East Coast Golf Management trying to reincarnate Cudone junior golf program

East Coast Golf Management partners Mike Buccerone and Chuck Hutchison want to re-create the Carolyn Cudone Myrtle Beach Junior Golf Program next summer, and they have begun raising funds to do so with an event Monday and Tuesday featuring pros from their company’s affiliated courses.

The program is being called East Coast Junior Golf. East Coast manages six courses and has more than 20 in a marketing cooperative, and because its courses are spread up and down the Grand Strand, they will be able to offer instruction and events in multiple locations so juniors won’t have far to travel.

“There’s a lot of [junior] tournaments in the area, and there’s a lot of teachers in the area, but there’s really not a lot of golf courses that are doing junior golf instruction during the summer,” Hutchison said. “So we’re trying to help with the instruction part of it, and get our PGA guys more involved. … Golf needs help and it needs help in the junior golf department. There’s just not enough kids playing.”

They are in the process of forming an East Coast Junior Golf nonprofit and website (www.MyrtleBeachjrgolf.com).

Cudone, who died at the age of 90 in 2009, started the MB Junior Golf Program in 1981 and it featured a summer’s worth of instruction and tournaments. Hutchison was both a participant and later an instructor in the program, which eventually merged with a South Carolina Junior Golf Association program that still offers summer tournaments in the area and is being overseen by Dale Ketola of Potential Golf at Farmstead Golf Links.

“We as a company want to bring that back starting next year,” Buccerone. “We’re kind of going back to the old concept where there was a south, a central and a northern region with four weeks of clinics two days a week and golf [tournaments] followed by that for the next four or five weeks, two days a week.”

Buccerone and Hutchison also hope to fund scholarships for program participants.

The first fundraiser is their N.C. vs. S.C. Ryder Cup-style tournament at Wachesaw Plantation East featuring 24 players who are predominantly pros at East Coast-affiliated courses. Each participant paid $150 and proceeds will go to the new non-profit.

The format is 27 holes Monday consisting of three nine-hole matches and 18-hole singles matches Tuesday. The North holds a two-point lead through Monday.

This story was originally published November 2, 2015 at 9:36 PM with the headline "East Coast Golf Management trying to reincarnate Cudone junior golf program."