What was your favourite memory of junior golf?

[arnieboy]

When I was a kid only posh people played golf and I certainly wasn't one.
Didn't start to play until my 40's.

 

[chrisd]

When I was a kid only posh people played golf and I certainly wasn't one.
Didn't start to play until my 40's.

Me too, I was about 47 when I first hit a ball with a golf club

 

[Blue in Munich]

Me too, I was about 47 when I first hit a ball with a golf club

Thought they didn't invent golf until you were 47...

 

[upsidedown]

Didn't start playing until in 40's but my older brother and Dad fashioned a 9 hole course that criss crossed the garden. Longest hole was about 70 yards and shortest about 20. Very small bumpy greens with old coffee tins for the holes. Hours of endless fun on summer evenings

 

[chrisd]

Me too, I was about 47 when I first hit a ball with a golf club

So that's why I had new clubs ??

 

[richart]

Me too, I was about 47 when I first hit a ball with a golf club

But you took the game up when you were 43.

 

[drewster]

Regretfully i didn't play golf until i gave up cricket at 32. I so wish i had my time again !!

 

[chrisd]

But you took the game up when you were 43.

A bit hit and miss though!

 

[IanM]

I never took the game up til I was around 20. Growing up on a council estate in the 80's/90's golf wasn't as accessible back then as it is today.

although i'm about 10 years older than you, it was the same. I passed the scholarship exam to go the local posh school, many of my mates played golf cos their dads did. I am trying to remember how much Junior membership at Guildford would have been about 1976. I suspect I knew not to ask, as it would have been more than my folks could afford.

Although, we used to caddy occasionally at several clubs - that sparked the interest. When I watched Seve win at St Andrews in 1984 I was working for Nat West by then and I was in awe of him. I bought a second hand half set of Dunlop Blue Flash inc a bag for £40 out of the small ads in the "Surrey Ad" from a guy in Hindhead. Started on the Par 3 at Hoebridge...

 

[DCB]

Some interesting comments about the cost of golf. Up here we were really lucky, everybody seemed to play golf. We had a variety of Muni courses where you could play for very little, most of those Muni's had clubs attached. I remember paying 5p for my round back in the mid 70s. A Saturday morning was a whopping 30 or 35p. A bit of a change nowadays, but, there are still Muni facilities available and members clubs are still reasonably priced for the ordinary golfer in many of our towns and cities.

 

[Orikoru]

Some of the prices quoted in here are unbelievable, imagine paying 20p for a round of golf. Sure has shot up over the last 40 odd years..

 

[need_my_wedge]

I remember at 13, I worked in the local butcher shop at the weekend, he was a golfer and said to me one day that I should give it a try. Unfortunately, wasn't accessible for me at the time. A few years later circa 1981, at age 16 I left school on exam leave prior to doing my O levels. On day 1 went with a mate to the local pitch and putt in Goff's Park (Crawley) and was hooked. Can't remember the fee, but was a few pence to rent a 7 or 8 iron, a putter and a ball. Played pretty much every day that summer (except exam days) until we started work in August, but who needed exam revision anyways......

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Having to walk the 2miles from home to Deaconsbank muni pulling my old rickety trolley behind me - down the busy main (Ayr) road and through Rouken Glen park. That walk I didn't mind - it was the walk back that was a pain (it was all uphill as well) - though I'd usually stop in quiet area of the park near the Ayr Rd gates and hit a ball or two...the ones with the big smiles/cuts so I could abandon them if a park keeper came along. Sometimes I got a lift from my mum. Then I'd leave my old trolley as I preferred carrying - trolleys were for the auld yins.

 

[chrisd]

Who's ball was it....? ?

Could've been anybody's ??

 

[Dando]

my favourite memory of junior golf was being bloody good at it

 

[Imurg]

my favourite memory of junior golf was being bloody good at it

What.Golf?
What happened?

 

[Dando]

What.Golf?
What happened?

I was better at cricket so gave up golfing my ball to concentrate on that.
Never been able to get dialed in properly again no matter what clubs i game

 

[SatchFan]

When I joined my club as a junior back in 1973 we used to get a group lesson from the assistant pro every Saturday morning for 10p each. An annual 7 day season ticket cost us £45.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

My Junior Membership of Dunkeld & Birnam was £5/year (it's still only £20).

April to October my folks would regularly take us up to Dunkeld from Glasgow for the weekend, and we'd camp in a field adjacent to the course (my mum knew the farmer from when she was a girl) about where the 16th green is now - with fabulous views over to Loch of the Lowes.

When we only had a little time me and my brother would climb over a gate into the course and play a few holes or crawl under the gorse bushes looking for balls (we couldn't afford to buy balls and our new balls were generally limited to what Santa gave us in our Christmas stocking). I still have a great affection for that club and course and to this day it vies with Pitlochry for my affections.

My earliest golfing memory (I wouldn't have been 10) is of being taken to Ainsdale beach by my Uncle Les with a couple of clubs - one being a cut-down hickory-shafted niblick that became my 'chipper'. He played at Birkdale and Southport & Ainsdale but it was on Ainsdale sands (and the Southport pitch and putt) that he showed me how to hold a club and hit a ball. On the hard sand it was quite easy - in the sand dunes I discovered the problems of bunker play