Pestana SA are committed to developing golf for local school children.

They offer instruction to school parties, giving the pupils an opportunity to try golf as a sport while on release from school.

Juniors are young people who have not reached 18 in the current year. 

On Saturday mornings Carlos Ribeiro, the incumbent teaching professional at the Pestana Academy, teaches the juniors as a group and supervises their development. 

The age range of these children is six to eighteen.  They come from any school and background.  They have to be members of the Federação Portuguesa de Golfe (FPG), which costs a small amount and there is a small joining fee, but the tuition and access to the Pestana golf courses is free once they are full members of the Saturday Academy.

The FPG have created a Juniors development scheme to bring young people to golf and ultimately they hope to have representation in the top echelons of Professional Tour golfing.   The FPG has the 'Drive' project which gives support to the golfing academies around Portugal and provides competitions for the juniors at all levels on a regional basis.  These are set for all standards, i.e. handicapped and with preference for red tees for the less experienced. Although mainly taken up by boys there are full competitions for girls. The FPG also runs nationwide competitions, often as competitions between the regional champions but generally open to all.

There appears to be little difficulty in equipping these young players.  Their parents or other supporters ensure they have clubs and balls, but young children with growing feet need new golf shoes from time to time. Some of the children need help with entry fees for competitions but these are normally small amounts each time. There may be some promising youngsters who come from very deprived backgrounds and Carlos can identify them, ensuring that they have the opportunity to become involved. 

Historically Vilamoura were the first organisation to provide teaching and competitions under the FPG Drive scheme.  They had a greater number in each age group and the competitions were keener.  This led to the impression that Vilamoura was better and there has been a steady drain of talent, which frustrated Carlos as he never got the credit for the later successes of the juniors who had started at Carvoeiro.

To date there has been no success story in that no Tour Professional has emerged from the Juniors Academy but there is a number of young adults who have gone on to play at a good level, and enjoy golf as a past time.  Felipe Argulhas, who some of you will know because he sometimes works in reception  at Silves, is such a product of the juniors system.

Every year the Pestana group of courses hosts four to five competitions for Juniors.  This means providing courtesy of the course, which is Pestana's responsibility, and funding for the prizes in each age/gender group .  Each competition needs around €60-€70 for the trophies.  There are no recurring trophies like an overall winner's cup, which could be an extra trophy among the prizes given for the tournaments.

It is not easy to help as a club because we play social games on Saturdays and Tuesdays are school days except in school holidays. However as a club we can have an occasional game that includes the juniors.

They are deeply into stroke play and have a lot of experience with the Stableford system and handicapping.  They have almost no experience in matchplay.  All they know is that there is another form of play with some differences in the rules. We could set up matches but there again there is a problem because we play a very limited number of matchplay games at weekends.

It would help Carlos if some of the juniors chose to make one of the Pestana associated clubs their home club.  He would not lose them to Vilamoura.  Handicaps would be controlled in the normal way as a club member.  They would be under instruction at the Academy and sometimes play with the club.

Serra de Monchique Golf Club has a junior membership group in the constitution.  There is no need for further administration apart from handling personal data.