I’ll never forget winning my first ‘major’ club competition. I was 14 years-old and it was on Lady Captain’s Day - one of the most coveted trophies of the year. I’ve still got the pictures of me, a fresh-faced junior, collecting a beautiful little silver trinket box from the Lady Captain. But I didn’t walk away with the trophy to accompany it. A club policy, at the time, stipulated that although I was allowed to play in and win the competition, as a junior I wasn’t allowed the silverware.
Although a few decades have since passed, many clubs and including certain competitions at ours, still have a policy where juniors can enter, but not win the trophies in the women’s section.
In many ways this seems extremely harsh on aspiring young golfers and a little bit unsporting. After all, if they've scored brilliantly, surely they truly deserve their success to be celebrated?
As a long-standing member of the club I used to have this belief but with age has come the sense of seeing the viewpoint from the other side of the coin. Juniors are undoubtedly the most over-handicapped players in the club. Especially when new to the game and improving all the time, they are infinitely more capable of shooting extraordinary scores than the adults who they are competing alongside.
For them to score 10 shots or better in a competition is perfectly normal. And as their golf improves so their handicap comes tumbling down. We all went through this exciting period of learning and improving but while they are doing so, should they be denied the joy of lifting the trophy that on paper they won?
As a low handicapper I actually do believe so, because there are probably only a handful (at best) junior girls in the field of players and allowing them to compete as equals alongside the rest of the women in the club takes away the fun of playing in that competition for us. A 14-year-old off a 34 handicap can easily score 45 points or more - I cannot (short of shooting the equivalent of eight-under-par!)
But they are never going to have the joy of winning a trophy, I hear you cry! Of course they will. There are plenty of opportunities for junior girls to compete at clubs, in their county and, if they are good enough, alongside their talented peers all around the country. These are the trophies they should aspire to have their names engraved on. Not the Victory Cup for the best medal score playing against seventy-something-year-old club veterans.
As a parent of a 10-year-old who is just about to start marking his first cards for handicap I will definitely be encouraging him to play lots of golf with grown-ups. There are some obvious pros of allowing children and teenagers to play in adult competitions. There’s a lot that can be learned playing alongside older, more experienced golfers, especially the correct etiquette and rules, more so than if you let kids simply tee up with other juniors.
So, what’s the solution? For me it is for junior girls to play as much competitive club golf as they wish, but to only win the club’s junior trophies until they turn 18. While I know that this is a controversial viewpoint and one that many parents of junior girls will be disappointed to read, I believe that the women’s section trophies (with the exception of the club championship, which should be open to every age to crown the ‘best player’) should only be won by the women (those over 18).
It will be interesting to see how many clubs are taking this stance and how many have actually gone the opposite way and allowed junior girls to win as much silverware as they like. It’s certainly a tricky decision, so do let us know your thoughts.
