Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter have been teammates for decades, first on European Ryder Cup squads and now as members of LIV Golf’s Majesticks GC.
Through the latter association, Westwood and Poulter have now partnered on yet another initiative: a community impact program with kids at top of mind.
Together, with team co-principals Oliver Banks and James Dunkley — and Jordan Stephenson, who joined the organization from Youth Trust Sport in the UK and serves as the Majesticks head of impact and culture — the team created Little Sticks, a first-of-its-kind curriculum designed to foster a more inclusive and enjoyable environment for children and young people to help them unlock their potential through golf. Little Sticks’ primary aim is to educate, engage and empower young people by introducing them to the game and its values.
“Community has always really been at the heart of what we’re trying to do,” Banks told me recently. “A lot of golf programs have come and not particularly done very well, so there’s an opportunity for us where can we really make a difference.”
The Little Sticks pilot program began last year with programming for elementary and middle-school age children in six schools in the UK and one in the U.S. According to Stephenson, one of the program’s biggest challenges was convincing administrators of physical education curriculums that golf was a worthy inclusion. Once they decided to implement the program, Stephenson facilitated the delivery of the necessary equipment, training and resources. The pilot was a success, Stephenson said, with data showing that nearly 60 percent of children had a meaningful positive change in their well-being after attending at least six Little Sticks sessions.
Little Sticks is not just about learning the game of golf. The 12-week program takes a holistic approach, providing basic fundamentals in the form of 15 simple games while also placing an emphasis on mental and physical well-being. The curriculum incorporates Poulter and Westwood delivering instruction and encouragement in video form, with the players representing character values like resilience (Westwood) and teamwork (Poulter).
“We’re giving them skills and tools that can help their future but also giving them a sense of belonging,” Stephenson said. “They belong to our team, the Majesticks, they belong to our players, so they have a wider sense of community as well. What we really want to do is use our golfers as the role models, so we have tangible people that our children can learn about and the teachers can use within their lessons.”
The Little Sticks curriculum also reinforces these character-building lessons within the games the children play rather than solely in a presentation-style classroom environment, making it fun and engaging.
“If you observed a P.E. lesson, 95 percent of the time, children are playing golf, it’s just the activities they’re engaging in have been developed to help derive those character-building skills,” Stephenson said. “So it’s not, ‘Sit down, everyone, we’re going to tell you about resilience.’ Instead, it’s ‘You’ve played this game, how did you find it? Did you find it challenging? What did you do to overcome if you thought you couldn’t do it? How did you utilize other people for support?'”
