Years ago, I was a coach for The First Tee of Greater Charlotte, a wonderful junior golf program that makes golf available for ALL juniors. In order to be a junior coach, everyone, even PGA club professionals, are required to attend and pass the coaching classes.
One of my big take-aways from these coaching classes was that in order to keep the juniors engaged, you need to let them experiment, learn from their mistakes and not to be too technical. Let them play, and they will develop their skills through playing games. Make the games difficult enough to be a challenge, but not so difficult that they can’t enjoy some success. The more I thought about this, the more I wondered why we don’t teach adults this way.
Adults, it’s time to reclaim your youth and start playing games. Next time you go golfing, have a 9-hole putting contest before the round. If you have fun and time, you should do it again. When you go to the range with a friend, see who can hit it the highest, see who can make the ball curve left or right. Have chipping games, see who can make their ball stop the quickest. Have a game to see who can chip in first. Do whatever you can imagine.