by tracyhunter
Have you heard of the World Golf Foundation before?
I hadn’t either until very recently when an initiative of theirs came to my attention. The initiative is called ‘Get Golf Ready’, and its aim is simple – provide a concise introduction to the game of golf for as many adults as possible. You enroll, you pay $99 and you receive five lessons that are focused on giving you the confidence to take the sport up and get involved.
I thought that was really interesting. So often the focus on sports administrators is on youth. Hook ‘em in while their young and keep them involved for the next six decades. And that’s fine if you’ve got a parent who is willing to encourage their child to play golf.
But what about those people who don’t grow up learning to play golf. There is often an embarrassment in taking up a sport later on in life, and a further problem with golf is that it does require some patience to begin with.
So when I first heard about this program I was impressed, and very interested in seeing what interest there was for it.
The interest has been huge. Initially organisers were hoping to sign up 700 facilities for 2009 and build from there. As it stands now they are well past that number and will probably have more than 1,000 participating facilities.
With an estimated average of 50 golfers per facility per year, running over three years that is an extra 150,000 adults that will have been introduced to the sport. It will be interesting to watch whether the program organisers put in place some sort of follow up to measure how many of the students continue to play in the future.
If you’d like to find out more about the program you can visit the official website at Play Golf America. They have a zip code tool there that will let you discover the closest program to where you live. If you’re thinking of taking the game up, or you know someone who is, you should check it out.
Crooksy