Boys and girls took to the greens last week to participate in the annual Tellico Village Junior Golf Camp at Toqua Golf Course.
The week-long camp started nearly 20 years ago and has become one of the most anticipated events for Village professionals.
“This is my fourth year here,” Casey Flenniken, Tanasi golf professional, said. “This is probably the first year that I’ve seen a lot of new faces — a lot of newer kids. I don’t know if that’s newer Villagers moving in or their grandkids are coming or whatever. There’s a lot of newer faces, some familiar, but a lot of newer faces. They really took on to it. You set the ground rules on Monday, and they take off running with it.”
Flenniken was pleased with the amount of participation throughout the week despite hot temperatures.
“We’ve had 60 kids, which is awesome because it’s been 95 or hotter all week,” Flenniken said. “It’s been very humid, but they’ve responded well to it. We do a lot for them throughout the week.”
The first three days emphasized fundamentals, followed by a fun day and championship round on Friday.
“We’ll do three straight instruction days,” Flenniken said. “So they’re learning rules and etiquette on the short course. We’ve got a little six-hole short course that Chris Sykes, Toqua superintendent, puts together for them. They learn the rules there, so we’ll put some ‘ground under repair’ stuff, loose impediments and that kind of stuff out there, so they have to play around it. It’s really neat. We’ll do driving, chipping, putting, bunker play all through the bag on top of the rules and etiquette.
“They also get a fun day, where we play a golf baseball game, play some golf hockey, putt-putt and we had some piñatas for them,” he added. “In the past, we had the dunk tank, so we thought putt-putt was a good switch up. On Friday, they have a golf tournament, so they’ll actually get to go out on the golf course, compete, sign their scorecard — same things you’ll do when you play junior tour events.”
Junior golfer Hamilton Klint enjoys attending the camp every summer.
“I’ve been going to this camp for six years,” Klint said. “I like it, and I enjoy it. It’s fun. My favorite part of the camp is usually fun day. Last year, they had a dunk tank, but I think the putt-putt course is more fun than that because everybody gets to play on that, and it doesn’t take a long time to do that.”
The camp has helped Klint improve his swings from the fairway to the greens.
“My favorite club to hit is probably the 7-iron, and I usually hit that from like 80-100 yards out,” Klint said. “I’m a decent driver. I hit that out about 150 yards. I feel like I learn a lot.”
Flenniken believes it’s important to learn the game at a younger age.
“They’ve got videos now of tour players swinging when they were 3, 4 years old,” Flenniken said. “I think the sooner you can do it ... at their age, you tell them something, and they’ve got it within 10 seconds. They can do it versus ... you take an adult and start changing things, it’s going to take them a week or two. They respond very well.”
The Village professionals are already looking ahead to next year’s camp and thinking of ways to grow it.
“We’ve got room for 30 kids in each session,” Flenniken said. “We only had about 20 in each session, so we’ve got more room. If we need more instructors, we can get more instructors. The bigger we can make it, the better. It’s nice, though. At 60, we get a lot of one-on-one time with kids. Each instructor has five or six kids in each session, so they get a lot of bang for their buck. It’s a great deal.”
