SALJGA members have been taking full advantage of the tremendous benefits offered to them by the St Andrews Links Trust in providing free balls to aid their practice by hitting 218,850 balls during 2011.
All SALJGA members are allowed 50 free practice balls a day at the driving range that can be used anytime between 08:00 and 09:30 or 15:30 to 17:00 to help them practice the lessons taught during the coaching sessions and hence accelerate their improvement. Those members selected for the winter coaching sessions have a slightly more generous allowance. Over the past 12 months a lot of SALJGA members have been using this tremendous offer from the Links to improve their golf and have reaped the benefits. The top hitter last year was Zack Bedford who hit more than 15,000 balls and he was closely followed by Keith Bowman. Other big hitters were Cameron Campbell, Alasdair McDougall, Sophie Maguire, Ewan Scott and Ryan Cowan and it is no coincidence that these golfers have the lowest handicaps in SALJGA and are continuing to improve. I urge all SALJGA members to take full advantage of the free practice balls once they receive their new 2012 membership cards and I hopefully SALJGA members will manage to hit over a quarter of a million balls in 2012.