By Tym Glaser, Associate Editor - Sport 
Jamaican junior golfer Kemar Brown presents Sports Minister Portia Simpson-Miller with a flower arrangement after yesterday's official launch of the Jamaica Golf Association's Schools Golf Programme held at the Cable & Wireless National Golf Academy, New Kingston. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer
JAMAICA GOLF took another significant step towards shrugging off the tag of an 'elite' sport with the launch of a long-awaited national schools programme at the Cable and Wireless National Golf Academy in New Kingston yesterday.
The Jamaica Golf Association (JGA) initiative will tee off next month with six Kingston schools and will gradually spread to 18 within the capital city before branching out into the parishes.
The programme will comprise two phases: introductory and developmental. The two best players from each school after the introductory stage, to be held at the Golf Academy, will advance the the developmental phase which will take place in the summer over a period of ten weeks and will possibly incorporate the Constant Spring Golf Club.
The first six schools in the programme are Charlie Smith, Trench Town, Vauxhall, St. Anne's, Tivoli and Denham Town - hardly hot beds of golf but that is exactly what the JGA wants as it seeks to open up the sport a move thoroughly endorsed by Minister of Local Government and Sport, Portia Simpson-Miller, who officially launched the programme, and Jamaica Labour Party leader to be, Senator Bruce Golding, at yesterday's launch.
"Golf is not known to be a mass people participation sport in Jamaica," Golding stated in his address to an audience which included Cable and Wireless's senior vice president - mobile, Ian Neita, JGA president Gordon Hutchinson and vice president David Mais, and teachers and students from the participating schools.
THE RICH AND THE FAMOUS
"In fact, as I was growing up in Jamaica, I associated golf with the rich and the famous and the infamous and the people who had more leisure at their disposal than work to do.
That is what I think makes this initiative so significant because it is an outreaching from the golfing community ... this is a reaching out between uptown and downtown and a coming together of people towards an endeavour which will provide enjoyment, but I think much more than that, can become an important agent of social change."
Simpson-Miller, who was presented with a belated Valentine's flower arrangement by promising junior golfer Kemar Brown on behalf of the JGA, endorsed her political rival's sentiments.
"Today we mark a milestone in the development of a sport which offers much to our young people," Simpson-Miller said. "I feel immensely proud that the sport of golf can now be offered to our young people regardless of their economic status.
"The golf programme we launch today not only provides the opportunity for our high school students to learn to play the game of golf but to also hone their skills and techniques. From this the foundations will be layed, not just for the creation young Jamaican Tigers (Woods), but of citizens who possess wholesome values."
If all runs smoothly, the schools programme could lead to a national schools competition.
"I am sure this will be realised," Simpson-Miller said. "We can look forward to the day when we see our national high school champions competing with other youngsters on the international stage and doing very well."
