The Pro: Lessons from My Father About Golf And Life - Hardcover

Harmon, Claude "Butch", Jr.; Eubanks, Steve

 
9780307338037: The Pro: Lessons from My Father About Golf And Life
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307338037 ISBN 13: 9780307338037
Verlag: Crown Pub, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

One of the world's leading golf coaches offers a heartwarming portrait of his father, golfing legend Claude Harmon, that explores the ways in which his father's lessons, words of wisdom, and philosophy about life and about golf have shaped his life. 150,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Claude “Butch” Harmon, Jr., was Sports Illustrated’s Teacher of the Year in 1995 and is Golf Digest’s top golf instructor. An accomplished player on the PGA tour, he won the B.C. Open in 1971. Formerly coach to Tiger Woods and Greg Norman, his current roster includes Adam Scott, Fred Couples, Natalie Gulbis, and many other top players.

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One

"If It Were Easy, Everybody Would Do It"

"Golf is hard!"

Dad used to lurch forward with his arms out as he made this proclamation. While a little less than six feet tall, Dad was always big, a thick man with broad shoulders and a wide neck. When he lunged to make a point, he looked like a blitzing linebacker. His hands would go wide as if he were about to make a tackle. Then he would say,

"Golf's hard. Good golf is damn hard, and championship golf is so hard only a select few ever comprehend it. It's a cruel game. Think about it. A hundred and forty-four people play in the tournament, and a hundred and forty-three of them are going to lose. That's tough. The game chews you up, spits you out, and steps on you. It's those who get up and dust themselves off that make it. But that's how it should be. If it were easy, everybody would do it."

Dad pounded this point home to me and my brothers on more occasions than any of us can remember. He didn't always use the same words. One of his favorite expressions, for example, was, "Show me somebody who is practicing for today, and I'll show you somebody who has no chance of getting better tomorrow." This was another way of saying the same thing. Golf is hard. It takes a lot of work. If you want to play good golf, you had better be willing to put in long, hard hours, for an extended period of time. And in many cases, you have to get worse before you can get better.

My brothers and I knew he was right. To say "golf is hard" is like saying "the sky is blue" or "the world is round." It's axiomatic, which made Dad's passion for repeating it seem odd at times. I wanted to say things like, "Yeah, sure, Dad, okay, it's hard, so what does my spine angle look like at impact?" But he would never let us forget the point. Dad made sure we understood that golf was not a game you ever perfected. The moment you thought you had golf whipped, the game slapped you down and embarrassed you. Conversely, whenever you were ready to quit forever, a good thought and a good round came along and sparked the smoldering ember of hope.

He also drummed the message that golf was not a game of steady progressions. You don't get 10 percent better in the first six months and 10 percent better every month after that. Nor was it a game where results tied directly to one component, like talent or repetitions. One golfer might hit five hundred balls a day for a decade and never break par, while another might put his clubs away for months and shoot in the sixties in his first outing. Champion golfers were those who had talent on top of spending endless hours on the practice tees.

I knew all of this--all the Harmon boys did--but knowing that the game is unyielding, unfair, unpredictable, unsympathetic, and unaware of who you are and what you shot yesterday, and accepting such truths are two different things. Plenty of times, I wanted the quick fix, the magic potion that would make my game better by noon. My father had little patience for those, like me, who looked for easy answers. "The tip-of-the-day pro is the one I want to be playing against," he would say.

He also had little use for anyone who thought the golf swing had to feel "good" or "natural." My youngest brother Billy, who as a teenager was one of the best junior players in the country, used to argue with Dad about how a change "felt." When Dad tried to change Billy's grip to keep him from hitting an occasional hook, Billy said, "Dad, it doesn't feel right."

My father snatched up the ball and club and held both within inches of Billy's face. "You see that ball?" he barked.

"Yes, sir," Billy said.

"And you see that club?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that ball and that club are inanimate objects. In-an-i-mate! The ball is only going to do what the club makes it do, and the club is only going to go where you swing it. Neither of them gives a damn how you feel."

I never heard him use that kind of language with any students whose last names weren't Harmon, but he was always most direct when appraising our games. If we opted for the easy road instead of making the fundamental changes necessary to get better, he would let us know about it in his own special way. Once he was watching Billy on a day when our youngest brother thought his swing couldn't get much better. Each shot was solid, and the balls were flying long and straight on a perfect trajectory. He waited for Dad to say something like, "Wow, you're really hitting it great," or "That swing looks perfect." When no praise came, Billy finally asked, "What are you thinking about, Dad?"

Dad said, "I'm thinking about P. T. Barnum, and the Ringling brothers."

This put Billy in a bind. He wanted to know what Dad thought, but he knew the Ringling and Barnum reference was a precursor to a dig. So, my brother took a deep breath and said, "Okay, Dad, what about them?"

"Well, you know, Barnum and those guys travel over to Africa to get these elephants for their shows. They get them young, spend time with them, and train them."

"Yeah?" Billy said.

"Well, those they can't train, they ship back to Africa."

Still waiting for a point, Billy said, "So?"

Dad shook his head and said, "I've got no place to send you."

This didn't sit well with my brother, who felt like he was hitting the ball as well as he had all season. "Why can't you say something positive?" he asked.

"I can when you do something positive. As long as you jerk the club to the inside on your takeaway [a swing flaw Billy fought throughout his playing days], it doesn't matter how good you hit it today, you're never going to be a golfer."

Billy wasn't thrilled, but Dad couldn't have cared less. The swing wouldn't last, so as far as Dad was concerned, it didn't matter how well Billy hit it. If he was unwilling to sacrifice the good feeling of a solid shot today for the hard work and bad shots that were bound to accompany a much-needed swing change, then he was like an uncoachable elephant. The fact that the swing worked once in a while was of no consequence. If you couldn't repeat it under pressure, as Dad assured Billy he could not, then it didn't matter.

When my brother Craig was getting ready to qualify for the U.S. Open, Dad took him out to the West Course at Winged Foot to see his game. Craig felt pretty good about himself. He'd been practicing all summer, and he had talked about how this was his year. He even felt confident enough to challenge our father to a little game. Craig played as good as he could and shot a seventy-one. Dad, well into his fifties at that point and suffering from the early stages of arthritis, shot a seven-birdie round of sixty-five.

Craig couldn't believe it. "Dad, I just played as good as I can play and shot seventy-one," he said. "I didn't think there was a sixty-five out there. How'd you do that?"

Dad put his arm around Craig and said, "It's really simple, son. Some people have it, and some people don't. I have it. You don't."

Dad had it because he worked at it his entire life. He also knew better than most how hard and cruel the game could be.

Born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1916, a place and a time when strict social structures shaped the young and...

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Verlag
Crown Pub
Erscheinungsdatum
2006
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307338037
ISBN 13 
9780307338037
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
248
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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ISBN 10:  0307338045 ISBN 13:  9780307338044
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Softcover