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May 01, 2012 Issue 218According to Marcus, it is important to understand that golf is a sport and notjust a game. Dismissing the misconception that it isn’t an active sport, he says,“The big thing we do now with the kids is make them active, make them runaround, make them have fun..."They learn without even thinking about it; they pick up the skills that arenecessary for golf. When you are with kids, you have to teach them in acompletely different style from that of adults.”While the beginners’ classes run for one-hour, the other classes are for 45minutes. There are classes throughout the week and parents can select the onethat is suitable for them. And once the children reach a certain level of ability,they move up into a new class - not necessarily after eight weeks. As Marcuspointed out, some children may need two sets of eight-week courses.Talking about the response to thisprogramme, he says, “We have hadunbelievable response… The dropoutrate for most programmes is anywherefrom 10 to 15 percent; but we haven’thad a single dropout. We have had toput up extra classes in some cases."In each batch we have a maximumof eight students - we don’t want anymore than that, as student-teacher ratiois important, especially, when you havegot 6-year olds and there are clubsMarcus Caseyturning around. Also, as a sport, it is fardifferent than any other. We have core values that parents try to teach theirchildren - honesty, integrity, care for environment, respect for others, respect forself, etc. These are core values that we teach children through the sport.”At present, there are 90 children on the rolls, 26 percent of them Omanis. Thereis a mix of students from different countries; 14 of them are girls.And for those interested to join, James explains: “You register your interestthrough the OGC website www.ogchandicap.com. The OGC will then askparents if they have any preferred venue - the programme is offered at AlmoujGolf, Muscat Hills and Ghallah Wentworth. You can select the preferred venueand the OGC will then forward the details to us. We contact the parents to getthe children assigned to their preferred time slot.”The larger objective is to discover more talent and expose the game to morepeople, not only in Muscat but also across the country and the region. This isall the more important if Oman is to become a golfing destination.18