Eddie ready to help the kids flourish through academy

by Graham Otway

There seems to be a rule of thumb for the way top sports stars around the world manage their mega- finances and that is ‘take, do not give’. Eddie Pepperell is proving an exception to that rule.

Golfers have been known to give back to the sport from which they have made their millions, but the likes of Paul Lawrie and Stephen Gallacher were closer to their 40th birthdays than their teens when they set up their foundations to encourage youngsters to take up the game.

Rory McIlroy, whose foundation is backing the Irish Open, is an exception to that rule since he is still a fortnight short of his 27th birthday but, then again, with a Nike sponsorship deal reputedly worth $250 million he is not short of a bob or two in the bank. But Pepperell, aged 25 and currently only in his fourth season on the European Tour, does not fall into the same brackets as the Scotsmen or the Ulsterman.

And at the Frilford Heath Golf Club in Oxfordshire where he first started learning to play as a 13-year-old, members are raising their glasses to him.

It was the members’ generosity that helped Pepperell join golf’s professional ranks by providing a sponsorship that helped him meet his initial huge costs of flying to tournaments, staying in hotels and paying a caddie.

He has yet to win or tour, but a  cheque for €217,000 for finishing second in last year’s Irish Open and ten other top tens have taken away that financial pressure.

And his response has been to thank the members for their backing, tell them to stop handing him cash and instead spend it on a new academy to encourage youngsters to take up golf.

“For various reasons I didn’t want to call it the Eddie Pepperell Foundation,” he told The Golf Paper. “So it is The Frilford Heath Junior Academy supported by Eddie Pepperell.

“I am so excited about it. It’s a great feeling to be able to give something back to the golf club which initially gave me so much when I was starting out and then joining the professional ranks.”

Last week, Pepperell went back to Frilford Heath to welcome the 51 juniors, aged from eight to 17, most of whom had little or no previous experience of playing golf.

They have been given a year’s free membership of a three-course club which this year will be a qualifying venue for The Open Championship at Royal Troon in July.

The juniors will also benefit from six coaching sessions from head teaching professional Derek Craik and, as their ability improves, become integrated into the club’s  junior programme run by Mark McMurdo and his junior committee.

Pepperell posed for photos with each of the youngsters and presented them with a signed Wolsey golf cap from his clothing sponsors.

He is also approaching Wolsey and his club suppliers TaylorMade for prizes for this summer’s Junior Open.

“With life being so busy on Tour I can’t be personally involved with the juniors that much,” said Pepperell. “But the Academy has my total support and I will be calling in to see how things are progressing whenever I am at home.”

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