Highly motivated!
JGA confident of home advantage in Carib Amateur Junior Golf Champs
WITH LESS than two-weeks to go before the start of the 31st staging of the Caribbean Junior Golf Championships, chairperson for the Junior Golfers arm of the Jamaica Golf Association, Alison Reid, said she is extremely confident of her youngsters winning the competition.
Eight countries, including defending champions Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and hosts Jamaica, have been confirmed to participate in the championships, which will be held from July 3 to 6 at the Caymanas Golf Club.
The Jamaican team, which is conditioned by Jason Lopez and Johnny Newham, has never won the championships before.
In fact, the country finished fourth at last year’s tournament, which was held in Trinidad and Tobago.
Reid told The Gleaner that the Jamaican players are very skilled and highly motivated.
“I can say that we are 95 per cent confident because we have some really good juniors and they are very excited about winning,” said Reid.
“There are a couple children who live abroad and they are here and they have been on the golf course as often as they can practice,” she said.
“We have a full team and we have a strong team because in each category, we have a very strong set of children, and so I think we should be able to pull it off,” Reid said.
She added that as host of the championships, they are taking it very seriously and also plan to use their home advantage to full effect.
“We have been getting the children out here (Caymanas Golf Club) twice a week, to do short games and on weekends to play to 18 holes,” Reid said.
“We have also have them do six classes of mental games, because golf is very mental, and we have really taken a different approach to see if we can really enhance what we have,” she said.