Swift Current resident Jeff Chambers has turned his love of golf and his passion for teaching kids into an exciting career that is also paying dividends for the junior golf community in the Southwest and across the province.
Chambers, who has been living in Swift Current for six years, is the Provincial Coach for Saskatchewan and focuses the bulk of his time and efforts towards junior development.
“Basically I travel the whole province in the Future Links vehicle and go to small towns and get junior programs going and get kids interested by being there as a professional and helping them out, said Chambers.
“From there I take a step on and put on high performance clinics and work with our elite players and try to help them out to become more competitive at not just the provincial level but also at Nationals. These are the kids that we are going to take four of to Nationals so I want to get them as prepared as possible. I develop the juniors and help them with mental training, technical training, all that kind of stuff and then I go with them to National events.”
Chambers, who is in his fourth year as the Provincial Coach after spending two years with the Elmwood Golf Club, admits that he has a soft spot for small town golfers.
“I love to see small town kids make it because I am a very small town kid from MacGregor, Manitoba and we lived out in the country so I had to stay in after school just to stay on the golf course. It was only nine holes, but I just played a lot of golf and I loved it. I got my Pro Card through the Lethbridge Community College. I have a passion for teaching and I love to help out kids. I was a hockey coach, a curling coach, and volleyball, I just like to help out and I thought why not put my two favorite loves together and that is what I am doing.”
Chambers also noted that Swift Current is starting to become recognizable on the golfing landscape.
“We stack up very well. For the size of Swift Current people notice that there are people from Swift Current in the field and that is a great thing. It all comes down to your junior development programs. I know when I worked at Elmwood I tried very hard to get kids interested. Both Chinook and Elmwood have done a great job of keeping junior golfers feeling welcome at the golf course which is very important to me. They support them being there they are not trying to chase them away. They want them there, which is great.”
Chambers pointed out that there are a number of young and up-and-coming junior golfers who are starting to make some noise including Taylor Smith, Kaitlyn Blackmer, Kaitlyn Jahnke, Katie Avram, John McConnell, and Mark Johnston.
“For a community our size they are definitely coming on. There is room for improvement but they are coming on. The Swift Current Comp. team is winning all of their competitions. But it is just a good sign that hey Swift Current has some talent and I personally am going to do whatever I can to help that through,” said Chambers.
Chambers also noted that for female golfers there is an abundance of options south of the border.
“For the girls it is as easy as you can possibly imagine. If Kaitlyn Blackmer and Kaitlyn Janke, and even Katie Avram continue to do this, anyone of those three could come to me and say I want a good scholarship, I could find them a full ride somewhere. For guys there is much more competition, it is just crazy how much more competition there is. For a player to get a full scholarship they would have to do something extraordinary at Nationals not just at the provincial level. I know a few kids who have gone down there but you also want a quality school. We are actually trying to talk a lot of kids into staying in Canada.”
Chambers believes that junior golfers in Swift Current are very fortunate two have access to two quality golf courses.
“We have two completely different kinds of courses. Elmwood would make you learn more shots, the punch shots, the draws, the fades, because you have more variety and elevation changes whereas Chinook is pretty laid out. At the same time you are dealing with superior greens over at Chinook where you are going to get a really good roll.”
Chambers stresses repetition and the mental aspect of the game with his elite golfers.
“Nobody in the province practices more then Taylor Smith. People know that they saw him out on the range on the worst days. I remember one day they were closing the course and he was still out on the range hitting golf balls. ”
“You have to practice and then you have to have the mental side and that is where Taylor had the biggest breakthrough this year. We started to work on that a lot more this year and he finally began to understand what I was trying to teach him in the mental game. Once the kids start to learn that then they become very gifted.”
While no Saskatchewan golfer has ever made the PGA Tour Chambers notes that things are improving.
“This year was the best year that we have ever had in the history of Saskatchewan. We had four people go to Nationals and all four made the cut, which is very hard to do, you are in the top 60 or 70 in all of Canada, so that is very impressive in itself.”
“Graham DeLaet from Weyburn will be our first player on the PGA Tour. He has already had seven or eight top tens on the Canadian Tout. I have seen him, I was with him the week before he turned pro at the Canadian Amateur and he is that good and he will make it,” says Chambers.
Chambers also work for the Maple Leaf Junior Tour which is based on giving kids the opportunities that they normally wouldn’t have and also runs four Saskatchewan based events for the MJT.
On August 18th-25th Chambers captained Team Canada’s trip to Scotland for five straight days of golf.
“It was just a fantastic event, it was one of the best trips I have ever been on. They played awesome and we just throttled them over there. It was nice because we got pretty beat up pretty bad last year and lost every match.”
Chambers also has recently been named an assistant coach to go to China in February.
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