Juniors to benefit as Royal Dornoch opens to local school children

Having bolstered its volunteer coaching base to 14, Royal Dornoch Golf Club is about to embark on a campaign of delivering junior coaching to 40 local school children.

Royal Dornoch is one of around 200 Scottish clubs signed up for the clubgolf programme. Emerging from Scotland’s successful bid to host the Ryder Cup clubgolf is a partnership of the Scottish Golf Union, the Scottish Ladies' Golfing Association, the Professional Golfers' Association, the Golf Foundation and sportscotland.

The Club has been delivering clubgolf Stages 1 and 2 for a number of years to its own junior members. This month its PGA Pro, Gary Dingwall, completed his first 10-week clubgolf Stage 3 course delivered to 13 local juniors.

“This is the first time we have run anything like this at the club,” said Gary, who gave the coaching in his spare time on both weekend days. “It’s been successful, they all seem to have learnt a lot and have enjoyed it.”

Gary’s Stage 3 juniors, all active junior members, provided the perfect test ground for his new programme. This month things change dramatically when 40 Dornoch primary children, many of them non-golfers, will arrive at the club for Stage 1 coaching.

These children will have experienced clubgolf’s introductory game, firstclubgolf, in school time using multi-coloured modified clubs, rubberised balls and Velcro targets. At the Club they will join a 40-hour course delivered by volunteer coaches under Gary’s supervision over a two year programme which covers the fundamentals of putting, chipping, full swing, rules and etiquette.

“For the first time we are able to give children a solid foundation with a full pathway in place to take them from Stage 1 to Stage 3,” said Gary, who hopes to attract well over 40 children to the Friday night sessions which run separately to the after school sessions.

“Introducing this golf pathway gives the kids a specific target. Instead of them having to ask us when they can go on the course, once they reach a certain point and they have earned their “clubgolf passports” they can go on the course without adult supervision when they are judged to be ready.

“Hopefully it will take off in a big way and they’ll enjoy it and experience the reward of progressing through different stages.”

In Gary, originally from Wishaw and Teaching Pro at Royal Dornoch for the past six years, the children will have an accomplished guide. Capped 11 times for Scotland as a junior, he is a former Scottish Assistants tournament champion as well as winning the Scottish Assistants Order of Merit.

It was the Club’s previous Pro, Stuart Morrison, now Pro at Tain Golf Club and SGU Highland Academy coach, teaching Stage 4 of the programme, who showed Gary the potential of clubgolf.

“When I saw Stuart delivering Stage 4, it made complete sense to me that this is the perfect way to keep kids in golf and improve them,” he said. “So I went through the Stage 3 orientation programme.

“If the kids want to progress to the level of the Academy with Stuart then brilliant but if they don’t then hopefully we can keep them in golf for ever more. However they do have every opportunity as Royal Dornoch have invested in the V1 Video Analysis software system which will be used for the more technical aspects of stage 3 coaching.

“I would love to see kids who I have known since 10 years old playing at a decent standard, maybe not world beaters, but still loving their game of golf. Just to quote one example Niall Campbell joined the stage 3 programme in November and his handicap has come down from 18 to 11.”

With annual junior membership pegged at an astonishingly low £7 for its local children, Royal Dornoch already has an exemplary attitude to juniors. Over 140 children are currently on its books, though many, including their two lowest handicap boys, live in other parts of Highland and represent their home clubs.

“We are hoping that with this programme in place we will get some really good ones coming out of the woodwork,” said Junior Convenor, Mike Thomas. “With the youngsters now benefiting from Gary’s coaching over the winter, we’ll hopefully get a few more single figure golfers this year."