SEBRING, Fla. – Young Pro Squad member Corey Conners fired a 2-under 70 to earn medallist honours in Saturday’s rain-delayed final of PGA Tour Lationamérica Qualifying School at the Sun ‘N Lake Golf Course.

Conners, a Listowel, Ont., product, finished at 10-under (74-67-67-70) for a two-stroke victory over a trio of Americans at 8-under par. With the win, the 24-year-old Kent State graduate earns fully exempt status on tour.

Heading into the 2016 season, Conners will split events between the PGA Tour Latinoamérica and the Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada.

Click here for full scoring.

HONOLULU – A new driver, a new swing and Brandt Snedeker is starting to feel just like new.

Coming off a great weekend at Kapalua, Snedeker played bogey-free Friday and rolled in a couple of long birdie putts that carried him to a 5-under 65 and a one-shot lead over Kevin Kisner after two rounds of the Sony Open.

Snedeker was at 12-under 128.

“I feel like I’m playing great, so it should be fun,” Snedeker said about the weekend at Waialae.

It could be fun for a lot of players.

Two dozen players were separated by five shots at the halfway point. Scoring conditions were so ideal that 87 players from the 144-man field made the cut, meaning there will be a 54-hole cut on Saturday.

Kisner, who played with Snedeker, kept pace with him on Thursday (both opened at 63) and on Friday until a two-shot swing on their 12th hole. Snedeker made a 35-foot birdie putt and Kisner missed a 5-footer for par. Kiser kept his wits even as his putts kept missing. Even though he missed three birdie chances inside 10 feet and had several others in the 15-foot range that caught part of the cup, he hung in there long enough to make a 12-foot eagle putt on his last hole for a 66.

British Open champion Zach Johnson (66) and the resurgent Luke Donald (65) were among those two shots behind, while the group three strokes back included Sean O’Hair and 49-year-old Jerry Kelly. Vijay Singh, who turns 53 next month and can become the PGA Tour’s oldest winner, had a 69 and was four behind.

Dating to his final two rounds on Maui – 65-67 to tie for third – Snedeker is 26 under over his last 72 holes. That beats the way he finished the up last year. He went to the Australian PGA Championship and opened with an 84.

He made a full commitment to an overhaul of his setup, and Snedeker said he worked hard with Butch Harmon and then showed up in Maui early, playing a couple of practice rounds with Jordan Spieth. And it helped that Kapalua’s fairways are among the widest in golf.

“Maui being wide open off the tee a little bit helped me get comfortable with it,” Snedeker said. “And then I realized this week … how it feels, what should happen, and when I do hit a bad shot, I kind of know where it comes from. So I feel way more comfortable with it this week and excited about it, because the bad shots haven’t been near as bad as they have been.”

Kisner was a runner-up in the HSBC Champions and won the RSM Classic at Sea Island in his final two tournaments of 2015, and he started the new year by finishing ninth at Kapalua on a weekend where his putter went cold. And here he is again, contending on the weekend after a year in which he had four runner-up finishes at a victory.

“To go out and play the way I did on Sunday at the RSM with a three-shot lead was a huge confidence builder,” Kisner said. “It wasn’t that favorable that I took a month-and-a-half off after it, but to come back and get right back into the fire and have a chance to win this weekend is going to be huge for me.”

Two-time defending champion Jimmy Walker finished with nine straight pars for a 68 to finish on 3-under 137 and make the cut on the number. He was nine shots back.

Kisner and Snedeker were right of the fairway on the par-4 third, having to punch out low to avoid the palm trees. Kisner’s shot caught a frond and came down short of the green, and he pitched to 5 feet and missed the par putt. Snedeker’s shot ran all the way onto the green, and he holed a 35-foot birdie putt for a two-shot lead.

On the par-3 fourth, Snedeker made a 20-foot birdie putt, and then finished with a good chip out of the rough to 4 feet for birdie on the par-5 ninth.

Kisner’s frustration was starting to get noticeable when he bent over so far that his hands nearly touched his shoes on the fifth, but with that eagle on the ninth, he still was only one shot out of the lead.

“I was proud of the way I stayed patient all day,” Kisner said. “That round could have been a few more bogeys if I’d have let not holing any of the putts get to me, but stayed patient, kept hitting good shots and good way to finish it on 9.”

Graham DeLaet of Weyburn, Sask., sits T36 and leads the Canadian contingent at 5-under 135 following a bogey-free 62. Brantford, Ont., native David Hearn is tied for 47th place at 4-under after carding a 71 on the day, while Abbotsford, B.C., products Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor are T66 at 3-under.

DIVOTS: All three players who are staying on for the Champions Tour season debut next week on the Big Island – Singh, Fred Funk and Davis Love III – made the cut. … Robert Allenby missed the cut by four shots in his return to Honolulu. He shot a 68 on Friday. That was his lowest score since Aug. 2. … Five players who were at Kapalua last week missed the cut – Russell Knox, Justin Thomas, Chris Kirk, Graeme McDowell and Troy Merritt.

Calgary’s Wes Heffernan has taken a new direction in his golfing career, transitioning from professional competition to high performance coaching.

Heffernan, 38, recorded nine professional victories in his 15-plus years of competition—five Alberta Open titles and four Canadian Tour victories. In 2015, Heffernan played in five Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada events—making the cut three times while adding another finish on the Web.com Tour.

Heffernan played in two majors – the 2001 and 2011 U.S. Opens, making the cut in 2011.

In his time as an amateur, Heffernan was a two-time Canadian Amateur medalist and an Alberta Amateur Champion.

He also represented Canada internationally on both the professional and amateur level, playing in the 2008 and 2007 World Cup as well as the 2000 World Amateur Team Championship in Berlin, Germany.

A candidate for membership with the PGA of Canada, Heffernan brings years of extensive playing experience to the coaching staff at the Calgary Centre—Golf Canada’s flagship facility.

“The Golf Canada Calgary Centre is certainly thrilled to announce Wes Hefferman has joined our team,” said Chad Rusnak, Director of Golf at the Calgary Centre. “Wes is a teaching professional with a long credible track record of success as a player at both the amateur and professional level and is certainly a positive and welcoming addition to our team. We are currently in the early planning stages and look forward to officially announcing Wes’s decision to join our academy team via a media day in February.”

Click here to book a lesson at the Calgary Centre.

This past fall, after roughly 800 rounds of golf, I witnessed my first hole-in-one. The non-stop flight to the hole touched down on the green a good 10 feet ahead of the target, before beginning a slow, yet steady and methodical, march toward the flag.

Dan Poppers who’d struck the pin-seeking missile had previously bemoaned the ladies seven-iron that had somehow wormed its way into his rental set at Bear Trace at Cumberland Mountain, a beauty of a Nicklaus course an hour west of Knoxville, Tennessee. After finally putting it to good use on the 14th-hole, Poppers was thanking his lucky stars for the club mishap. Still, he miscalculated the extent of his good fortune and missed the magical moment when his ball gently slipped into the jar.

He had figured his rainbow toward the flag was fixing to end up a foot or so short. So Poppers actually had his head down trying to retrieve his tee when it dropped in and he heard us hoot and holler. After Rick, Eric, and myself patted him on the back, Poppers clambered back into his cart and jotted a perfunctory one on his scorecard. He played it off all nonchalant, but this was the first ace this 69-year-old diehard golfer had recorded and nobody was buying the cool as a cucumber act.

When we got back to the clubhouse he was presented with a Bear Trace flag that we all signed and scrawled short messages on with a sharpie to mark the occasion. I wrote: “Poppin’ like it’s hot.” It was then that the enormity of the milestone finally sunk in. When he couldn’t contain his bottled up gusto any longer, he started dialing up his kids and gleefully spilled all the gory details surrounding his glorious one-and-done golf shot.

Just a couple weeks earlier on Sunday morning at The Barclays, Brian Harman airmailed his tee shot on No. 3 priority express into the four and a quarter inch cup 183 yards away. Eleven holes later he gave the gallery at Plainfield Country Club something to really remember by dealing golf’s greatest tee-to-cup parlor trick one more time, carding a 218-yard ace.

Cousin to blue-footed booby bird sightings in the northern hemisphere and buzzer beating full-court swishes in basketball, the one-and-done golf shot is our pastime’s sash-winning spectacle, and a player potting two in one round is almost unthinkable. This was only the third time in PGA Tour history that the mind-blowing deed had been done.

While the tradition calls for a round of drinks at the clubhouse, there’s not much precedent for pulling a twofer so Harman splurged, treating the assembled media to three hundred beers and a bottle of Crown. He cracked wise about it the next day on the Dan Patrick Show: “I wouldn’t wish my bar tab on my worst enemy.”

The odds of pulling a Harman and potting a pair of hole-in-ones in a single round are astronomical. Golf Digest once ball-parked the slim to none occurrence at 67 million to one.

“IN THE HOLE!!!”

To understand the strange confluence of rhyme, reason, and random acts of green rolling kindness that must conspire together to create an elusive ace, I sought the counsel of a business whose viability is dependent upon translating golf luckiness into actuarial tables.

EPA Ultimate Concepts is a Calgary based prize indemnity specialist that insures thousands of hole-in-one contests every year, running the gambit from $2,500 sink-it-and-win-it challenges on up to million dollar shot life-changers.

“We calculate the odds of an average golfer getting a hole in one in a tournament [on a 150-yard hole for men] at 1 in 15,000,” explains Alan Vinet, EPA’s General Manager.

Now in league play, where players play the same course over and over again, the odds improve to around 1 in 10,000.

LUCKY STARS

In the end, it boils down to being really lucky, and that factor often trumps skillset. “I investigate all the hole-in-ones that happen—I not only sell the insurance but I do the claims investigations. You ask what the handicap of the golfer is and it’s all over the board, ” relates Vinet.

Dealing with as many aces as Vinet does, it takes a lot to surprise him. He’s had ones hit a tree and bounce in, or skip across a pond then carom off a rock and rebound onto the green and snake in. Still his mind has been blown on occasion. One particular $100,000 winner floored him. “It was a shotgun start and this guy had rushed into the tournament and barely had time to tie his shoes.”

Winds were gusting to 60 km an hour and the hole ran along a fence that was out of bounds. He hit four-wood, not exactly a common club, and it was heading out of bounds but the mighty winds blessed his shot blowing it back into play. “It rolled something like thirty yards across the green and hit the pin,” exclaims Vinet.

With just under two decades of insuring golf aces under their belt, EPA Ultimate Concepts possesses unique knowledge of rare outlier courses where chances to make a hole-in-one are the best. Despite my incessant pleading, Vinet would not spill the beans.

“There’s one in the East, and one in the West,” he offered coyly.

BUCKING THE ODDS

“The only thing that I know that [rings true] for people to have more hole-in-ones than normal is that they hook the ball,” explains Stephen Johnston, the founding partner of Global Golf Advisors, a consultancy firm laser focused on public courses, private clubs, real estate and resorts. It was formerly KPMG’s golf practice.

Johnston isn’t just guessing, he’s speaking from experience. Aside from being one of the leading authorities on operational analysis and financial solutions in the golf biz he’s also Canada’s Ace King with a jaw dropping 51 attested hole-in-ones to his name.

Johnston got his ace train chugging when he was 12-years-old, just getting his bearings on the game and shooting in the high 90s. The scene was the 12th hole at Whitevale Golf Club, which plays 145-yards from the white tees and you need to clear Duffin’s Creek and a bunker in front to get on the green. Clutching a 4-iron and playing with his father, who had brought two of his friends along, the moment remains crystal clear in his personal highlight reel.

“To me the ball just went in the hole, I had never played a lot of golf and didn’t really understand the significance. My dad and his friends were more excited than I was.”

When it comes to secrets of his ace prowess, Johnston chocks it up to the aforementioned playing a hook and teeing it up really low, barely off the ground on par 3s. While taking dead aim is important, he likes to factor in roll before picking his target.

“When I was younger I would just aim at the flag,” Johnston explain.

“As I got older, because my shots would always land and roll, I would like to figure out if I needed to be right or left of the pin.”

See, nothing to it.

PALM CITY, Fla. – With the Web.com Tour season opener just two weeks away, Young Pro Squad member Adam Svensson added another trophy to the shelf on Thursday with a win at the Palm City Classic—a Minor League Golf mini tour event.

Just one month removed from earning medalist honours at Web.com Tour Qualifying School, the 22-year-old fired an 8-under 63 for a one-stroke victory over Syracuse, N.Y., product Dan McCarthy in Thursday’s 18-hole event at the Martin Downs Osprey Creek in Palm City, Fla.

The Surrey, B.C. native will take home $1000 (USD) from the win, his first Minor League Golf Tour victory in two starts. He tied for sixth earlier in the week on Tuesday at Fountains Country Club in Lake Worth, Fla.

Sharp and focused, Svensson will embark on the next step in his career at the Panama Claro Championship from Jan. 29 – Feb. 1 at the Panama Golf Club.

Click here for full scoring.

The health of the game in this country relies on a myriad of factors, most notably, a commitment to put the golfer’s interests above all else. With the golfer in mind, I am sincerely thankful to the many organizations and individuals that drive the success of golf in Canada.

That gratitude starts with the 5.7 Canadians who play 60 million rounds of golf annually. Consumers make tough decisions with how to spend their recreational dollars. Golf as a sport is fortunate to have a strong base of loyal customers and casual enthusiasts that enjoy the game at 2,346 facilities from coast to coast.

Being a customer-centric business means listening to the golfer and searching for innovative ways to create meaningful engagement. It’s encouraging when golfers share their passion for the game. I’m just as appreciative of the customers who share constructive criticism. It means they care and are willing to hold the golf industry accountable.

To the 3,700 PGA of Canada professionals who represent the frontline of our industry—thank you for committing to the golfer through instruction and program delivery at the club level; for helping avid golfers, new enthusiasts, lifelong members, families and juniors get the most out of their golf experiences.

A tip of the cap goes out to the golf course superintendents who put in extremely long days to deliver a golf experience that balances playability, enjoyment and sustainability. Meeting and exceeding golfer expectations can seem insurmountable and I have a tremendous respect for the commitment of maintenance staff that are so much more than experts in growing grass.

Golf is big business. To the course operators, manufacturers and member clubs that represent an $11.3 billion impact to the Canadian economy—thank you for underwriting the risk of the Canadian golf industry. For most of us, golf is a game but for operators, club managers and other industry partners with a financial stake in our game, golf is a competitive business uninsulated from economic uncertainty.

No single factor has a greater impact on the game than weather, so a debt of thanks is owed to Mother Nature for shining a kind eye on the 2015 golf season. Conditions in most regions of the country were exceptional, and it showed with 9.8% uptick in rounds played nationally versus 2014 based on Rounds Played and Weather Reporting from the National Golf Course Owners Association Canada. The highest increase in rounds played was Alberta (13.2%), followed by Saskatchewan/Manitoba (8.4%), British Columbia (6.5%), Ontario (6%) and Quebec (5%). The lone dark cloud was an 11. 6% decline in Atlantic Canada based on an extremely late start to the season. Overall it was a season of sunny skies for course operators which fuels great optimism for 2016.

To the 37,000 charity events held annually at golf courses—thank you for leveraging our sport to raise funds in communities across Canada. Each year, more than $533 million in charitable giving is generated through golf and I applaud participants and charity event organizers for being a part of this wonderful story.

To the talented professionals, competitive amateurs, rising stars and legends of Canadian golf—thank you for inspiring us with your play and for showing the world that Canada can be a force on the international golfing stage.

Volunteers have long been the driving force behind golf in this country and enough can’t be said to thank the tens of thousands of individuals that give their time to make the game better. The same is true for the many sponsors and local supporters that align their brands and their businesses with Canadian golf.

Kudos as well to our closest partners—the staff and volunteers at the 10 provincial golf associations with whom we share a vested stake through membership, program delivery, junior golf and player development. I would be remiss if I did not extend a heartfelt thank you to the staff at Golf Canada for their enthusiasm and commitment to both our sport and our association.

Finally—to the individual members and member clubs that Golf Canada has the honour to represent, a most sincere thank you for supporting golf in this country and for sharing in the celebration of this great game.

When the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame welcomes its 2016 class, a long-time member of Golf Canada’s devoted group of volunteers will be among its five honourees.

Barbara Allan – who has volunteered with Golf Canada in several capacities and on a number of committees – has demonstrated a strong dedication to the game, not only in her home province, but also across the nation. For her commitment and service to golf, she will be inducted in the Hall’s builder category.

The former President of the Golf Association of Ontario works diligently at the club, district and provincial levels and is the Chair of Handicap and Rules at Garrison Golf and Curling Club in Kingston. She has served on the duty roster of officials at each of Canada’s National Open Championships – the RBC Canadian Open and the Canadian Pacific Women’s Open.

In 2014, Golf Canada presented Allan with its Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her tireless efforts and boundless passion in the promotion of Golf. This year, she will once again Chair the Amateur Championships Committee and will act as Tournament Chair for various Golf Canada championships.

Since its first induction class in 1996, the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame has welcomed the area’s most gifted athletes and its most earnest builders to commemorate their contributions to 33 sports and sport-related fields.

With the induction ceremony for its 21st class on May 6 at Our Lady of Fatima Parish Hall, the Hall of Fame’s membership will grow to 163.

Allan will become the 11th member of the Hall to be inducted in the sport of golf, joining:

• Allan Douglas Atkins – 2000 – Builder
• Ronald Brown – 1998 – Athlete
• Katherine Cartwright – 2000 – Athlete/Builder
• Jennifer Ellis – 2015 – Athlete
• Richard H. Green – 1996 – Athlete
• Jim Halliday – 2008 – Athlete
• Robert Londry – 2006 – Athlete/Builder
• Caroline Mitchell – 1996 – Athlete
• Katherine O’Neill – 2006 – Athlete/Builder
• Anne C. Turnbull – 2006 – Athlete/Builder

National Amateur Squad member Hugo Bernard of Mont-St-Hilaire, Que., has officially signed on as a member of the Saint Leo Lions golf team for the 2016 season.

Bernard, a former Quebec Men’s Amateur Champion, joins senior and fellow Canadian Joey Savoie (Montreal) in Saint Leo, Fla., as one of 12 on the Lions’ roster.

The smooth-swinging lefty joins the Lions on the heels of a season that featured Top-5 finishes at all three legs of the Quebec triple crown (Quebec Amateur, Duke of Kent, Alexander of Tunis) and a runner-up finish at the Canadian Amateur.

Bernard and the third-ranked Lions (Div II) are set to kick off competition in 2016 when they take on the field at the Matlock Collegiate Classic from Feb. 8–9.

Click here to view the Saint Leo Lions schedule.

Continued education of certified coaches delivers added benefits to the athlete, the parents, the teaching professionals themselves and ultimately, the future of Canada’s next generation of golfers.

National Coaching Certification Program (NCCP) certified coaches belong to a select group that have chosen to pursue the highest education, giving them the knowledge to excel in all areas of coaching golf.

Click the below infographic to download live PDF version with videos.

It is an inspired program that has the power to change lives—to send youngsters on a path to golfing stardom or to simply introduce them to a previously unforeseen athletic pursuit; to nurture confidence in a withdrawn individual and to instill the game’s greatest virtues at a key time in a student’s personal growth.

The (GIS) program has signed up more than 2,700 schools representing more than 315,000 students, but there are gaps that need to be filled as the program prepares for its next stage of evolution, the most prominent being with the end user.

For most of the year—and in many cases for years following a program’s initial implementation—equipment and teachers’ manuals sit dormant in gymnasium storage rooms. That’s not to say the responsibility lies entirely with the schools.

“We need more people, which is the answer to many of the challenges we have in growing golf,” explains the Golf Association of Ontario’s Executive Director Mike Kelly. “It’s the missing piece to what will allow programs like CN Future Links or Golf in Schools to take flight, or in growing the sport in general, for that matter—that we don’t have the infrastructure at the community level to support it.”

Within that framework, however, both Kelly and Golf Canada’s Chief Sport Officer Jeff Thompson see a need for volunteers to take the lead within their respective communities.

“The next step is creating relationships with schools and connecting them with local golf facilities,” says Thompson. “But that’s a big job to even expect from provincial associations.”

Consequently, Golf Canada is seeking to leverage the Community Golf Coach training program, which was designed in partnership with the PGA of Canada and the Coaching Association of Canada. “We also need to identify community ambassadors who have an interest and passion to support schools running a GIS program and who can connect to golf facilities,” Thompson adds.

Those community golf coaches can come from non-PGA members, notes Thompson. “Members of golf clubs who might be retired can take the community golf coach training, which arms them with the resources and intelligence to make them comfortable to go into schools and establish a relationship with the facility and the teachers, and help ensure that the roots run deep and that the program will continue over time.” The first of those community ambassadors will be Grant Fraser, founder of the Golf Management Institute of Canada and professor of the Professional Golf Management (PGM) program at Niagara College.

“We’re going to pilot an initiative where he goes to four or flve facilities and talks to them about how he’s planning to create golf communities, linking schools with golf facilities that are keen to get involved,” Thompson explains. “It would be great to have one of him in every 40-kilometre radius!” Fraser, whose third year Niagara College PGM students have conducted annual fundraisers for the past four years, raising an estimated $7,500 in adopting 11 Niagaraarea schools, is a natural and enthusiastic flt.

“My students take pride in helping to grow the game,” he says. “Up until now I’ve been satisfied doing that, but it’s not enough. Going forward, I want to have my students help introduce the program to the schools—to physically go there and help the teacher get the equipment into the hands of the kids.”

Other similarly impassioned individuals can be found throughout the country, from Hughendon Golf Course owner Lee Cooper offering free golf to students aged 13 and under at neighbouring Amisk Public School in rural Alberta, to Chris Veltkamp, founder and director of the Play Golf Junior Tour and athletic coordinator and Phys. Ed. Teacher at St. Mary St. Cecilia in Morrisburg, Ont., who has been providing golf to schools he’s worked in for 10 years, including developing a rudimentary four-hole golf course in a empty lot beside his current school. And there’s P.E.I. Provincial Golf Coach Dallas Desjardins, a legendary Golf in Schools and junior golf supporter, and Wayne Allen, head pro at Blomidon GC in Corner Brook, Nfld., who has recruited 16 schools in Newfoundland and Labrador. The list goes on, but many more—particularly at the community level—need to step forward if Golf Canada’s ambitious plans are to bear fruit.

No one is more passionate about addressing that issue than Kelly, who developed Canada’s first Golf in Schools program in 2001 at Ontario’s Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Kelly’s plan of attack involves creating new zones within Ontario, the purpose of each to grow local participation. “Each zone will be a combination of all of the partners in Ontario: the GAO, Golf Canada, the National Golf Course Owners Association, the PGA of Ontario, Ontario Golf Course Superintendents and Canadian Society of Club Managers. Golf Barrie is going to be the pilot. Now we have to recruit more people like Grant, who are passionate about Golf in Schools, can get out into the community and talk to the teacher once a month and be part of the program and give teachers reasons to do it.”

Making the game more visible and accessible is key to the plan, Kelly says. “Part of the challenge is that you don’t see golf anywhere but at a golf course. There’s a fear of what’s ‘over there.’ We need to make it part of community events. Golf in Schools is a ‘try’ activity. Then we can move it to the ‘learn’ side of things. If we can get people to play golf, they’re going to enjoy it and get hooked.”

Pay for Play

Funding the program is also a continuing focus. Currently, two-thirds of all new GIS participating schools are the result of ‘adoptions,’ whereby an individual or corporation donates to bring the program to the school. Golf Canada is consequently actively pushing further support by including it in corporate sponsorships. One example is the PGA Champions Tour’s Shaw Charity Classic, which, since its inaugural event in 2013, has made an annual $5,000 Golf in Schools donation to Alberta Golf. The association has, in turn, divided the funds into $300 parcels and donated them to multiple schools throughout the province.

Another high-proflle supporter is PGA TOUR player Graham DeLaet, who has adopted 37 Saskatchewan schools, including four in his hometown of Weyburn, through funds raised by the 2013 Graham DeLaet Charity Golf Classic, an event conducted in conjunction with Golf Saskatchewan. The contribution pushed the GIS program participation to more than 70 per cent of the province’s schools.

Golf Canada is making additional strides to explore the potential of the program. “This year we piloted an initiative around a Golf in Schools pass to 23 facilities around the country (who had made connections with schools),” says Thompson. “Those facilities can give the passes to kids to come back to their driving range to receive a free bucket of balls. The feedback we received has been positive— that those kids are not returning alone but bringing an adult or their brothers or sisters.

“And with the new Life Skills curriculum and intermediate schools program, two significant layers have been added this year,” Thompson notes. “Next year we will put together an evaluation process to see how the Life Skills curriculum is resonating with the schools.”As Kelly and Thompson point out, if the foundation can be improved and a community infrastructure added, the sky is the limit for Golf in Schools, not to mention other developmental programs. “We have more to offer families than any other sport,” says Kelly. “What we’re talking about is a massive change that will take time, but we need to start doing something. We can’t just sit and wait for people to come through the door.”

To learn more about Golf in Schools, visit www.golfinschools.ca.