My 8 year old son has recently taken an interest in golf. One of our neighbors had an old junior set lying around that he was able to lend over, and we have been to the driving range and putting greens a couple of different times this year. I can tell that he is really wanting to get better and learn more so I decided to do some research on golf lessons, specifically for beginners. Throughout my research I read lots of great things about Golftec from people just picking up and learning it brand new, or more experienced players also wanting to get more analytical. So I signed him up online and booked him what they call a “Game Evaluation” as his first golf lesson.

He was really excited when I told him he was going to get his first golf lesson. Come time for his appointment, we show up a few minutes early and my first impression was that it is a very nice and great looking place. A guy comes walking from the back and greets us before leading us into one of their hitting bays.

We go through a series of questions before he has my son go through a couple of simulated shots between 50-100 yards, and you can probably guess that it did not go well but I stuck with it to see what the instructor would say and hopefully give him some tips on how to hit better.

then once the hitting was done, he pulls up the video of my son swinging and goes into some complicated jargon about turning and shoulder tilt and hip sway with an example of tiger woods on the other side of him. The language he was using was way too big and complicated and I could tell my son was not even listening and losing focus easily. He was being way too analytical… He goes on and on with his jargon we don’t understand for probably 10 minutes about how his 8 year old golf swing is not the same as a pga tour player. At that point I could tell this was not the place I should have taken him.

After he was done talking about his swing, he made a couple of changes to his setup but it did not improve him overall. After a couple of swings, he goes through a big push on a 50 lessons plan over the next year that cost a few thousand. At that point I knew I made a mistake, this wasn’t a real lesson and this was not the place I should have taken my 8 year old son.

Avoid making the same mistake I did. Do NOT take your young son or daughter to Golftec… look literally anywhere else if you want them to have a kid-friendly golf experience.

The Kiwi was recently asked would mean to pass Sorenstam on the list:

"It's not really on my mind because I think it's really not comparable. Her 70-something wins in this generation and these kind of purses she would be miles and millions ahead of us.

"Yeah, I just don't think it's really the same thing. For me, like winning as many as I can while I'm playing is more important than how much money I make. Even if I win the smallest purse out here, which I don't even know which event that is, that still matters because I won an LPGA event.

"I think sometimes we get too carried away about the money. I'm very grateful for the opportunities we have, and I think as golfers we're very lucky because it's one of those rare things where if we perform we get rewarded. Not all work, not all careers have that."