Golf: Volunteer Ryan Lewis on express track to land award

Apr 22 2008 by Harold Brough, Liverpool Daily Post

RYAN LEWIS, a teenager who had never even held a golf club, has been honoured as a top example of the kind of effort needed by the game’s administrators to put England golfers at the top of the world by the year 2020.

It is obviously going to take exceptional talent, top coaching, endless hours on the practice grounds, the training of the very best youngsters, those now not much bigger than a golf driver. But it will also need the time and commitment of people like Ryan, a student at the Rainhill Media and Arts College, St Helens.

He is among the volunteers who help with the countless tasks linked to the development and organisation of golf, from helping organise junior competitions and arranging coaching sessions, collecting practice balls on the range, showing youngster how to hold and swing a club. There are many thousands of these people but Ryan’s role has been so exceptional he has been recognised as England’s top young golf volunteer and awarded the England Golf Partnership Young Volunteer of the Year Award, in a scheme designed to emphasise the importance of volunteers.

Lyndsey Hewison, of the English Women’s Golf Association, one of the groups in the England Golf Partnership and the Sports Plan to make England the leading golf nation by 2020, says: “We want greater participation but as well as people playing the game we need more coaching and we want more volunteers.”

Phil Beard, Volunteers Manager of the England Golf Partnership, says: “Without volunteers we would struggle to get more involved in the game – and so get more winners and at the top level. Ryan has really helped to increase participation in the game.”

Ryan’s work has been centred at the Eccleston Park club where, supported by St Helens Council, boys and girls are being encouraged to begin playing.

Head professional Bryan Joelson-Mulhall says: “We are trying to make it easier for people to access golf. Lots of people watch golf on television, but they do not know how to get into the sport. It is easy with football. But that is our number one sport. Why cannot we do the same for golf?”

The club has been busy making it easier helped by about 20 volunteers, half of them club members, others such as Ryan from elsewhere. Their roles include helping take golf into the local schools. The club is now working with about 12 schools. Joelson-Mulhall describes the sessions as “extremely popular.”

Junior coaching with about 20-30 youngsters, some as young as five, is held on Saturday afternoons. A Festival of Golf, aimed at families, was held in 2007 and is likely to be repeated this year. Last year only four or five youngsters played in the junior competitions. Now the numbers have reached about 20. The club has cut the joining fee for juniors from £150 to £30. Ryan, aged 16, became involved when he heard the St Helens Schools Sports Partnership were in need of volunteers to help with its programme to develop golf among young people. He had played football, in defence, for Rainhill United and had played table tennis to league standard. But he had never even held a golf club.

“I just never thought of golf,” he says. “I used to say to my mates ‘what do you want to do that for? It’s rubbish.’ But then I thought I might be able to help out and that I would see what it is like, give it a go. Also I thought it would be good on my CV, voluntary work.”

Now, guided by Joelson-Mulhall. he is working at the primary schools, helping youngsters start the game with plastic clubs and balls.

On Saturdays he is at Eccleston Park helping with the lessons and the etiquette of the game. He helps out at the professional’s shop, which he says is helping him learn business skills. When he finishes his studies he would like to run his own business, hopefully in sport.

Talking of the award and his work as a volunteer, he says: “I am very honoured. I am enjoying things. We do want to get rid of the idea that golf is an old man’s game. This has helped me, too. It has helped me mix with people of all age groups. So it has been good for me.”

So he has become part of the drive to put England golfers at the top of world golf, not just nearly men but those able to win against the Tiger Woods, Els and Mickelsons of that future age. Ryan himself is now a golf convert.

“When I came to try golf myself it I loved it,” he says. “I am hooked. I play as much as I can now, at Eccleston Park where I know so many people and also sometimes at Sherdley Park ”

Joelson-Mulhall said: “Since we started the open access sessions we have seen a large number of primary aged children coming down to try golf for the first time. Ryan really has been a great help. He is able to relate to the children many of whom may be nervous at trying a new sport for the first time."