4 Year Old, Timeline on training advice?

My daughter is 4 1/2 years old and since her ballet classes were canceled I asked if she wanted to learn how to Golf and got a resounding yes. I got her a 4 piece golf set and we work on putting and making contact with the ball around the chipping green swinging however she feels comfortable swinging.

My question is specifically on how early I should get her started on a full swing, I'm not worried about form so much but I know speed is a tricky thing to teach. My concern is that if I push for a full swing, which she is physically capable of now, that she will miss the ball often and get frustrated and not want to do it.

Get her a back yard club and just let her hack it around the yard.

Keep it fun or she'll lose interest very quickly.

Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) Junior Golf Parent Workshop. Almost like required reading for new junior golf parents. My kid spent 6 months or so putting and chipping before ever hitting the range (full swing). Parentnightvideo

Just keep it fun for the next X number of years. She will let you know when it's time.

Go to the course and let her practice her ballet down the fairways or in the bunkers (twilight of course).

She needs to build a solid foundation to fully exploit her speed and explosiveness. I suggest squats, bench press, and dead lifts for starters. Full range of motion is key. Avoid the Smith Machine at all costs.

If she is interested in golf then take her out and let her putt your ball. Don’t have them try and play golf too early they might get frustrated when things don’t go there way

i personally think group lessons are good when they are 5.

I wasn’t this way when my kids were younger but keep away from doing weekly tournaments.Looking back I think I could have done less tournaments.Maybe play one or two a year when they are young.Focus on development and save the money for traveling until there older. It tak

I will agree with Tiger. Teach the game from green back to tee box. Let them learn how to putt the ball.

OP 36. Whether you enrolled in it or just practice informally. Putting and chipping for the next couple of years.

Once the child can shoot 36 or lower from 25 yards then move them back to 50 yards. Once 36 or lower from there then move them back again.

This is the type of quality response I was looking. Gonna head out and get a full gym set up today.

On a serious note, I appreciate the responses. Couple of things I feel I need to make more clear. She has much more fun hitting real golf balls than whiffleballs in the back yard, and unfortunately she will get ahold of a ball fairly often and crush it about 20-30 yards. For that reason we just head to the range at twilight and hit balls on the chipping green when no one is around.

We alternate between putting and "chipping" right now.

All trips to the course/range should include a bunch of french fries. At her age that's the most important part.

Lemonade here.

Putting for slurpees

I thought all of our kids started swinging the club at 18 months?

Now that I’ve been here for about a year, I’m seeing the same topics go round and round.

If 7-11 only had a drive-thru!

Sonic slushes are my current bait of choice.

Yeah but only yours started with Miura.

I have been around 7 or 8. How do you think I feel?

We need @TigerMom back.

No, no, no. I suggest protein shakes.

or @CTgolf

Its crazy, I went through 10 pages of search results before posting my very specific question about age and when to advance to a full swing. I've also looked elsewhere online and gotten a myriad of different responses, so lo and behold posted here to get others opinions in a thread I could easily refer back too. Next time you want to post, make sure its actually useful or at least funny.

You're fine. There are just some cranky people out there on the interweb.

Both

Chill out dude, wasn’t targeting you, just stating my general observation.

I just about delete this account every other day, but I am still here: Hope this helps: My daughter started playing around 5. She only wanted to smash the driver as hard as she could ( i don't blame her - smashing driver as hard as you can is sure a lot more fun than putting, so thats what I let her do for a long time - Daughter is now 8 and she hits it significantly farther than most her age. At 7 we started working more on her chipping and she is most improved here, putting is better but still haven't worked much on it yet. She has progressed nicely - at an old 6 started shooting high 40s, then mid 40s, low 40s, then high 30s, she is now shooting around par at 8. I can tell that she will be breaking park in the next 6 months or so (really close.) My point is at such a young age let them start where they want and take your time. Also i found a course with a good breakfast spot, so sometimes we just eat and don't play, she does girls golf to hang out with other girls, we have volunteered at usga junior events, expose them to all golf offers (not just practicing all the time - exposing them to different things will lead them to wanting to practice more.) Anyways its a fun journey with the kids hope it helps.

Go dive into the rollback thread. The last one went about 100 pages, same people engaging in the same circular arguments.

Here's a chock full of good info.https://golfcanada.ca/app/uploads/2015/01/2015_GC_LTPD_EN-FINAL-low.pdf

Fantastic answer, thank you.

Have her watch tournaments w you on tv. My daughter is 7 now and shooting same scores as me already (albeit from 140yds). But I brainwashed her by watching a ton of golf on tv, taking her to drive the cart and putter around while I played from about 4yo and on. Also...have her take a lesson from a pro. Not you. They listen and don’t fuss as much with a fun teacher.

a good teacher will help w full swing so you don’t have to...and 4 is fine to start working a full swing. Us kids yard club is a good one to start with.

And lastly...just keep it fun. At that age Sometimes we used to play 9 holes, sometimes she hits 5 balls and is over it. Let her decide... now at 7 she loves the game and wants to play every day.