The fairway on the second hole at Laurel Springs Golf Club in suburban Atlanta swerves left and right between bunkers big enough to have names. Another giant sand pit protects a tiny green. It’s a brutal par-5, straight uphill, 141 yards.

That’s right, 141.

In an effort to attract more young golfers, Laurel Springs created a course within its mighty Jack Nicklaus-designed course that’s short enough to allow even 4-year-olds to putt for birdies. From the green tees, the fifth hole is a 35-yard par-3; the par-4 sixth stretches 89 yards. A second set of junior tees presents a layout that’s a good deal longer, with holes averaging about 200 yards, but it’s still half the length of the track played by adult men.

The simple, subtle concept succeeds brilliantly. The kids come with their parents, who play along or caddie. Laurel Springs has a wonderful program called "Family Golf." Everyone wins: Mothers and fathers spend more time with their kids in an activity they all enjoy; club revenues are up in the off-hours when the course is available to juniors; and golf wins a few battles in the never-ending war with television, computers, and video games.

"Our junior program had been the typical summer babysitting," says Laurel Springs head golf professional Bill Paiter (who knows something about babysitting, since he has 6-year-old triplets at home). "But this has been a huge success, and increased our junior participation dramatically in 2004. In one year, we went from 35 to 130 juniors age 12 and under who played regularly from April through September. The members, the kids, they all love it. I even hear dads say to their wives, ‘Honey, our son or daughter really loves golf. We gotta go play.’"

KIDS FIRST
All this is music to the ears of Dan Van Horn, founder of nearby Norcross, Georgia-based U.S. Kids Golf, a marketer of child-sized clubs, bags, and shoes. He and his company have made a crusade of sticking up for children who want to play the world’s greatest game, an advocacy that began, oddly enough, with baseball. When Van Horn compared the easy availability of youth-sized bats and gloves for his two kids to the almost total absence of age-appropriate equipment when he tried to get his children into golf, an idea was born.

"It seemed they lost interest after only 15 minutes," Van Horn recalls of that day in 1997 when his 3-year-old and his 6-year-old picked up clubs and quickly put them down again. "Then I noticed other kids struggling with adult clubs or cut-down adult clubs, which are too stiff and heavy for them to handle. That’s all that was available. So, I went to Taiwan and China, where a lot of golf club components are made. I asked, ‘What do you do for juniors? I want the right grip, shaft, and clubhead.’ Well, they didn’t do much. They made junior clubs from the reject bins."

It took a lot of trying, but Van Horn finally found a manufacturer willing to go into business with him, and willing to charge him about $4,000 each for molds for each little club. He made deals with other vendors to fill out the U.S. Kids Golf product line. Then, with a missionary’s zeal, he moved on to fixing the playing field.

"The usual answer to ‘what do we do with the youngest players?’ was to build a short course somewhere over there," says Van Horn, a gray-haired, ex-professional golfer with brown eyes and a no-baloney style. "But we want golf to be a family adventure, a relationship sport versus mom or dad’s time-away sport. That’s the ministry part for me."

Van Horn had an actual Christian ministry once, on the PGA Tour. When he thinks back on all the golf pros who told him they got started by playing the game with their mother or father on late Sunday afternoons, it reinforces his commitment to blending children and adults, and a short course into the big one.

SHORT CUTS
Laurel Springs is one of about 200 clubs that have embraced Van Horn’s Family Golf model. Step one is vital, but easy. The "personal" tees — judged a more appealing nomenclature than "kiddie," "junior," or "forward" — require only a couple of sets of inexpensive metal plates, which are planted like big ball markers on flat ground in the fairway or short rough. Users of the green and yellow tees at Laurel Springs (U.S. Kids Golf has other colors and recommended distances available) merely tee off within two club lengths of the markers. Maintenance costs are zero, or near zero; occasionally, the round plates need to be moved to avoid wearing out the grass in one spot. And someone has to operate a can of spray paint. To alert cart riders where the unobtrusive personal tees are located, Laurel Springs paints color-coded markers on its cart paths.

Step two requires scorecards. Scorecards give the short courses credibility with the kids, and they’re indispensable for tournament play.

"We started our program with a banquet for the players and their parents," Paiter says. "We showed videos on etiquette and the rules, and explained our dress code: collared shirts, shirts tucked in, no tank tops, jeans, or swimsuits. Hats have to face forward. It’s pretty strict, but I think the kids actually like it."

And woe unto the Laurel Springs junior golfer who throws a club. The first violation results in a 30-day suspension; strike two — or throw two — and you’re out of the program for good.

Laurel Springs also conducts age-group clinics for putting, chipping, pitching, bunker play, and the full swing, with tests along the way and a pin for participants’ hats for achieving some level of competence with each skill. As the handbook makes clear — in all caps, and boldface, with eight exclamation points at the end: EACH CHILD MUST HAVE PASSED THE RULES AND ORIENTATION TEST BEFORE PARTICIPATING IN A PLAYDAY!!!!!!!!

JUNIORS COMPETE
July is tournament month. Unlike competitions staged by the U.S. Golf Association or the American Junior Golf Association, parents are allowed — no, encouraged — to walk and talk with their kids, even to caddie for them. "Family interaction is what we want," says Robert Patterson, U.S. Kids Golf’s chief operating officer. "We’ve had almost no problem with bad-behaving parents."

Patterson describes "the top of our competition pyramid," the U.S Kids Golf World Championship. Qualifying tournaments are held in 25 foreign countries and in every state (Florida, California, and Texas have two, because they’re so big). This event is already up and running and has been televised by The Golf Channel. Patterson and Van Horn also envision 500 "local tours" for junior golfers, modeled, at least in scope and availability, on Little League Baseball.

Where’s the profit in this? Patterson smiles. "I’m more the green eyeshades guy," he says. "Dan will come up with another idea, and I’ll say, ‘We can’t make any money from that,’ and he’ll say, ‘I don’t care.’" [U.S. Kids Golf operates a 501(c)(3) Foundation in order to keep its moneymaking and its basically philanthropic parts separate.]

The stakes in all this are higher than just invigorating a few junior golf programs, of course. Everyone in golf is thinking about the future of the game. "We get our parents and children together on Sunday afternoons, and serve chicken fingers and fries after the golf, and give out little trophies — those kids are in heaven," Paiter says. "The more juniors we can capture now, the better it is for everybody."

Paiter is doing his part at home, too. He gave the triplets (Margaret, Madison, and Megan) new golf clubs for their birthday.

Author and writer Curt Sampson’s newest book is The Lost Masters, a re-creation of the scorecard scandal at Augusta in 1968 (Simon and Schuster, February 2005).

GROWING UP AT BROOKHAVEN
By one measure, no junior golf program in the world has enjoyed greater success than the one at Brookhaven Country Club, ClubCorp’s founding club. The 54-hole facility in Farmers Branch, Texas, near Dallas produced Scott Verplank, Andrew Magee, and Brian Watts, all of whom have had notable success on the PGA Tour.

"Brookhaven has always had a great culture for junior golf," recalls Magee, 42, a three-time All-American at the University of Oklahoma who has won four times on the tour. "What set us apart was the amount and quality of competition, and the encouragement of the staff."

In the 1970s, the pros encouraging young Scott, Andrew, and Brian were named Joe Dreisbach and Tom Bennison. Today, head golf professional David Sanchez and his first assistant, Joey Anders, continue the tradition.

"Joey is the most involved with the juniors," Sanchez says, "but our other pros also do a great job — Braden Davis, Charlie Prince, Shawn Slayton, and Lori Nelson, our head teaching professional."

They solve the yardage and difficulty questions easily at Brookhaven. Its three courses (the Masters, the Championship, and the Presidents) are long, medium, and short, with forward, middle, and back tees, which allows a tremendous amount of flexibility. For the youngest golfers, Anders often creates par-4s and par-5s of about 150 yards.

What they do for juniors at Brookhaven — clinics, tournaments, and age-adjusted tees — is less unusual than the availability and dedication of their pros. The kids stay charged up as a result, and their enthusiasm is infectious. "Parents and grandparents are invited to come out and watch, and the majority of them do," Sanchez says. "What a fun way to grow up."