The Golf Foundation’s CEO Brendon Pyle talks about a new bid to reach children in every school in the UK but it’s not just about numbers – the charity wants golf to have a positive effect for youngsters and explains how the golf industry can help.
GBN: Hi Brendon. The Golf Foundation launched a new school initiative in September – tell us more about how it’s all been going.
‘Unleash Your Drive in Schools’ has been a huge success so far. We have had more than 400 schools register their interest already, our Golfway kitbags of equipment are being sent into the schools as we speak, and the teachers have all been highly positive about the digital learning platform and delivery portal created to make the fundamentals of golf easy to learn and share with the kids. Our President Nick Dougherty came to us just last year with this fantastic idea to get golf into every school, while helping us make a genuine difference to the next generation – it’s been a whirlwind year, but to see it all come to life and start to get into primary schools all across the Home Nations has been amazing.
The launch at Wentworth at the BMW PGA Championship saw us receive the support of Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Leona Maguire and Bob MacIntyre among others, not to mention Nick Dougherty presenting the whole idea live on Sky Sports. We also had a group of local school kids on the first tee at Wentworth showcasing their golfing journey, and we saw some great coverage across, among others, the BBC, Sky Sports, DP World Tour, The Scotsman, Golf Monthly and, of course, Golf Business News!
So it’s about getting golf into schools and ‘growing the game’?
Actually, no! Nick has always been vocal from the start that while we want to get golf into every school, this is ironically not ‘all about growing the game’. First and foremost, we want to help change the face of mental wellbeing among children in schools. We know that there is a problem post-Covid, and we genuinely believe golf is in a unique position to make a difference. Latest research from our mental toughness expert and adviser, Dr John Perry at the University of Limerick, shows that many pupils in years 5 and 6 of school experience a major dip in confidence and overall mental toughness through their early years in secondary school until year 10, so our type of intervention can be really welcome.
We want to get kids playing golf – that’s at the heart of our mission statement – but this campaign is about having an impact on mental wellbeing more than ‘growing the game’. We are working hard with schools to ensure they complete our specialised mental wellbeing reports both before and after the programme, so we can track the impact we are having and work on areas where we need to help bring certain elements to life more.
In simple terms, how can golf have a genuine impact on a child’s mental wellbeing, other than spending more time outdoors with friends etc?
This programme can be delivered indoors or outdoors, so for once, this isn’t about just getting out in the fresh air and experiencing those mental wellbeing benefits that all golfers understand. We know that those are there for people who play on the course and get out with friends and so on, but this is very much a different story. Our programme has nine mental toughness tools, which we have developed with experts over the past five years. They are embedded across our six lessons in order for the kids to gradually learn each one, while getting all the fun out of the game in front of them. For example, if you learn to take a breath and count to three when you are ‘feeling the fizz’ of adrenaline before you hit the ball in a game, that can start to help you in a stressful situation in school – taking a moment to breathe before you react to something.
We teach positive self-reflection, positive self-talk, ‘What went well’ (taking the positives from any situation), and ‘Even better if’ (setting a goal for the next challenge), breathing techniques and more. Each skill is explained to the teacher through training and introduced to the kids within their lesson, then taught via the game of golf. Hopefully these help within the game, and eventually start to help off the course too. We’ve always talked about these kids facing huge challenges inside and outside the classroom. If we can help them to deal with stress and anxiety in the classroom and playground situations, the hope is we can make a genuine difference when those situations arise at home or out in everyday life as well.
As I mentioned, this has all been developed over a number of years and by using experts from various mental wellbeing fields – for example, we use the recognised Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale as part of the self-assessment to track overall wellbeing. Additionally, several targeted questions are asked as an indicator that participants understand that they can use the tools and effectively apply them in various life scenarios – whether facing challenges, setbacks, or seizing opportunities. The results of our early school studies indicate an average increase in mental toughness of 19% among our pupils, in line with the findings of our original study with young people in golf clubs.
How do teachers get involved?
If you know a teacher who might be interested, they can sign up here.
And how can the golfing world help?
Basically, we need money to make this work. The more we get, the more free kit bags we can provide alongside all our online training and digital and printed resources.
We have an amazing opportunity for the whole golf world to get involved with, thanks to some help from our friends at Wentworth Club and the DP World Tour. We are putting on a special golf tournament at Wentworth Club in August 2024, where 72 golfers will take to the West Course and battle it out to win three spots at the BMW PGA Championship Pro-Am!
Golfers can enter our monthly draws to win a place in the Wentworth Club event, while golf clubs or organisations can all start fundraising today – the top 10 fundraisers between now and June 2024 will all earn one spot in the event.
There is a special ‘Play In May’ campaign to fill another 30-40 spots at Wentworth Club, too, and we’re really excited about that. But we’ll have more information on this when we get nearer the time!
Great, look forward to hearing more. Good luck!