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It was déjà vu all over again. Wednesday afternoon, on the driving range, at the PGA Championship, searching for a swing that would hit the ball within 10 yards of where I was aiming while traveling at least 260 yards in the air. And when hadn’t I been looking for that? No time I could remember: only now it was, once again, paramount that I find it, and quickly.
It is one thing to play a 6900 yard golf course with 35 yard wide fairways flanked by light to moderate rough, fair sized greens that were somewhat receptive to decent shots that rolled at moderate speeds: on such a course you don’t really have to strike your ball with excellence at every turn. There are ways to recover, ways to follow a mediocre shot with a good one that makes up 100 % for the mediocre one. Ways to extricate yourself from a particularly heinous shot and perhaps not lose any shots to par. On such a course great ball striking will produce many birdie opportunities, and if the putter is hot, very low scores. And if you hit the ball abominably, you still have a chance to scrape out a decent score, at least to keep it around par.
This is most definitely not the case at the PGA Championship. I did play one normal golf course in 1995, when a soft Riviera gave up a winning score of 18 under par and an even par cut line. That venue played under 7000 yards, with less than penal rough and soft greens, and I found myself able to get it around (with a steady putter) well enough to make the cut. My next PGA, in 1999 at Medinah, was decidedly different, as were the last three, at Atlanta Athletic Club, Hazeltine, and then Oak Hill. All of these courses are brutal. In my universe “brutal” is any course which has the length to force you to hit driver most of the time, and the tightness, through rough or hazard, to also force you to hit it straight. The hardest thing to do in golf is to hit the ball both straight and long, and that is what separates the very best from the merely excellent. When the penalties are severe off the tee everyone wants to gear back and make sure the ball ends up in the fairway. When the hole is 460 this is not an option, at least for someone like me who flies it no more than 260 yards in the air.
The neat thing, though, is that if you can fly it 260 and you can hit it where you are aiming most of the time you can play any course the governing bodies can come up with. I saw that first hand on Monday at Oak Hill when I was privileged to play 18 holes with US Open champion Jim Furyk, just me and him. Getting the game was a matter of fortunate timing: I went out on Monday morning to register and play with a club pro friend of mine, and when he went out earlier than we had planned I was left without a playing partner. I wasn’t worried, as over the years I had managed to conjure up nice games, some planned and some spur of the moment. The players I have played with include David Duval, Corey Pavin, Mark O’Meara, John Cook, Craig Stadler, Jay Haas, Loren Roberts, Bob Estes, Jeff Sluman, Fred Funk, Steve Lowery, and Billy Andrade.
I got to the range to warm up at about 10 o’clock, and I set up in a spot right next to Furyk, who, with a long iron in his hand, appeared to be at the end of his session. I had played with Jim at the Erie Charity Classic some 5 years ago, but I wasn’t sure if he remembered me. As I contemplated my next move I went through my bag quickly, figuring that if I finished at roughly the same time as he did I might be able to insert myself into his game. I hesitated for a moment, weighing the sting of possible rejection against getting to play with the current U.S. Open champion, and then found myself saying hello and after finding that he remembered my name, asking if he was going to play (“yes”) and if he had a game (“no”). Seizing the opportunity I then asked if it would be O.K. if I joined him, and when he said yes to that as well I had lined up another great PGA memory.
Watching Furyk was like watching a surgeon at work. It reminded me of what golf is really all about: having precise control of distance and direction, not bashing the ball 300 yards in the air. I am constantly worried that I am not long enough, and have as my goal a consistent 265 yard carry off the tee. I asked Jim how far he carried his drives, and he said that he was “comfortable” driving it over anything 260 yards out or less. The key to ball strikers like Furyk and Fred Funk is that since they hit the ball so straight they can play lines that shorten every dogleg and find the side of the fairway that affords the best shot into the green. Both guys have increased their distance recently, as has just about every player on the Tour, but it’s their ability to hit the ball where they are aiming and long enough that has made them so successful. I was quite pleased to find that I was no more than 10 yards behind Jim on most drives, and that I was even with him on at least a couple of occasions. That is, when I hit the ball straight. While he was hitting virtually every fairway, about half the time I teed off my old nemesis showed up, the high, weak block to the right, short and well into the 6 to 8 inch hay that lined every fairway.
I was certainly paying fairly close attention to Jim, but this was my first practice round as well and there were a lot of unknowns that I was hoping to make known before Thursday’s first round. I had come into the week not having played much the entire year, due partly to a thin schedule of spring and early summer events, and also the ongoing illness of my wife’s mother, the seriousness of which had me asking her if she wanted me to withdraw altogether and just stay home. Jennifer wanted me to play, but I told her that if anything happened while I was gone I would come home immediately.
When I don’t play in tournaments, and I believe this is probably a general truth in the game, I really don’t know whether or not the things I have been working on are the right things. It takes putting some heat on your game to see how it is functions in the face of added stress. I am always trying to improve my ball striking, and recently that struggle has taken on more urgent tones as the quality of my hitting has deteriorated. In May of 2002 I hurt my back so severely that by September I was done for the year, unable even to take advantage of 4 Tour exemptions I had earned by winning the National Club Pro the year before. My recovery has been slow, but with the help of my trainer and therapist Charlie McMillin I feel ready to make a renewed effort to swing the club correctly, which, unfortunately, requires physical abilities that I have not, up to now, possessed. But I’m getting there, and as I feel better physically and am able to hit more balls I can see a quantum leap in my ball striking in the near future.
The PGA was the first tournament in quite a while that I did not have qualms about my body as I prepared to go. My friend Mark Diamond, who jumped on the opportunity to get away from Wall Street and the schizophrenic market, had been on my bag for three out of the four previous PGAs in which I had played. He had a plan for me: I was not allowed to play three 18-hole practice rounds, and my ball beating would be limited to an hour sometime after the round. Well, trying to get me off the range when I’m feeling good enough to practice and hitting it woefully less well than the course demanded is an impossible task, and I ruined The Golf Channel’s lead in with David Duval when they had to say “David Duval, the second to the last player to leave the practice tee on Wednesday evening… Guess who was last? I watched as the cameramen changed position to get Duval in the picture leaving the range without me in the background: wouldn’t want anyone to know that some club pro was either more dedicated or more desperate.
I had been in the process of making some changes to my swing, which I had gotten totally fed up with at the National Club Pro. Yes, I had finished 13th, but I’m sure the guys I played with mentioned afterward that they had no idea how I had shot such decent scores. A hole-in-one in the third round, after starting 2 over after three, had jump started me and four of the most ridiculous up-and-downs you’ve ever seen on the first five holes saved me the last day. I was crossing the line at the top and getting the shaft behind my hands on the approach to impact, and the result was erratic ball flight and distance control. My driving was especially bad, as I had gotten both shorter and more crooked, not the combination you would want on hard courses.
When I got back from the tournament I was happy to have qualified for the PGA, but I knew I had a lot of work to do. That work for me happens at lunch and/or after finishing teaching. In the past I have been able to hit the ball decently and play well in spite of my limited playing time, but I felt that I simply had to hit more balls if I were going to make this thing better. It may not be the best thing to hit a lot of balls if you have no idea what you are doing, but if you do actually have a clue there is no substitute for repetition, and that means beating balls. Probably the truest thing Ben Hogan ever actually said was that the “secret” to hitting the ball well was to be found “in the dirt”.
It was still somewhere in the dirt when I left for Rochester, but I did have the grand idea of going back to a swing type (longer, flatter, and more catchy at the top) that I had gradually moved away from over 4 or 5 years. In other words, my “Hogan” swing. I have been a Hogan fanatic forever, and I have at times attempted to figure out and copy his motion. I also decided to go back to a square (toe-line parallel to the target-line) stance, instead of the open stance I had adopted some four years earlier. Heading to Oak Hill I felt like I could do what I was picturing in my mind, and I was committed to making it work.
I knew something was amiss on the front nine on Monday, and by the 16th hole Furyk could stand it no longer and asked me if I minded him making a suggestion. I marveled at his humility and assured him that it was fine, he should go ahead and suggest away, and he postulated that my driver was not producing enough spin and that I was hanging back in order to keep it up in the air. I was definitely struggling with the big stick so I thanked him for his advice, and for actually paying attention to what I was doing, and after the round got together with Daryl Dyte of Taylor-Made and hit about 15 different drivers until I found one that worked better. Of course, that didn’t cure the problems my swing was producing, and my Tuesday game with Fred Funk and club pros Rob Labritz and Jeff Lankford again had me hitting the driver out of play on far too many holes. What was especially aggravating was that I was hitting it quite well on the range warming up, but as soon as I got out to the course I was pathetic. The same thing happened Wednesday playing with Fred again, and this time I stopped after 9 holes and went back to the house to take a nap. I was in trouble, and I didn’t feel like shooting 85 on Thursday.
It was apparent that I needed to go back to something familiar, so when we got back out to the course after my nap I junked what I was doing and went back to standing well open to the ball. I forgot about trying to flatten and lengthen my swing and just tried to do something I could relate to so that I could drive the ball into the fairway. I hit some better shots, and retired to the range where I outlasted Duval as the sun sank slowly in the West. I left the course knowing I had given it my best effort, and that whatever happened on Thursday was going to be as good as I could expect. Playing in these things as a part-part time player is stressful and fascinating at the same time. I truly don’t want to play poorly, and it always amazes me how much I learn when I am forced to look hard at my game to see why it doesn’t measure up to the toughest of conditions. I have always had the “knack” for the game that is so essential to play at a high level, but physically I had never been able to make my swing good enough and consistent enough to play on a Tour level.
Not being able to play well enough was the one and only reason I stopped playing and started teaching, and I still consider myself a player moonlighting as a teaching pro. Not that this is a bad thing, though. I just think that playing is the ultimate expression of love for the game, and that competition is the ultimate test of the player’s technique as well as his heart and character. It continues to amaze me how many of the game’s top-ranked teachers don’t play in competition at all. Certainly almost no one equates teaching skill with playing skill, with the notable exceptions of Lee Trevino and Gary Player, both of whom have been quoted as saying they would never think of seeking help from someone who couldn’t play. I don’t even think I would want to teach if I couldn’t play. I have never figured out anything worthwhile reading books by teaching pros or magazines full of articles by guys who can’t even hit a shot, nor have I made a career of watching other teachers teach and plagiarizing their methods and information. All my knowledge has come from sweating on the range and going through the stomach-churning endeavor that is competitive golf. I have had to think out my entire swing, and every idea I have ever had gets tested immediately on the course. It bothers me that I still have such chronic swing problems: if I know what I am doing, I should be able to do it right myself. I am dedicated to getting better, and I want more than anything to develop an uncompensated technique with which I can win at a higher level than I am on at the moment.
It kills me that finding the right combination of thoughts and actions that come together to build a great swing is such a lengthy process. It is so easy to make a wrong turn and get lost, and it then gets even tougher to get back on the right track. I was fascinated on Tuesday playing with Freddy, who I also played with in the magical first two rounds of the PGA last year at Hazeltine. He had come back from the British Open convinced that the wind and the conditions had screwed up his posture and his swing, and had suffered through 4 particularly bad tournaments the previous 5 weeks. He had then gone to Texas for a lesson from his pro, who gave him a few ideas and a couple of simple drills. Fred showed me what he was thinking about, but the only thing I knew is that every time I had ever seen him he had hit the ball straight and solid, and that if he wanted to work on anything different it probably wouldn’t make much difference. I figured it was only a matter of time before he started flushing it again.
Sure enough, after a couple really bad shots Freddy declared that he was unable to think of anything while swinging. “I’ve been out here long enough”, he told me: “I should know what I’m doing. I’m not going to think of anything for the rest of the day.” Mark and I, both teaching pros prone to thinking of everything and never quite able to hit it nearly as good as Freddy, shook out heads in amazement as we watched Fred literally empty out his mind and hit an absolute missile (at least for him) right down the middle, 15 yards in the air past his previous best of the day. I laughed at the absurdity of it all. Here was a guy so talented that he cured himself by subtracting all thought of what was supposed to make him better. And be sure to note that the key work there is “talent”. With significant talent the search becomes more for finding a way to let the talent come out rather than attempting to build anything better. I can assure you that if you think you are going to swing better by thinking of absolutely nothing (it worked for Fred: he finished 7th) you had better have been great before you started thinking in the first place.
I, on the other hand, had plenty to think about as I teed off on Thursday on the 460 yard first hole. The problem with playing in an event of this magnitude is that I had to try to keep those thoughts clear while my heart rate climbed to dangerous levels. I know why all those Top 100 and Top 50 teachers stay put on their practice ranges every time my stomach knots up before the opening drive. I put that drive into the fairway about 280 out, and I hit a 5-iron to 25 feet above the hole. Making the putt for birdie was almost anti-climatic after what I had been through during the practice rounds, and as the round unfolded I found myself doing fairly well, but ultimately falling victim to the same insufficiencies in my technique that have undone my chances in the past. After a 79 which could have been somewhat better I visited the range for another session, this one lasting 3 hours, trying to continue to advance what I had come up with during these last few days and thinking ahead to the Middle Atlantic Section CPC Championship, which was coming up on the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I felt good about the effort, and I was ready to go after it again on Friday. As it turned out I would have needed a second-round 69 to make the cut, a round I was not destined to play, as I received a call from my 11 year old daughter Friday morning telling me that my wife’s mother had passed away during the night.
As I had promised, I immediately changed my plane ticket and was back home by 3 P.M. I was able to take care of the kids while Jennifer spent the day with her father. There are times in every golfer’s career when priorities come into question, specifically whether or not the family, or the marriage, is more important than golf. I have a deep-seated desire to be successful as a player and as a teacher, and I’m sure I’ve made decisions that could be seen as putting the golf first. Jen has pounded me about making sure that I am around for the important events in out girls’ lives, and she is insistent on creating traditions and memories that will give our girls something to look back on and remind them of the love and togetherness we had as a family. In a sense she has watched out for me and has made understand that sometimes I might not see so clearly what my priorities should be. Many people have commented that it was “too bad” that Jen’s mom passed away during the tournament. I really didn’t see it that way. What’s one round of golf when compared to the importance of being there for my wife in a time of great sadness and need? I was fine with leaving, and actually felt good to make the decision to withdraw and go home. Success and money are important, but the cost of each must be evaluated against the well-being of the family.
I offered to skip the Section Championship, but since it was local and I would be home each day by mid-afternoon Jen gave me the go-ahead. I felt better about my game after the hard work I had put in at Oak Hill, and sure enough I fired a 64 in the second round at Musket Ridge to take a one-shot lead. It felt great to be in the hunt, and it felt just as bad on Wednesday when I faded to a 74 and could do no better that finish 5th. The same blocked right shots that have killed me over the past years cropped up again on 16 and 17, and I went backwards with bogies while Rick Schuller hit solid shots and made great putts to pull away for the win. The good news was that my body felt fine, and I would be able to continue to practice the physically demanding movements that I need to make to improve my swing. I will swing better and hit the ball better: you can trust me on that account. I’m getting close, and I expect a breakthrough soon. That might sound strange coming from someone with a resume’ and a reputation such as I have up to now, but I don’t believe I’ve come close to playing my best golf yet. The search is never ending, and my fascination with the game leads me ever on down the road of discovery.
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