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Junior golf tips from an ai perspective
Junior golf tips from an ai perspective
My 9 year old daughter first picked up a golf club at age 3 - influenced by her older sister who was taking lessons at the time. We started with the range followed by time on the putting green. She seemed to love it - especially the drives! In 2021, she played in her first Drive, Chip, and Putt competition and luckily earned 3 ribbons - a pleasant surprise for us all given our prep regiment only consisted of 15 days of unstructured practice. While we built on this, we remained fairly sporadic with our practices. We also didn't think too much of our approach given we had seen some progress and hoped she'd organically develop her skills over time. This brings us to 2023 when we dove in, head first, into her JGANC journey. It could not have been more clear as day, hope is not a plan.
Her first tournament was a horrible experience. That saying "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom..." - minus the snow, could not have been truer words. She wasn't dressed right for the weather and had to wear her large parka jacket just to keep warm. Worst part, we were unprepared for how the rain and drop in temperature would affect her ability to grip the clubs correctly. At one point, her iron slipped out of her hands and flew about 10 yards away. Thankfully, it didn’t hit anyone. Adding fuel to the fire, she wasn’t used to par 4 and 5 distances (neither were we!). Hole after hole was just a pile-on of discouragement as she closed no less than 7 putts each time, wrapping that first 9 hole competition with a whopping final score of 71. I was heartbroken. It was the hardest to see tears trickling down my little one's face, the face that up until that point gleamed with joy for golf. What had I done to her?
Needless to say, I was disappointed in myself. JGANC competition is like a marathon - and we mistakenly ran this one thinking sprinklings of practice and a good attitude would be enough. We hit reset after she said she still liked golf (phew!) and I leaned into the learnings from this and coupled it with the basics - preparation.
Post my due diligence, I started laying out a spreadsheet to help organize my thoughts. Our North Star remained - to improve her game while keeping it fun. I wanted her to build resilience and discipline along the way so added resources that could help develop those muscles as well. Today, the evolving spreadsheet is all-encompassing. It includes tabs to help:
My point in all this is to create a playbook that can house the key considerations that will help achieve our North Star. The playbook will help prepare for most conditions within our control - and it will map a plan for factors outside of our control. This would then allow me space to focus on emotionally supporting and cheering my daughter on.
Putting my Golf Playbook v1 to the test.
To my delight, and hers, applying the rigor has resulted in a 47% increase in her overall leaderboard standing in just 10 weeks! Mind is still blown by this insight! In other words, after 5 games of applying the checklist, analyzing the insights from my spreadsheet, we have seen a significant drop in her score from the highest of 71 (on a 9 hole) to a whooping 40 in her latest competition! But that's just the silver lining. Most importantly, I see the energy and joy on her face during every competition since. She still faces lots of challenges (eg how to hit over obstacles without getting mentally paralyzed by it) BUT it has been absolutely heartening to watch her develop grit and excitement for this game. She has also started to understand the value of a disciplined, trackable approach more than ever - and her hunger to learn more is so inspiring. I know I'm biased but it's been such a beautiful evolution to witness. In hindsight, I would not have changed the outcome and experience of our first game. It gave us many learnings, humbled us in a way that would not have motivated us to change. And this next chapter is certainly reaping the benefits.
Hope you find this spreadsheet as helpful as we have - I know my daughter is surely happier because of it. Because this worked so well with my daughter, I have also started using this to improve my own game!
I'm still learning and using ai to help enhance my kid's potential and interest in golf. Hope you find this as helpful as I have.
Here is a link to my spreadsheet:
https://personalplaybook.etsy.com
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