What a wonderful day we were blessed with in Sorrento on Saturday as we embarked on another Wee Highlanders fun challenge match and this time around there were quite a few differences from our last visit to this wonderful golf venue.

First thing to note was that, following feedback from kids and parents, of our Wee’s it was decided that where possible we would now offer our youngest players the opportunity to play 9 hole competitions instead of our usual 6 hole events…seems like we underestimated the energy levels of our Wee’s as this change appears to make them very happy indeed!

The other significant thing to note about this one was the players…for the first time in many months BOTH players competing in this one were making their competition debuts with us. That’s great news for us as we try to build this part of Highlander Junior Tour. Hopefully it’s a good sign that the word is spreading about these competitions and it signals even more new players may be ready to participate.

Our players were local kid Brantlee Daly aged 9 from Sorrento and Jonathan Castellanos aged 6 from Orlando (representing Marriott Golf Academy). Once the usual introductions were made we met on the tee for a quick rules briefing which some of you may know already primarily consists of ensuring they know the importance of golf rule number 1 (Wee Highlander version-2020) which is simply that they MUST have fun or risk immediate disqualification!

Rules complete and the match was underway. It was immediately apparent that despite their tender years both Jonathan and Brantlee are certainly not novice golfers! Irons were struck confidently by both and driving off the tee on longer holes was also done accurately.

Brantlee has a few years on Jonathan and that helped in driving distance especially but Jonathan also showed time after time how good he can be especially around the greens where touch and feel are more important than strength. Neither young player showed any real weakness in their overall game and they were both a joy to watch from beginning to end.

It’s always interesting too to watch the behavior of our youngest competitors. They both showed at times a real determination to win…there’s no doubt that to be a successful young player in golf today this is something that they must posses however at this stage this must never be allowed to become so important that it affects their ability to enjoy the game and have fun. Both Jonathan and Brantlee had their moments of frustration and disappointments but they genuinely behaved impeccably well and showed the high standards of golf etiquette we expect from all of our players.

Anyone who knows what we do will know already that we don’t put too much emphasis on scores in these Wee Highlander events. Yes we present a medal to the lowest scorer but we genuinely believe these early stage competitions are nothing more than a platform designed to help the youngest players to gain confidence and have fun playing our great game.

When the scores were counted  and the scorecards handed in they were each delivered to me by a happy and smiling young player and that’s worth a great deal to us!

Those scores incidentally might surprise some of you…firstly they were very impressive AND very close. In the end it was Brantlee who took the medal with an exceptional 9 hole total of 39. Jonathan ran him close with his own equally strong 44.

We would like to take this opportunity to say well done to both players for their efforts and a huge thank you to parents for your support of both players and our junior tour. We hope everyone enjoyed the experience at Red Tail and you can join us again soon. We are very much looking forward to seeing Brantlee and Jonathan playing alongside some of our other regular Wee Highlanders in future like Kenzi, Koen and Eden.

And so that wraps up another Wee Highlander. We are back with a special Wee Highlander 9 hole challenge this coming week in The Villages which is already sold out.

Our next available Highlander Junior Tour event is our two day end of season Championship Golfer of the Year competition on 19th and 20th December. Our next available Wee Highlander is on January 2nd at Eagle Ridge GC in Summerfield and we hope as many of you as possible can join us for that one.

More info and to book by clicking HERE.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone if we don’t see you before and thank you again for your valuable support of what we do. We really do appreciate it.