Although there are differences among the best junior golfers, one thing they almost certainly have in common is that, when compared to their peers, they have more tournament experience. The benefits of tournament play are numerous and include:

• Valuable learning opportunities that can’t be found in practice.
• An opportunity for younger golfers to test their skills under the pressure of competition.
• The statistical feedback that’s necessary for improvement.
• Automatic national ranking based upon tournament scores.
• A chance to meet and make friends with other competitive junior golfers.

We realize that most parents understand the value of competition in the development process but still need guidance as to the frequency of play and the types of tournaments that are appropriate for their child.
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Periodization and Timing
We like to use a model and a few simple rules to help parents get a better feel for the frequency in which their child should compete. Most high-level athletes use some form of periodization to peak at the right time and avoid over training. In golf, the model below works well for both juniors starting out and for more experienced golfers.

There are four phases within a cycle and the duration of each phase and the time in between each phase can vary throughout the year. Here’s how the timing might work for a young golfer who plays a two-day tournament on the weekend and has two weeks until his next tournament.

1. Compete in a tournament (two days)
2. Evaluate the results and allow time to rest and recover (one to two days)
3. Work with your coach and train the areas of your game that need improvement (approximately five days)
4. Prepare for the next tournament with most of the time being spent on the course (approximately five days)

Tournament Selection
Now that you have a better idea of how to manage a competition cycle, let’s go over the specifics of putting together a tournament schedule.

For younger players, the goal is exposure and experience. At this stage, score is unimportant, so parents can schedule several tournaments in a row even if it’s not possible or practical to play practice rounds at each course. For older, more competitive juniors, parents need to be strategic when selecting tournaments because of their implications to national rankings. Parents should lean toward events on familiar courses, with strong fields, and that will allow adequate preparation including playing at least one practice round.

The NTPGA (www.ntpga.com) has a full schedule of nine-hole prep and 18-hole medalist tournaments. These tournaments are a great starting point for players that need experience on the golf course. The TJGT (www.tjgt.com) is a great regional tour that offers competitive juniors the opportunity to test their skills on championship courses and against strong fields. The most serious juniors can consider playing on a national level. The AJGA (www.ajga.org) offers a full schedule of events throughout the country.

My recent blog post "Are You Coachable?" which can be found below contained some content from a published article by Matt Wilson and Corey Lundberg entitled "Coachability: Traits and Tactics of Super Learning Students." In my original article, I failed to site Matt and Corey's article which can be found at www.curiouscoaches.com. I apologized to Matt and Corey for that omission. They are excellent coaches who have worked hard to provide useful information to the coaching community.

In golf, where fractions separate the best from the rest, junior golfers can’t afford to get off track and let days and weeks go by without making progress. Heeding the ongoing advice of an experienced coach can literally make the difference on whether a young golfer reaches his goals or not.

Now that we understand the importance of trusting your coach and following his or her guidance, let’s determine how coachable you are. There are several traits that coachable athletes share. Among the most important are the following:

• They are motivated by the challenge of mastering a skill rather than by the goal of beating someone else or achieving some external reward.
  
• They persist through challenges. They are not discouraged by the fact that golfers lose much more than they win, and they understand that even practice can become a grind.
  
• They are disciplined and stay on task. They accept the fact that to become a skilled golfer, it requires thousands of repetitions and the work is often tedious.
  
• They are conscientious and careful when they train and practice because they know little mistakes add up over time, especially in a sport that demands precision.
  
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they are self-compassionate. They understand that by its very nature, golf can be brutal and to maintain effort over a long period of time, they must avoid self-criticism and maintain a positive outlook.

In addition to possessing the personal traits above, coachable athletes use tactics that increase the likelihood that their hard work will pay off. Here are some of the most significant ones:

• They organize their work and lay out a detailed plan for each day of training and practice.
  
• They reflect on their lessons, practice, and play and this reflection often manifests itself in journaling.
  
• They set goals and measure their progress against those goals.
  
• They track their stats regardless of their performance.
  
• They communicate frequently with their coach to ensure that their coach has all the information needed to be effective.

To summarize, being coachable might be the most important quality that a golfer can possess. It doesn’t come naturally and most of us have to work hard to be good at it. From a coach’s standpoint, it’s an absolute pleasure and gift whenever I get to work with an athlete that is truly coachable. If you’re ready to start being more coachable, I suggest that on your next lesson, you walk up to your coach and make the following statement: “Please tell me exactly what I need to do to reach my goals.” Your coach might be surprised but I can guarantee you that you’ll be on your way to a better golf game.​

Perform an Annual Review
This process will enable a parent to look back and celebrate the victories (I’m not necessarily referring to tournament victories), evaluate the failures, and decide on the changes or shifts that are necessary to make 2018 more successful for a young golfer. This can best be done by writing the answers to the following three questions.

1.       What went well in 2017?
2.       What didn’t go so well in 2017?
3.       What does your son or daughter need to do differently so that 2018 will be successful?

Create a System and Forget about Goals
Most of us attempt to set some goals but struggle year after year to accomplish what we outline on paper. A far more productive approach is to commit to a process of improvement – in other words a system for accomplishing goals.

Here’s an example:
·       Your child’s goal is to win a tournament. Their “system” details what they do at practice each day.

You can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to a schedule, rather than worrying about big, difficult-to-achieve goals. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress. Goals are about short-term results. Systems are about the long-term process. Goals suggest you can control things that are uncontrollable. Forget about predicting the future. Build a system that is reliable and signals when adjustments are necessary.

In summary, goals are good for planning your progress. Systems are good for actually making progress.

Prepare Your Child’s Tournament Schedule in Advance
After completing an assessment of 2017 and putting together an improvement system for 2018, it’s time to plan out your son or daughter’s tournament schedule. Preparing the schedule in advance increases the chances that your child will perform well when it counts the most and will help you save on travel and other expenses.

When exploring which tournaments to play, it makes sense to follow these guidelines:

·       Register for a mix of tournaments so that your child can be tested by strong competition in some events and then can compete to win in other events. I recommend competing on one of the regional tours like the Texas Junior Golf Tour (tjgt.com). They have a variety of tournaments to test competitors of every level.
·       If your son or daughter plays high school golf, be sure to check the team schedule to avoid doubling up on events. Also check their exam schedule. It’s hard to compete when preparation or sleep are in short supply.
·       Make sure your child’s instructor knows which tournaments are the most important so that he or she can ensure that your child’s game is peaking at just the right time.

If you follow the three steps outlined above, you will be putting your junior golfer in position to have a successful and rewarding 2018.

As coaching and training methods improve, the ranks of skilled junior golfers has grown steadily over the years. Just a few short years ago, it was uncommon to see younger players with tour level club speed and regularly shooting under par scores. That’s no longer the case. At our Academy, we have several high school players who swing as fast as the pros and I just came from a tournament in which there were 30 scores of 69 or lower.  Therefore, junior golfers must look for and take advantage of every opportunity to separate themselves from the pack.

One of the easiest and best ways of gaining important insight on your game is with the use of a well-established statistical analysis program. The best among these programs will enable you to do three important things.

Identify Strengths and Weaknesses
A very basic feature of a good stats program will be to clearly identify a golfer’s strengths and weaknesses. The best golfers in the world know exactly how and why they play well. They no doubt attempt to lessen the impact of their weaknesses but they are typically more concerned with making sure they can rely on their strengths for scoring. In contrast, we see junior golfers spending too much time on their weaknesses with little benefit or reduction in scores.

Direct Your Practice Time
Once strengths and weaknesses are accurately identified with the help of a stats program, it’s easy to come up with an improvement plan that strategically divides up a player’s training and practice time. As an example, for a player struggling off the tee, it could make sense to allocate the bulk of practice time to this part of the game until there’s noticeable improvement in the stats. Better players with clear strengths and known weaknesses, still must be careful to spend enough time on all parts of their game to stay sharp and tournament-ready.

Pick Up on Trends
Because stats paint such a clear picture, they’re enormously helpful when it comes to spotting trends that could impact a player’s game in the future. Young golfers tend to focus too much energy and emotion on an occasional poor shot and often miss the bigger picture. By comparing statistics from one tournament to another or even from one season to the next, players can spot trends an act upon tendencies before they have a big impact on their game.
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I can’t emphasize enough how valuable it is for a competitive junior golfer to be using a good statistical analysis program. As a coach, I insist that our students enter their stats after every round. I use the information to determine what changes need to be made to improve a student’s performance. There are several good stats programs from which to choose. We use ShotbyShot.com but also like the DECADE system by BirdieFire.com. Both rely on strokes-gained analysis, the same approach used by the pros.

In the hands of a competitive junior golfer, the right equipment will speed up development, lower scores, and add to the overall enjoyment of the game. Poorly fitted equipment, on the other hand, will contribute to poor contact, erratic ball flight, slow progress and, ultimately, discourage younger golfers. Therefore, as parents and coaches, it’s essential to make sure juniors have equipment that works for their game.

Specific Guidelines
In recent years, the options for younger juniors has increased but it still is limited relative to the options available for older juniors and adults.

Buying the right clubs is a challenge especially for growing and developing junior golfers. The investment, physical changes, and shifting golf swings only add to the challenge. Thanks to the experience from hundreds of fittings, we know the steps to take and the mistakes to avoid to help you make a good club-buying decision. The list below is a quick summary of the recommendations we make to the parents of students. These recommendations are geared towards younger players.

 

1. Choose clubs that are shorter, lighter, and softer as opposed to clubs that are longer, heavier, and stiffer. We often remind parents that young golfers should grow out of their clubs rather than grow into their clubs. Long, heavy, stiff clubs can produce movement patterns that will need to be reversed as golfers get stronger and faster. As an added warning, don’t give your kids adult clubs that have been cut down.
2. For younger golfers with slower swing speeds, favor irons that increase launch and reduce the amount of roll after the ball hits the ground. Higher ball flight increases both carry distance and the chance of holding a green after landing on it. Driver fittings require a balance between carry distance and roll. With slower swing speeds, it’s best to maximize total distance (carry and roll).
3. Don’t buy from retail outlets but instead use a qualified fitter that has access to a TrackMan launch monitor. Retail outlets often have relatively inexperienced employees handling the fitting process and it’s not uncommon for their launch monitors to produce “amped up” numbers to sell clubs. I also recommend testing clubs on the course even if that means slowing down the fitting process.
4. It usually makes sense to refrain from buying clubs that attempt to correct for swing issues. For example, buying a club with a large offset or a closed club face would discourage a young player from learning how to properly square the club face and might make it difficult to learn how to hit a shot with an open club face. I would suggest that your child’s swing coach be involved in the fitting process to ensure that the new clubs compliment the changes that the coach is trying to make with your son or daughter’s game.
5. From a technical standpoint, there are a handful of critical parameters that should be considered to get a proper fitting. Club speed, ball speed, launch angle, carry distance, dispersion, land angle, and spin rate should be measured and evaluated. An experienced club fitter with have the best chance of blending all the information together to arrive at a good decision. A club’s aesthetic appeal and feel are also important and should be considered toward the end of the fitting process.
   

The goal of every golf parent should be to act in a way that increases the likelihood of having a positive golf experience with his or her young golfer. In last month’s blog post, we introduced the first five of 10 Keys to Being a Great Golf Parent. In this month’s article, we present the second half of the list. We encourage you to use this list as a guideline for raising your junior golfer.
 
6.       Calm the waters. Golf is an emotional sport, especially for competitive juniors who are trying to manage their own expectations and do the best they can to impress and please their parents and coaches. Parents that understand this, would be wise to react calmly to the natural peaks and valleys of competition. Steadiness from parents will enable young golfers to focus on long-term improvement, a requirement for those will high aspirations.
7.       Memorize the magic five words. After watching a round of golf for 4-6 hours, most parents can’t wait to share their advice (and sometime their criticism) as soon as the round is over. But take it from me, this is the worst time to offer feedback. Instead, I recommend memorizing and repeating the following phrase: “I love watching you play.” That means being engaged and present and looking for opportunities to catch them doing something right rather than pointing out mistakes and second guessing them.
8.       Hold your child accountable for his or her effort. In golf, coaches and players only get to spend a small fraction of time together. Therefore, it’s up parents to ensure that their child is following the directions of their coach and investing an appropriate amount of time on their game. I can tell you firsthand that our number one priority with students is to establish a supportive and trusting relationship. We can remind students of what’s required to play high level golf but we have limited control or leverage over how they actually spend their time.
9.       Make school work and family responsibilities the highest priorities. As parents and coaches, we should be most concerned with raising young man and women of high character and strong values. The best way to do that is to assign appropriate priorities to school work and family responsibilities. By their over-the-top reactions, too many parents unknowingly present golf as the #1 priority. On a related note, most young golfers are over committed and struggling to get enough sleep and recovery time. It’s up to parents to enforce appropriate bed times and impose necessary restrictions on social media.
10.       Forget about the score. That’s right, I said forget about the score. In a sport that takes years to master, your son or daughter’s record will be filled with bad rounds and poor scores. I urge you to keep your eye focused on the long run. This will help encourage your child to do the same. Improvement and good scores will be your likely reward for taking a more long-term view.