Some of the golfers had never held a golf club before. Others seemed to know their way around a golf course pretty well. Some knocked their shots a couple of hundred yards down the driving range, while other whiffed on their first few shots or hit their balls just a few feet.
The 16 junior golfers who showed up for the 9:30 session at the "Junior Links" Golf Clinic at Nibley Park Golf Course on a recent Monday morning came in all shapes and sizes and abilities. They ranged in age from 6 to 15, and there were just as many girls as boys.
One of the 6-year-olds was my son, Andrew, who has been interested in golf since he learned how to walk but never had done much more than hit some balls around the yard with his older brothers.
When I told him he was going to a golf clinic, he was thrilled, although the main reason might have been that he didn't have to go to those dreaded swimming lessons he had endured for the previous three weeks. While I'm not one of those parents who is trying to produce another Tiger Woods, I would like my child to find an interest in something besides video games and the Cartoon Network.
Nibley Park and Mick Riley golf courses are the junior golf headquarters every summer in the Salt Lake Valley. Junior golf programs exist from St. George to Cedar City to Orem to Bountiful to Brigham City, but no programs run as many kids through as Nibley and Mick Riley do each summer.
Some 500 juniors go through the Mick Riley program each summer, with nearly 200 golfers participating in a league and about 300 who go through camps and clinics. Riverbend and Meadow Brook also have junior golf clinics, but more than half of Salt Lake County junior golf is held at Mick Riley.
Head pro Todd Meyer is a strong supporter of junior golf and last year won the Utah Section PGA award as the "Junior Golf Leader." His assistant, Jeff Waters, has been a leading proponent of junior golf for more than two decades, and the two of them make the junior golf program thrive.
"We're trying to produce different programs for different levels of golfers," Meyer said. "We try to provide programs at the junior level that are best suited for their game. We want to help make them love it for life."
From one perspective, you could say that some golf pros are looking toward the future when they push junior golf programs. Meyer acknowledges that is part of it.
"This is an investment for my golf course," he said. "We all need to be more pro-active."
However, he's also concerned about the future of a sport he loves.
"It's not just for future business," he said. "We want to develop golfers as people. Golf builds character, and it teaches honesty and integrity.
"We're proud of the fact that we develop good players and that the program continues to grow. It's a bit cumbersome at times, and sometimes it feels like an elementary school or a junior high out here. But that's better than having the kids hanging out at the mall."
Salt Lake City golf courses run their "Junior Links" program at Bonneville, Rose Park and Glendale golf courses, but the majority of the weeklong clinics are held at Nibley Park. Although it doesn't handle as many golfers as Mick Riley, Nibley Park still does its share with a couple of hundred each summer.
Nibley Park head pro Mike Brimley says there's a lot more to their clinics than teaching kids how to hit a golf ball.
"We try to teach them the basic skills, but we also emphasize etiquette, safety and speed of play," he said.
The first thing on Monday morning that the young golfers are taught is to be careful where you walk to never get near someone swinging a club.
Later, the golfers are divided into smaller groups and taught the basics of a grip, stance and swing. Then they are given a pile of balls and allowed to swing away while a pro circulates from child to child helping each individually. After hitting 30 to 40 balls that day, Andrew informed me afterward, "I hit 13 solid shots today." He must have counted every ball that got airborne.
The youngsters were given a T-shirt the first day and a small bag of goodies on the third day that contained a golf ball, some tees, a rule book and a ball mark repairer. At the end of each session, the kids got a free doughnut donut and soft drink, which for some kids is the highlight of the session.
Besides working on their woods and irons, the kids spend a good deal of time on the putting green. They also watched a video that teaches etiquette, learning things like playing quickly and how to fix a ball mark ("you push up the grass and make a little bump and then tap it down," Andrew explained to me).
Brimley said one of the most gratifying things to him when he sees graduates of his junior golf program come back to his course is how fast they play. "They may not be able to swing the right way, but they are usually our fastest players," he said.
On the last day, the juniors get to experience a tournament with a putting course set up on the putting green. Each golfer is given a scorecard for the 18-hole round and scores are tallied and even put up on a scoreboard, hole-by-hole, just like in a real tournament. Prizes are given to the top three places and each golfer is given a token for the driving range.
The kids were each given a certificate on the final day to show they had completed the junior program. Each of the kids, whether a wide-eyed 6-year-old or a cocky teenager, went away smiling at the end of the week with a better understanding of the game of golf.
While most of the junior golf programs are held in June and July, both Nibley Park (483-5418) and Mick Riley (266-8185) still have junior golf programs in August.
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