Designer kids tee up a winner

In the industrial heartland of the West Midlands, where football dominates the sporting landscape, golf is set to challenge its status at one primary school which can boast the newest golf course in the country.

This unique nine-hole tri-golf venture boasts tight fairways, penal rough and strategically placed bunkers – all the imagination of pupils of Brandhall Primary School – and is already a hit with pupils, teachers and the community, who have all had the chance to test their mettle on this high-profile addition to their sporting facilities.

The new course has been a collaboration between PGA Professional Greg Lynch, who has been doing after-school coaching sessions, and PE co-ordinator Lance Halls and Maxine Burrows, the school’s extended service and community partnerships manager.

Both Halls and Burrows are enthusiastic amateur golfers and their passion for the game, along with that of Lynch’s has seen this 12 month ‘labour of love’ come to fruition and have a positive impact on the school children.

Funding for the course was proving difficult until the school secured £1,000 from Sandwell Borough Council. Burrows and Halls also used their golf connections and received additional support from PGA Professional Paul Johnson, and pulled in favours and skills from colleagues and families to get the project off the ground and completed.

Burrows said: “I wanted to maximise the outside space we have at the school and having seen a tri-golf course at Rednal Hill school in Birmingham, I thought that was something we could do.

“Working with Greg, who I knew from Warley Woods, and with the help of Paul Johnson, we have pulled it all together.

“It has been a challenge from getting the funding to preparing it as I think I under-estimated the amount of maintenance it needs.

“But the children are really excited about it and it has become extremely popular with them at lunchtime. We make sure they have all had an induction on how to play the game and anyone who wants to play comes and books a tee time and is given a scorecard.

“As well as being used by the school, it will be used by the holiday playschemes, it is used after school and we anticipate it being used by the wider community, including mums and dads.”

Halls, whose pupils played a role in designing the holes, will be incorporating golf into the school’s PE curriculum.

“The Key Stage 2 pupils will do golf for half a term,” he said. “We had Jason Sorrell from the Golf Foundation come in and do some training with the teachers and we also picked up some good ideas.

“Having the course means we can introduce the children to golf, which they were unlikely to do otherwise. The kids have really taken to it, especially as all of key sports involve running and this enables everyone to play.”

Lynch (below), who coaches at a number of schools in the Birmingham area, said: “The youngsters have done fabulously well, the project has gripped their imagination. There are still a few hedges and trees to plant but we are nearly there with a cracking little course for Tri-Golf.”

*Images of pupils from Lyng Primary School, West Bromwich, playing the new course.