Take a moment and ponder about a sport that you can play for your entire life. That sport would be golf. Combine that with the fact that children pick it up easily and you’ve got something good that will last a lifetime. Kids are fast learners and can begin with limited instructions.
As a parent, we all want to do the right things for our children and sometimes that means guiding them in the right direction. There are many sports that children can become involved with and that is wonderful. The idea is to expose them to many sports and let them decide for themselves which ones they want to pursue.
With that being said, there is no other sport where they can learn as many valuable life lessons as in golf. Golf can be played by virtually anyone, you don’t have to big or fast or even have great coordination to play golf, especially as a child and you can start as soon as you can maintain your balance.
Golf Is Safe and Fun
Golf Is Fun: Just take a moment sometime to watch children in a junior golf program. They laugh and have fun while learning a new skill and meeting new friends.
Minimal Risk: Unlike many other popular sports such as football, baseball, or soccer the chances of serious injury or any injury for that matter is remote. All they have to do is stay out of the way of the person swinging and the golf ball.
Golf Is Played In a Wonderful Environment: A golf course is a wonderful place to spend time and it also is a safe place for your children to be for hours at a time.
Golf Teaches Them Important Life Lessons
Maturity in Dealing with Bad Bounces:Bad bounces happen, in life and in golf, after both good shots and bad shots. Learning to deal with those situations will greatly impact the rest of their life.
Dealing With Bad Shots: In golf they have the opportunity to learn to put a bad shot behind them and not dwell on it or it is likely to cause another bad shot.
Learning Patience: Like maturity, they learn that you cannot force things to happen. They are playing against the course and they have to take what it gives them.
Spending Time With The Family: It’s a sport the entire family can play together for generations. Even if you don’t play now, it might be good to consider taking the game up just to spend time with your family.
Other Positives For Their Future
Improves Their Health: With all of the talk today about the youth obesity epidemic in our country, golf is a sport that helps young people get off the couch. When you play golf, walking the golf course and carrying your bag, a 150-pound person burns 350 calories and walks more than 10,000 steps and they are outdoors.
College Scholarships: If your child should choose to excel at golf they will have a lot of opportunities when it comes to college funding. The earlier your child starts, the greater his or her chance is of gaining access to scholarship money. This is even truer for girls.
A Useful Business Skill for The Future: It’s hard to think about it now, but kids grow up and the people they meet as children can play a huge part in their success later in life. Plus having a decent golf game will be an invaluable skill for their career development.
Young people should play golf because it is based on characteristics that are too often missing in today’s win-at-all-costs society. Golf places an emphasis on personal integrity. In golf there is no judge or referee; instead, you are taught to call infractions on yourself.
There are a million things you can buy your buy for or do for your kids in the hope that it helps them learn and grow, but only a few make a real positive impact on their lives.
Playing golf is one of those!