Children's golf day out

SIMPLY GOLF

The last few years have seen an amazing change in the attitude of parents towards sport. They are no longer turned off by their wards taking it up seriously.

So, schools today have training in various disciplines all the year round and children flock to it. But the biggest attraction is still cricket and footballfollowed by swimming in the summer months.

Last week, I saw something different. More than 150 children from various age groups, accompanied by their parents, congregated on the Par-66 Unitech Karma Lakelands, a nine-hole golf facility in Manesar.

There are many tournaments for juniors but this one, called The Unitech Junior Golf Open and conducted by the newly formed Delhi Golf Society, was unusual because it included lots of fun and games for the children, including a carnival at the end of the event. A few months ago, the children had similar fun during the Nokia's Day Out.

But make no mistake. Golf can be tough on kids. Walking around the course for four-and-a-half hours on a hot afternoon is a difficult proposition. Many of these junior tournaments also do not encourage caddies because they want the children to toughen up. So, they have to lug their golf bags on the greens.

The tournament itself was a success with youngsters like Sidharth Seth, Nasir Ali, Shahid Ali, Madhav Soi, Vaishavi Sinha and Viraat Badhwar acquitting themselves well in their respective categories.

But what caught my attention was the accompanying carnival. Even after they had won the trophies, the children played about. There were 'mini scooters' and 'mini mobikes' as well as play-pens for smaller children, which were placed on the lawn next to the greens.

All that the kids could sense was that "Golf is fun". This kind of fund activity will bring them back to the course which otherwise can be boring and taxing, more so if you are not winning.

Another welcome aspect was the Parent-Child competition, where the parents appeared more tense than the children. That's where the real danger lies for over-achieving parents.

There were far too many parents trying to teach their putt, swing or drive which should ideally be left to the coach. How can any parent with a handicap of 30 become a coach?

Parents should encourage by all means, but at the same time but they should not apply pressure to win. Even Vijay Singh and Tiger Woods have missed shorter putts than that and with lots at stake.

In the last year or so, the Indian Golf Union (IGU) has become all the more aware of over-ambitious parents and some have been known to slap their children in front of their friends for a bad shot on the course. Which is why the IGU has rightly banned parents from walking the course while their wards are at play.

Recently, I saw the parents of a fairly talented golfer, who is still not in his teens, getting out of a children party midway when everyone else was having fun.

They said they wanted their boy to sleep early to catch up with the golf practice at 5 am the next morning. The driver accompanies him each morning to the course, where a local pro coaches him. The boy says he loves it but his face certainly did not show it.

The chances are that the boy will have given up competitive golf by the time he enters his teens simply because it has become a burden for him. So let the chidlren have fun, and they will automatically come back to it with the feeling "Golf is fun".