McDonald Golf Club

Clubgolf

Juniors to benefit as Ellon's McDonald Golf Club wins facility development award Ellon's McDonald Golf Club, at the forefront of developing junior golf in the local community, has secured an Awards for All lottery grant to develop a junior practice facility.

The award for £9,900, combined with a donation from the Rotary Club, help from local contractor Jim Jamieson and funds from the Golf Club, will enable Ellon to develop a junior practice facility for its thriving junior coaching programme and its growing junior membership.

"We are delighted to receive this grant which will help us develop an area of waste land into a safe practice area for our juniors," said the Club's Clubgolf Co-coordinator, Graham Gerrard.

"It will have everything we need to coach our juniors; a green with a landing area so we are able to teach chip and run shots as well as putting, plus two bunkers and a tee."

The Club sees the new, planned area as an 'enormous improvement' over what the Club currently uses to coach its juniors - a patch of grass between the sixteenth and seventeenth tees.

Yet, despite its limited facilities, the Club has made impressive progress in developing junior coaching.

Ellon is the perfect example of a club transforming its junior section through the national junior golf programme, clubgolf.

A partnership between the Scottish Golf Union, the Scottish Ladies' Golfing Association, the Professional Golfers' Association, the Golf Foundation and sportscotland, clubgolf emerged from Scotland's successful bid to host the Ryder Cup in 2014.

Launched in 2003 at Gleneagles by Colin Montgomerie, clubgolf is a result of the Scottish Government's commitment to introduce every nine-year-old child in Scotland to the game.

"We started clubgolf three years ago and we now have 80 children on our programme, " said Mr Gerrard, who works with 11 qualified volunteer coaches to deliver Stage 1 of the clubgolf programme.

Professional, Sandy Aird, who joined the Club in February, coaches the more advanced juniors at Stages 2 and 3 of the programme.

With local schools delivering clubgolf's introductory game and with the club offering a well structured coaching programme it is no coincidence that golf has become an important sport for local children, many of whom come from non golfing families.

The go ahead for a new junior facility is perfectly timed.
"We plan to start work as soon as possible," said Mr Gerrard.

"We have already appointed a local contractor, Jim Jamieson, to clear and resurface the land.
We are at the mercy of the weather but we aim to open the new facility next September.

Many thanks to Andy McLean for the photographs