Welcome to The Claret Junior Tour. All content on this website is the acquired property of The Claret Junior Tour. The Tour is owned and operated by Keith and Fiona McColl.
Welcome everyone to the 2024 Junior Golf Season and a commitment and promise from Fiona and I that it is our intention to make this season our best yet! To do so is indeed going to be a challenge for us as our season 2023 was exceptional for us in so many ways however, as we now head into our 5th season hosting tournaments, the one thing we do like is a challenge, So… LET’s GO Junior Golfers and families!!
First off, a guarantee from us….there will be NO logo change for at least the next couple of years to come! Hopefully you are now very familiar with our bagpiper and Claret Jug combination logo and it’s been awesome this year that so many have purchased a shirt or hat from us. It is important that we keep building awareness as it brings in interest from new players and business too so thank you all for your support of this. We think this branding does a good job of reflecting the things that we do a little bit different from other tours and we think it captures well the history of the great game itself, first played in Scotland more than 600 years ago!
Those of you who know us already will know we are fiercely proud of the fact that our ancient game began in our birthplace way back in the 1400’s! We are also very proud to now call Florida and the USA “home” and we think there really is no better place to be living and working, with junior golfers, to do our small bit to help the future of our great game to thrive!
Over the last couple of years we are pleased to recognize that we’ve managed to gain a bit of a reputation in junior golf for being just a little different!
We hope, if you’ve had the chance to play in any of our major championship events, that you enjoyed the unique atmosphere created by our resident local bagpiper (Paul McNeill) who plays as each of our major championship as attending competitors complete their final hole of play. As you will see from our logo we have clad our bagpiper in the deep red Claret and Yellow Tartan of the ancient Stewart Clan, who originate from the Highlands of Scotland . This is Fiona’s ancient family Clan and we are pleased to recognize it in our new logo. Bagpipes and golf are an ancient and loved combination around the globe, by many, and our tour branding reflects this fact.
The New Season is really only about ONE thing. Junior Golf Development, and providing you, once again, with the very best tournament opportunities at great and supportive venues and always at family-affordable rates.. We want you to challenge yourself as a young golfer and develop into the player you would hope to be. Some of the venues we play will be established and existing from 2022 but we are always working hard to ensure we can bring you lots of new venues to play in the year ahead! Watch this page for all the news on those as we update the information below regularly.
There will be some changes made to our operation this year BUT rest assured though we are not planning on changing the things that work well, only improving those tournament day things that we think need improved and those that we believe will help players to progress and develop faster. The first change that you will notice is the increased frequency of 36 hole tournaments. It is our aim in 2023 to offer you a single day (18 hole) tournament and a multi-day (36 holes) tournament each month throughout the year.
The latter of these (36 holes or more) tournaments are aimed very much at those players who are highly committed to tournament improvement as the challenge and strategy required to compete in multi day events can be very different to that of playing a single day event. With careful planning we believe this will offer even more opportunities to ALL players as you will be able to choose to play our multi day tournaments as either an 18- or 36-hole tournament. Once again, and just like 2023, we expect to play in excess of 40 days of tournament golf so there will be lots of opportunities to play!
Our single day 18-hole events will continue to attract ranking points from iWanamaker rankings and our 36-hole events will attract ranking points from both iWanamaker rankings and JGS (Junior Golf Scoreboard). In an exciting addition, and with the help and support of our friends at FSGA (Florida State Golf Association), ALL of our tournaments will provide our lowest scorers with FJT Tournament Exemption Certificates which will assist your development by helping you gain access to large-field FJT Junior Tournaments. As a Junior Tour we believe strongly in the commitment the FSGA provides to Junior Golf Development. We fully understand that many of you compete on numerous junior tours as well as our own and we fully respect your decision to do so. We applaud your commitment to play, in some cases, every week however, in our personal view, there is no better place to be challenged in large field events than playing FJT events operated by our own State run Golf Association. Their tournaments are professionally run, affordable and challenging with players from across the country competing.
With the above in mind it is our intention to schedule our own tournaments, as much as possible, around FJT events taking place in Central Florida. We will also be actively encouraging many of our own players to play FJT events this year if we believe they are ready and equipped physically and mentally for that experience. Please note that we are always happy to have discussions with you and provide our opinions on when is the right time to make that step. We feel it is necessary to make that point at this stage as the last 4 years have shown that one of the biggest mistakes a parent of a promising player can make is putting his/her child into a large field event unprepared for the particular challenge(s) they might encounter. Often this results in a junior losing confidence or worse, becoming disenchanted with tournament golf completely! We have seen this happen too many times, it’s a concern to us and we think it should be a concern for you too.
As a growing junior tour, we believe strongly that we exist to introduce new players to the game in a safe and supportive environment. For those players who are more experienced and showing stronger levels of skill, and are developing faster, we hope to challenge them alongside players of similar ability. We have no desire to lose the personal and family supportive qualities that we think makes our tour fun and challenging and therefore we have no great desire to operate large field tournament events, that we can leave to FSGA/FJT!
In order to be prepared for those big field events we believe you should be playing regularly on your local tour where you should be challenging, developing and even winning before you consider that next major step.
Over the last 4 years we’ve made some great friends and we’ve enjoyed watching some incredible junior golf with you all. We have SO many great memories and we are very, very proud of each and every young player who shows immense character and spirit to compete in, what we believe, is THE toughest sport of them all!
We do hope you will join us during the new season and allow The Claret Junior Tour to play our part in your junior players development as each of them takes their next step on their personal golfing journey.
We are open 24/7 for player registrations. Booking a tournament is easy, just click on the RED button below, register and make payment. You will get a receipt to show payment has been made and we email player tee times and pairings along with full tournament joining information 24 hours before the tournament begins.
*IMPORTANT* Disclaimer: We wish to make clear that while our professional golf industry experience was gained in St. Andrews, Scotland we do NOT have any association, nor are we in any way representing any business relationship with, any other golf industry organization from, or based in St Andrews, Scotland including, but not limited to, The R&A (The Royal and Ancient Golf Club) or St Andrews Links Trust.
Fiona and I are both thankful and personally grateful to have enjoyed a long working association with both of these organizations in our time prior to our arrival in the USA and we hold these iconic and professional golf entities in the highest regard possible. We would never wish to, or expect to, in any way benefit from any suggestion to the contrary and we hope this disclaimer makes that abundantly clear to our own guests. If you require any further clarification on this point please email me personally at keith@claretjuniortour.com