Program provides replacement golf clubs for youth who lost theirs during the October fires
A common refrain following the devastating firestorm in October was the notion of helping victims, especially kids, return to a state of “normalcy” as quickly as possible. Windsor Golf Club has tried to help with that by focusing on their small niche and providing replacement clubs to children who lost their homes — and their clubs — in the devastating fires.
Demian Reddy is one of the golf instructors at the club specializing in the junior program and he helped coalesce several ideas into a cohesive plan.
“The idea was a combination of two different people at the same time,” he said. “A father, Matt Kwan, who has two boys who have been in our junior program, came to me about the idea of raising money (to get clubs for kids) and, unbeknownst to us, one of the gentlemen who works in the pro shop, Neal Hellman, had the same idea. Matt had come to me with this idea and I thought it was great and then Neal had come up with the same idea and was going to start an account where we could take in donations just from people coming through the pro shop, whether it was $5 or $25 it didn’t matter, and so we combined our efforts and started the (program).”
In addition, Reddy reached out to Tom Hackle who organizes the annual Growler Golf event about donating some of the funds to the program.
“(The Growler) is always held the last weekend of the year and it’s not normally a charity event,” Reddy said. “This is the fourth year and this year I approached the gentlemen who runs it and I said we have this thing going on, so maybe for the first time we could take a little bit of the entry that we charge and what’s left over from a little of the prize money and put it towards this and he thought it sounded like a great idea.”
To date, the program has given out 11 sets of clubs to children who lost theirs during the fires. The clubs are all brand new and come from one of three manufacturers: Ping, Calloway and Taylor Made.
“We worked out an agreement with a couple of the main club manufacturers and they agreed to give us a little discount off the wholesale price,” Reddy said. “Basically we’ve just been mixing and matching. I’ve been throwing it out to the parents and the children if they have a preference of any of those three but most haven’t — they’ve just been happy to be getting something new in replacement and in many cases it may be better than what they had previously, so they’re excited. The manufacturers know about the fires and what happened and they’re willing to help out a little bit so that was good as well.”
Reddy says the account started in the pro shop has enough money in it to provide an additional six to eight sets of clubs to a child in need, so they are putting out word for any additional names. “At this point, we’re not trying to necessarily raise more money as we have the cash on hand, but if we could find another handful of kids we’d be happy to help them out,” he said.
If you know of a child in need of replacement clubs due to the October firestorm, you can contact Demian Reddy at 953-9008 or the pro shop at the Windsor Golf Club at 838-7888.
