Inverurie Golf Club are toasting the success of their thriving junior section after their team finished second in the recent Scottish Junior Flag Championship.
Royal Dornoch won the national event for players aged 13 and under, which was played on the nine-hole Wee Course at Gleneagles.
In the Junior Flag Championship, players are given 36 shots to complete the nine holes.
If they do not finish the course, they place a flag where their ball landed after their 36th shot.
The team who gets furthest around the course wins with Inverurie’s Matthew Shanks, eight, Rory Thomson, nine, Jamie Lorimer, 10, and 12-year-old James Shanks finishing second of 15 in the event.
The quartet qualified by winning a 12-team regional qualifier at the Paul Lawrie Golf Centre in June, with another team from Inverurie coming second in that event.
Juniors going from strength to strength
Connor Killoh, who along with Michael Kelman coordinates Inverurie’s junior golf, believes the club’s youth section is thriving.
When the pair took on the role in January 2022, Inverurie had only 12 junior golfers – now they have almost 150.
Killoh said: “It was a great experience for the boys to play at Gleneagles and they all did really well.
“To finish second in a national event wasn’t something we were expecting and was a really impressive performance.
“Two of the boys got to the ninth green, and the other two completed the nine holes in their 36 shots, which was really good.
“All four of Dornoch’s players completed the course, which was impressive from them.
“I think our boys will be competing in the North-East District boys’ events next year.
“There are a lot of good golfers in those events, so we’ll see how they get on, but they’ve got bright futures.
“There are a lot of good junior players who are doing well at the club.
“We just try to get as many folk involved in playing as we can and the junior section has really just snowballed through word of mouth.
“We now have just shy of 150 junior members and we have a waiting list of 30 with people continuing to get in touch about joining.
“Hopefully it continues and hopefully our juniors can keep doing well.”
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