Golf: Club trio win Academy awards after star turns

Published on Tuesday 8 December 2009 08:53

THREE North Berwick golfers have been selected for a national coaching academy just five years after being introduced to the game through the clubgolf programme.

Clara Young, a 13-year-old member at North Berwick Golf Club, and 14-year-olds Euan Bowden and Calum Hill, who play at the Glen and Tantallon respectively, all progressed through every stage of the junior initiative before earning their selection for the SGU's East Academy, coached by Colin Brooks at the Braid Hills.

"These are our first players to make the Academy, which is fantastic news and hopefully they will be followed by many more," said their coach, North Berwick's Martyn Huish.

He was one of the first PGA pros in Scotland to embrace the clubgolf programme and, as a result, the club has a 20-strong base of qualified volunteer coaches and 96 children in its programme.

Huish added: "We are continually telling everyone in the programme what can happen at the end of it, so this makes it worth all the effort we have put in from the start."

The trio were amongst the first-ever intake of clubgolfers following the strategy's launch by Colin Montgomerie at Gleneagles in 2003 as a legacy to Scotland's successful bid to host the Ryder Cup. It's been a fine year for all three players. Earlier this summer, having slashed her handicap from 19 to ten, Young became North Berwick GC's youngest-ever club champion after winning the ladies title.

"The highlight of Hill's season was winning the Glen's junior championship while he also tied for fifth in the recent SGU Junior Winter Series at Nairn. A new member of Tantallon's men's winter league team, Hill has reduced his handicap from 8.7 to 4.5 this season.

Bowden, who was runner up to Hill in the Glen's junior championship, tied for fifth place in the Scottish Boys Under-14s Championship at Largs this summer. He won Scottish Junior Tour events at Blairgowrie (Landsdowne) and St Andrews (Strathtyrum) and plays off 3.9 having started the season on 7.

All three players' progress has been helped, not only by Huish's clubgolf Stage 3 coaching during the season, but also by weekly winter training at Heriot-Watt University's indoor golf academy. "It kept them going through the winter, so we will revisit that again this year and expand it so that we have two groups, one for the next batch coming through behind these three," said Huish.

With a solid volunteer coaching structure in place at North Berwick, as well as other East Lothian clubs, it is hoped the trio will be the first of many ranks of good young players coming through the programme.

"We've got a good batch of kids here and they are all feeding off each other," added Huish. "We don't have the situation which you often get when one junior is a long way ahead of all the others and doesn't get the competition they need to develop.

"We keep them altogether which keeps them grounded. Because there is such competition within the club set up these kids are all working hard to win their own competitions as well as outwith.

"Behind these three we have siblings and other juniors all coming through the clubgolf programme so you never know what will happen on the back of them."

This year some 38,000 P5 children were introduced to the game at school through the clubgolf's introductory game, firstclubgolf. Over 1090, the region's entire P5 roll, are from East Lothian. With many of these children coming from non-golfing families, the intake of children on club junior programmes will come increasingly from families outside the sport.

"We are beginning to see more kids from non-golfing families now," noted Huish. "North Berwick is a golfing area and a lot of children here have been taught by parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and family friends.

"But there are certainly a number in the programme now that have no golfing background at all. It's looking very healthy."

Joining Young, Hill and Bowden in the SGU's East Academy is Tara McTaggart, a Borders-based North Berwick junior team member.