Start Here: The Top 50 Mistakes in Junior Golf: A Guide for Parents of Junior Golfers (Becoming Elite- A Complete Guide to Junior Golf, College Golf and Life)

Start Here: The Top 50 Mistakes in Junior GolfThe patterns are so consistent it is almost painful to watch. A new family enters junior golf full of excitement and hope. They make the same mistakes that hundreds of families before them have made. And they get the same disappointing results.This book exists to change that.Start Here identifies the 50 most common and most damaging mistakes families make in junior golf, organized into five sections that cover the full scope of the journey: development, practice, tournament play, parent-child communication, and college recruiting. Each mistake follows a simple format. What goes wrong. What I have seen after 25 years of coaching. What you should do instead. No fluff. No theory for theory's sake. Just practical guidance you can apply immediately.Written by Brad Sparling, a former college golf coach at Duke University and Ohio State who helped build NCAA championship teams, coached 14 All-Americans, and two National Players of the Year. After leaving college coaching, Brad founded Play Golf In College, a teaching, coaching, mentoring, and recruiting business he has operated for 16 years, developing hundreds of junior golfers and personally guiding over 165 players into college golf programs with a 95% success rate. He has coached 19 individual state champions and led the Dublin Jerome High School team to a record-breaking state championship and number one national ranking in 2025. All three of his children played Division I college golf. He has seen this journey from every seat in the room.The development section explains why early specialization backfires, why technique obsession kills skill development, and why the best 18-year-olds were not the best 12-year-olds. The practice section reveals why most range sessions are wasted time and what separates training that transfers to the course from practice that just feels productive. The tournament play section covers the mental, strategic, and decision-making mistakes that keep talented players from posting the scores their talent says they should. The parent-child communication section may be the most important in the book, because your relationship with your child will outlast any golf career. And the recruiting section pulls back the curtain on a process most families start too late, approach incorrectly, and misunderstand from start to finish.You do not have to read this book in order. If your kid is struggling in tournaments, jump to Section 3. If the car rides home have become tense, go straight to Section 4. If recruiting is keeping you up at night, Section 5 is waiting.Start Here is the warning label for junior golf. The things he tells every new family that walks through his door. Read more