After training hard and getting good at a sport that you love, it’s only natural that you would want to pass your skills and knowledge on to the next generation of golfers.
Whether you’re instructing a child of your own or handling a bunch of other kids, teaching young ones the ways of golf can be a rewarding and heart-warming thing. Who knows, you might just be mentoring a golf superstar in the making!
With that said, there are still some challenges to instructing young minds. Keeping them engaged and teaching them some of the more technical aspects of the sport are just some of the challenges many people encounter when trying to teach kids golf.
From using innovative apps like Golf Pad GPS to getting creative with your training sessions, we’ve narrowed down the top 10 best tips for improving your kid’s golfing game and get him or her hitting like a pro in no time!
Unlike what golf lessons used to look like just a few decades ago, there are now a host of technological tools designed to make golf, golf teaching, and scorekeeping a whole lot easier.
And where many golfers today have at least one golf app on their phones, usually for keeping score or calculating handicaps, apps can also go a long way to helping kids improve their golf game.
Naturally, we’re a fan of Golf Pad GPS (for IOS and Android). Being a Rangefinder, scoring, and shot tracking app, it’s basically everything that a golfer would need in a game.
With the Golf Pad GPS, you get an actual aerial map with measurements of distance to the front, middle, and back of the green or any point on the course. It also comes with a host of golfing tutorials, tips, and FAQs that even professional golfers would benefit from.
With kids still learning the ropes, the app is essential in keeping track of everything and identifying key points for improvement. And to sweeten the deal, even more, the Golf Pad GPS can be downloaded for FREE with absolutely no strings attached.
Even the most competitive of coaches can affirm that the most important thing in golf is not the score, but the skill that’s been honed over hundreds of training sessions.
When working with a kid, focus more on trying to develop the right form and proper swing rather than obsession over scores.
Though scoring can be fun and foster some healthy competition amongst the youngsters, a kid who cares too much about the score rather than just playing the game is more likely to drop golf when he or she loses a game (which happens even to the best of us).
Though it might seem obvious that a child can’t wield golf clubs meant for adults, there’s actually more to it than meets the eye.
Consider that for adults, golfing equipment comes in very different shapes, sizes, and materials.
Even just using golf clubs of the wrong length can seriously harm a pro player’s performance.
The same rings true for children. Although we still don’t recommend getting the most flashy or expensive materials when starting out, getting the right-sized clubs can help make the swings feel more natural for your little student.
Children are famous for having short attention spans. As an instructor, whether for your own child is someone else’s, you should assume this beforehand. Be sure to give them the most basic of rules first: just hit the ball towards the hole (essentially golf in a nutshell).
Once the child has these basics down, then you can introduce a scoring system and increase the distance. This turns a training session into an actual game that the kid can play and try to win.
Refrain from using golf jargon and handicaps in these early stages. What you should be concerned with here is fostering an element of fun and healthy competition that will keep the child engaged and interested.
Related: 5 Simple Tips for Raising Golf-Loving Children
Some teachers use water balloons in place of golf balls in training a kid how to swing. Kids love water and making balloons pop. By marrying the two concepts together, you have one of the most effective teaching methods to improve a kid’s swing.
With the Golf Pad GPS, you can identify milestones in ball distance and speed that the child has reached, rewarding him or her accordingly for this. This incentives improvement and avoids the frustration that might come when doing a repetitive task with no clear gains.
Don’t shy away from getting creative with your practices and introducing new elements to make things more fun!
Though it’s important to speak to kids on their level, it’s important to note that kids are smarter than what most people give them credit for.
If you see true talent in your student, then introducing some of the more adult rules of the game early, in proper measures, might give them the headstart they need to end up being one of the greats.
This is even more essential when you have a kid that seems to be progressing at a faster pace than the others. In such cases, the child alone might grow hungry for more challenging games.
We would recommend that a child receive a healthy mix of both group and private lessons, especially when trying to develop the right set of skills quickly.
Golf is not a game that one can play alone. It’s a competitive sport played with at least one other person. In fact, a long game of golf promotes fun banter and long conversations that can earn both players a friend that’ll last a lifetime.
Group instructions are great places for kids to socialize, make friends, and play golf close to the way adults play it. Practicing and playing golf with other kids can also make the child’s skills develop faster since the rules and concepts are being actualized in front of them.
Be sure to make the most out of each practice session. There have to be little distractions from the surroundings and a clear itinerary of things you and your pupil are gonna do in the allotted time.
If you’re practicing at a course, then go beforehand to see what time slots are the least crowded. Also, check to see if other kids are playing too and gauge whether or not their parents are open to some golf play dates.
With Golf Pad GPS, regularly mark down improvements on things like distance and speed.
Luckily, the app works on over 40,000 worldwide courses.
If practicing at a course seems a bit expensive, then you can set up a mini-course in your backyard.
Just be sure to be consistent with your training schedule; training sessions that are too long and frequent might cause burnout while sessions that are too short and seldom might make progress slow.
It is recommended that a child should be at least 5 to 6 years old before you begin introducing them to golf, likely with a plastic club and ball.
Getting a kid interested in a sport is something that happens gradually with a lot of encouragement. If the child doesn’t feel like playing, then try again the next day or introduce it as a game with rewards.
And even then, it’ll be a long way before you start talking about par and handicaps. If you add instructions and jargon into the games too early, you run the risk of turning a fun time into work, which will make your children lose interest in the game altogether.
Whether you’re trying to raise a professional golfer, or simply want to enjoy playing a game you love with your kid, know that it’s going to take a long time before your child is up-to-par with the adults.
Remember, every child, and even every adult, learns at a different rate and it can be hard to put a timeline on progress. Even professional players still spend countless hours training.
If you intend to teach a kid golf, you’re gonna have to be patient because it’s a long-haul kind of endeavor.
There’s nothing like the rewarding feeling a parent gets when he or she sees their child succeed in a game he or she loves dearly. Fostering talent and skills that’ll serve a child well into adulthood is, after all, one of the main goals of any parent.
Golf is a great sport for kids to pick up that’ll teach them lots of important lessons they can use in other aspects of life. And with the right techniques and tricks, there’s no saying how far a kid can go with golf.
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