Vol. 18 - Gain Speed As A Junior Golfer

Hello everyone!

Its been a while since I have had adequate time to write a newsletter as I have been busy working on my non-profit, The Eastern Iowa Junior Golf Associations, annual fundraiser tournament. My apologies for the lapse.

As I was working on the event for the EIJGA the idea of the topic for this newsletter came to me.

What to focus on with a junior golfer — control or speed?

When I was a junior golfer that focus was very much on control and learning proper mechanics. Learning how to make solid contact first with a good grip and posture, backswing etc.. then teaching them how to play and score. This was all good and dandy until something called strokes gained came around and poked big holes through this logic. With more and more data about the game of golf and what actually helps players more has changed and evolved.

Strokes gained has taught as that distance is the biggest advantage a player can have. Also with this data we have learned that hitting it longer doesn’t necessarily mean we will hit it off line a significant amount more either.

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When can a player gain the most speed in their golfing career?

Answer: When they are a junior!!

When juniors are growing and developing this is the time when speed development should be the focus. Teaching them how to swing it fast and be an athlete will give them much more advantage later on than the other way around. Juniors have 3-4 time windows when they will gain the most speed in their youth and we need to capitalize on these. This will help immensely in raising the ceiling of their potential. Once a player gets beyond these windows, teaching your body to be faster is still possible but your ceiling is much lower and the work is much more difficult.

If you are a parent of a junior golfer I would encourage your junior to swing it as fast as they can regardless of where the ball goes and how the contact is. Even if they fall over that is perfectly fine by me. Let them have fun with it and learn how to be an athlete. We can teach them the control part of the game later which is much easier to do if they are an athlete. This is why I encourage all my junior families to allow their juniors to play many sports, especially those that involve any sort of throwing, running, jumping, balance and eye-hand coordination. The time for juniors to become more sport specific won’t be until their later teen years.

My biggest advice for any parent who has a child that plays sports is first to make sure they are having fun followed by allow them to become and athlete.

If you have any questions about junior golf development and or speed training please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Email to join my academy speed program and get 15% off the The Stack Speed System with the PRGR Radar.

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