Hey All:
I have previously been the Assistant Golf coach at the high school in my town. I am replacing a veteran coach who has had a ton of respect with the kids and community. Big shoes to fill to say the least! I have learned tons and love his coaching style which I plan to try to emulate.
One thing I am concerned about is our team struggles at times with being a team. As you all know - golf is a very individualized sport. These athletes are competing against each other to be playing in matches. But at the matches they need to be focusing on winning as a team and not beating their team mate. Well - in some degree they should be wanting to beat the team mates too! I hope you can see the fine line here.
One major problem we have (a good problem) that arguably our best player is a girl. She is a 4 handicap and this gets the boys all worked up. They get on the defensive and say things that downplay our female golfers golf game.
Can you think of anyway to promote team play and how to get the players to be happy about other players success? To me that should just be a given - but this day in age it isn't.
I thought about doing alternate shot competitions and pairing up people who normally have issues.
Any clever ideas on consequences if players are not putting the team first? I don't really want to punish competitiveness - but I want to teach the kids if they want to be better they have to work at it.
I hope this makes sense! I just am trying to avoid the drama that I forsee coming into the season. Thanks for your thoughts!
D
