Why this junior-golf trend is so troubling      

One of the many reasons I embrace my son’s love of golf is that it is a screen-free zone for both of us. He just turned 13, and our time on course feels like the only respite when he’s neither glued to my iPad nor begging for his own phone. I relish those tech-free hours for myself, too.

Which is why I’m disheartened by a recent trend in junior golf: tournaments requiring players as young as 12 to keep score live on their own smartphones.

Seriously?

We have an adolescent mental-health crisis in this country, which some research attributes, convincingly, to the rise of smartphones and social media. At last count, 31 states have banned or restricted students’ use of cellphones in schools, and a national movement called Wait Until 8th advocates for kids not to get smartphones until at least the end of 8th grade.

But golf is, inexplicably, moving in the opposite direction. Many junior competitors are now expected to have their own phones at the ready during tournament rounds to enter hole-by-hole scores.

We’ve all experienced the irresistible distractions of smartphones — and how annoying it is when that guy or gal in our foursome responds to a text and then gets sucked into their news alerts and Instagram feed and confirming their next dental appointment. (Many of us have been that guy or gal.)

If adults can’t resist the gravitational pull of those devices in our pockets, how can we expect kids to do so?

Tournament directors say that smartphones enable live scoring, which players and families want. A live leaderboard “makes it feel a little bit more like a professional event, and the events that they watch on TV,” said Greg Hubbard, vice president of coach and tournament development for U.S. Kids Golf, the world’s largest junior golf organization.

Live scoring also has benefits for tournament administrators. Spencer Sorensen, the Oregon Golf Association’s director of championships and events, said that live scoring lets him monitor pace of play and nudge slowpokes before they get too far behind. He recently oversaw a tournament where two players in the penultimate group came in tied; he was able to see that no one in the last group was in contention, so could start the playoff right away. Soggy, tattered, lost or illegible scorecards also become a thing of the past.

But for players, cellphone use is a mixed bag. Even Mason Howell, the 18-year-old who won the U.S. Amateur earlier this year, has gotten sucked in. “It’s happened,” he told me. “I’m looking at my phone, and then I’m looking at social media. I get distracted and then my mind’s not where it’s supposed to be.”

Fourteen-year-old Alexa Phung, a two-time Drive, Chip & Putt champion, agrees that cellphone use can be “quite a distraction.” She tells friends and family not to text her as she’s heading into a tournament but has spotted her playing partners texting during rounds. How does she know they’re not entering scores? “Their thumbs,” she says, waggling her thumbs in the universal sign for texting. “It’s very obvious.”

According to Sorensen, some players want to know where they are on the leaderboard, saying it motivates them and informs their decision-making. “They can say, ‘OK, I’m two shots back right now, maybe I’ll try to make a birdie here,’ or whatever it may be.”

But Sebastian Martinez, who runs Skout Golf, a golf school in Beaverton, Ore., says that leaderboard watching is the “exact opposite of a performance mindset.” He said that chasing birdies by playing more aggressively than you otherwise might more likely than not will result in doubles. Then the player you were chasing might make a big number, so you only needed to make par — or, worse, you find out his or her score was entered incorrectly. Martinez urges his players not to change their decision-making based on what others are doing.

Katie Burgoyne, PGA teaching pro at Black Canyon Golf Club in Montrose, Colo., and mother of twin 10-year-old golfers, agrees. “Golf isn’t a game that you can make yourself play better to beat someone,” she said. She advises her juniors to avoid scoring apps. “I want your head down, thinking about your next shot — not thinking about where you’re scoring and who you’re beating,” she said. “Because no matter what, you should be trying to do your best every single time, not do your best to beat John.”

Burgoyne also wonders about the potential for cheating: Is anyone policing whether scoring apps are in tournament mode with the slope function disabled? Alexa Phung said her father swapped numbers with another dad at the beginning of one of her rounds. Later that day he received an accidental text from his new contact that was intended for the daughter. In the message, the father called out a hole location. Legal? Maybe. Suspicious? Definitely.

When my son and I arrived at the U.S. Kids World Championships in Pinehurst, N.C, in August, we learned that competitors in the 12-year-old flight were expected to manage their own live scoring. U.S. Kids encourages parent caddies, who usually take on scorekeeper responsibilities, so, in this case, the kids were off the hook. But it was still frustrating for me that instead of watching my son’s group putt out and thinking about what to say to him as we walked to the next hole, I was messing with my phone to open the app and enter scores.

Hubbard of U.S. Kids told me that his organization started phone-based scoring for all tournaments in 2020 during the pandemic. But in 2021 they started receiving feedback from parents that phones were “creating a distraction” and detracting from a key part of the U.S. Kids mission: encouraging family interaction. “When we felt like it was taking away from our mission and the experience of these families, we re-evaluated,” Hubbard said.

U.S. Kids dropped live scoring for all ages except 12-year-olds in its 15 to 20 most elite events (out of the 2,500 tournaments it runs every year). Hubbard said U.S. Kids kept the policy in place for that age group because his organization wants “to prepare them for the next level,” meaning teen events at which they almost certainly will be expected to input scores on their phones.

There are alternatives to phone-scoring. Some tournaments assign a spectator or volunteer to post a group’s scores. Other events ask rules officials to enter scores. Still others have provided custom scoring devices, though expecting players to navigate unfamiliar gadgets has its downsides, too. In all of those cases, though, paper scorecards are also kept as backups.

Golf prides itself on respecting tradition and resisting the temptations of modernity. I still have a folder of old scorecards from rounds I played decades ago, as does my 83-year-old father.

But this isn’t just a plea for nostalgia. Requiring kids to have smartphones in the first place goes against the spirit of accessibility that many junior golf organizations have worked so hard to promote. Also, requiring kids to fiddle with phones during a round runs contrary to what golf is so brilliant at fostering: focus and presence.

I started this conversation in a junior-golf Facebook group with 30,000 members. With the passion that only social media can evoke, several commenters suggested that if a junior golfer is distracted by a phone, the phone isn’t the problem. I appreciate the sentiment: If I can’t stop eating Oreos, that’s on me and my willpower, not the Oreos. Still, I sure as heck try not to carry Oreos around in my pocket all day.

The rest of the world is realizing the drawbacks and distractions of smartphones; the golf world should keep pace. In a sport where green blazers and claret jugs still hold sway, surely the paper scorecard can remain supreme as well — especially for our youngest competitors.

Christine Bader is an Oregon-based writer.