As he dutifully followed along watching his son – the youngest child in the event – hit shots that many low-handicap golfers would have relished, a relatively basic query struck Feargal Cooper as funny.
Smacking a ball nearby was seven-year-old Sean Cooper, born in the UAE to Irish parents and already something of a local prodigy. In February at the Omega Dubai Desert Classic, he was pulled from the gallery to hit shots on the practice range during a clinic staged by major champions Tiger Woods and Mark O'Meara, who were audibly impressed.
So, the notion that Feargal has ever resorted to twisting Sean’s arm to play struck the father as humorous. It is quite the opposite around their house.
“All kids are like that, aren’t they?” Feargal said. “They can’t get enough of this.”
Actually, no, which is precisely the issue that one of the sport’s largest management companies is trying to remedy in the UAE.
Troon Golf, a multinational company that runs five courses in the Emirates, including the Abu Dhabi and Saadiyat Beach golf clubs, this summer has launched the Troon Junior Inter-Club Series, a decidedly user-friendly competition designed to hook school-age golfers on a sport that can sorely use an infusion of youth.
All around the planet, dozens of organisations have conjured up programmes to stem the tide of golf’s declining participatory numbers, with mixed results. In the melting pot of the UAE, the task is made more complicated by culture, temperatures and accessibility.
Most UAE clubs have plenty of expatriates children as members, but diversity is limited and few of them play seriously. As a result, attracting girls and other nationalities are huge facets of the new programme, which is made up of a series of low-key team events set to conclude in November.
“We have seen some of these junior programmes really take off,” said Danny Jakubowski, the director of instruction at Abu Dhabi Golf Club and the architect of the series. “I could care less how good they are at golf. I want them to come out and have fun.”
The tournament model is a departure from the norm. Four juniors were picked from the five Troon clubs with not a thought to selecting the best players. Instead, Jakubowski delivered a wide array of talent, gender and nationalities.
“If I am being honest, I really encouraged all the clubs to have female and Emirati participation,” he said.
Playing in their proximal peer group sends the message to the children that competition can be addictive and that there are others out there with similar interests. In short, organisers are hoping to set a treble hook with fun, camaraderie and familiarity.
It might be the first tournament series where determining a winner is not the primary function. In fact, experienced golfers, such as Griffin Joseph, 15, who carries a single-digit handicap and has played in numerous area tournaments, was paired with three younger players and asked to serve as something of a mentor.
“I really like playing with the younger guys,” Joseph said. “Not because I am better than they are, but because it’s fun to maybe teach them a few things. I remember that I had a fifth-grade buddy when I was in the first grade, and I thought he was the coolest guy around.”
Ahmed Lila has played golf with his 11-year-old son, Amaar, many times, sometimes with a comical undertow that many parents will recognise. Amaar gets frustrated when they play together, because he thinks his dad yells too much.
To which his father counters, laughing: “That’s because you don’t listen.”
Playing alongside others between the ages of seven and 15, and from all over the UAE, was a blast, Amaar said.
“I like how they weren’t all just people from here,” said Amaar, who lives in Abu Dhabi. “There were new people to play with, which makes it more fun. I think it was more interactive than playing with an adult, where there’s not as much to talk about.”
There has been plenty of conversation among the grown-ups about how to staunch the bleeding in the sport, which is suffering from daunting and declining participation numbers throughout most of the world.
Dana Garmany, the chairman of Troon Golf worldwide, acknowledged the elephant in the room at last week’s HSBC Golf Business Forum in Abu Dhabi, which drew hundreds of the sport’s global brain trust. With the broadly defined baby-boomer generation ageing quickly, the player pipeline thereafter looks bleak.
“It’s a scary number when you get out beyond that,” Garmany said.
The inaugural Troon event was anything but frightening. Each team had four players, everybody used their club handicap over the nine-hole format, and the highest score on each team was thrown out. Jakubowski hopes to use different players at each of the five scheduled events over the rest of the summer, exposing as many children as possible to the format.
For some, it marked their first taste of tournament play, the low-pressure format notwithstanding. Hannah Carson, 11, was nervous at the thought of playing in front of other children and their parents, said her mother, Phyllis.
Small wonder. Because there are few girls her age with whom to play at the Montgomerie Club in Dubai, where the family has a membership, Hannah plays in a regular foursome with her mother and her friends, who all showed up to lend moral support.
“You don’t have to persuade her to go out and play,” Phyllis said.
Having children her own age as playing partners, though, makes it all the better.
To underscore the player paucity, of the 200-plus junior members at the Montgomerie Club, perhaps a dozen are “serious players”, said Rhys Beecher, the club’s director of instruction.
“Sometimes I think we lose them because of the lack of serious competitors,” Beecher said.
In the future, Jakubowski hopes junior series will include every club in the UAE, perhaps morphing into a serious competition. Until then, the programme offers an appetiser sampler plate, hoping the participants will someday order off the full-sized menu.
As children noisily milled around him afterwards in the Abu Dhabi venue’s famous clubhouse, playing pool and waiting for Jakubowski to tally up the final numbers, it was easy to characterise the series opener as a hit. Brothers and sisters of those who participated expressed an interest in playing, too.
“I could really care less which team wins,” Jakubowski said. “I just want to give them the chance to play golf and show them what it has to offer.”
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