Response to "Where did all the young stars go?"
E-mail from Ross McGuire
Colin,
Martin Dempster's piece (in The Scotsman and also Scottishgolfview.com) gets me on my soapbox about golf in Scotland and the lack of focus on driving talent forward to the next level. The SGU are fantastic in terms of amateur golf and ensuring that the elite squads and development players have access to coaching and most importantly, funding to help young talented golfers compete in tournaments worldwide.
That's a great grounding, however, as Andrew Crerar points out most of those golfers then have to fend for themselves when they turn pro.
Look at the example of Wentworth Golf Club, who have their own scholarship scheme which allows young golfers to be members of their club and to receive a certain amount of funding to help them on their way.
The main benefit no doubt being able enjoy first-class practice facilities that are good enough to be used by Ernie Els and Thomas Bjorn as their home club! We have a plethora of fantastic golf clubs and facilties in Scotland which we have not opened up to our top amateur golfers (unless I have missed something) and even when they turn pro, there will still be some courses that are "out of bounds" to young pros.
Could we as a golfing nation not nominate a set of regional centres (as a minimum) where members of the Scottish squads would be able to utilise the facilities to work on their game at venues where Open championships and other large tournaments are played?
Turnberry, Dundonald, Gleneagles, Dalmahoy, Muirfield, Gullane and Carnoustie are some names of courses that spring to mind for this type of initiative. A more open approach would be to ask all SGU members clubs to provide courtesy of facilities to all Scottish squad members as is done for professionals.
I read recently that Keir McNicoll was invited to the Dunhill Links championship - he had no funding to become a European Tour member and as such any money he won could not count towards earning a tour card. Perhaps over the course of their amateur careers, our young players would not only earn ranking points but secure post amateur funding based on their performance as amateurs.
We have an order of merit and world rankings already and these could be used in some way to provide a post amateur fund for taking on the professional game, based on the amateur record of say the previous two seasons.
Using Keir as an example, he would be one of the top funded fledgling pros for the season where he has turned professional to ensure his talent is not cast aside as soon as the home internationals are finished.
The article also mentioned a lot of other extremely talented Scottish players, Barry Hume, Chris Kelly and many more who have the ability to be playing in tournaments at a higher level. It's also interesting that Andrew Crerar mentioned the Swedish team turning up at Tour School together as a group with an entourage of coaches, doctors and other support.
I'm not surprised, given I stayed at the same B&B as the Swedish amateur team one weekend. They had a similar set-up to that described for the Tour School, just fewer people. They had six players, a technical coach and a sports psychologist for an amateur tournament!
It seems that Martin's piece has stoked the fires of those of us in Scotland who care about how our young players progress - similar to the current plight of our football team (the main difference being our golfers have an abundance of talent!).
Hopefully though we won't put an Ernie Walker style think tank in place, but rather make positive chances to the set up of our game to ensure progress can be made quickly. The SGU would be the right people to put a framework for discussion in place and to facilitate the delivery of action on any recommendations that can help our talented players flourish again.
The funding may be a challenge to put in place overnight - some simple things like access to the best local facilities could be arranged very quickly.
Looking forward to seeing how this moves forward.
Ross McGuire
PS I haven't even mentioned my former home golf club, Colville Park!
Colin,
Martin Dempster's piece (in The Scotsman and also Scottishgolfview.com) gets me on my soapbox about golf in Scotland and the lack of focus on driving talent forward to the next level. The SGU are fantastic in terms of amateur golf and ensuring that the elite squads and development players have access to coaching and most importantly, funding to help young talented golfers compete in tournaments worldwide.
That's a great grounding, however, as Andrew Crerar points out most of those golfers then have to fend for themselves when they turn pro.
Look at the example of Wentworth Golf Club, who have their own scholarship scheme which allows young golfers to be members of their club and to receive a certain amount of funding to help them on their way.
The main benefit no doubt being able enjoy first-class practice facilities that are good enough to be used by Ernie Els and Thomas Bjorn as their home club! We have a plethora of fantastic golf clubs and facilties in Scotland which we have not opened up to our top amateur golfers (unless I have missed something) and even when they turn pro, there will still be some courses that are "out of bounds" to young pros.
Could we as a golfing nation not nominate a set of regional centres (as a minimum) where members of the Scottish squads would be able to utilise the facilities to work on their game at venues where Open championships and other large tournaments are played?
Turnberry, Dundonald, Gleneagles, Dalmahoy, Muirfield, Gullane and Carnoustie are some names of courses that spring to mind for this type of initiative. A more open approach would be to ask all SGU members clubs to provide courtesy of facilities to all Scottish squad members as is done for professionals.
I read recently that Keir McNicoll was invited to the Dunhill Links championship - he had no funding to become a European Tour member and as such any money he won could not count towards earning a tour card. Perhaps over the course of their amateur careers, our young players would not only earn ranking points but secure post amateur funding based on their performance as amateurs.
We have an order of merit and world rankings already and these could be used in some way to provide a post amateur fund for taking on the professional game, based on the amateur record of say the previous two seasons.
Using Keir as an example, he would be one of the top funded fledgling pros for the season where he has turned professional to ensure his talent is not cast aside as soon as the home internationals are finished.
The article also mentioned a lot of other extremely talented Scottish players, Barry Hume, Chris Kelly and many more who have the ability to be playing in tournaments at a higher level. It's also interesting that Andrew Crerar mentioned the Swedish team turning up at Tour School together as a group with an entourage of coaches, doctors and other support.
I'm not surprised, given I stayed at the same B&B as the Swedish amateur team one weekend. They had a similar set-up to that described for the Tour School, just fewer people. They had six players, a technical coach and a sports psychologist for an amateur tournament!
It seems that Martin's piece has stoked the fires of those of us in Scotland who care about how our young players progress - similar to the current plight of our football team (the main difference being our golfers have an abundance of talent!).
Hopefully though we won't put an Ernie Walker style think tank in place, but rather make positive chances to the set up of our game to ensure progress can be made quickly. The SGU would be the right people to put a framework for discussion in place and to facilitate the delivery of action on any recommendations that can help our talented players flourish again.
The funding may be a challenge to put in place overnight - some simple things like access to the best local facilities could be arranged very quickly.
Looking forward to seeing how this moves forward.
Ross McGuire
PS I haven't even mentioned my former home golf club, Colville Park!
Labels: Amateur Men, Pro Men
posted by Colin |
See story on its own page | Wednesday, November 18, 2009
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