Bermuda Junior Golf Association (BJGA) president Quinton Sherlock jr has hit back at criticism suggesting his organisation are failing in their duties to produce top future prospects.

In an article published in Thursday's Royal Gazette, pro golfer Eric West claimed that Bermuda's youth golfers are "falling way behind" their American counterparts in their development and that the BJGA's membership had dwindled in recent years.

But in response to the player's opinion, Sherlock said nothing could be further from the truth.

The former Southampton Rangers cricketer contended that his association's membership had tripled in recent years and continued to produce top young players, naming the likes of Alex Osborne, Joshua Cabrera and Angus Lang who are all currently enrolled in prestigious golf academies in the UK and US.

"Two years ago the Board of Directors set about a strategic plan specifically designed to increase our membership because there was a time when our membership was around the high 50s," said Sherlock. "Thus we set about creating new initiatives and instituting a novices programme and also lowering the fees for kids to be able to join to basically boost our membership.

"And in that regard we have been quite successful as to date we have over 170 members in our programme and actually over the last three years the numbers in our organisation have tripled."

Sherlock also hit back at West's claim that the BJGA are now producing "fewer really good kids" and that was junior golf is no longer taken as seriously as in the past.

"If you were to look at the results from last year's Bermuda Amateur Strokeplay Championship you would see that a number of our juniors placed in the top 12, such as Ryan Benevides, Ryan Roberts and Alex Osborne to name a few. A couple of our better players have gone overseas to golf academies while we also have some top amateurs based here locally.

"Currently we have a national training programme that is being run by Darron Swan at Belmont Hills and basically Darron sees these kids at least once a week for both on-course training and some of the mental aspects of the game.

"In addition to that, we actually sent eight kids to golf school in Sea Island (in Georgia) which is a place where PGA players such as Todd Hamilton go and receive lessons – and our kids actually received rave reviews from the instructors there. They said they had never met a bunch of kids so focused and into their golf."

Sherlock said he was baffled as to why West would publicly criticise his association that he feels has made positive strides in recent years.

"I think it's unfortunate that Eric would go and make these statements in the public arena without really knowing the facts or anything specifically about our programme," he added. "But as an organisation we are more than willing to work along with Eric because we do feel he can potentially add some good points to the group."

The newly-wed West argued: "When I played junior golf it was a really serious organisation but now the numbers are dwindling, resulting in fewer really good kids.

"Now there's only two or three kids that are really good and competing internationally. What I see happening here is not realistic for kids to be doing to get a Division One scholarship."