From the hearth: Excerpts from three memorable recent conversations. Texas Amputee Golf Association Executive Director Roy McCoy talks about the way golf helps those rebounding from the trauma of amputation.

Former National Golf Course Owners Association (NGCOA) board president Cliff Rampy on the bottom line of the real estate driven golf "boom."

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Finally, Susan Naylor of The Darrell Survey on being a fly on the teeing ground, including a conversation she recalls overhearing Bert Yancey have with Jerry McGee the day before he died.



The first voice sounded spry and more than a little bit country. Roy McCoy, in fact, is from Stephenville, Texas, southwest of Ft. Worth. He was once a pro rodeo rider. "Always been a sportsman," he says. "Never took to golf too much. I was from kind of a poor family. Had to be a member of a country club then so I didn't play much when I was a kid." He didn't play at all until his doctors suggested it. Roy had returned from Vietnam in 1965, his right leg amputated above the knee. For many years, he's run the non-profit Texas Amputee Golf Association.

McCoy: It's really designed more just to go out and meet people with the same types of limitation, and to have some fun and so if they come out and play with us. They don't really feel different and they don't feel really embarrassed about being there.

THR: Was golf was a hard sell, particularly to those, like yourself, who had no background or even any special previous interest in golf?

McCoy: You know, most of the time they receive it pretty well. The fact that someone else is standing there on an artificial leg, like I am, and I'm able to do these things. And I'm not a licensed counselor. I don't get paid or anything like that. I just tell them the truth. That life is not going to always be easy, and everything's not always going to be a bed of roses. You're gonna get blisters, pains, phantom pains and things, but you can work through them. And it helps to be active, to do things. That's the message I try to get across, see: I can do it, you can do it too. That type of thing.

[Ernest Jones, many years the head pro at Merion, comes to mind. Jones's "swing the clubhead" method was predicated on his having lost a leg in the First World War.]

THR: What's the hardest part about learning golf for these folks who are new to the game, recovering from their surgery?

Roy McCoy: I guess…of course you've got to work on your strength and stamina. That's just normal. I guess the hardest thing is that they're embarrassed to be out there. They're afraid they're going to do something wrong or somebody's gonna laugh at them, or they're not going to be able to hit it as far as anybody else. Those are very real concerns, and I tell them: 'You're probably right, but you've just got to get over it and go out and enjoy yourself, and do the best you can do.'

We say, 'You know, hit a few and if you have to ride a few holes and don't hit a few times, that's OK too.' The object is to get them out there playing.

And of course we have some guys that laugh and joke and cut up, and some of them may even hurt your feelings but they sure make you want to get better cause they make you - 'I wanna beat that guy the next time I'm out there.' They stir up the competitive juices, I guess is one way of saying it. It winds up being a lot of fun and you make lifelong friends.



The second voice sounded slightly irritated. Cliff Rampy owns the Treeline Golf Club in Tomball, Texas, near Houston. An engineer, Cliff inherited the course from his father. It's been in the family for 40 years.

A past board president of the National Golf Course Owners Association of America, he is the inaugural head of the newly formed state chapter. That Texas only recently warranted its own chapter in itself is telling. Urban areas of Texas are experiencing a golf boom - one running into record drought and what is politely called an economic downturn.

In a state all too familiar with the economic mood swings of boom and bust, Rampy is not optimistic about the "over-supply" of courses. "The irony," he says, of a real estate driven course, "is that it will never be anything other than a golf course." He means a golf course without ties - to the community, or to the game.

THR: What are the prospects going to be for all these new courses, given the economy and given the competition driven largely by real estate development?

Cliff Rampy: Well, they'll get their market share or attempt to steal market share from others, especially from golf courses that have been there for the long term, that have been developing new golfers all along through junior golf programs and league play and men's golf association activity and stuff.

And these developers will steal those golfers by lowering green fees and raising the bar, so to speak, by giving a fresh new golf course to the golfing public and getting them to come out for a value price. At some point in time that value price won't allow them to maintain the golf course the way they want it to be maintained.

THR: Bottom line?

Cliff Rampy: It's good for the consumer because he's going to get some good deals on golf and be able to play a lot of different golf courses.

The only bad thing is eventually it's going to come down to profit, and making dollars and making sense out of the dollars spent. And if maintenance budgets have to dwindle then the home owners surrounding these golf courses are going to be a little bit upset if they don't have a golf course that looks as nice as it did two years ago.

The bottom line is the oversupply is going to drive the prices down. The consumer will enjoy it. Hopefully, the consumer will go get his buddies involved and what not. Maybe more people will be attracted to the game of golf because it's more affordable and because 8:00 tee times on Saturday are easier to get now instead of waiting until 3:00 in the afternoon. Who knows? We'll see how it all shakes out.



The last voice was a little bit sleepy. It was still early on the west coast. Today it's home in LA, yesterday it was Castle Pines.

The fine print of golf ads touting this or that fantabulous club's dominance on the professional tours invariably references The Darrell Survey. The organization tracks equipment used by the pros, and now also by consumers. It's been around since the Depression. Founder Eddie Darrell was a childhood friend of Ed 'Porky' Oliver's. They grew up together in Wilmington, Delaware.

"They were all a bunch of characters," says Susan Naylor who has, since 1976, run the company with her brother. "And as Porky came out and got into the golf world, he sort of had Eddie join him. And Eddie just invented this company in order to be able to be part of it."

The players don't have any reticence about someone nosing through their bags because they help butter the bread, as Susan explains.

Susan Naylor: Not only do I check up to see whether or not someone's living according to their contract, but I also give the players an opportunity to make more money just on individual clubs. So the players cooperate because they get something out of it, if you want to know the truth. [Only if we can handle it!] I'm the middle person between the players and the manufacturers. I'm like the auditor.

THR: Are there tricks of the trade? I mean are pros playing one club on Thursday and another on Saturday?

Susan Naylor: We've done some studies on that. We found that sometimes that does happen but usually that person doesn't make the cut. Most of the people that make the cut are the people that use that equipment and don't play those games.

[Note: PGA Tour players can pocket an easy $1,200 here for using this driver or $700 there for using that putter for a day. The Darrell Survey verifies that they have indeed used the club in question. The manufacturers then cut the check.]

THR: It must be very interesting to stand right on the first tee. What a fascinating perspective.

Susan Naylor: Exactly. Sometimes the funniest things happen. I remember being on the tee one time…

It was the last time Bert Yancey ever teed off. He actually died the next day. He didn't make it to the tee. This was in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. It was so funny. He was so concerned because Jerry McGee was marking his ball with just a little pencil. And he was trying to tell Jerry that he shouldn't mark it that way, that he should mark it with a big marker.

Jerry was like, 'Bert, you don't need to tell me how to mark my balls. You want to have a fight right here?' And he'd throw his balls down. They happened to be playing with Chi Chi Rodriguez and he was saying he couldn't understand how he got that pairing and he's saying, 'Oh my god! There's going to be a fight here.' To be in that and to stand there and watch those funny things happen…

And you know that behind the ropes the people think it's really serious and that people aren't doing those things. It's really a fun thing to be part of.

One time on the senior tour, they were just taking their hats off and they were sort of comparing where they'd had their hair done last. [?!] There're just funny conversations that no one would realize are going on. So sometimes I just get off the tee and laugh. Sometimes they are really being serious, but it's really a privilege to be able to observe the top players in the world. -0-

- For more on The Darrell Survey, their annual Golf Equipment Almanac 2001 is reviewed in Light Reading.

© THR, 2001

Talking Points - Edition I - Ron Green
Talking Points - Edition II - Dr. Patrick Cohn
Talking Points - Edition III - Bradley S. Klein
Talking Points - Edition IV - Doug Sanders
Talking Points - Edition V - Curt Sampson
Talking Points - Edition VI - Geoff Shackelford
Talking Points - Edition VII - Bryan Gathright
Talking Points - Edition VIII - Tim Rosaforte, Ray March and Gary Player
Talking Points - Edition IX - Dave Pelz
Talking Points - Edition X - Don Wade
Talking Points - Edition XI - Sidney Matthew
Talking Points - Edition XII - Bud Shrake
Talking Points - Edition XIII - Betsy Rawls