Golf courses try recovery shots

By Maureen Mullen / Boston Globe

PHOTO: Pete Walsh, head pro at MGA Links, gives a lesson to Amy Zajac of Mansfield during a First Tee clinic.

As a child, Julieann O’Connell used to tag along with her dad to the driving range and practice green. She soon decided she wanted to play more. So her parents brought her to Braintree Municipal Golf Course, where head pro Bob Beach runs a program for golfers with special needs.

O’Connell, who is 25 and has Down syndrome, has been participating in Beach’s program for about 10 years.

“It’s a great thing to see,” said her father, Bill O’Connell, who lives in Braintree. “We are very happy to be involved with it.”

“She’s got a great swing,” O’Connell said of his daughter. “I know when Bob is showing off his group, he’ll ask Julie to demonstrate.”

The best part, though, is that it has opened the game to his whole family, O’Connell said. Julieann often invites her father and cousins to play a round of golf with her.

Golfers like Julieann O’Connell are an important part of the future of the golf industry. After a boom early this century, the number of rounds played nationwide has been declining, abetted by the economic crash of 2008. As a result, more than 150 courses closed in 2013, the National Golf Foundation reported, while only 14 new courses opened.

“We’ve been trying to get [golf participation] back up to where it was in the early 2000s, back when the tee sheets were full and there were a lot more people at the facilities,” said Brian Bain, the PGA of America’s regional manager for player development.

That means bringing back lapsed golfers, and being more innovative in attracting new and nontraditional golfers.

“We know that there are barriers out there, and we’re trying to work on them,” said Bain. “It’s a slow process, but it’s definitely gaining momentum.”

The barriers include time and money. And, for those who have never played before, there is the intimidation factor, what Bain considers the biggest hurdle.

“We have quite a few facilities in the area that do a lot to grow the game and [have] different targets, youth, ladies, all sorts of different programs,” Bain said.

Braintree Municipal, for example, offers a program for veterans, including disabled veterans, and has offered adaptive carts for about 10 years.

At Hillview Golf Course in North Reading, some women are being introduced to the game through the North Shore Women's Group.

In the western suburbs, Stow Acres Country Club offers a variety of lessons and camps for women, junior, and senior golfers of all abilities. “We try and group them together to create a kind of group synergy so that everyone can have a good experience and get their foot in the door,” said Thomas Giles, director of instruction at the Stow Acres golf school.

Children also are introduced to golf through the First Tee, a PGA outreach program aimed at kids who might not have easy access to the game. The First Tee has been in Massachusetts since 2003, with locations in Norton, Lynnfield, Hyannis, and Springfield, and is looking to establish a location in Boston within the next year, said Joe McCabe, executive director of First Tee of Massachusetts.

Nearly 2,500 children go through the program each year in Massachusetts, McCabe said. That includes about 80 who braved the unpredictable weather during the April school vacation week for a clinic at MGA Links in Norton.

“We’ve had a lot of success stories, not only on the golf course, but also off the golf course,” McCabe said. “We’ve had about 10 to 12 kids go through our program right through their high school years and then went on to play college golf. . . . [It is] nice to see them be able to continue their enthusiasm for golf into their college years, because golf is such a lifelong game.”

Bringing in nontraditional golfers can help the sport grow. But there are also benefits for the golfers, Bain said.

“So many wonderful things can come about from golf, whether it’s you’re out with friends, you’re in the fresh air, a lot of business takes place on the golf course,” he said.

Sue Collins had always wanted to get into golf, but had no one to go with. But as the head of the North Shore Women’s Group, a networking organization with about 1,300 members, she saw a perfect opportunity.

“We had just an outrageous amount of interest,” Collins said. “We were running two group lessons a week the first year, and they filled up and they had a wait list. So once one set ran out, we started another one, and the girls that went through the classes then started going to drop-in golf twice a week, and whoever shows up, shows up, and we have other women to go golfing with.”

The group’s members “were all excited because they felt it was more of a man’s sport and they felt kind of threatened going out on their own with a smaller group,” Collins said. “The Hillview has been wonderful for our group. They pretty much close their course down after us, so we don’t have anybody breathing down our backs.”

She added: “We’ve realized now that we don’t have to compare; we don’t have to be good. We just have to go out and play.”

Chris Carter, Hillview’s head pro, runs two clinics a week for the women’s group and started a program last year for graduates of the clinics. They can go out two nights a week after 6 p.m. for a discount to play as many holes as they can before it gets dark.

“Now we’re seeing those people show up on regular days with their friends because they’ve gone from zero experience, to [participating in] the clinic for a year and the playing program for another year, and now they’re actually playing golf — which was our goal from the get-go.”

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