Developing A Junior Player

A few Summers back I received a call from Carlos’ father, letting me know that his son would be competing in a US Kids Golf tournament at Tump Nationl Doral in two weeks and he wanted me to work with his son Monday through Friday prior to the tournament to get him ready for the event. Everything got scheduled and the 9 year old Carlos showed up at the Jim McLean Golf School ready to work with his set of clubs US Kids Tour Series 57. On day one I did a full assessment of his equipment and his golf game to determine his skill level with the short game and long game, Carlos had to that point some good success on the course at tournaments at his home country but competing at an international US Kids event would demand his best golf!

During my initial interview with Carlos and his father I mentioned that he would have to work in developing a better body motion not only to be more consistent at impact but also to prevent future problems with his back and neck, and I wasn't very surprised when Carlos' father mentioned to me that the kid had already complained to him for back pain. The only chance I had to change this pattern of motion was by having Carlos use much shorter clubs that would force him after some practice to keep the forward bending of his upper body through and after impact. In the picture on the right you can notice how much Carlos was lifting his upper body to be able to swing his very long clubs.

In this picture I am presenting how Carlos looked at setup with his clubs US Kids TS57 on the left and with the US kids TS51 on the right. The longer club was "pushing" him back on his setup, his weight was much more toward his heels and he had to stand much more upright to the golf ball. As a drill I actually had Carlos hit many balls with an even smaller club, US Kids UL 45 that forced him to keep his forward bending to even be able to reach the ball on the ground, this drill helped him develop the correct feel on his swing. Carlos trained all that week with me at Doral and only used his new and smaller golf clubs and he went out to win the US Kids tournament that weekend with a stunting score of 2 under par with high Florida winds.

The US Kids Tour Series is designed for players who show intermediate-to-advance skills, play competitive golf events, and have club head speeds above 54 mph. In my opinion, the US Kids Tour Series golf clubs are the natural bridge that prepares juniors for adult clubs. Junior players are ever changing their height, weight, strength, swing speed, etc, they are like a "different little person" every few months and reducing the changes by moving them through clubs that are designed for them and proportionally incremented is a fortune I wish I would had when I started at Golf in the early eighties. Carlos worked very diligently to improve his technique and the process was very rewarding to see him develop and progress into a very competitive junior player. Below I would like to share a few pics from my work with him.

Right Picture (from left to right): Runner up at the European World Championship | Runner up at the World Championship at Pinehurst | Winning the US Kids event at Doral after changing his clubs to much smaller ones.

Evolution of Carlos' swing
One thing is certain, Golf golf is not only swing technique, Carlos spent countless hours developing his short game, his putting, his green reading skills, his course management, etc, but I wanted to present what a great evolution he made with his body motion and how shorter clubs help to develop a junior player. Carlos is preparing for College Golf at a year round Golf School in North Florida and I am still very much in touch with him making sure he continues his golf journey moving in the right direction!