Once in a lifetime

St Andrews Golf Camp provides junior golfers with an incredible opportunity to improve their games while soaking up all things golf-related in the Auld Grey Toon.

Watching The Open at St Andrews is about as inspirational as it gets for prospective golfers. There will hopefully be many youngsters encouraged to swing a club for the first time or to improve their games after watching the thrilling 144th Championship.

The competition itself is inspiring, but so is the place. When The Open is at the Home of Golf, there’s just something a bit special about it. The town of St Andrews lives and breathes golf. The sport has been played on the links there for hundreds of years and thoughts of early legends of the game like Allan Robertson, Old and Young Tom Morris will always be stirred by the Auld Grey Toon.

St Andrews is a site of pilgrimage for all lovers of our great game and many of those who come to the game later in life wish they had been able to experience the magic of the place as a youngster. What better way to encourage a junior golfer than to give them a taste of “Golfing in the Kingdom?”

A recently founded company in St Andrews is striving to do just that. The stated aim of “St Andrews Golf Camp” is to provide a unique golfing experience for junior golfers: To help young players learn and expand their golfing knowledge, also to gain new cultural experiences while making new friends in an international setting. Sounds pretty good doesn’t it?

Over the course of the 7-10 day Golf Camp the juniors have the chance to learn links Golf from some of the best professionals in the country, experience playing some of the finest links golf courses in the world, play golf like it used to be played at the Kingarroch hickory course, learn about the history of the game at The British Golf museum, and in the case of last week's Open Championship camp, have the opportunity to experience all four days of the Championship.

Open 2015 - A Review:

In 2015 St Andrews Golf Camp is running three camps with the first being Open week when they had 17 junior golfers from all over the world. This included: Italy, France, Spain, Hong Kong, USA and Holland.

The camp works closely with the St Andrews Links Academy to provide expert tuition in the mornings, both on the course and in the driving range. Each of the junior golfers are given an appraisal of their performance and given tips on the areas of the game they should work on. In the afternoons, the juniors get the opportunity to play competitive games on one of the St Andrews Links Courses, Kingsbarns or Fairmont courses.

The Golf Camp team looks after the juniors 24/7 and all catering is taken care of (breakfast, lunch and dinner.) As many of the kids travel unaccompanied, they are met at the airport.

This winter the team are looking to run their first junior golf camp in Dubai with details likely be confirmed in the next month. The idea is to give kids in the UK and Europe the opportunity to take advantage of the warmer weather and work with some of the teaching pros located in and around Dubai. They will then hold two or three camps again in St Andrews during 2016.

Further info on the golf camps can be found at www.standrewsgolfcamp.com

There are still a few spots left on the August camp for anyone interested. It would seem to be the ultimate experience for an aspiring junior golfer and could just be the inspiration they need to take a step forward in the game.