Junior golf scholarship programme launched

An enterprising strength and conditioning coach in Kerry is offering four young golfers a €10,000 scholarship to improve their game.

Niall Hobbert, BTS Fitness High Performance Centre of Excellence, has joined forces with Tralee Golf Club to launch a junior scholarship programme for U18s.

He moved home from Dublin to set up his new business and brought with him clients from the professional rugby world and the AFL.

However, he chose to start the programme with golf as he believes the importance of strength and conditioning work is totally underestimated in sport in Ireland.

“Strength and conditioning has its uses for golfers of all ages and it is a completely underused resource in Ireland,” he said.

“This is the first relationship of its kind in the country, between a high performance centre and a golf club. We launched it last week and the idea is to have two males and two females taking it up so we can maximise their training for nine months.

“We plan to carry out physiological assessments every five to six weeks with an aim to see how far we can bring their handicap down.

“It’s not even being done in golf in Ireland right now. They just tell golfers to get out on the course to work on their game. We will work on their fitness, stamina, balance, transferring weight without affecting swing.

“Tralee Golf Club have agreed to come in and do swing tests and give one-on-one golf sessions. The two approaches running simultaneously correlate with each other.”

The plan is to roll out the work into other sports, with GAA, soccer and rugby obvious target areas and Hobbert hopes to offer scholarships in many more sports by the end of 2014.

“Any clubs or county boards interested can just give me a ring,” he says.”

Applications to join the golf programme can be made through Tralee Golf Club while future scholarships will be run in conjunction with clubs or associations.