YMG director awarded top PGA honour

Dateline: April 2006

A founder director of YMG, Nigel Blenkarne has been awarded one of golf's top honours with the Professional Golfer Association's Master Professional status.

Former Tour play
A former European Tour player and leading English Golf Union (EGU) coach, Nigel received the prestigious Master Professional accolade in recognition for his considerable expertise and achievements in golf.

Nigel, along with fellow directors and PGA Professionals Chris Smith and Dave Gosling (who was named a Fellow of the PGA last year for his work in junior golf) founded the acclaimed Young Masters Golf in 2002. The YMG Junior Golf Programme has now grown to be the UK's top coaching programme with around 31,000 boys and girls being coached by more than 1,100 YMG-affliated PGA coaches.

Leading junior coach
Having long been recognised as one of the UK's leading junior golf coaches, Nigel began his professional golf career in the 1970s, playing for 4 years on the European Tour alongside the likes of Ryder Cup Captain Ian Woosam. He went on to coach some of the brightest junior golfers in the country and was also a PGA Board member for many years.

"I'm delighted to have been awarded PGA Master Professional status," said Nigel. "It is a great honour and nice to be recognised for doing a job that I love to do. But in the last few years, being part of the team that set-up and has seen YMG grow so fast has been especially rewarding and it is great to know that the significant impact we are having on the development of the game is not going unnoticed."

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