Catch them young

Golf is an amazing sport, a way of life and some may say an addiction for a lifetime. For sure it is one of the very few sports played from an extremely young age to the last days of one’s life. Golf helps juniors in both their physical and mental development. It teaches them to be honest, abide by rules, be punctual, make friends and most of all have fun, apart from improving their physical skills.

Many children today have limited physical skills as there are many schools with no playgrounds and some which do not give enough importance to sports. A good junior programme should look after the development of a child than just focussing on teaching them golf technique. A child must develop FMS which stands for Fundamental Movement Skills. These skills can be divided into –

Locomotive: Like running, jumping, skipping, hopping, sprinting etc

Stability: The ABC’s of sport are agility, balance, co-ordination and speed.

Object control skills: Learning to throw, kick, strike, catch etc

Awareness: Spatial as in their surroundings, kinaesthetic as in movements, body as in position and rules.

After a child develops FMS, we introduce FSS which is fundamental sports skill. These apply to that particular sport and in golf would include the golf swing, short game and putting. Therefore technical training comes after the child has developed the necessary movement skills. This is the most important part of a junior program. Once we develop FMS and FSS in any sport a sports skill can be transferred from one sport to another. So a tennis or cricket skill can be transferred to golf. Therefore children should try to play as many games as possible up to the age of around 12 and then reduce them to 3-4 sports till 15 and then concentrate on one. Do not try to specialise in only one sport too early as this has a negative impact the most serious one being burnout.

(Grewal is the director of National Golf Academy of India and CGA Hero Honda Golf Academy. If you have any queries get in touch with him at [email protected])