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Loon Ridge Junior Clinic Opens Saturday
Participants are asked to bring clubs, patience, and a willingness to relocate for geese.

MISQUAH — Loon Ridge will open its junior golf clinic Saturday, the resort announced, inviting area young people to a season of weekend instruction and asking that participants bring clubs, patience, and “a willingness to relocate for geese,” the last being less a courtesy than, on the seventh fairway, a fundamental rule of play.
The clinic, run by head pro Greg Mattson, offers junior lesson slots through the summer at a rate the resort holds low for local families — part of an arrangement, general manager Renée Fontaine said, by which Loon Ridge stays on good terms with the town it depends on. “The summer people pay the bills,” Fontaine said. “The local kids are why it’s a community and not just a resort. We’d run the junior clinic at a loss, and some years we do, and we’d do it anyway.”
Mattson said the clinic teaches the fundamentals — grip, stance, the short game — and, of necessity, the local one. “First thing every junior learns here is the geese,” he said. “You don’t play through a goose. You don’t argue with a goose. You move your ball one club length, quietly, and you keep your opinions to yourself, because the geese were here before the course and they have never once acknowledged the course exists.”
Slots are filling, the resort reported, weather and geese permitting — the latter being, on the relevant fairway, the genuine variable. Interested families are asked to inquire at the pro shop, where Mattson will, he promised, “teach your kid to hit it straight, and to lose gracefully to a bird, which is a more useful skill than the golf, frankly, and the one they’ll keep.”
