Located on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Headland Golf Club has been a registered MYGolf Centre since January, 2011. During this time they have gone from strength to strength and now boast a total of 55 MYGolf participants! The following questions have been answered by Centre Coordinator and PGA Member, Matt Victorsen along with the club&aposs Secretary Manager, Ben Dobson. Why do you run a junior program? We run junior programs for many reasons most importantly these juniors are the future members of our golf clubs and the future of the game as a whole. Without the next generation of golfers our game will decline. Secondly it is our obligation as PGA members to continue to grow the game and provide juniors with an opportunity to play sport and be part of a team/club. At Headland Golf Club we understand that juniors are the future of the game of golf, and that we as a golf club have a moral duty to promote the game to juniors and make it easily available and attractive to them. With the constant demands of golf club life juniors can be easily forgotten. The ultimate goal of the program for Headland is to convert as many My Golf participants into Junior Members of Headland Golf Club and to grow within them a passion for the game of golf. We are well on the way to achieving this. Who runs the program? We are lucky at Headland that we have a dedicated and talented My Golf Coordinator in PGA Professional Matt Victorsen who, with the financial support of the club, has grown his group of juniors considerably since first adopting the My Golf program. How have you found the MYGolf program and the benefits? The MyGolf Program is the most comprehensive junior program I have seen from the beginner (bronze) players through to the more advanced (gold) players. The program highlights the key aspects of golf, “Rip It” Long Shots, “Roll It” Putting, “Chip It” Chipping, “Blast It” Bunker Shots, “Fly It” Pitching and “Bend It” Manoeuvring the Ball. The juniors who have enrolled enjoy the website and the certificates that are awarded when they achieve a certain level in the Skills Test. Most importantly it gives the children and their parents an avenue to be able to watch the progress from lesson to lesson, term to term and year to year which is always encouraging. Any tips and ideas you can give to run the program successfully? To be able to run a junior program successfully, we believe it is crucial for the Club Secretary Manager or the Directors to support Junior Golf and provide the resources and opportunities necessary to have that point of difference . We offer Squad Training four days a week, Parent and Child Golf Days, Junior Fundraising Days, Headland Junior Classics and OnCourse Playing Lessons throughout the year. For the beginner through to the Elite Development Squad we have Junior Golf events at our club 154 days per year. This is only possible through the support Ben Dobson, our secretary manager, provides. Through the different skills of the MyGolf Program we make every lesson different so the juniors don&apost become &aposbored&apos doing the same thing at golf every week.
Author: Golf Australia