Golf for ALL

My name is Richard Franklin and I am the Founder/ Lead Game Designer for DiscoverGolf and a champion for childhood PLAY.

12+ years ago I would have said that I am a “ golf professional “. 12+ years later I recognize how MUCH MORE goes into working with kids than “ just golf”.

That is the true essence of DiscoverGolf.

The notion that creating EXPERIENCES and ENVIRONMENTS that compel young people to EXPLORE , assert their AGENCY over their immediate surroundings, all while feeling connected to a dynamic and ACCESSIBLE COMMUNITY of PLAY, is priority #1 .

I started DiscoverGolf as someone that wanted to DO BETTER by the kids that I had the great fortune of working with. I also wanted to focus primarily on 4-12-year-old players as I could see how incredibly valuable a positive play experience was to them and their families.

I also felt and experienced how HIGH THE STAKES are in this age group.

A young golfer’s initial experience with the game is truly a “fork in the road moment”. A negative COUPLE OF MINUTES can literally end golf careers before they even start.

DiscoverGolf and its network of coaches have worked with over half a million juniors between the ages of 4-12 over the last 12 years and it is through those experiences that the products on this website were born.

Each and every game/engagement installation represents a fulfillment of our promise to do everything in our power to “ hook “ a child into the game of golf.

What has always been evident to me as a coach of 4-12-year-old golfers is that every child is looking for something slightly DIFFERENT.

And yet, all are CONNECTED by an insatiable appetite for that “in the moment” feeling, truly immersed engagement, being in “flow”.

That is DiscoverGolf’s north star.

Offering a one of kind toolkit to coaches and parents that fast tracks kids to that point of authentic connection.

“People tend to forget, PLAY is serious”

— DAVID HOCKNEY

“golf” ANYWHERE

DiscoverGolf stands for the democratization of the game.

We want to distill the game down to its most fertile roots, and then SHARE THAT.

We believe that what “ golf “ actually REPRESENTS, is a medium for humans to connect with the many dimensions of who they are.

Sometimes it’s FUN to concentrate really hard on the outcome of the next shot.

Sometimes the FUN is simply the banter and schadenfreude ( laughing at yourself and others ) amidst a game moment.

But mostly the FUN is in the primal love we humans have for swinging a stick and watching in amazement the way we can make a dormant ball bend towards our will.

And that FUN of physical manipulation aka “FUN of improving” is a very real part of DiscoverGolf.

The skill of blowing up Freak Fighter, knocking down Tiki Tirade heads, and putting balls into a 6” triangle to secure a 3D King Putt pyramid are direct reflections of the physical skills one needs to play GOLF.

Within DiscoverGolf games you will see and feel the swinging motion of clubs / putters that has forever been linked to “pars” and “bogeys”. But, in our world the outcome of that stick and ball interaction leads to a wonderfully diverse set of outcomes including, but not limited to :

• territory control

• the rewards of social harmony/ collaboration

• resource security

• destruction

• changing scope of a strategy

• a sense of power; a hostile change shift in strategic momentum

• engineering prowess

We believe that when game mechanics and golf collide a new world of “gamer golf kid” is born!

And in this case that love affair can happen in a park , in a backyard, in a basement just as easily as it is happening at some of the finest junior golf academies in the world.

a FOCUS on 4-12 year old PLAYERS

rewards of PLAY ; supercharging the learning process

Dopamine : amount and duration of time relative to expectancy of REWARDS. What does a 7 year old find rewarding ?

A FOCUS on 4-12 year old PLAYERS means a focus on contextualizing the learning within a frame of goal directed activities ( games ) that propel the player through sequences of action. As any player of games can attest to , these sequences of action must be REWARDING for attention and engagement to be applied.

The massive shift in working with this age group is to orientate the REWARDS around game narration ( story telling ) , in-game strategy, role play, and other seemingly non-golf pursuits.

This is pure DiscoverGolf.

Using the “ loop of golf” ( club and ball striking ) to drive a game engine that resonates at an emotional level, therefore “flagging” the event as important ( worth remembering, worth coming back to ) at a neurochemical level.

DiscoverGolf’s ultimate aim is to EMPOWER and ENRICH children.

We recognize the long-term implications of children at in this age group sensing, demonstrating, and improving their COMPETENCY within their physical/ social/ emotional domains.

This is a critical topic for DiscoverGolf and one that is always at the forefront of our design schemes.

We wish to reframe “ training” environments, often weighted towards showcasing those individuals with the highest level of physical dexterity.

When the win/success probability / and sense of COMPETENCY is determined by ONLY those attributes we fear that the “game of golf” becomes less accessible.

It is our belief that games that feature diverse mechanical structures, more child-appropriate themes, and textured play patterns also offer a MULTITUDE of the child’s competencies to shine through.

Many of those competencies were highlighted in the previous section and include creativity, engineering prowess, social collaboration, strategic thinking, and systems contemplation.

Taking (golf)PLAY to the NEXT LEVEL

Universally accepted research on the importance of “ deliberate PLAY”

“Play” and its scholarship is vast. It implications are only outpaced by the lenses in which humans view the concept.

Golf coaches and collective minds in youth sports have long considered and have ultimately agreed that early childhood experiences should be dominated by PLAY. As highlighted in the figure above , a lack of PLAY in these “ sampling ages “ can cause physical harm and dropout.

DiscoverGolf is an EXTENSION of that thinking.

DiscoverGolf is game company that serves to collect and synthesize the research at the intersection point of PLAY and SKILL DEVELOPMENT in order to make one of kind , original gameworks that celebrate the research in a CHILD - CENTRIC format.

DiscoverGolf’s PLAY WORLD; a celebration of the genius-child

Pioneering the future of junior golf; navigating the cultural landscape

Youth sports are being dwarfed by SCREEN TIME PLAY

It has been said that we live in the “ ludic age”.

A time in whcih “everything is a game”.

Through that prism we can start to unpack the underlying reasons children are so enthralled with their screens.

These “screens” are effervescent sources of feedback loops offering up “ LIKE “ counts, social commentary, damage/ hit/ health counts, tools for self-expression, resources states and countless tokens of “ progress “.

Each and every one of the features embedded in “app culture“ and Esports taps into how the human brain metabolizes rewards and serves to scratch our most fundamental needs of social connection , competency , and autonomy.

DiscoverGolf’s WHY , is deeply connected to the evaluation of the “ mediascape” that our kids live in.

Our goal is to learn, reverse engineer , and graft the physicological nourishments and direct methods that social media and game companies use to attract kids and repurpose them for the means of getting kids OUTSIDE, playing GOLF, and connecting with a community of PLAY.

We believe there is a power to be harnessed within the new age of smartphones and the internet, but we also see the darker undercurrent that is toxic and damaging to our youth.

If a DiscoverGolfer becomes an LPGA/PGA star that is fantastic! But what matters most to us is that they are exposed to a source of joy that doesn’t come from an algorithm but from the recruitment of their physical/emotional/mental tools while playing the game of GOLF.