Shiskine’s new junior golf drive an instant success

20 August 2009

Arran’s Shiskine Golf and Tennis Club, which in June received major investment from sportscotland to help transform its facilities, is making huge strides in developing junior golf in the community through the national junior programme, clubgolf.

clubgolf is the partnership between the Scottish Golf Union (SGU), the Scottish Ladies' Golfing Association (SLGA), the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA), the Golf Foundation and sportscotland launched in 2003 following Scotland’s successful bid to host the 2014 Ryder Cup.

Shiskine’s golfers had become aware the average age of its member was heading towards the late 50s. They realized that the numbers of children playing golf on the island was shrinking. They admitted more could be done to offer local youngsters a structured coaching programme.

Through the forward thinking efforts of its members, in combination with clubgolf, improvements to its clubhouse and the adoption of a clubgolf programme (Shiskine is the first clubgolf centre on Arran) will have a double impact on local juniors.

“Our club is very much involved with the community,” said the Club’s clubgolf co-ordinator, Gordon Stewart.

“We have had a good relationship with the two local primary schools and have offered their children coaching in an amateur but enthusiastic way.

“But when we looked at the whole junior structure we realised we hadn’t got a proper training programme in place.

“Then when we found out about clubgolf and proper structured coaching we decided to invest in training to push it forwards.”

To address its challenges the Club has been working closely with Ann Lang, clubgolf’s Regional Manager for South West Scotland.

This May it made a significant step by sending seven of its members on clubgolf’s two day Level 1 coaching course, held at the local high school. All seven became qualified coaches. Having since re- approached the local primary schools, the club has attracted over 30 children to its clubgolf coaching which is supervised by its Pro, Dougie Bell.

“We run the coaching on Monday evenings, take the children out for between one and two hours and we rotate the volunteers,” said Mr Stewart. “It’s working very well and the kids love it.”

Junior developments at Shiskine are having a knock on effect locally. Impressed by its results nearby Whiting Bay GC has made contact with Ann Lang to improve its own junior coaching.

Meanwhile, work on Shiskine’s new purpose-built clubhouse is due to start soon. When complete it will provide full disabled access, improved changing rooms and showers plus a room for bowling and tennis club members. In addition, a new restaurant and function suite will be available all year round creating a fantastic facility for use by the whole community.

“It’s very obvious to us that juniors are very keen but there were no facilities for them, no junior room or TV, so we are quite excited about providing that facility,” added Mr Stewart.

With the local driving range providing the practice facility to keep the coaching going through the autumn and winter, and other plans to hold junior tournaments, local children have everything they will ever need to put them on a fairway to success.