Junior Golf: 5 Important Quotes For Junior Golfers

In this Wednesday Waggle we’re going to look at 5 quotes from top PGA professionals and get some insight into how winners think.

In one of S3’s mental management courses, the instructor interviewed only world-class 1st place winners in many different sports, both team and individual. He asked them what percentage of their sport was mental. Their answer was all the same, 90%.

Think about that for a minute. The concept is that if someone had the basic body type necessary for a particular sport, then most people were, if driven to succeed, coordinated enough to achieve some level of success. The degree of success depends on how well the athlete masters the mental game.

What does this look like in golf? Here are 5 quotes from great golfers, in no particular order:

1. The King, Arnold Palmer: “I’ve always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.”

2. The greatest golfer of all-time, Jack Nicklaus: “As soon as I heard a player talking negative about the course or conditions, I wrote him off as a competitor. He’d already taken himself out of the tournament.”

3. The third member of The Big Three, Gary Player: “We create success or failure on the course primarily by our thoughts.”

4. The man with the most PGA Tour wins, San Snead: “Forget your opponents, always play against par.”

5. Two-time Masters Champion and super creative, Bubba Watson: “Nobody our here’s playing for second place.”

Photocredit:nicklaus.com

What common thread do you see? Dad and Mom, each of these men has a mental structure, a discipline that is constant. They do not veer from it.

We’ve seen confidence from Arnold, positivity from Jack, controlling thoughts during a round from Gary, play against the course not the player from Sam and 1st place is why we play from Bubba.

See you on #1 tee mentally ready… Sam

Junior Golf: Why The Masters Is Important For Your Junior Golfer

In today’s Wednesday Waggle we will take a look at this week’s PGA tournament and offer some input as to why The Masters is very important for your son/daughter.

photocredit:golfdigest.com

There are more reasons than this space allows as to the importance of The Masters to your son and the rest of your family, in fact to all sports fans everywhere. Let’s hit some highlights.
1st, it’s the first men’s major championship of each year and the field will include many of the best players in the world. That alone should make it very important.

2nd, Augusta National Golf Club, the permanent Masters venue in Augusta, Georgia, is one of the most beautiful places anywhere. Amazingly gorgeous flowers are blooming all over the course and the fairways, greens, traps, hazards, paths, every square inch seems to be perfectly manicured. We look forward to every minute of TV coverage so we can enjoy this visual feast.

3rd, The Masters is loaded with great traditions. From the ceremonial opening tee shots, done for years by the legendary Big Three of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. With Arnold’s passing last September, Jack and Gary will do this year’s shots. And then there’s the awarding of the renowned green jacket to the winner on Sunday afternoon and any number of traditions occurring in between.

4th, the golf is great! The players will tell you that this is one of the toughest courses they play. The greens are lightning fast. The undulating and rolling fairways, much more so than the TV cameras show, almost never leave a flat lie and stance for the next shot. Water and traps are just begging for golf balls to enter them. And even with all this there are players shooting under par. Wow!

5th, tickets to this event are widely known as possibly the toughest ticket in all of sports. Just having an opportunity to be a patron, as the fans at ANGC are referred to, is a rare situation. Go for it!

photocredit:pinterest

So what does this mean to your youngster? Hopefully he’ll dream more and bigger dreams. I mean every pro playing in this event dreamed about it as a kid and probably as a pro too until getting his 1st invitation to play in The Masters! Heck, I’ve dreamed about being a patron and that’s tough enough!The sheer beauty, pageantry, traditions and excellent golf should end up being more than enough to get your kiddo revved up.
So Parents, your action is to make sure you TiVo the tournament. Thursday and Friday are on ESPN and Saturday and Sunday are on CBS. We always record 2.5 hours beyond the scheduled Sunday end time to allow for possible playoffs.
See you on #1 tee excited about The Masters… Sam

Junior Golf: Why The Masters Is Important For Your Junior Golfer

In today’s Wednesday Waggle we will take a look at this week’s PGA tournament and offer some input as to why The Masters is very important for your son/daughter.

photocredit:golfdigest.com

There are more reasons than this space allows as to the importance of The Masters to your son and the rest of your family, in fact to all sports fans everywhere. Let’s hit some highlights.

1st, it’s the first men’s major championship of each year and the field will include many of the best players in the world. That alone should make it very important.
2nd, Augusta National Golf Club, the permanent Masters venue in Augusta, Georgia, is one of the most beautiful places anywhere. Amazingly gorgeous flowers are blooming all over the course and the fairways, greens, traps, hazards, paths, every square inch seems to be perfectly manicured. We look forward to every minute of TV coverage so we can enjoy this visual feast.
3rd, The Masters is loaded with great traditions. From the ceremonial opening tee shots, done for years by the legendary Big Three of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. With Arnold’s passing last September, Jack and Gary will do this year’s shots. And then there’s the awarding of the renowned green jacket to the winner on Sunday afternoon and any number of traditions occurring in between.
4th, the golf is great! The players will tell you that this is one of the toughest courses they play. The greens are lightning fast. The undulating and rolling fairways, much more so than the TV cameras show, almost never leave a flat lie and stance for the next shot. Water and traps are just begging for golf balls to enter them. And even with all this there are players shooting under par. Wow!
5th, tickets to this event are widely known as possibly the toughest ticket in all of sports. Just having an opportunity to be a patron, as the fans at ANGC are referred to, is a rare situation. Go for it!

photocredit:pinterest

So what does this mean to your youngster? Hopefully he’ll dream more and bigger dreams. I mean every pro playing in this event dreamed about it as a kid and probably as a pro too until getting his 1st invitation to play in The Masters! Heck, I’ve dreamed about being a patron and that’s tough enough!The sheer beauty, pageantry, traditions and excellent golf should end up being more than enough to get your kiddo revved up.

So Parents, your action is to make sure you TiVo the tournament. Thursday and Friday are on ESPN and Saturday and Sunday are on CBS. We always record 2.5 hours beyond the scheduled Sunday end time to allow for possible playoffs.

See you on #1 tee excited about The Masters… Sam

Junior Golf:Make More Time For Golf

In today’s Monday Mulligan we have a found an easy way to make more time for golf, particularly now that there is less daylight in the afternoon and early evening.
How on earth does a parent find more time for practice or play when everybody’s day is already full? It gets dark by 5:30 or 6:00pm and there’s dinner and homework so how can you expand the clock to get the additional hours of golf time? (image jennleforge.com)
Gary Player talks about his youth, working as a teenager at the local country club. It opened at 7:00am so Gary always arrived an hour early, at 6:00am and spent the whole hour hitting shots out of the sand trap. This is, of course, how Mr. Player became legendary as the greatest “bunker/sand” shot maker in the history of golf. Nothing like hitting bunker shots at least 5 hours a week for 3 or 4 years to learn how to do it properly!
S3 was starting his freshman year in high school and he felt like he needed to spend more time on the range. His afternoons were already full with golf team practice so what could we do? Tim, S3’s swing coach showed us how to turn on the lights at his driving range and set out some balls for us the night before. And he told the local police what we were doing. So for his whole 1st semester of high school we were at the range by 5:30am, hitting balls for an hour under the lights, went back home for breakfast and then to school by 7:45am. A full morning and a really full day, but well worth it! (Gary Player image Golf Today)
Mom and Dad, get creative. Is there a range nearby that might work something out with you? Well, you don’t know until you ask. Early, very early mornings aren’t for everybody, but then not everybody is trying to get a college golf scholarship. Help your junior golfer learn about sacrifice, learn about going beyond what everybody else is doing. It’s the stuff champions are made of!
See you on #1 tee bright and early… Sam

Junior Golf: Lesson 2 From The Tour Championship

In our Friday Flop Shot we’ll take a look at the 2nd lesson to be learned from The Tour Championship. Every time you watch a professional golf tournament, there are many things to be learned, both good and bad. (photo from offcoursegolf.com)

So our 2nd and final lesson we will take from last week’s Tour Championship is: nobody plays great all the time. Yes, the greatest names in the history of the game had their streaks when they won multiple golf tournaments. And Byron Nelson won 11 events in 1 year in the 1940’s, but as great an achievement as that was, he didn’t win everything. Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods and more guys have won a lot of golf tournaments in 1 season. But they all had times that they weren’t playing good enough to win. Yes, none of them liked it, but it’s called being human.

LPGA Hall of Famer Judy Rankin was talking on the golf channel about how many tournaments in a row the pros play, and for most it’s 2 or 3 in a row because it is so demanding. However, Judy made the point that if you are playing great, you want to keep playing because you know it won’t last forever. This is reality in professional golf.

Jason Day was hot as a firecracker the last few months on the PGA Tour and he was a favorite to win it all. In Atlanta however, Jason’s magical play had faded and while he was playing pretty well, after 2 days it appeared that he would really need to finish super strong to get back in it. In the meantime Henrick Stenson was on fire in the 1st round and looked like he was going to shoot about 30-under par if he could keep it up as he did at this same venue in 2013, winning it all. Ricky Fowler looked like he was always just about to get a bunch of birdies going but he never caught fire.

Then there’s Jordan Spieth who had everybody, except him and his caddy, shaking their heads after he missed the cut in 2 of the playoff events. As the other guys on the PGA Tour know, Jordan is a competitor to take very seriously when the stakes are high. Stenson could not maintain his torrid birdie streaks and Jordan patiently caught up with and ultimately passed him. No one else was really a threat on Sunday as 2 days of rain had made a mess of everyone’s scores, except for Jordan’s. Congratulations to him! (Byron Nelson photo from media.nj.com)

Mom and Dad, you junior golfer is not going to win every golf tournament they play in. Winning just 1 is a big deal. Any golf tournament is hard to win so don’t beat your junior golfer up when he doesn’t play well or is not competitive. It happens. It’s part of golf. Players at every skill level are looking for consistency and guess what, sometimes your golfer is more consistent and sometimes they are not very consistent at all. Accept the fact that designing a plan to work toward better consistency is the way to go. This isn’t accepting failure. This is about accepting that golf is hard and being an elite athlete in any sport is hard and all athletes in all sports at all levels want to be more consistent in playing at a higher level.

So love your son. Take him to #1 tee and I’ll be looking for him… Sam

Junior Golf: Grab the Remote

In today’s Wednesday Waggle we’re taking a look at the remote, yes that remote! But when we grab the remote, it may not be for the reason you are expecting.

Ah, the much-maligned remote. The evil tool of couch potatoes. We are going to use it for good, good golf, that is. Yes, if you have not already done so, grab the remote and search for the golf channel. If it’s not on your package, I am encouraging you to add it today. Usually it is a minimal monthly add-on. If it’s too much for your budget, then please consider dropping something from your package to be able to afford it. Our experience is that if you and your junior golfer are serious about golf, the Golf Channel is the single most important channel in your whole TV package. (Jason Duffner photo golfdigest.com)

DirecTV has been our TV vendor for more than 10 years and they are a great vendor. We only lose their signal when a severe thunderstorm is between our dish and their satellite. The Golf Channel is channel 218 on DirecTV and in our home, it is the most watched channel by far. They broadcast professional tournaments from: the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, Web.com Tour, European PGA Tour and top amateur events. Many of these are rerun at least one time, so there is a huge amount of great inspirational golf to excite your daughter about her future in the game she loves.

And the insight, golf tips, golf strategy, conditioning and all-around constant valuable influx of golf information is wonderful! The Golf Channel is never stale. Teaching/learning shows include: Champions Tour Learning Centers, The Golf Fix, Golf Channel Academy, School of Golf and Playing Lessons From the Pros and more. Plus the “Live from the (insert current tournament name)” and Morning Drive have amazing interviews and information. And of course, Feherty has interviews with high profile golfers and golf-lovers that are in-depth and very entertaining.

The point is: the Golf Channel is loaded with great stuff that you are hard-pressed to get anywhere else. And it’s clean wholesome TV! Now that’s a real deal!

See you on #1 tee… and you better have a recent Golf Channel quote… Sam

Junior Golf: Finger Stretches, Yes, Really

In today’s Friday Flop Shot we will examine finger stretches and how great a benefit they can be in helping prevent injuries. Your son’s fingers, hands and wrist are sacred territory which must be protected at all costs. Unless these body parts are close to 100% healthy, the chances of playing decent golf are greatly reduced. More focus is needed on the proper stretching of fingers, wrists, forearms and elbows. Today these are not getting the attention they deserve.

The good news is that finger stretches can be done anywhere, anytime. No special equipment, clothing or location is required. All you have to do is help remind or help your junior golfer to do them. Mom and Dad you should do them as well. Be the example. (photo from offcoursegolf.com)

Easy and effective finger stretches:
1. Hold both hands in front of your face with all 5 fingers spread apart and the same fingertips on each hand touching the fingertips on the other hand. Relax the fingers on the left hand and push them backwards with the fingers of your right hand. Repeat with the left hand pushing the right hand fingers rearward. You can push both hands against each other also, but the feeling when fingers are bent backward is totally different than fingers pushing forward against each other. You will feel this in your forearms and up into your shoulders.
2. Martial art stretch for hands, fingers and wrists: stand up straight with your left arm straight along your left side with the elbow locked out and palm facing forward. Maintain the left arm and swing it in front of the right quadricep muscle (right thigh). With the right hand, grab the 4 fingers of the left hand and gently pull them, while raising them up, toward the outside of the right hip. Hold for 20 seconds. Then reach under the 4 fingers of the left hand with the forefinger of the right hand to grasp the left thumb and gently pull it rearward. You and your son will really feel these, all the way into triceps and beyond. You may also do this exercise with your arm extended straight out in front of you, parallel to the floor.

Great examples of the need for these stretches include times when your son has been spending an inordinate amount of time doing schoolwork that requires lots of keying in on a computer. The hands, wrists and forearms and elbows can get almost locked in place. If you head to the range right after this, your son’s tendons and ligaments may be slightly misaligned and could be damaged unless proper stretching/warm-up takes place. (photo from developersaccomplice.co.uk)

Also, in our house, S3 and I love to play Call of Duty and especially love killing zombies together. After hours of holding the PS4 controller my wrists start to ache and I feel like I almost need to crack my fingers loose to get them out of the PS4 position. We do have an absolute blast and we are big fans of parents playing video games, in moderation, with the youngsters. However, when we put down the PS4 and head to the driving range, we all know that special stretching is needed to switch over the hands, wrists, forearms and elbows from video game mode to golf mode. Injury prevention, if you please.

See you on #1 tee… and you better be stretched out… Sam

Junior Golf: More Stretching=Better Golf

In this Wednesday Waggle we’ll see how more stretching equals better golf. Yes, your daughter is as nimble and flexible as a piece of string, but she will benefit from proper stretching. The best golf is a result of many things including a body that is properly stretched out. Tight muscles just cannot get into the proper positions to execute good swings.

Even with the innate agility that comes with youth, your daughter still needs to start investigating a solid stretching, strength and conditioning program. The easiest to implement is the stretching because it requires no special equipment or clothing. 40 years ago the only guy doing anything remotely resembling these things was Gary Player. Look at him today. He looks great and can allegedly outwalk the young pros on tour! It’s no accident. His years of extra conditioning work have really paid off. (Jason Duffner photo from golfdigest.com)

Where do you start with the stretches? Our family has a series of stretches that have helped 100% of the folks we know have properly used them. These were given to me by an orthopedic surgeon 20 years ago when my lower back was knotted-up. They are designed to stretch pretty much everything on your back side from the base of your skull to your Achilles’ tendon. And with a knotted-up lower back, I was pain-free and better than normal after 16 days of doing these stretches 2x daily. Now they are an integral part of my fitness regimen. And they stretch the quads and calves too!

Today virtually everyone on the PGA/LPGA has some sort of fitness routine. The competition demands it. Sometimes kids take more readily to new things if they are fun, so here are 2 stretching situations that you can certainly make “fun” to your daughter. It is just plain “fun” to watch Miguel Ángel Jiménez do his brief stretches on the driving range. They are quick and easy, but they may not be the only warmups he does. Find a video and go for it. (photo from i.ytimg.com)

Another great video from The Golf Channel, I’m sorry I don’t remember the specific show: is one of the guest instructors showing quick stretches to do when your daughter is late getting to #1 tee and there is no time for formal routines. It is great and it takes just a minute or 2.

See you on #1 tee…and your daughter better be stretched-out and ready to play… Sam

Junior Golf Parents – Gary Player on Why Golf for Kids!

Parenting Junior Golfers is an exciting time of life!

During an interview prior to the start of the 2012 British Open Championship, World Golf Hall of Fame Member and golfing legend Gary Player was asked why there were so many talented younger professional golfers?  His response was that the United States and South Africa have by far the best Junior Golf Programs in the world today -so many of these exceptional younger pros are from those two countries.

To paraphrase Player, The people in America should kiss the ground of that country every day.  When asked why golf is such a great sport for kids, the always optimistic, energetic and enthusiastic Player continued:  “Golf is a friend-making factory!  In one four-hour round of golf you can make a friend for a lifetime.  Golf is an ageless sport-you can easily play into your 80’s or longer.”

I concur with Player wholeheartedly. Here are few more reasons why your child would benefit from playing golf:

As a rule, golf people are good people and golf courses are good places for kids to spend time.  And most JG’s are polite, well-spoken and well-mannered-the kind of kids you want your child to be around.

Golf will help get your Junior Golfer in shape and keep them in shape.  It is a sport of flexibility and balance and strength-all important for a lifetime of good health.  And the Vitamin D they get from sun exposure is super healthy!

Honesty, integrity, confidence and perseverance are just some of the life skills your Junior Golfer will be able to experience.   Golf is very healthy as a character-building environment.

The risk of injury in golf is minimal when compared to other sports.  A sprain, bruise, some sunburn or tendonitis covers the great majority of golf injuries.  You just don’t need to worry about your child’s sport being a threat to their health.  Golf is a benefit to their health!

Junior Golf in the U. S. is more popular than ever!  Top quality coaches, courses, clinics, inexpensive/beginner’s equipment and proper attire are readily available.  And there are so many Junior Golf Tournaments, for players of every level, you can barely keep up with them.

Junior Golf promotes life skills combined with competition.  And along with competition comes pressure-a lot like life.  After you introduce your kiddo to golf and if they “take to” it, you are in for years of quality time together.  You will watch your Junior Golfer grow up and become more mature right before your eyes.

I love promoting the game of golf, especially to young people as they are the future of the sport… now, get out there and play! – Sam