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I have 3 boyes. 6yr. 3yr. 1yr. I am wanting to get them started in golf and a young age. My 6yr old is right handed, my 3yr old looks like he is going to be left handed. I don't want to have both sets of clubs to deal with all the time. Is this somthing i need to deal with at this age?Thanks for the help. Dave

I have a 6, 4 and 2 year old. My oldest is a boy and the other 2 girls. I had the boy take 2 lessons this year -- thats fairly worthless. I take both the 6 & 4 year old to the range (alone so they don't mess with each other) and just get them swinging as best I can. You can't expect much as they don't have much in the way of strength. They seem to make decent contact now. What I have done is focused on putting. I bought a nice indoor putting green (15x6) that rolls at an 11 stimp. I use it all the time for my putting, but a great place for the kids to learn how to put and to do as a family. This has helped them the most at this age.

My 4 year old daughter has taken the most liking to the sport and loves going with me. I belong to a private club and there isn't much traffic so I often take her. If I take a cart she will sit on the cart or now she will even walk 12 holes. I bring a 7 iron and a putter and drop her ball about 75 yards from the green. after a few shots she gets it to the green and putts. I teach her about the game and to respect the greens. A few of my buddies will even play with us now she is so well mannered on the course.

So key now is just getting them familiar with golf and swinging and putting. I had to readjust my expectations. I know my son has a short attention span so I don't push it with him. I want all his experiences with the sport to be good ones.

Good luck.

oh yeah...forgot to mention my 6 year old is right and 4 year old lefty. I started her with right handed clubs and the pro even got me a left handed club for her to try, but she has stayed with the right handed club. Some of the greatest golfers are opposite swingers so I doubt it hurts them. If they want to change later so be it. I would only get one set for now.

Thanks for the info. I think starting with the putting is a great place to start. Thank Dave

Where did you buy it?

I got it on ebay at a deep discount, but bought a Big Moss (bigmoss.com) green they have nice ones at 15x6 feet and 4x12. They roll nicely. Easy to move around too.

Thanks for the info!!!

Harvey Pennick recommended that you take out your shag bag, find the oldest nastiest balls that you'd have no problem parting with, and take your kid out to a water hazard on the course and let the kid hit those balls into the water. The point is to have fun and associate golf with that fun. Though I do like the irony that if they do eventually take up golf, water definitely is the opposite of fun! Make no mention of mechanics for a long time.

I think that fun really is the key. Go to putt-putt mini golf, go to pitch-n-putts, maybe even executive/par 3 courses. And you can't drive them, it has to remain fun.

My brother and I both have fond memories of going in the winter to walk local courses with Grandpa. It was a nice afternoon, golf or no, but with the added benefit of looking for forgotten golf balls. (We suspect now that most if not all were planted by Gramps.)

We're both weekend duffers now and it is in some way because of those afternoon walks. We never had any run-ins with course management, this was winter in Michigan, but you might have issues with that somewhere warmer.

My young lad is 9 now and I started taking him to the range about two years ago. The more I tried to get him to do (proper address stance etc) the worst he did. Finally I told him to just hit it as hard as he can and have fun and it was amazing the difference. I think there will be time later to address the fundamentals just let the kids hit the ball. This year I started taking him out for 9 holes of golf at my course around twilight when we had the course to ourselves. I got him to play from the 150yard marker in on the par 4's and the 200 yard marker on the par 5's and from the front tees on the par 3's. It was a lot of fun for both of us. Since he found out that he can find golf balls in the woods I cant get him to play anymore he just wants to come and find Golf Balls. The up side is he found over 20 pro V1's for me this year. (Child Labour is great)

My daughter is 8 and the local course has kids 'lessons' every Sunday during the summer. Each week they work on something different (full swing, putting, chipping or rules/etiquette). The instructor is great and all he wants the kids to do is have fun without tearing up the course. He will often take them onto the course to one of the lakes and have them hit a bucket of balls into the water and on hot days he or one of the parents will take a few kids at a time on a golf cart for a 'sprinkler' run. This is the advantage to having one of the pros with you as I don't think the course would appreciate me zig zagging through the running sprinklers with a cart full of kids. He does very little in the way of fundamentals except to always have them stand behind the ball and pick a target before they hit. He will occassionally give them other very basic fundamentals, but generally just tries to make it fun for them.

This has really increased my daughter's interest in practicing. She really surprised me the last time we went to hit balls. Usually she is ready to go home after a bucket, but the last time we were there she asked if we could get another bucket after we had already hit one each, so we did. After hitting those she asked me if could go to the pitching green. I was pretty stunned and happy that I would also get some pitching and chipping practice in. After some practice she asked if we could have a 'race'. This is a game I taught her on the putting green where we would each putt from a given point (I always handicap it by giving her shorter putts) and the fewest putts to that location gets one point and we race to a predetermined number. So we raced to 10 on the pitching green by hitting 5 balls each round/stage and the closest ball of the 10 hit during that round earned one point. When we finished that she asked if we could putt and we ended up putting until it became dark. We ended up getting a little over 3 hrs of practice in with her leading the way and staying interested the whole time. Mom was a little upset that we were gone so long without calling, but we had a great time.

Anything you can do that makes golf fun will spur continued interest. Remember when you take your kids that you need to be on their schedule as far as maintaining interest. Ideally you want to leave before they have lost their focus and interest, even if it is before you want to leave. These sessions will often feel like 'wasted' practice opportunities to you or I, but by leaving while there is still some interest from the little ones you are reaffirming a positive experience at the course.