Whitefish junior golf is thriving tradition
Mike Micklewright stood before the group of school-aged children and asked them what that long metal thing was in his hand.
"A golf club!" the children responded in a chorus.
"And what do we use it for?" Micklewright asked in animated fashion.
"To hit the ball!" said the children, sitting on the grass and shifting anxiously in the hot afternoon sun recently on the driving range at Whitefish Lake Golf Club.
Other teaching professionals broke the group of about 60 8-year-olds and 9-year-olds into groups and started the children on the long, long road to learning the sport of golf. And so began the 28th year of junior golf clinics at Whitefish Lake Golf Club. The free clinics are offered twice a week during July.
Head PGA professional Tim Olson and three of the club's other PGA pros - Dane Thorman, Chris Newton and Micklewright - teach the clinics for over 150 kids between the ages of 5 and 18. The children learn golf etiquette, the rules of golf, chipping, putting, the full golf swing - and something else that's very important:
"We teach them how to be ladies and gentlemen on the course," said Mike Dowaliby, who founded the junior program in 1977. "We teach kids to have confidence in themselves."
The summer that Dowaliby was hired he started the junior program at the request of the club's board. It was at that time that he remembers teaching current head professional Tim Olson when Olson was a mere 4 years old. Olson now runs the program.
"I really felt good when I retired, that he (Olson) took the ball and ran with it," said Dowaliby, who was the coach of Whitefish High School from 1977 to 1984. "It makes me feel good that the kids of yesterday are running the program."
Olson said the clinics give the kids a solid golf foundation in a stress-free environment. "We're not trying to make anybody into a Tiger Woods out there, but if they want to take it to the next level, we're here for that, too," Olson said. "We want to introduce golf to as many kids as possible, at a basic level.
"But more than anything, I'm just trying to carry on the tradition. I want to continue the opportunity that was given to me."
Whether they go on to careers as club professionals, like Thorman, Newton, Olson or Micklewright, or just continue to grow their games as amateurs, the children on the driving range each week are the future of the sport, says Dowaliby.
The popular junior golf program has produced its share of standout golfers at Whitefish High School.
In his first year as coach, Dowaliby's Bulldogs qualified one boy to the state tournament. The next year, he said, "We started winning tournaments, and they've been winning ever since."
Along with Olson are former Whitefish High School standouts Newton and Thorman. Newton won the state title for the Lady Bulldogs in 1981 and won the Montana women's amateur title in 1985. Thorman, who also participated in the junior clinics as a child, won the state boy's title in 1985.
When he's teaching, Thorman gets the kids excited and pumped up. "Let's put our clubs down for a second and give ourselves a good round of applause," he enthusiastically told a group of 11-year-olds last Wednesday night. For Thorman, the clinics are about getting kids into that initial phase of golf - and having fun is a big part of it.
"You don't find junior golf programs like this that are free," said Thorman, who taught previously on the West Coast.
Strong financial support helps keep the program strong. With Whitefish Lake's entire staff of four PGA professionals devoting their time to these children, the overhead isn't cheap, but the annual Bulldog Open golf tournament, held each Father's Day for the last 25 years, provides the majority of funding for the program. Micklewright also does a one-week PGA clinic in June for juniors.
Combined, the efforts on the junior golf program at Whitefish Lake have garnered no small amount of attention. "It's funny, you go to places and they say 'Oh you're from Whitefish; that's where you have that good junior golf program,'" Dowaliby said.
On the first night of this year's clinics it was obvious which children had already received some instruction in golf, while other kids struggled to merely hit the bright yellow driving range balls. It's Thorman's goal to help groom those better players into eventually becoming college-level players.
Some say that the golf swing has to be dug out of the dirt, taking a divot one swing at a time. Along that course of learning, children - even adults - might learn something else about themselves along the way.
That fact is not lost on Dowaliby, who spent 23 years as head pro at Whitefish Lake. "Golf helps these kids to understand themselves as a person and in life," he said. "It all fits in, in the swing of things."
Reese, of Whitefish, is editor of Montana Living magazine.