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Loch Ness Golf Club embrace clubgolf national junior golf programme

Posted by Big G under Juniors Golf, Latest Golf News

In the days where the average golfing membership age is quite high, Loch Ness Golf Club’s future is in safe hands with their junior membership very impressively exceeding the 200 mark.

Jamie Treasurer receives Loch Ness GC’s senior tropy from Club Captain, Tom Smith

Equally startling are the numbers of children on its clubgolf coaching programme – some 150 at last count and most of them from non golfing families, introduced to the game through clubgolf’s introductory in-school game, firstclubgolf.

Few are more delighted with the success of the Club’s programme than its orchestrator, the Club’s Junior Convenor Richard Treasurer, who with his team of five PGA qualified volunteer coaches has achieved success on a grand scale in the last six years.

And no one is more proud than Richard whose son has emerged as one of the early success stories from the clubgolf programme he set up.  This month, 17 year old Jamie Treasurer became the Club’s senior and junior champ for the second year in a row.

With such a large base of junior players it was only a matter of time before one emerged to start challenging the seniors.  Jamie, a primary school pupil at the time, had hardly swung a club before becoming one of the Club’s first intake of clubgolf recruits.

Since then he has progressed to lessons with the Club’s Pro, Martin Piggott.  At the same time as he has reduced his handicap to two he has begun featuring in the latter stages of national events.  In last month’s SGU Boys’ Stroke Play event at Blairgowrie he made the cut for the last 40 places.

Launched by Colin Montgomerie in 2003 as a lasting legacy to host the Ryder Cup, clubgolf is a partnership between the Scottish Golf Union, Scottish Ladies’ Golfing Association, Professional Golfers’ Association, the Golf Foundation and sportscotland.

clubgolf is nearing its ultimate target of giving all 50,000 nine year olds in Scotland the opportunity to play golf.  This year alone, 33,466 of Scotland’s Primary 5 children experienced clubgolf.  Meanwhile 232 clubs across Scotland and a volunteer workforce of 1128 qualified coaches are delivering the programme.

Hugely successful in Highland, 90 percent of schools are delivering firstclubgolf and 35 golf clubs are providing junior clubgolf coaching.

As a front runner in the programme, Loch Ness Golf Club is one of the many clubs in Scotland to see the benefits.