Golf: Festival fun helps Linlithgow youngsters learn to love the sport

LINLITHGOW'S Kingsfield Driving Range, where European Tour star Stephen Gallacher is based, welcomed 73 local primary school pupils for its first-ever 'children's festival'.

"The inspiration for the festival came from the fact the primary schools in Linlithgow have a number of sports festivals each year which tend to be rugby, hockey and football," said Kingsfield manager David Mitchell.

"We have a real family atmosphere at Kingsfield and are working hard to get more kids involved in the game. We approached the local Active Schools Co-ordinator and offered the centre for the day and set up some games and brought in a personality".

The personality was Dean Robertson, the 1999 Italian Open winner and 2006 Scottish PGA champion who now runs the highly-successful Scottish Junior Golf Tour.

"My philosophy is about creating games for learning and understanding which is what we rolled out at Kingsfield," he said.

"I'm huge on positive coaching. In order to learn you have to create an environment which is synonymous with having fun. That was evident at Kingsfield, where the kids were really buzzed and they enjoyed it."

With clubgolf's introductory game set to introduce more than 41,000 to the game this spring Kingsfield's involvement comes at the perfect time.

"The festival was fantastically well organised and the children loved the day," said Active Schools co-ordinator Lauren McLean.