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Brimming with wisdom, this modern classic belongs on instruction's top shelf. Expect frequent and wonderful aha's driving down those familiar stretches on the game improvement highway.
The author fled Franco's Spain, arriving in Highland Park, Illinois in 1936 as a teen. His father, Angel, Spain's first professional golfer, taught golf into his late 80's. Manuel, perennially a top 100 teacher, carries on a theme that dates to the friendship his father enjoyed with forgotten genius Ernest Jones, who pioneered a unique approach to golf which he successfully demonstrated by shooting record scores on one leg, the other having been lost in France during the First World War.
Those who had difficulty with the late Mr. Penick's homespun parables or the loose organization will find this book as forthright, if more clinically arranged. "The Ernest Jones view," he writes, "is a holistic view of the movement and it coincides with the physics of motion, velocity, and force."
The premise is explained with genuine enthusiasm, simplicity and peerless experience. De la Torre's clarity serves as a scythe wasting the accumulated clutter and disappointment of the jaded golfer. No physical or mental stone is left unturned and the good feeling is infectious. "Everything Manuel said," LPGA great Carol Mann notes, "made sense." It very much still does.
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Chasing Tiger
By Curt Sampson
Atria Books, 2002
ISBN: 0-7434-4212-1 $25
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Reclusive as Osama bin Laden and only slightly less elusive, Tiger remains a daunting subject even for one expert in unearthing treasure from sites as difficult as Ben Hogan and Augusta National. Giving Tiger his space (and affording the reader some much needed perspective of his own), we're introduced to the wake left by Tiger's tsunami, a cultural and financial phenomenon that continues to ripple through barriers with varying degrees of force, dependent largely upon Tiger's whim. Indeed, the comparison of Tiger to other modern sporting icons, notably Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan, presents a poignant discussion, albeit with many chapters as yet unwritten. (Perhaps worthy of a seat at the table, minus the physical excesses, would be the contrast to boxer Jack Johnson.)
Little wonder, though, that the young and well-mannered Charles Howell undoubtedly spoke on behalf of his PGA Tour colleagues in wishing Tiger a lengthy recovery from his off-season knee surgery. Howell is one of several of the more prominent subjects we meet who fall under Tiger's shadow on many levels. There is also the enigmatic cartoon character Frank Lickliter, as creative a walking karmic disaster and contrast as one could ask for and, back in Austin, there is also an aspiring young protégée who has so taken Tiger to heart that he tapes his fingers just so and otherwise perfectly mimics his physical mannerisms, treating a Saturday morning round on the city courses as the final round of a major. I seen the dude.
Such entertaining diversions complement an exceptional and studied treatise on Tiger Inc., particularly with his relationship with International Management Group. The exponential leap Tiger represents over anyone on the scene, including/especially his predecessors, is chastening. Palmer and Nicklaus put up their own dough and repeatedly lost big (Chinese laundries?! There's also mention of an $11M judgment Arnold never collected involving his ownership of Cadillac dealerships, etc., etc.). Now, fast forward. "Tiger risks nothing but a smile. He doesn't invest a dime in American Express, Nike, Wheaties, Disney, Buick, Tigleist/Footjoy, Upper Deck, or EA Sports. And why should he?" Why, indeed. They get his "ideas" and his "intelligence," but as Sampson concludes, "They don't get the deep concern of a man risking his own money in the big-business poker game."
Of all the improbable endorsements (Japanese coffee?), the wackiest tie-in has to be with Buick. It's one of a number of captivating threads plucked from the flotsam and jetsam of Tiger's repeated star turn. And there is also a warning. "It's like tennis was in the eighties," a collegiate player comments on the growing seriousness among aspiring tour players. Professional golf, including its top gun, had best hope the comparison ends there.
Aside from his two U.S. Open titles, the affable TV correspondent has the novel distinction of having beaned his wife with wayward drives on three separate occasions. We also learn that Tommy Bolt traveled with two pairs of slacks to avoid competing in trousers sullied by wrinkles accumulated from sitting.
These are enlightening tidbits, but when the author himself admits to severe literary first tee jitters, and the foreword contributor confesses he initially failed to see a need for such a book, the reader can be excused for wondering where's the beef. Add two on the first tee, also, for repeated misspellings of Callaway and Merion (Marion?).
There is a silver lining for those who wade through the desperately bland biographical portions. There is, for example, a through recap of the author's surgeries, and the details of that failed oil pump en route from Chicago to Madison will surely have you on the edge of your seat.
Battle scared from years of corporate outings and pro-ams, he does offer some imaginative tips. In his day, he practiced bunker shots with an 8-iron figuring that anything with a sand wedge was a piece of cake. There's also this: Take two brothers. One is aggressive, the other plays conservatively. Both play 100 rounds a year. The hard charger will record the 20 best rounds of the year. But he'll also have the 30 or 40 worst rounds. The smarter player, however, will play more consistent golf and improve more rapidly. "On a perfect day, the dummy wins. On a normal day, the smart one wins."
And this shocker: "Most practice devices don't do well because people have to actually practice with them." You think? Here's another shocker: $24.95.
A treatise into murky waters by a Canadian physician, this outpouring of frustration and introspection dates back at least to Thomas Kincaid who, during a suitably bleak January in 1687 Edinburgh, set down his own precepts of the fundamentals.
"Think about throwing a rock at a tree," the good doctor proposes. "Do you think of where your elbows are? Do you think of your wrist flexion? Do you think of shifting your weight forward? NO. The only thought you have is where do I release this rock in order for it to start toward the target. That's it. You're thinking from the rock, forward.
"I know you're thinking, "yeah, but I can hold the rock in my hand!" I know, but here's the trick: the Ball is not the rock! The Club Head is the rock!"
Actually, we were thinking more about the cumulative effects of winter-induced cabin fever in the Great White North, but the author's logic and enthusiasm are hardly more than mildly eccentric; this is golf, after all. Anyone who hasn't stayed up late designing a putter or curing an ancient evil is clearly in the minority. (For more, see Letters to the Executor.)
Among his prescriptions: less thought, generally, more concentration on the clubhead rather than on the ball, a better understanding of hooks and slices, proper tutelage, a swing directed towards the target. The search for the Grail of swing perfection continues among the humble as well as the mighty.
Perhaps the most novel suggestion is the Zen-like prescription to carry and hold a golf ball in one's hands away from the course. This will help the brain recognize the ball's weight and consistency all the better, he suggests, to discern how hard it must be struck.
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Fairway Dreams
A Decade in Professional Golf
By Lauren St. John
Mainstream Sport, 2001 (U.S. 2002)
Trafalgarsqurebooks.com
ISBN: 1-84018-368-3 $15.95
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It was an end of year comment, easily dismissed. Phillip Price was talking to BBC's Radio Five. Perhaps the longest shot of the Euros, Price, ranked 119th, as you'll recall, spanked the World No. 2 ranked player, chap named Mickelson, in the singles of the Ryder Cup. Not that it's a bad thing at all for the underdog to win - and Europe will always be the underdog, and from time to time parlay it to advantage. With the affair behind us, Price's words were one final prick at the scar tissue.
"They just don't seem to gel that well," he said, of the U.S. side. "You just never see them talking to each other. Our team room was so much fun. We were all relaxed, we were having breakfast and dinner together - everybody was just having a really nice time and they don't do that. … none of them want to speak to each other. It's like they have to play together, and maybe it shows in their play."
Of course he's right, although lest we forget Brookline where the tables were turned. But get this: the players on the European PGA Tour actually socialize and "get on" with each other, really. It brings to mind the joke about the 20 American tour players who enter a restaurant (remarkable in itself) and sit at 20 tables. The Euros wander in (it seems they even still drink alcohol). Twenty sit together at one table and midnight oil is burned. Perhaps it's changed. [Colin Montgomerie's autobiography bears this out. More on that next time.]
Tiger's on the cover of this chirpy and entirely engaging imported European PGA Tour journal, but he's a bit player. This archive goes back a few years. It's about Faldo and Simon Hobday, the young Ernie, and dozens of unsung players. Joke: Why did Seve's wife, Carmen, take so long in labor? A: Because the baby was demanding appearance money. There is lots and lots of juicy anecdotes of life on the road, including this - "My god!" reacts a bystander to a Tiger drive at the 2000 Open. One imagines a monocle dropping.
The European PGA Tour remains a backwater ("If you got upset every time something went wrong on Tour," says one veteran, "you'd be a nervous wreck.") The money's still not very good but say what you will it clearly breeds toughness. The camaraderie also helps temper what Mark Roe termed an "unnatural" lifestyle, living out of a grip, away from the family, etc. The tour, writes the author, never shy of dramatic flourishes, is "relentless, forward-looking, shallow. It takes no account of friendships, relationships, marriages, children, pets or responsibility… It is an unnatural life and a highly artificial one." All true.
The insights in this time capsule come fast and furious over the miles, long waits, rain delays, pranks, and evenings spent over a mug. As elsewhere, the good players are very good and the cream as elsewhere also rises, yet the losers are generally so much more interesting.
Light Reading - Edition I
Light Reading - Edition II
Light Reading - Edition III
Light Reading - Edition IV
Light Reading - Edition V
Light Reading - Edition VI
Light Reading - Edition VII
Light Reading - Edition VIII
Light Reading - Edition IX
Light Reading - Edition X
Light Reading - Edition XI
Light Reading - Edition XII
Light Reading - Edition XIII
Light Reading - Edition XIV
Light Reading - Edition XV
Light Reading - Edition XVI
Light Reading - Edition XVII
Light Reading - Edition XVIII
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