Vijay Patel
At the start of July, I went to the Stanhope Foundation Learn 2 Love golf event, along with my colleague Josie. It was a session that was to introduce golf to people, which is good for me because I’ve never played golf properly before!
The day was also a chance for us to represent Mencap and talk to other charities and companies about what we do and raise awareness about learning disability A learning disability is to do with the way someone's brain works. It makes it harder for someone to learn, understand or do things. . I spoke to a lot of people about my work as a campaigns officer and shared my experience Experience is when you have learned or tried something before. as someone with a learning disability.
We started off with a putting skills challenge, with Josie and myself paired together. It started off with trying to putt the ball from a close distance, but every time you got the ball in the hole you had to move back a little further to make it more of a challenge.
As I said, I’ve never played proper golf before, it was a lot different to mini golf that I’m more used to! I told them I was left-handed, so they gave me a set of clubs that were made for left-handed people. I didn’t know they existed! We also got a nice gift bag full of goodies too, which was nice.
Next we moved on to a chipping challenge, using a different club to chip the ball into the air and as close to a pole as possible.
Finally we went up to the driving range, where we did some long-range driving. That means we had to hit the ball as far as we could. I have to say that Josie was amazing at this, hitting long-range shots that were going really far down the range.
After some refreshments and a quick drink, we went out to put our new skills to use as we headed out onto the golf course itself for a few holes. We went out in groups of 4, and were given proper caddy bags to hold all our clubs – mine were all left-handed of course! Josie and I took turns wheeling along the course. I was glad we didn’t have to carry them.
When the session finished, there was food for lunch which was fab. It was great to be invited to the day by the Stanhope Foundation because they have been big supporters of Mencap, helping to increase opportunities for people with a learning disability.
And although I came away from it battered and bruised with a couple of blisters on my fingers from swinging the clubs, it was a great fun day out!
