A golf lesson for kids...

Led to one exiting weekend!

How did I move on from this golf lesson for kids to preparing my eleven year old to be the youngest ever winner of our ladies’ club championship? I make it sound quite straightforward but it was far from that.

She had accomplished her target (which was established during our 'golf lesson for kids' sessions) making the 36-hole cut. Having done that, the final round was a relaxed occasion in which, she finished, as expected, out of the important places.

Leela had played great and I was proud, I had expected a solid performance and she didn’t let me or herself down. The whole experience was pretty relaxed and totally enjoyable.

We decided there and then that taking the title the following year would be our next target.

I felt at the time that it was a fair goal and we would both move on from a ‘golf lessons for kids’ to one for a champion.

Of course we were not only thinking about club champion the next year but perhaps world champion in years to come.

The following season, 2006, was full of ups and downs. Leela had been picked to play for the under 12’s for our region which involved a lot of travel and constant pressure.

She did however cope well with it all and eventually achieved 2nd place in this age group, thus qualifying for the national finals.

Those long journeys and pressure events did however take their toll and more often than not, she struggled with many aspects of 'golf lesson for kids' and her game.

The weeks running up to the club championship were tough and with only ten days to go she had developed a push slice with her driver in place of her usual draw.

This had not only knocked about 30 yards off her drives, but she started to fire them into trouble. Her scoring averages leapt up and confidence levels bottomed out.

She was still swinging reasonably well but the problem arose from her clubface being open at impact.

We tried everything from adjusting the grip to improving the shoulder turn and everything else in between. It was at this point I decided to use the magic from 'golf lesson for kids'.

With three days to go, desperate measures were required and I decided to drop all corrections to her swing mechanics. We were going to work on her fun monitor, which for me was a more suitable golf lesson for kids.

To find fun we always played games other than golf where she could become an eleven year old again. During her fun peaks I would get her to tell me from 1-10 how much fun she was having.

During these games her fun monitor would quite often register 10’s and in this state I would ask her if it was possible for her to feel the same way with a golf club in her hand.

This is of course a suitable golf lesson for kids as they can adapt very easily to it.

She tried this and at first was achieving similar levels of fun but after a few shots and indifferent results, she would sink back into a painful state of 2’s or 3’s.

We would immediately drop the golf when this happened and only resume when the higher fun state returned.

About an hour into this ‘golf lesson for kids’, I decided to ask Leela what it was about the other games (like bouncing a tennis ball off a wall) that made it so easy to maintain a good level of fun but golf seemed to drag her down very quickly.

She would answer, “I don’t know”, “maybe golf is hard”, “and throwing is, well, easy” or “I don’t need to think about how to throw a ball”.

So I asked her, “What would have to happen for golf to be easy?” She looked puzzled so I followed this up by saying, “Do you think that swinging your club without having to think may be fun?”

This idea seemed to light her up and she picked up her driver and gave it a go. Before swinging I told her that as thinking was not allowed, this meant results did not matter and she was supposed to have easy fun.

I got her to activate her monitor again and give me fun levels from 1-10 as she was swinging. As always, in this ‘golf lesson for kids’, I encouraged her to rate her practice swing and also her swing with the ball.

It started well with plenty of 7’s and 8’s but then a few comments like, “thinned it”, “hit that one heavy” or “pulled that one” started coming out. I just calmly said, “You’re thinking again, aren’t you?

I do love this part of giving a 'golf lesson for a kid' as it always drops her back into an easy, non-thinking, fun-filled state and she promptly gets back to the numbers.

After a while she started saying “9”, “Oh, 9 and a ½” or “ that was definitely a 10”. Occasionally she would ask how long her last drive was and I would simply say, “I think you’re thinking again!”

I was starting to experience great levels of fun myself as I watched her soft curling draws soar out to the 200yd marker. This lesson is of course great for everyone and it's not just a golf lesson for kids.

They just adapt better to it than us, that's all.

Go back to ‘toddler golf lesson’ to read more on this golf lesson for kids, where I will be finishing the story about Leela’s title clinching performance.

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