My Lesson with Roger Gunn

Sorry that I couldn't come up with a more clever title and that I had to resort to a cheap take off of a miserable movie called My Dinner with André that I hope never to see again. I know that you've all come to expect more from me. Anyway, taking a golf lesson is a lot like going to the dentist: No one goes because they want to.

I never had any delusions about becoming a great player. My own playing ambitions are really pretty modest. I want to hit the ball solidly and I would like to qualify for the US Amateur Public Links. To do this, I'd have to shave enough strokes to get my handicap down to the mid 8s from the mid 10s. But, I digress...

My game fell apart right around the time I got divorced, though I cannot be sure of any direct association. The horrors came on fast and hung on tight. Out of nowhere I lost my back swing. It almost felt like someone else was taking the club back for me and not the way that I wanted. It felt like the top of my back swing got lost in the woods and it quickly became impossible to find a way to start the down swing toward the ball with any kind of flow. That's a lousy feeling. Once your back swing is lost it takes so many corrections to re-simplify that which has become all too complicated for the result to be a solidly struck ball.

Amazingly, some balls were hit solidly. Still, the entire event became so convoluted that swinging the club had become a genuinely painful process. Playing a round was possible, but not enjoyable. Practicing was impossible. The feeling of physical madness that had contaminated my full swing was quickly making its presence known in simple practice swings, and shorter shots. At times, I could even feel it during chips and long puts. I kid you not...

Part of the problem is that we tend to muddle on. Golf imparts an odd mixture of fatalism and optimism. Players really believe that they can figure out their flaws but somewhere in the depths of their souls they know that other, possibly more serious, problems will always be lurking nearby.

Finally, and out of desperation, I tried a couple lessons. I was looking for someone who not only knew the golf swing but also had the conversational skills to clearly convey what he knew and also to understand what I was saying to him. So much of my life is about words yet I know that words can often get in the way. Still, words are indispensable tools in both golf and life.

I took lessons from two local guys. One is something of a local legend and the other is a humble pro from a local executive course. The legend was useless, and I do not say that with any rancor. He was simply a guy who had decided long ago that he was going to give every golfer the same prescription. He had found his nectar and he poured it freely.

The second guy was a gem of a person, though he just couldn't get me going in the right direction. We could have talked for hours about golf and life, he was just such a fine and genuine guy. Something about the evil move that had taken root in me just escaped him. He could almost see what was going on but it just couldn't find a way to address it. It was frustrating to both of us. He really wanted to help and I really wanted to be helped. Still, he is a man that I happily count as a friend and a really good teacher of the game.

For months I tried to dissemble my swing in the backyard. I learned some interesting things. I learned that a comparatively weak left hand (the hand itself not my left hand grip) made me tend to open the blade far too quickly on the way back. I learned this when I realized that if I tried to hit chips with my left hand only I would usually shank the ball. When I focused on keeping blade square, just few inches longer, I developed a whole new feeling for the position of the left hand as it moves away from the ball. I also learned that my balance had been compromised and I have started to work to increase my lower body stability and regain as much balance as I can.

Still, I gradually became aware that the basic fault was far too ingrained for me to beat it by myself. My greatest fear was that the fault would become a permanent effect and that I'd be just another guy with a game shattering fault who just scraped it around. I had heard about Roger Gunn quite a bit over the years. He's about my age and played a lot of competitive golf in the Los Angeles area. Roger has taught PGA Tour players and Hollywood types but would he be up to the challenge that I brought to him?

Roger teaches out of Tierra Rejada in Moorpark (you can read my review of the course elswhere in the blog) which is one of the newish breed of let's build a golf course on a mountain type of courses that have become so prevalent in Los Angeles County over the last decade or so. Whatever your take on Tierra Rejada as a course, the have an excellent practice facility. I met Roger out there last Friday morning and I was very impressed with the lesson.

After we shook hands and began to chat, Roger took an informal inventory of my bag. He took stock of clubs and their condition and examined their faces and soles. He reminded me of a doctor who asks you what you did over the weekend while he looks into your ears. Of course, I had to present a dissertation on my problem that would have bored lesser pros to tears but Roger listened intently and that means a lot.

Finally, the fateful moment arrived. I have hit the ball like this for so long that I have almost gotten used to it, but it stills feels lousy and the balls flies without verve or purpose. I half feared that I would hit a couple OK and that it would throw him off the scent. I needn't have worried.

After just a couple swings Roger began to speak about the importance of plane and path. Of course, I head heard and read the stuff he was saying a thousand times before. But, Roger gave a few simple examples that brought the essence of the problem to me clearly. For the next few minutes we worked on a very basic correction that involved him guiding the plane of my back swing. He reiterated that without the proper plane and path issues like tempo were irrelevant. His efforts allowed me to feel where the top of my swing had to be so that I could freely get the club on its way back to the ball.

A real strength that Roger has is to doggedly stay on point. When I asked him whether it might be helpful to work on my transition, he gently reeled me back into the issue of plane and said that if the plane was right the transition would take care of itself.

After my lesson with Roger I felt more than a glimmer of hope for the first time in a long time. I had a simple issue to work on that was basic to my swing. I also had an idea of how I had gone so far astray. It is well known that we all learn to play golf differently. Roger combines clear verbal instruction with an amazing ability to get to the most essential problem first. It would have been great had I found Roger a long time ago. I could have been on my way back to playing the way I know that I can a whole lot sooner. That said, golf is a lot like life. Sometimes we have to suffer through things for a new and better path to be clearly revealed. I'd like to thank Roger again and recommend him to anyone looking to rekindle their passion for the game. I'll be working with Roger again soon.

I need to make up for lost time if I'm going to qualify for the USGA Publinx!

An Open Letter to David Fay of the USGA

“I’m one of those who believes the ball is going farther. Only someone who is deaf, dumb and blind would say otherwise.” USGA Executive Director David Fay / GolfWorld 3/7/03

(Editor’s Note: While preparing this article for egolfweekly (a sadly defenct golf journal that used to run my golf pieces), I stumbled across this quote from the recipient of the letter you will soon be reading. The words caused me to stare at the page slack-jawed, reading the quote again and again. This came from the man who heads the very agency charged with the maintenance of our game and he was just now figuring this out. How could he and the USGA be counted on to lead when they appear so utterly out of touch? Reading this quote did nothing but galvanize my quest to make the USGA confront its shortcomings and emerge as a true proponent of the game and its members. This open letter to Fay makes my case and provides a series of suggestions intended to enrich the debate about the USGA’s direction and effectiveness. I hope you enjoy it...PC)

Dear Mr. Fay

As a USGA member and lover of golf I have been moved to write Golf Journal editor Brett Avery about what I have perceived as the shortcomings of the USGA Journal and now find myself unable to contain my vigor in writing to you about some issues as well. Among the more troubling aspects of the USGA is its pervasive East Coast bias, and I do not only refer to the sites of the US Opens (though I will get to that in time). I read the Journal from cover to cover each month and I am continually struck by the fact that whether it’s the A Great Golf Hole feature or a player profile the bias is all too clear. Of course, the USGA’s home is in the East, so this can hardly be too surprising; yet what percentage of the USGA’s members call home West of the Mississippi. I would bet that it is 50% or better.

The USGA’s Golf Journal: Not of, by, or for The People?

Beyond geography, I believe that the Journal also fails to place enough emphasis on the average player (and ergo average USGA member). Here is an excerpt of my letter to Mr. Avery:

As regular reader of Golf Journal and a devoted member of the USGA I’d like to share a perspective that I’ve developed. While I enjoy each issue, I have been struck with what I feel to be a lack of emphasis on the rank and file USGA members as subject matter. Instead the magazine seems to emphasize the rarefied experiences of those who are either famous for their play or for success in other fields. We have even been privy to articles on the courses that the famous play. The last two of the series “My Home Course” featured the courses of Annika Sorenstam and Andy Williams. In this issue we read of Babe Ruth’s passion for golf. Last summer it was splashy pictures of former tennis great, Ivan Lendl’s foray into professional golf. I will hazard that USGA members care little about professional tennis players who have discovered golf, and even less about their hapless careers as professional golfers. (Note from PC: This pattern continues in a recent issue where we read of Ozzie Smith’s love of the game and in the January/February issue wherein we learn that movie stars, both past and present, enjoy golf. Surprise, surprise.)

My point is that golf ought to be a pursuit of personal experience first and an exercise in hero worship or spectating a distant second. The common golfer is the heart and soul of the USGA, and its financier as well. Where is their story presented as anything more than an afterthought? I am the first to admit that these may be difficult stories to tell in an interesting way, but that’s the basic challenge of your role as editor. I will go so far as to contend that the few articles that Golf Journal does publish on real golfers playing real courses are of the most enduring appeal. I’m thinking particularly of the superb March/April 1999 piece “Desert Stormers.”

Is it not somewhat ironic that it was Golf World which featured a fine article on the winner of the U.S. Mid-Amateur, Greg Puga? As you know his Mid-Am win gained him a spot in the 2001 Masters field. The article focuses on the facts that Puga lives in one of the most gang ridden parts of Los Angeles and caddies at the Bel-Air CC to keep his playing dreams alive. That an article like this is more likely to appear in Golf World, a for profit publication, than Golf Journal should come as a surprise, but does not.

My intent is to push you towards making Golf Journal the publication that it can and should become. You obviously have great resources at your disposal, and a talented staff. The first step is to recognize that the USGA is an association made strong by its members, both the well known & the unknown. You will be at your best when you strive to tell the whole story of American golf. Often times that will be the story of the humblest player on an anonymous course playing our game. I’m sure that you get my feelings, but remain only modestly hopeful that the Journal will ever more closely mirror its members.

(A Note from PC: It seems that the USGA has seen fit to pull the plug on Golf Journal. According to Fay the decision “is primarily driven by the rapidly changing nature of communications vehicles through which we provide and receive our news.” Ah, the wit to write! If anyone has a clue to what Fay means by this, please email me. It seems that the USGA is about to unveil a new publication called, “Inside the Ropes” and a rose by any other name...well you know the rest.)

What Makes a US Open?

On to the US Open...The fodder here is an interview that you did with Golf Digest (not a periodical that I usually read, got an issue as a freebie). In it you admit the bias toward Eastern courses, but maintain (with the aid of a quote by Jerry Pate) that the reality is justified by the fact that the good courses are all in the East. Without intending to be silly, can we define good? Is Bethpage great in the same way that Pebble Beach is great? Doesn’t the USGA really just want a good competition? If it does then the competition could be at the local muny and as long as the players are good the results will be exciting. The linksland and the heather evolved into the Old Course, early US courses were built on land rich in trees, so trees became a hazard that was (at least for a while) unique to US courses. The reality is that the great courses of the US are not viewed as kindly in the home of our game. San Francisco’s Olympic Club, with its overhanging trees, is not a classic course in the same sense as The Old Course. But, the evolution of American golf (and our courses) is far from complete: The USGA casts itself as an anachronism when it plays its competitions on the same courses again and again. Ours is a new country yet the USGA wants history to stop where it’s comfortable and preserve a status quo that may not always be worth saving.

The fact is that there are a wealth of good and a few great courses in California and that’s without talking about Pebble Beach. Besides Torrey Pines, there is the Wilson Course at Griffith Park (sort of a West Coast Bethpage sans the $2-3 million that the USGA coughed up). What about Riviera? What about the Los Angeles Country Club? How about Valencia Country Club? When the Nissan Open was held there, while the Senior Tour had their run over at Riviera, there was many a tour player that spoke to the local media about Valencia being a better site than Riviera. I mention Valencia to segue into my next point. A good course becomes a great course only with time and history. Until the USGA expands their rota, we can be assured that the US Open will be played again and again on the same courses. It reminds me very much of the virtuoso condemned for playing and recording the same classical cycles again and again for lack of new material.

How We Define Great Courses

We are lucky that in the game of golf there are always great new courses just waiting for us to discover and appreciate them. What about The Stadium Course at PGA West? Is it a great course in the making or merely a difficult one? The PGA Tour thought enough of it to select it as the site for the Q-School Finals. How will the USGA measure up to this challenge? Is it not more important for our national championships to be contested at sites that represent the width and breadth of our nation than to adhere to some dubious and often arcane criteria that matter only to a very few? It’s interesting to me that Bethpage had only to look to the USGA, another East Coast institution, to source the needed funds for its Open makeover while it was the San Diego County locals who had to come up with the money for Torrey Pines to even be considered by the USGA. The denial of a deep and pervasive East Coast bias within the USGA is all but impossible to argue. And, with my glossy new USGA 2003 Calendar just out of the plastic I can see that 11 of the 12 months highlight a USGA Championship played East of the Mississippi. Perhaps the USGA membership should have a vote to create a USGA West so that we can feel at least somewhat connected to the governing body of our beloved game.

The Equipment Debacle: Is the USGA Leading or Lost?

I see golf at a crossroads of sorts, and frankly wonder whether the USGA is up to the task as it is the only entity that has a chance to ensure that the best aspects of our game endure. The current equipment debacle, which you describe in the interview and the USGA’s Black Hole of Calcutta, is a prime example. Any bashing by the media that the USGA has suffered has been deserved. The plain reality is that the technology being employed to build golf clubs and balls is not rocket science, though the club marketeers would like us to believe otherwise. What we are seeing now is a convergence of stronger players and better equipment against the constant (for the most part) of the golf course. This brings me to one of my most essential points.

Lengthening holes at the Open is not the answer. For an Open set up the answer lies largely in the width of the fairways, the stoutness of the rough and the severity of the hazards. You had an inkling of this fact when you lamented the pristine conditions at Bethpage in favor of a little more scruffiness. This begs the questions of whether fairways, greens and bunkers must always be kept in lab grade condition. Still, I like your terminology...why didn’t you make this “scruffiness factor” clear to the superintendent at The Black and introduce yet another gun in the USGA’s arsenal in the battle of skills over technology? I know why: You didn’t want to suffer the whining of the players. How sad. One of a golfer’s favorite pleasures is listening to PGA players whine about severe conditions, or bumps on the pool table like greens that they play week in and week out. If not by the USGA and if not at the Open, such a gambit may never be attempted. At this point, the deck seems overwhelmingly stacked in favor or the players of great skill. One even wonders how many more big putts are made because the tournament greens are not being accidentally aerated by thousands of metal spikes. The point is that there are many ways to ensure that the playing field remains level and that length is simply the most common method employed. The problem with forced carries of 265 yards is that it is far more indicative of power than skill.

Who, exactly, is the USGA afraid of when they elect to have players tee off both the 1st and the 10th at the Open? Your reasoning is just so plainly inconsistent on this point that I am truly troubled. In one sentence you are rightly stating that the USGA should have taken Hogan up on his invitation to have the USGA to penalize him for slow play. I revere Hogan’s record and fine play, but the USGA should have nailed him just as you should nail the Open competitors who cannot maintain a reasonable pace of play. Instead, the USGA lets everyone off the hook with the 1st/10th solution. How will we ever know if these guys can play on pace and play well? More importantly, how is the lesson that pace of play is important to all of us ever driven home?

From your interview: “The setup for a typical tour stop is much closer to a US Open than it would have been 30 years ago, so the Open system isn’t as much of a shock as it might have been 25, 30, or 40 years ago.” You must be kidding. Without checking my facts, I am confident that the scoring differential between the Open and the average tour stop has increased, if anything, over the last 25 years. Even with PGA scoring records being each passing week, I am still confident that the 2003 US Open scores will be among the highest of the season.

It was recently reported that overall distances in the professional game are up 7% in the last decade. Isn’t this enough to convince you that all of the “conforming” balls that the USGA has approved are beating the initial velocity test somehow? It is an easy matter to address the issue of COR, but the reality is that the distance gains go beyond the high COR drivers and into the less technology enhanced irons. Perhaps after decades of his words being ignored it is time to really listen to Jack Nicklaus...It’s the ball.

Perhaps while the USGA and the R&A were quibbling over the .830-.863 COR issue they should have been trying to figure out a more relevant and illustrative ball test. Instead, the two bodies incurred the wrath of their faithful members by appearing to take away new clubs that might have helped the average player better enjoy his game. All the while, the ball has kept flying farther and farther

What is clear is that the ball makers know something that the USGA doesn’t and that the knowledge is not that hard to attain (after all, pretty much all of the proline balls offer similar distances). The question remains whether the USGA can be responsive enough to figure things out (or, to employ or contract with those who can) and then act to gain control over something that is so very basic to the game of golf. There is simply no precedence for a 7% increase in any sport within such a short time. A 63 year old Nicklaus was quoted in GolfWorld as saying, “Twenty-five years ago into the wind I had to crank my best to get it over the water at 18 (at Doral’s no longer very monstrous Blue Monster). Here I am an old man, and I drove it over the water with ease. That’s crazy.” Crazy it is, but is it enough to rouse the USGA and propel them into the 21st century? Not yet.

I can remember Tiger Woods saying way back in 1997 that he wanted to use his influence to make golf look more like America. In a similar spirit, I would like the USGA to look and act more like its membership. The USGA often does fine work in its role as keeper of the rules, and in its turf grass research, etc. My annual dues are paid happily. Now, I would like the USGA to become something more...become as strong and as vital as your members, be they from the East or the West, young or old, scratch player or hack.

Step one: Perhaps a split of power at the Journal’s editorial offices to make certain that it represents all parts of our country with equal zeal. I fear that people in the East lose sight of the scope and vitality of the West, not just here in California, but throughout the region, where golf is played the year round.

Step two: Make a concerted and fresh effort to find appropriate sites for USGA events which are not sites of past championships. Why not make such a list, along with the advantages and disadvantages of each, available to the USGA membership? As we move into the new millennium let the membership have some voice in determining which qualities ought define a USGA championship venue . Each USGA event ought be the people’s championship, first.

A USGA Classic Championship: A Chance for Nostalgia & Perspective

Step three: Here is an idea that I will guess has not been seriously proposed until now: Create a new USGA Classic Championship. This event will be played on some course which has hosted a USGA championship but has since come to be seen as obsolete due to gallery access or lack of length. The qualification process would be identical to that of the US Open. The big difference would be that the event would be played with golf equipment consistent with the era wherein the course hosted the actual US Open. Further, the courses could only be set-up using maintenance equipment available during the respective era. Now, without one new rule on COR the USGA could illustrate in a wonderfully educational and entertaining way how the game has indeed progressed and how it has remained the same. Moreover, it would allow some of those great old courses another shot at glory and let younger people see where Hogan hit his legendary approach at Merion and a vast collection of other great shots that have been consigned to ancient history by the form of our modern game.

The final issue that I would like to raise concerns the decision to relocate some if not all of the artifacts that have previously been displayed at Golf House to Manhattan’s Russian Tea Room. Am I the only one who sees this as an amazingly huge missed opportunity? Why not establish a West Coast Golf House and bring the USGA’s treasures into the view of the fastest growing and most diverse region of our nation? To instead choose a site that is no more than 50 miles from the one that has housed this collection for the last 30 years is simply shortsighted and geocentric.

A Friendly but Earnest Challenge

I again challenge the USGA, its officers and publications, to honestly evaluate its representation of its members. This is a challenge that I would imagine each of you would be happy to undertake. This makes your apparent disinterest or unwillingness to do so all the more disturbing and hard to understand.

My hope is that your response to my points will be most illuminating.

(Note: After a few weeks, Mr. Fay did reply: His response was terse, humorless and distinctly unenlightened.)

The Joy of Meltdowns

Please understand that I have always liked Suzann Pettersen. She's been a special favorite if mine ever since she dropped the F-Bomb while being interviewed during the Solheim Cup a few years back. The slip showed humanity and passion all at once, and I like that in a professional golfer.

So, I found myself quietly rooting for Pettersen as she seemed destined for major championship glory at this weekend's Kraft Nabisco Championship (or, The Dinah, to those who really know LPGA golf and care about its founders). The problem was that Morgan Pressel would just not go away and Petterson's driver just would not stay in the fairway.

I pray for meltdowns in golf the way a NASCAR fan prays for the tortured sheet metal of multi-car pileups. While golf is in some ways the very worst spectator sport, in other ways it is far and away the best. With the right players and the right course the drama and human angst can approach the level of a Greek tragedy. A mere TV viewer can be witness to the kind of emotional and physical collapse that we all hope we'll never have to endure ourselves.

Pettersen's collapse started with her driver, spread to her putter and finally even to her short irons and wedges. She's a stoic, simmering player by nature, she is from Norway afterall, so at first not a lot of her trials could be seen on her face. Panic never set in, but a lot of despair was evident as the situation grew more dire. When her drive went left on 18, which eliminated going for the par 5 in 2, she looked a bit like a person who has just been in a fender bender, shocked but not injured.

But, when her wedge 3rd left her a 25 footer for birdie to tie, Pettersen looked shaken. After leaving the downhiller short, her self-immolation was complete.

The proceedings were depressing enough that my friend would not watch the replays of Pettersen's downfall. That reaction got me wondering why I like to watch meltdowns so much?

The answer came to me after a while: I like to watch really good players get knocked down to see if they can get up again. Most do while some appear to recover but never make it all the way back. Phil Mickelson's US meltdown was brief, just one hole, but his full recovery is far from assured. Mark Calcavecchia maintains that his game never really recovered after his epoch defeat at the Kiawah Island War by the Shore, also known as the 1991 Ryder Cup. Now, bear in mind that since 1991 Calcavecchia has won more than 10 PGA tour events yet the wound has never healed, at least to him. It makes you wonder what his career would look like had he won his match? Did the crushing loss really hurt his game or is it possible that in some strange way the defeat added some wins to a fine résumé? No one will ever know for sure.

Perhaps this is one of the things that keeps Tiger Woods from being a player who long time lovers of the game can warm up to. He's never really had to exorcise any demons. Ben Hogan ducked hook his way out of the game before he learned to tame it into his legendary controlled fade. Bobby Jones suffered the self-induced ignominy of walking off the course, during the British Open off all things, when his un-contained temper caused his game to temporarily vanish. That's why the cheers for Phil Mickelson will always be warmer than those for Woods. We can sense Mickelson's weaknesses as readily as we can see his brilliance.

One of the wonderful things about golf, for both hacks and pros, is the sense of newness that comes from each first tee. If we could all free ourselves from our memories of past failings and see each new round, and each new shot as truly new we'd all be better players.

Suzann Pettersen will have a hard time forgetting the way she played on the back nine last Sunday. She will think about what went wrong and she will wonder how she'll play the next time both glory and humiliation are knocking on the door. But, the point is that she will play again. A 25 year old player with her game will find a way to look ahead and imagine more good shots than bad ones. In golf, the trick is to play without fear of failure or success.