Driving the future of golf
BRYANSTON – Meet the makers and shakers of development golf, two members of Bryanston Country Club.
The face of golf tends to change over time, usually for the better, and the people ‘driving’ these changes deserve credit for their work.
Bryanston Country Club members Melanie Cilliers and Nhlanhla Mohlauli are pioneering the development of girls golf in underprivileged areas.
Cilliers started the Fanie Cilliers Girls Academy at Soweto Country Club earlier this year after the death of her husband, a long-standing Bryanston member and top advocate.
Sunshine and PGA Tour professionals, including Mohlauli, voluntarily gave four girls top-quality one-on-one coaching in the first 10 months of the academy’s existence. Next year the academy plans to help more girls and promote the careers of those already under its care.
“My husband would have been very impressed with what we have done,” Cilliers smiled.
“He would have liked this. He always thought golf was a sport women and men could play, and play together.”
During an interview with Caxton Local Media at Bryanston Country Club, the pair received a phone call informing them of a donation of 3 000 golf balls for Soweto Country Club’s new driving range.
While Cilliers could hardly keep back tears, Mohlauli was on his feet pacing back and forth making further phone calls in his excitement.
Who will benefit from the new driving range? Not just the avid golfers in Soweto and its surrounds, but the development players who had always struggled to find space to practise their shots.
“It has been amazing and draining at the same time, and something that gives me so much joy,” Mohlauli described his work in coaching and managing aspects of the academy.
“It is fulfilling because you take the girls and use some time and produce something amazing. This instead of the time they could have spent doing something less productive in their disadvantaged backgrounds.”
While the academy has only been around for one year, the pair plan to keep their intake of underprivileged girls small so they all get special attention and none of them ‘fall through the cracks’ that appear in some development programmes.
The academy hopes in the next few years they can help the girls, and some new recruits, improve their golf and reap rewards such as scholarships at good schools, prizes from competitions and a sense of self-esteem.
Related articles:
https://www.citizen.co.za/sandton-chronicle/240034/crawfords-junior-pro-golfer/
https://www.citizen.co.za/sandton-chronicle/233221/young-girls-flourish-thanks-to-progressive-women-in-golf-programme/
