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I first touched a golf club at about the age of 16. My brother Joe, who is 4 years older, is an
avid golfer and although I considered golf to be less than a "real sport", being able to go
one-on-one with my big brother and hero, was too much to pass up. We went to the driving
range and he told me "sort of" how to hold the club. As I remember, I did pretty well. Using
what athletic ability I had from playing all kinds of sports, I just let my natural tendencies
take over. From the driving range we eventually moved over to the little par-3 course they
had at the driving range and I quickly learned the importance of hitting greens, developing a
short-game and the need to master a whole other part of the game - PUTTING. Almost
immediately, I knew instinctively that I was a pretty good reader of greens and my years of
trying to master bowling had carried over to putting and I quickly became a better than
average putter - by finding a spot along the intended line of the putt and trying my best to
roll the ball over that spot. That ability has served me pretty nicely for well over a quarter
of a century.
Fast forward about 5 years (I was busy nurturing a growing love between myself and my high
school sweetheart, Linda) - and "going through the motions" - first, at The University of
Notre Dame and then Albright College - since I didn't make the football team at ND as a
walk-on, I was a little bit lost to say the least - I still didn't know what I wanted to be when
I grew up. During this period of my life, I knew that marriage was on the horizon
(much to my delight) and I was pretty heavily involved in the local music scene - playing
bass guitar and singing lead for "the area's best band" - "Third Stream" - all the while inside
of me, the golfing seed was germinating and when the responsibilities of marriage and
seeking and finding gainful employment had been taken care of, I found myself devoting
almost every free minute to my new favorite "sport"... golf! Realizing that I was getting
hooked on this new challenge, I did as I always do when tackling something relatively new
to me - I purchased my first golf instruction book, "295 Golf Lessons by Billy Casper".
The book cost me $2.95 cents and, looking back years later, I don't think I could have made
a much better choice.
The book was published in 1973 and it is a very straight-forward, easy read that covers,
pretty much, all aspects of the game. I think it would be useful to anyone from a raw
beginner (as I was) to a seasoned golfer. Mr. Casper, through a series of nice drawings
and simple explanations, guides you through all of the steps necessary to successfully pull
off most of the shots you will face in a round of golf.
I was now 22 years old and it was time to graduate from the par-3 course and I set my sights
on a course that is a favorite among many golfers in my neck of the woods, 'Arrowhead' golf
course in Douglassville, Pa. My prominent memories of that first full round were that, number
one, I beat brother Joe and number two, I shot an 84 in my first official 18 hole round
(I counted them all and did not improve my lies.) You would think that I would have been
pretty happy with that (I didn't know any better)... I knew that par was 71 and I somehow
managed to miss that by a whopping 13 shots... I was not a real happy camper. So I set out
to improve my game and get those scores down to, or below, par. It didn't take long. Since I
was under 30 years old, I joined the local country club (Brookside CC) as a junior member
(the only way I could have afforded it) and I now had a venue that suited me perfectly in my
quest to "master" the game.
Brookside is a grand old dame, built in 1916 by course architect, William Gordon, and is
similar to many parkland type courses built in those days. At full length, Brookside will only
stretch to about 6700 yards. The fairways are a mix of tight and generous and if the
greenskeeper wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, the rough can be nearly unplayable.
Additionally, the greens are relatively small and undulating - some are severely sloped and
they can be wicked fast if desired - all in all, not a bad place to take my "graduate" course in
golf. I won't spend too much more time about my year's at Brookside except to highlight what
events stick out in my mind while I was there. I was known as a maniacal range ball hitting
machine. You know the big bucket that they use to fill the small buckets with so that people
can practice... well, MY bucket was the BIG one - the motherlode - the bucket that filled all
those tinier buckets. In hindsight, my practice was more quantity than quality (the ignorance
of youth) but the effort did pay off somewhat. In my first year at Brookside, I lost in the finals
of the club championship to an older member by the name of Ed Ermisch... (he had won the
championship numerous times).
The funny thing about losing to Ed was an incident that took place earlier during that first full
year. We played what they called our "team matches" which pits one, two or more teams from
one country club against similar skill level teams from another country club. I forget who we
were playing on this particular Sunday but I remember that Mr. Ermisch and I were the number
two and number one players for Brookside and on about the fourth or fifth hole (it was a fairly
long par-5), I managed to hit the green in 2 shots to increase the lead I already established
over my opponent. Walking towards the green, Ed shook his head and said "man, I'm not even
going to waste my time with the club championship this year".... he was already conceding
victory to me and I realize now that he was probably pulling that wiley old veteran trick of
lulling your opponent into a false sense of security. Through some late hole heroics, timely
putting and stupid rookie mistakes on my part, old Ed beat me one up in that club
championship. I did manage to win 3 out of the next 6 championships though - it seemed I hit
my stride every other year ('74', '76', '78') and I could never figure out why, except to say that
I foolishly expected to win every time out but the cold, hard fact is, some very fine golfers just
outplayed me at the right time and as I painfully learned (but found VERY hard to accept), in
golf, you are probably going to lose more times than you win and if you can't learn that early
on - and let it inspire & not frustrate you, you are in for a miserable life in golf... so, I did the
only thing that made sense to me at the time... I went right back to that extremely large
bucket of balls, determined to do everything in my power to increase my chances of winning
the next time out!
CLARIFICATION:
As you may have noticed if you read the above paragraphs, there is an obvious gaping hole
between those par-3 rounds and my first full 18 holes. Besides the driving range with the
par-3 course, there were several smaller ranges in our area. One of my favorites was a small
place that could have served as the dirt-encrusted range in "Tin Cup" - except that this
particular range was basically built on swampland and had those old range mats that look like
they had been around since the days of Tommy Armour and Walter Hagen. If you were lucky,
you could find a little patch of what resembled grass and hit from there. The place was run
by an older, darkly-tanned, leather-skinned, calloused-handed pro by the name of Jack
Robinson.
Maybe because I was his most regular customer and didn't seem to mind that a lot of the golf
balls he had were not complete spheres, Mr. Robinson took a liking to me. He gave me some
informal lessons (the most important of which I remember was, trying to hit my iron shots
under an imaginary piece of string about 3 feet in front of me and maybe a foot off the ground).
I truly enjoyed my time spent with Jack and he loved to tell me about his old days on
"The Tour" (I chose to believe everything he said, whether real or imagined). In particular,
he spoke of rounds played with Ben Hogan and how Mr. Hogan was not only physically better
than everyone else but he also had them all beat on that six inch course - the one between
our ears. Jack actually "lent" me my first real set of irons. They were a set of Wilson Staff
Dyna-Power irons - 1-iron thru wedge and they had a swingweight of E-6 (I never found out
why he had them set up so heavy but it may explain why, for many years into the future,
fellow golfers would ask me "how do you hit the ball so far when it seems like you hardly
exert yourself"?). Well, I hit countless thousands of shots with those clubs and they
eventually felt like extensions of my arms... I don't know if I have ever hit purer and more
solid golf shots with any of the dozens of sets I've owned since.
If you are paying attention, yes, my golf for a few years was limited to driving ranges and
that little par-3 course. Even I find it hard to explain why it took so long for me to eventually
step up to a big boy course. Maybe my formative years help explain why I was, at least for
the first 10 or 15 years, a very good iron player, a good short game guy (I didn't want to hear
that I had "about 100 yards to the hole" - I wanted to know if it was 97 or 102) and a decent
driver of the ball. I hit a draw on almost every shot back them (OK, a lot of them were
HOOKS) and that tendency would rear it's ugly head more than once in the years to come -
usually with catastrophic results. Well, I eventually outgrew the swamp and returned those
old beauties to Mr. Robinson... it was time to take the next big step!
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About me
