Juniors to benefit as Duns Golf Club wins facility development award

Duns Golf Club, at the forefront of developing junior golf in its local community, secured an Awards for All lottery grant this summer to develop a junior practice facility.

The award, for a shade under £10,000, will enable the Club to, in the words of Junior Convenor, Anne Wood “resurrect and develop an old putting area that has gone to wrack and ruin”. The Club’s Green Keepers will start by lifting the old turf next month and aims to complete the project by June 2009. By then the Club will have re-developed and shaped a brand new putting and chipping area, created both shallow and deep bunkers and introduced new driving nets.

Duns Golf Club is the perfect example of a club transforming its junior section through the national junior golf programme, clubgolf.

A partnership between the Scottish Golf Union, the Scottish Ladies' Golfing Association, the Professional Golfers' Association, the Golf Foundation and sportscotland, clubgolf emerged from Scotland’s successful bid to host the Ryder Cup. clubgolf is a result of the Scottish Government’s commitment to introduce every nine-year-old child in Scotland to the game.

By training three of its members to become PGA Level 1 qualified coaches last summer, the Club was fully prepared to take in P5 children who had been introduced to the game at schools through firstclubgolf. Played with multi-coloured clubs, rubberised balls, Velcro targets and carefully planned progressive lesson cards, firstclubgolf provides a safe and exciting introduction to the game.

Following their in-school introduction, children can progress to the second phase of clubgolf's Player Pathway, Stage 1, involving 40 hours of coaching delivered over two years, and covers the fundamentals of putting, chipping, full swing, rules and etiquette.

Duns Golf Club took in over 40 children for its Stage 1 programme last summer, adding a further 22 this year. Some already have handicaps and the Club is experiencing a surge in the numbers entering competitions. With such interest a better, junior-friendly area for the children to receive their weekly coaching was needed.

“The junior section is growing the whole time because of clubgolf,” said Anne. “When I got involved as Junior Convenor a few years ago, the coaching was limited and we only had six or seven juniors playing in competitions.

“Now we have three volunteer coaches, there’s a fourth about to be trained and we have a huge amount of support from parents. When we had a competition this week 18 juniors turned up.”

Until now the Club’s coaches have succeeded in teaching the children on a “tiny”, and far from ideal, putting area next to the course. A driving range three miles away provided the venue for teaching the long game.

“The area we have been using is right beside our first tee, which isn’t very good when you have a crowd of children,” said Mrs Wood. “So the Club is delighted to receive this award. It will make a big difference for the kids to have their own area and the adults will be able to practise their putting and chipping too.”