Girls Junior League must be the best kept secret

LAST week in an article about the drop off in numbers of ladies playing golf, I said that to the best of my knowledge there was no event in Kerry to encourage golf among young girls. I was wrong; there is a Kerry Girls League that has been running successfully for the past number of years apparently under the auspices of the ILGU.

It’s nothing on the scale of the Kerry Junior League for boys which involves practically every club in the county, but there are seven clubs involved.

Ballybunion, Dooks, Kenmare, Killarney, Killorglin, Tralee and Waterville participate in the event which is for teams of five girls with the best three scores to count and the first event of the season for the girls is at Tralee this Thursday, March 29.

I am delighted to learn of this event, which must be one of the best kept secrets in golf as I have never been asked to publicise any results or fixtures and I don’t even know who is in charge.

A member of my own club informed me of it on Sunday as we waited to tee off the first at Ballybunion and I then made enquiries from the club’s junior girls officer who gave me the details.

Surely the ILGU should be contacting the press with fixtures, results and news?

This has been a major failing of the ILGU in the past number of years and I cannot remember the last time I received an email from them with news or fixtures.

Pat O’Dwyer, who runs the Kerry Junior League for boys, is a fantastic source of information and is constantly in touch with news, results and fixtures, while the Munster Branch of the GUI are the same, but the ILGU fall very short in this department. The Munster Ladies championships are on this week in Killarney and I haven’t heard a word about it from the ILGU.

If it was a men’s event, I’d have the timesheet, all the rules and regulations, recommended accommodation, etc emailed to me weeks in advance and I’d have up to date scoring emailed to me several times a day during the tournament. So ladies, you’d really want to get your act together when it comes to press coverage for events.