Blog

LTAD: How to be the 5%

By: Chris Finn, Owner Par4Success

The international talent in college golf and on the PGA and LPGA Tours has exploded in the past few years.

95% of United States junior golfers today will not play competitive golf beyond High School.

These two statements may not seem related, but they are so closely intertwined they might as well be one.

Many experts believe that the rise in international success on Tour is due to the shift that has taken place at the developmental levels internationally. Many international countries have adopted what is called “Long Term Athletic Development” (LTAD) while in the USA, we are vastly continuing with the same traditional model. We focus on teaching juniors to be golfers, don’t train them to be athletes who play golf and focus on playing a lot of tournaments instead of on skill acquisition and athletic development.

So what is LTAD? It is a fluid (children progresses through at different rates), research based and competition proven model that looks at the development of the child from the time they are beginning to engage in activities even before they enter grade school and suggests a framework all the way until they are adults either playing at an elite level or playing for enjoyment and/or business.

The program focuses on the child having fun, but shifts and evolves with the child from having fun playing games when they are young (0-6), to teaching them coordination and athletic movement mastery through age (6-12) appropriate techniques and eventually working with them on flexibility, strength, power and athletic explosion in order to support and master the golf swing (9-23). Athletic training and skill acquisition are both integral parts of the program throughout, but take on different emphasis levels at different developmental stages.

By overplaying competitively and neglecting development of the tools necessary to succeed in college golf and on Tour, we are hurting our juniors’ chances of being elite. How come we have seen very few of our state’s top juniors become the big fish in the big sea?

So, what are we doing for our junior golfers in North Carolina to keep pace with the international community? The answer is that we are now offering this cutting edge developmental program to them all through our partnership with the CGA and local golf professionals.

If your child has aspirations to play collegiately or even Professionally, he/she needs to be involved with a structured, long term comprehensive athletic development program.    

Call us at 919-998-6623 or email me at chris@par4success.com to find out how you can get your junior involved.