450 Juniors Needing Coaching

Golf Coach Karyn Dallas has just received an alarming wake up call for the start of her junior coaching program. She went to her records and discovered that during the close season the number of juniors wanting to receive information on coaching had almost doubled from around 250 to just over 450.

Nine years ago Karyn launched her junior coaching program at Kirriemuir Golf Club to around 30 of the clubs juniors. Within 2 years word had spread and there were over 100 with more and more enquiries all the time. The coaching struggled to cope for a couple of years until a management program was introduced which enabled Karyn to quickly sort and organise over 200 students.

It was feared that such a quantity of students would stifle quality but these fear were allayed when in 2006 junior boys from Kirriemuir would dominate the Angus County Junior Order of Merit; taking the top eight slots. In 2007 they nearly made the double when Amy Taylor won the girls OOM and Daniel Naismith finished 2nd in the boys OOM.

When Karyn launched the program she was unaware of what she had achieved. The program has proved universally successful at all levels. As stated it was able to attract and retain a large number of students of which 30% are female. It was used as a national program by the SLGA and is success can be seen in the strength of the current Scottish Girls team who were all introduced to the program at an early age. When Karyn was asked to do some work with the local special needs community she simply adapted the sessions to suit the mental age and physical abilities of the students. At the top level two students, Jenna Wilson and Pamela Feggans earned tour cards in late 2007.

A commercial version of the program is overdue and following a very successful pilot at Montrose with Professional Jason Boyd another pilot is currently being rolled out in England. Karyn is looking for suitable locations in Ireland and Wales so if anyone is interested please contact Karyn by email karyn@tgolf.info