Crown find perfect fit in YMG


Dateline: 20 June 2005

In its first major initiative since acquiring the courses previously owned by the American Golf company, Crown Golf has adopted the Young Masters Golf training initiative and will roll the programme out across 28 clubs this spring and early summer.

Speaking about the move, Crown Golf Chief Executive John Weir said: We are determined that Crown clubs will be recognised as having the best coordinated teaching programme anywhere in Europe and will be working with YMG to develop the concept."

Responsibility to the game
To this end, YMG's Nigel Blenkarne will be working on secondment to Crown, helping to ensure that coaching becomes a major part of the Crown business so that it can fulfil what it sees as its responsibility to the game of golf.

"No one had ever really taken a step back and thought about golf in a structured way" says John Weir, Crown Golf's Chief Executive. "We were wrestling with this problem ourselves when we came across the YMG Initiative which had already made huge strides in the direction we want to take.

Roll-out
"We will roll-out YMG in our clubs in the coming months and fully hope to put more than 1,000 youngsters through the scheme at Crown clubs in the first year alone.

"This is the first in a series of major announcements that we will be making over coming months to change the way that golf course operators have traditionally approached the game. We want to emphasise that a Crown Golf course is something different and see the adoption of the YMG programme as laying down a marker for the future."


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