How France Pursues its Inner-City Golf Scheme
Aided by the support of a grant from the Ryder Cup European Development Trust, France is pursuing a wide-ranging scheme, targeted largely at inner-city children, to promote golf by creating new courses and providing a golf education programme.
The scheme was inaugurated in 2003 by PGA professional Bill Owens, businessman, Patrick Wallaert, owner of four golf courses around Paris, and Alexis Godillot, a French and European golf champion with the aim of developing the sport across the country with the launch of the Association pour le Développement du Golf Éducatif (ADGE).
Among the ambitious features of the long-term programme is that of creating courses for the general public at affordable cost in a country that, they believed, saw golf as being ‘only for the privileged few’ and in which ‘pay-as-you-play facilities in close proximity to town centres are few and far between’.
Also to take golf tuition to inner-city children in an easily-understood way and to generally introduce the sport to new generations...a most timely concept as France waits to hear in 12 months time whether it has been selected to stage the 2018 Ryder Cup as one of the five bidding nations.
A recent symbol of the outstanding success of the far-reaching project was, with the support of the PGA of France and the French Golf Federation, the opening on May 26 of a course and teaching facility (or ‘L’Inauguration du Parcours Éducatif’) at Choisy-le-Roi, with golf course, teaching facilities and 15-bay driving range.
As ADGE puts it: ‘We are convinced that golf can change behaviours and mentalities... in township areas to improve school climate and social cohesion’. As part of the scheme more than 300 physical education and primary schoolteachers have been trained to help introduce golf to their pupils by using appropriate equipment for young beginners.
