Is Golf a sport for everyone?
When we look at other sports, Take a professional footballer. They will have a career until they are 36 or 37 years old.
In golf, we only start playing well when we hit 50. The number of seniors playing golf is huge.
Take a look at the golf professionals of today, they're tall, fat, thin, small, old, young...
So many different shapes and sizes!
And the health benefits are enormous.
Let's make golf accessible to all. You can help me.
WHAT ARE THE GOLFING VALUES THAT HELP YOU IMPROVE AS A PERSON?
There are so many,
Coordination, concentration, discipline.
Competing against yourself. We can give up very easily against others but we develop a real sense of pride when we challenge ourselves.
It is important to have activities that encourage people to think of the environment we live in, and no sport does this better than golf.
A good golfer always thinks of the next player, and leaves the course clean.
Inexperienced golfers can kick up the terrain: no-one else is responsible, it's their fault.
In order to be conscientious, they leave the course as they found it.
I'm in favour of teaching golf at school as a way of teaching these values for future generations.
What kind of work does your organisation do?
We started the Golfing Education Organisation in 1993.
I travelled around in my camper van in order to visit communities and teach people.
We bring golf to the people using football pitches, uncultivated land and recycling centres.
As soon as we have the right equipment, we can start teaching.
We create golf courses with schools, colleges, and universities. We try to create courses of 3, 6 9 or even just 1 hole!
The youngsters are involved in this process and as such they have a sense of ownership over it and become aware of the importance of the environment.
As soon as a youngster picks up a golf club, it becomes a weapon in their hands; when they hit their first ball, they've never hit anything so far in their life.
They soon become hooked and want to keep playing and encourage their friends to take part too.
They say "come and watch me, come and watch me"
Its a great pastime.
How would you describe your "natural action" method of teaching golf?
My way of teaching a natural golfing action is basically to take the person out of the picture until they almost forget that they're there.
It's possible as soon as we forget all the obstacles.
You should never look at the ball.
Instead, you should look at the open space right in front of you; this is something you can pick up very quickly.
As soon as you remove the ball and the player from the equation and you transfer the energy into your extremities, its a piece of cake!
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