George Cliff hasn’t played a round of golf in three years, but he can teach it any day of the week.

The Fort Benning Golf Course club pro spent last week working with about a dozen kids at the Child, Youth & School Services summer junior golf clinic, teaching them the game he’s loved and played for most of his life.

“It’s the only game you can play the rest of your life,” Cliff said. “It’s a good game to learn at an early age.” Cliff demonstrated the mechanics and basics needed to compose an effortless swing, showing the young golfers how smoothness in the swing trumps power.

“It’s really helping my swing and teaching me how to get it up high,” Samuel Chambers, 10, said. The clinic allowed kids to get a weeklong introduction to hitting and putting.

“The idea is to expose them to the basics and mechanics of a golf swing so they can go out and participate in a round of golf,” course superintendent Ray Meredith said.

Meredith said what the kids learned from the clinic should allow them to play more frequently with parents or other family members.

Chambers, who has played golf since he was 6 years old, said the clinic helped him improve his putting. Chambers won a putting contest against his peers Wednesday after knocking a 25-foot putt to within about two feet from the hole.

“I got kind of lucky on that,” he said. “I just had to really focus.”

He said putting has always been the most difficult part of the game for him.

“You don’t know whether to hit it too hard or too soft,” Chambers said.

Cliff described learning how to play golf as how learning how to ride a bike — at the beginning, it’s tough, but once they get good at it, their body will remember how to do it for them, he said.

“It’s muscle memory,” he said. “You can take all winter off and come back next summer and start swinging a club again.”

Dorrie Wagner, CYSS director, said this is the first time in the past several years CYSS has hosted a golf clinic. This year drew more interest in golf and CYSS is evaluating whether or not to start a Fort Benning youth golf team, she said.

“That would add one more individual sport,” Wagner said. “It’s still in the planning stages.”

The golf camp was part of a series of camps held this summer by CYSS. The next will be a soccer camp starting July 11. Registration is ongoing.

For more information, contact the CYSS office at 545-1853.