Instruction
The Gift of Junior Golf: How To Introduce Your Child to the Game for a Lifetime
Golf has been described as “the greatest game ever played” and “the game you can play for a lifetime.” It can be one of the greatest gifts a parent gives their child.
Introducing a youngster to golf and helping them navigate their formative years through junior golf can be both exciting and challenging. Most junior golf parent start with great intent, to give their child the gift of the game. Unfortunately, sometimes this original intention can get lost along the way by visions of potential opportunities golf can afford. Although it would be exhilarating to one day see your son or daughter playing college golf or on television celebrating a professional victory, I believe it’s important to see the bigger picture and stick to your original intentions. When a parent’s primary focus is to make the game a positive experience for their child, junior golfers have the greatest opportunity to reach their potential on and off the course.
Enjoyment of the game is one of the keys to junior golfers developing the motivation to consistently work hard at golf. Genuine intrinsic motivation increases a golfer’s resiliency and ability to bounce back. An inner love for the game also decreases the likelihood of burnout and dropout. Children who find an internal passion for the game will be able to share it with their children. The gift of introducing your child to the game can turn into the gift that keeps on giving; one day, you might find yourself playing golf with your grandchildren. Even with all these positives related to intrinsic motivation and passion for the game, however, sharing it with your child can be complicated. There is good news and bad news.
Bad news first. As much as a parent would like to instill a love for the game in their child, they can’t. Parents can’t give their children a love for the game; they can only give their children the opportunity to find their own love for the game.
Now for the good news. When you give your child the opportunity to experience golf without an agenda, everyone wins. Letting your child pursue sports, activities, and recreation with their personal interest in mind allows them to discover what they love. If it’s not golf, it will be a sport or activity that gives them as much enjoyment as golf gives you. It also allows them the opportunity to enjoy golf enough to do it as a recreational activity, even if it’s not their leading passion.
The following are some guidelines to consider when introducing and navigating your child’s experience in junior golf. These ideas are helpful to junior golfers of all ages and abilities. It doesn’t matter whether your child is 6 or 16, or a beginner or an elite player. These ideas will help lead to both a positive experience and performance.
1. Lead By Example
Children and adolescents are sponges, and junior golfers are no different. A lot of what kids learn and how they act is based on how the adults around them conduct themselves. This phenomenon is referred to in psychology as Social Learning Theory. For instance, if a child sees their parent or coach get angry and frustrated after a shot, the junior golfer will learn that it’s a socially acceptable to get angry after a shot. If junior golfers see their parents and coaches enjoying the game and persisting through challenges, they will have the opportunity to learn that golf is fun and enjoyable. They will also learn how to effectively deal with adversity.
2. Engage Your Junior Golfer In As Many Different Sports And Activities As Possible, Especially Early On
Even though parents would love to see their children play golf, it’s extremely beneficial to expose them to different sports, especially between the ages of 6-12. Participating in different activities helps develop motor patterns, balance, and coordination, which in turn will be helpful to their future experiences in golf. Playing other sports will also give juniors a break from golf, which can help them physically and mentally recover.
3. Focus On The Positives And Seek Solutions
There is a common practice among golfers to focus on the negatives. It’s important to be the mature voice of reason around your junior golfer. Parents should focus on the positives surrounding their junior golfer’s performance and encourage them to do the same. When juniors are experiencing genuine challenges, it’s important for parents to help them seek solutions instead of indulging in the negative aspects of the challenge. Optimism is a skill that can be learned; it’s important that parents help their juniors develop this skill.
4. Focus On Process Over Outcome
It is natural for junior golfers to focus on outcomes like score and the leaderboard and where they finished. Focusing on outcome can be a good way to build confidence. Unfortunately, many junior golfers have the tendency to cast their score and performance in a negative light. It’s important to help junior golfers realize what they did well when they are not happy with their outcome.
Juniors can focus on a range things relating to their process such as their: effort, attitude, preparation, decision-making, persistence, and sportsmanship. Focusing on their personal processes can give them positive takeaways and also help them learn how to effectively manage their responses.
5. Let Your Junior Golfer Choose To Participate
It’s important that junior golfers feel they are the one choosing to play golf. Feeling like you are being made to do something takes the enjoyment out of the activity. It’s always better that junior golfers feel they are choosing to play and compete. This promotes autonomy, self-reliance, and motivation. I am not recommending that you allow your kids to stay home playing video games (it’s important they participate in outside social activities), but let them choose what activities they participate in. Worst-case scenario, give them options to choose from: for example, golf camp or summer camp.
6. Hold Your Junior Golfer Accountable Once They Sign Up
Junior golfers should have the opportunity participate in the decision-making process and provide input regarding golf camps, clinics, and tournaments in which they wish to compete. Once they make a commitment, however, they should be required to stick to it. This will help them learn important values like responsibility and accountability.
There are effective and ineffective ways of holding your junior golfer accountable. Saying, “You signed up for golf camp, that’s the end of the debate,” in a loud voice is not typically the best approach. Explain to them before signing up that after they commit it’s important that they follow through and give a 100-percent effort. If your junior golfer says they don’t want to participate after signing up, tell them they can choose to not participate next time, but they have already made the commitment this time and it’s important to honor your commitments.
7. Let Your Junior Golfer Choose To Specialize In Golf
There is a lot of debate within sport science whether junior golfers should specialize and focus solely on one sport or play multiple sports. Junior golfers are specializing more often and at younger ages than ever before. Parents and juniors are feeling pressure to specialize in fear of being left in the dust. On the surface, specializing sounds like a great idea, but it’s an important decision that deserves further examination.
Jean Cote, Joseph Baker, and Bruce Abernethy have been researching this exact topic for more than a decade. They’ve found that specializing too early can lead to more challenges than positives, especially for sports like golf where athletes peak later in adulthood. Cote and colleagues make two important assertions regarding specializing in sport:
- Children should be the ones who choose to specialize and focus on a single sport.
- The earliest this choice should generally be made is between the ages of 13-16.
With that said, I understand that college coaches are recruiting earlier than ever, and parents may have concerns relating to getting a golf scholarship. I believe a positive balance can be struck.
Junior golfers younger than 13 can still focus largely on golf while still being engaged in other activities. It’s also important for parents of junior golfers to pay close attention for signs of overtraining and burnout, especially since burnout can lead to many negative outcomes including dropping out. Remember, it’s impossible to play college golf if you stop playing golf. Many of the concerns surrounding burnout are alleviated when parents follow the other suggestions in this article and stay focused on the No. 1 priority: making junior golf a positive and enjoyable experience.
8. Support More Than Coach
Being both your child’s golf coach and No. 1 supporter is a difficult balance to strike. With that in mind, I recommend that parents don’t coach their junior golfer outside the basic fundamentals. And even during this time, there primary focus should be that their child is enjoying the time with mom and dad.
I recommend finding a coach once your junior golfer decides to start competing and taking the game more seriously. There are success stories that contradict this philosophy, but the negatives generally outweigh the positives. There are many great junior golf coaches, but a junior golfer only has two parents. Being a parent is one of the most important responsibilities in life, so it’s imperative to do everything we can to succeed. When your child has an opportunity pursue the game of golf and spend quality time with mom and dad, everyone wins.
There may be no more painful affliction in golf than the “yips” – those uncontrollable and maddening little nervous twitches that prevent you from making a decent stroke on short putts. If you’ve never had them, consider yourself very fortunate (or possibly just very young). But I can assure you that when your most treacherous and feared golf shot is not the 195 yard approach over water with a quartering headwind…not the extra tight fairway with water left and sand right…not the soft bunker shot to a downhill pin with water on the other side…No, when your most feared shot is the remaining 2- 4-foot putt after hitting a great approach, recovery or lag putt, it makes the game almost painful.
And I’ve been fighting the yips (again) for a while now. It’s a recurring nightmare that has haunted me most of my adult life. I even had the yips when I was in my 20s, but I’ve beat them into submission off and on most of my adult life. But just recently, that nasty virus came to life once again. My lag putting has been very good, but when I get over one of those “you should make this” length putts, the entire nervous system seems to go haywire. I make great practice strokes, and then the most pitiful short-stroke or jab at the ball you can imagine. Sheesh.
But I’m a traditionalist, and do not look toward the long putter, belly putter, cross-hand, claw or other variation as the solution. My approach is to beat those damn yips into submission some other way. Here’s what I’m doing that is working pretty well, and I offer it to all of you who might have a similar affliction on the greens.
When you are over a short putt, forget the practice strokes…you want your natural eye-hand coordination to be unhindered by mechanics. Address your putt and take a good look at the hole, and back to the putter to ensure good alignment. Lighten your right hand grip on the putter and make sure that only the fingertips are in contact with the grip, to prevent you from getting to tight.
Then, take a long, long look at the hole to fill your entire mind and senses with the target. When you bring your head/eyes back to the ball, try to make a smooth, immediate move right into your backstroke — not even a second pause — and then let your hands and putter track right back together right back to where you were looking — the HOLE! Seeing the putter make contact with the ball, preferably even the forward edge of the ball – the side near the hole.
For me, this is working, but I am asking all of you to chime in with your own “home remedies” for the most aggravating and senseless of all golf maladies. It never hurts to have more to fall back on!
Over the last couple of decades, golf has become much more science-based. We measure swing speed, smash factor, angle of attack, strokes gained, and many other metrics that can really help golfers improve. But I often wonder if the advancement of golf’s “hard” sciences comes at the expense of the “soft” sciences.
Take, for example, golf instruction. Good golf instruction requires understanding swing mechanics and ball flight. But let’s take that as a given for PGA instructors. The other factors that make an instructor effective can be evaluated by social science, rather than launch monitors.
If you are a recreational golfer looking for a golf instructor, here are my top three points to consider.
1. Cultural mindset
What is “cultural mindset? To social scientists, it means whether a culture of genius or a culture of learning exists. In a golf instruction context, that may mean whether the teacher communicates a message that golf ability is something innate (you either have it or you don’t), or whether golf ability is something that can be learned. You want the latter!
It may sound obvious to suggest that you find a golf instructor who thinks you can improve, but my research suggests that it isn’t a given. In a large sample study of golf instructors, I found that when it came to recreational golfers, there was a wide range of belief systems. Some instructors strongly believed recreational golfers could improve through lessons. while others strongly believed they could not. And those beliefs manifested in the instructor’s feedback given to a student and the culture created for players.
2. Coping and self-modeling can beat role-modeling
Swing analysis technology is often preloaded with swings of PGA and LPGA Tour players. The swings of elite players are intended to be used for comparative purposes with golfers taking lessons. What social science tells us is that for novice and non-expert golfers, comparing swings to tour professionals can have the opposite effect of that intended. If you fit into the novice or non-expert category of golfer, you will learn more and be more motivated to change if you see yourself making a ‘better’ swing (self-modeling) or seeing your swing compared to a similar other (a coping model). Stay away from instructors who want to compare your swing with that of a tour player.
3. Learning theory basics
It is not a sexy selling point, but learning is a process, and that process is incremental – particularly for recreational adult players. Social science helps us understand this element of golf instruction. A good instructor will take learning slowly. He or she will give you just about enough information that challenges you, but is still manageable. The artful instructor will take time to decide what that one or two learning points are before jumping in to make full-scale swing changes. If the instructor moves too fast, you will probably leave the lesson with an arm’s length of swing thoughts and not really know which to focus on.
As an instructor, I develop a priority list of changes I want to make in a player’s technique. We then patiently and gradually work through that list. Beware of instructors who give you more than you can chew.
So if you are in the market for golf instruction, I encourage you to look beyond the X’s and O’s to find the right match!
Most pros take months, even years, to win their first tournament. Lottie Woad needed exactly four days.
The 21-year-old from Surrey shot 21-under 267 at Dundonald Links to win the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open by three shots — in her very first event as a professional. She’s only the third player in LPGA history to accomplish this feat, joining Rose Zhang (2023) and Beverly Hanson (1951).
But here’s what caught my attention as a coach: Woad didn’t win through miraculous putting or bombing 300-yard drives. She won through relentless precision and unshakeable composure. After watching her performance unfold, I’m convinced every golfer — from weekend warriors to scratch players — can steal pages from her playbook.
Precision Beats Power (And It’s Not Even Close)
Forget the driving contests. Woad proved that finding greens matters more than finding distance.
What Woad did:
• Hit it straight, hit it solid, give yourself chances
• Aimed for the fat parts of greens instead of chasing pins
• Let her putting do the talking after hitting safe targets
• As she said, “Everyone was chasing me today, and managed to maintain the lead and played really nicely down the stretch and hit a lot of good shots”
Why most golfers mess this up:
• They see a pin tucked behind a bunker and grab one more club to “go right at it”
• Distance becomes more important than accuracy
• They try to be heroic instead of smart
ACTION ITEM: For your next 10 rounds, aim for the center of every green regardless of pin position. Track your greens in regulation and watch your scores drop before your swing changes.
The Putter That Stayed Cool Under Fire
Woad started the final round two shots clear and immediately applied pressure with birdies at the 2nd and 3rd holes. When South Korea’s Hyo Joo Kim mounted a charge and reached 20-under with a birdie at the 14th, Woad didn’t panic.
How she responded to pressure:
• Fired back with consecutive birdies at the 13th and 14th
• Watched Kim stumble with back-to-back bogeys
• Capped it with her fifth birdie of the day at the par-5 18th
• Stayed patient when others pressed, pressed when others cracked
What amateurs do wrong:
• Get conservative when they should be aggressive
• Try to force magic when steady play would win
• Panic when someone else makes a move
ACTION ITEM: Practice your 3-6 foot putts for 15 minutes after every range session. Woad’s putting wasn’t spectacular—it was reliable. Make the putts you should make.
Course Management 101: Play Your Game, Not the Course’s Game
Woad admitted she couldn’t see many scoreboards during the final round, but it didn’t matter. She stuck to her game plan regardless of what others were doing.
Her mental approach:
• Focused on her process, not the competition
• Drew on past pressure situations (Augusta National Women’s Amateur win)
• As she said, “That was the biggest tournament I played in at the time and was kind of my big win. So definitely felt the pressure of it more there, and I felt like all those experiences helped me with this”
Her physical execution:
• 270-yard drives (nothing flashy)
• Methodical iron play
• Steady putting
• Everything effective, nothing spectacular
ACTION ITEM: Create a yardage book for your home course. Know your distances to every pin, every hazard, every landing area. Stick to your plan no matter what your playing partners are doing.
Mental Toughness Isn’t Born, It’s Built
The most impressive part of Woad’s win? She genuinely didn’t expect it: “I definitely wasn’t expecting to win my first event as a pro, but I knew I was playing well, and I was hoping to contend.”
Her winning mindset:
• Didn’t put winning pressure on herself
• Focused on playing well and contending
• Made winning a byproduct of a good process
• Built confidence through recent experiences:
- Won the Women’s Irish Open as an amateur
- Missed a playoff by one shot at the Evian Championship
- Each experience prepared her for the next
What this means for you:
• Stop trying to shoot career rounds every time you tee up
• Focus on executing your pre-shot routine
• Commit to every shot
• Stay present in the moment
ACTION ITEM: Before each round, set process goals instead of score goals. Example: “I will take three practice swings before every shot” or “I will pick a specific target for every shot.” Let your score be the result, not the focus.
The Real Lesson
Woad collected $300,000 for her first professional victory, but the real prize was proving that fundamentals still work at golf’s highest level. She didn’t reinvent the game — she simply executed the basics better than everyone else that week.
The fundamentals that won:
• Hit more fairways
• Find more greens
• Make the putts you should make
• Stay patient under pressure
That’s something every golfer can do, regardless of handicap. Lottie Woad just showed us it’s still the winning formula.
FINAL ACTION ITEM: Pick one of the four action items above and commit to it for the next month. Master one fundamental before moving to the next. That’s how champions are built.
PGA Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer. You can check out his writing work and learn more about him by visiting BEAGOLFER.golf and OneMoreRollGolf.com. Also, check out “The Starter” on RG.org each Monday.
Editor’s note: Brendon shares his nearly 30 years of experience in the game with GolfWRX readers through his ongoing tip series. He looks forward to providing valuable insights and advice to help golfers improve their game. Stay tuned for more Tips!
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drknowital
Jul 25, 2017 at 12:56 pm
Whenever Doctors get involved all hell breaks loose. They label everything… I’m almost 60 and grew up with very stern parents and being the youngest of 4 brothers, well people my age know what older brothers do… I’ve raised 4 beautiful children and have been married to my best friend for over 30 years. Parents just need to guide their kids in the right direction, and if they fail that’s a learning experience. Today it seems children are in control… My opinion…