Scots Try To Get Back Into Their Own Game

From the BBC:

Scottish golfing prospects are to benefit from a £1m funding package to help them make the transition from amateur to professional.

The money from sportscotland covers a five year period and will provide coaching, training and sports science.

There will also be opportunities to attend warm weather training camps in the off-season and, in some cases, meet the underwriting of playing costs.

A further £1m will be ploughed into the strategic development of Scottish golf.

Currently, Scotland has just one professional player in the men’s world top 100 – with US-based Martin Laird at 95th.

At first, this sounded pretty desperate, but when I thought about it, I realized that we have the same thing here in the United States for our own national sports through the Little League, Pop Warner, Junior and High School sports programs, Colleges and the Minor Leagues. Golf is in that mix, too, with USGA Junior Championships, various state associations, as well as high school and college programs. In the United States, we spend hundreds of millions of public money through our public schools developing talent for the professional sports.

As a teacher, I’m not often sure that money is well spent, however …