Putting around for a week

Jimmy Stroup

Putting, chipping, grip and swing are the lessons of the day at the

Skyhawks Golf Camp in Newport Beach. And the 5- and 6-year-olds who

are learning the techniques in the week-long course at Bob Henry Park

are stroking to win.

With 12 kids to a group, golf instructors are knee-deep in

youngsters, teaching them the basics of how to play the ancient game

in a new way.

“Right now, we’re working on putting,” golf instructor Jimmy Lee

said. “It’s the first day, so we’re working on technique.”

“We want the kids to have fun, so we try to incorporate the

technique into games,” the 18-year-old University of Southern

California business student said.

The little games Skyhawks has developed to teach the big game

include events like the “Putting Relay,” “Battleship,” and “Putting

for Points.”

In the relay, kids set up at 10-foot, zig-zagged intervals and hit

a tennis ball back and forth to each other with oversize plastic

putters -- cut to kid sizes, of course. The games end when one of the

two six-boy teams relays the tennis ball to a cone set in the middle

of the playing field, all to great excitement and exclamation of the

winning boys.

The relay game keeps the kids occupied, while teaching control and

distance in a fun way, coach Roger Huh said.

“Most of these kids have never played golf, or they’ve played with

their parents at the range,” he said. “But they don’t know what

they’re doing.”

To teach them what to do, “Putting for Points” works on the kids’

aim and accuracy for future use on the greens at Newport Beach links.

The game lines up the boys and has them putt in a straight line at

Velcro targets with points measured at different spots.

“It’s an introduction to golf,” said Nick Kim, the director of the

Newport Beach golf camps. “Just to get the kids to learn the basics

of golf.”

Breaks are frequent and supervised at the camp, a quality that

makes parents feel like their kids are safe while they’re learning

said Irma Boehringer. Her 5-year-old son Roger is enrolled in the

golf camp with several of his friends from school.

“As a parent, that’s important to me,” she said.

For the rest of the week, the kids will move on from putting to

chipping and finally to the full swing -- when they’ll get a chance

to hack it out like real golfers stuck in the rough.

The Newport Beach Skyhawks beginning golf class runs from 9 a.m.

to noon, Monday through Friday. All the kids receive a T-shirt at the

end of the course. Skyhawks sports programs for kids are available in

11 states and in cities throughout Southern California.