Monkey see Monkey do! Recently, I starting getting back into golf after at least 10 years since I have played regularly back in high school (I can thank my new boss for that.) After hitting some balls in the yard I WANTED MORE! I loaded up the car with my wife, 2.5 year old son and 4 month old son and headed to our local driving range. I got a bucket of balls and me and my son were having a blast hitting the balls. I stopped halfway through the bucket because I noticed people watching my son hit the balls, he had watched me hit and started copying me and actually using his little plastic club to really whack some balls out onto the range with force. After hitting a bucket my sons poor little plastic club had buckled under the pressure of hitting real golf balls :( I went out and bought a plastic and metal club set for my son and that roke within minutes,,, I decided I could cut down a real club to my sons size and make him one for going to the range with Daddy. I was suprised at how easily this project was and wanted to share with you a 20 minute project that will launch you from cool dad to SUPER DAD! The EASY KIDS GOLF CLUB!

MATERIALS / TOOLS LIST:

-Used Golf Club
-Duct Tape
-Golf Tee
-Two Sided (Foam) Carpet Tape
-Hammer
-Pipe Cutter,snips, hacksaw,coping saw,etc (one will do)

Step 1: Club Selection and Length

First off, find a used club; I had several in my garage from collecting used ones over the years. If you don't have any spare clubs you can easily find them at used sporting goods stores, thrift stores, ebay, etc....

***Note*** For smaller tikes (in the case of my 2 year old) try to find a graphite club shaft or a club with a lighter club head. If a heavier club is all you have I can show you how to compensate for this.

To measure I used some of my sons clubs to get an idea how long it should be; it turned out his toy club shafts were around 18-20 ". To compensate for the added weight of a real club I took off about 4-5 " for his new club. His new club shaft measures around 15".

After you get a measurement mark the club and grab a pipe scorer/cutter or a really solid pair of snips.

Step 2: Cutting and Cleaning the Shaft

After you make your measurements, it is time to cut the shaft. The easiest method for me was to use a pipe cutter, its just a little attachment that clips to the club and had a radial blade to cut. You can use big snips, a hacksaw, or whatever else you like. I cut the shaft and noticed it was a bit jagged. The fix for this and also the solution to a hollow shaft was to take a golf tee and hammer it into the top of the new shaft. This gave a nice, safe topper to the club.

To clean it all up, before I hammered the tee into the shaft I used a rasp and filed down the jagged metal/graphite sticking out of the shaft. After I did this I hammered the tee and used some duct tape to secure the tee in place.

***Note*** Don't worry if the tee breaks when you hammer it in (it will) the duct tape will cover this.

Step 3: Taping the Shaft

Almost done! Now that we have a nice shaft that's safe for our little one to use, we can make a nice tape grip to give it the comfortable "real club" feel. To accomplish this I used some foam two sided carpet/floor mat tape. I had this laying around as well, but I got it at Ollie's for around $2.69 for the roll. I reccommend using the double sided carpet FOAM tape or weatherstripping tape because it sticks to the shaft and can conform easily when pressed onto the shaft.

Start at the low end of hte shaft and work your way up the shaft to the top making a few extra passes at the top to create a proper grip angle. Once you a finished with this, use duct tape to seal the bottom and then go all the way up the shaft covering the two sided carpet tape grip.

***Note*** I split the duct tape roll in half to create thinner tape which makes the duct tape conform to the shaft better, creating less folds and wrinkles in the grip. You can use fabric hockey tape (reccommended - $3.00 a roll) or reuse gold grip tape or bat tape.

Tape it up and YOU ARE DONE!!!! 20 minutes to #winning a golf club hack for your young child!!!!