Every Shot I Take: Lessons Learned About Golf, Life, and a Father's Love - Hardcover

Bamberger, Michael

 
9780684834009: Every Shot I Take: Lessons Learned About Golf, Life, and a Father's Love
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0684834006 ISBN 13: 9780684834009
Verlag: Simon and Schuster, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

As Davis Love III walked the fairways of the Oakland Hills Country Club, in contention during the final round of the 1996 U.S. Open Championship, he had a powerful ally on his side. For the rest of the nation the day may have been Father's Day, but for Love every day on a golf course is father's day.
It was Davis Love, Jr., master professional and legendary teacher, who taught his son the game in all its beautiful complexity. As a child, Davis III was encouraged just to play, to enjoy the game as he grew and developed his athletic skills, to find the pleasure in the game that can lead to the desire for improvement. But when, early in his teens, Davis III declared himself ready to take golf seriously, to put in the time to learn and understand the physical and mental components of the game that turn a golfer into a champion, his father was delighted, determined, and ready.
With every shot he takes, Davis Love III provides a tribute to the strength and the value of his father's teachings. And in Every Shot I Take, he shares with us the lessons he learned about how to play golf with power, with skill, and with joy. Those lessons range widely, from the psychological ("Let your attitude determine your golf game; don't let your golf game determine your attitude") to the physical ("To hit the ball far, hit the ball straight; I try to hit the ball at 80 percent of my overall power, because at 80 percent I have a much better chance of hitting the ball with the center of the clubface") to the technical ("When you begin your downswing, and your left foot returns to the ground, put your cleats in the same holes they were in originally"). They include drills like the Hitchhike Drill, where you place your right hand behind your back and your left thumb on your right shoulder, then in a spinning motion move your thumb to your left shoulder -- that's the golf swing in miniature! There are the Ten Commandments of Putting, six steps to successful long bunker shots, and tips for playing in the wind and rain, on fast greens, or out of long rough. Yet all are ultimately about something more than golf.
Golf was, for Davis, Jr., a way of being a father, of teaching his sons how to learn, how to approach whatever they might choose to do with knowledge and with care, how to overcome obstacles through dedication and understanding. It was the vehicle through which he taught the most important lesson of all: "Follow your dream, and enjoy the trip."
Through this moving tribute to his father's love, Davis III passes along the benefits of those lessons in a gem of a book that will improve your golf game -- and enhance your life.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Michael Bamberger was born in Patchogue, New York, in 1960. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982, he worked as a newspaper reporter, first for The Vineyard Gazette, later for The Philadelphia Inquirer. After twenty-two years at Sports Illustrated, he is now a senior writer at Golf.com. His books include To the Linksland, Men in Green, The Ball in the Air, and The Playing Lesson. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Christine.

Davis Love III has won 20 PGA Tour titles, including the 1997 PGA Championship, and the 1992 and 2003 Players Championships. He regularly represents the United States in team competitions like the Ryder Cup, for which he is the 2012 captain, and the President’s Cup and currently ranks fifth on the all-time career money list. He is the author of Every Shot I Take and lives in St. Simons Island, Georgia, with his wife and children.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

As Davis Love III walked the fairways of the Oakland Hills Country Club, in contention during the final round of the 1996 U.S. Open Championship, he had a powerful ally on his side. For the rest of the nation the day may have been Father's Day, but for Love every day on a golf course is father's day. It was Davis Love, Jr., master professional and legendary teacher, who taught his son the game in all its beautiful complexity. As a child, Davis III was encouraged just to play, to enjoy the game as he grew and developed his athletic skills, to find the pleasure in the game that can lead to the desire for improvement. With every shot he takes, Davis Love III provides a tribute to the strength and the value of his father's teachings. And in Every Shot I Take, he shares with us the lessons he learned about how to play golf with power, with skill, and with joy. Those lessons range widely, from the psychological ("Let your attitude determine your golf game; don't let your golf game determine your attitude") to the physical ("To hit the ball far, hit the ball straight; I try to hit the ball at 80 percent of my overall power, because at 80 percent I have a much better chance of hitting the ball with the center of the club-face") to the technical ("When you begin your downswing, and your left foot returns to the ground, put your cleats in the same holes they were in originally"). They include drills like the Hitchhike Drill, where you place your right hand behind your back and your left thumb on your right shoulder, then in a spinning motion move your thumb to your left shoulder - that's the golf swing in miniature! There are the Ten Commandments of Putting, six steps to successful long bunker shots, and tips for playing in the wind and rain, on fast greens, or out of long rough. Yet all are ultimately about something more than golf. Golf was, for Davis, Jr., a way of being a father, of teaching his sons how to learn, how to approach whatever they might choose to do with knowledge and with care, how to overcome obstacles through dedication and understanding. It was the vehicle through which he taught the most important lesson of all: "Follow your dream, and enjoy the trip".

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

CHAPTER 1

My Dad's the Pro

I had driven the ball into the trees. This was not uncommon for me. My father used to say, "The woods are full of long hitters," so Dad always knew where to find me. Someday, he promised, he would teach me to be a straight hitter, too. But at this moment we were looking for my ball among the tall pines of coastal Georgia, on a golf course owned by the Cloister Hotel at Sea Island, where my father was a teacher of golf -- and some other things, too. I was a guinea pig for a lot of his ideas, his best pupil in some ways, his worst in others.

We found the ball and I surveyed the shot and surveyed my father. He was never one to state the obvious; his eyes, even through his glasses, said all I needed to know: I was dead. The only things between my ball, sitting on a bed of pine needles, and the hole were trees and trouble. I took out a 3-iron, made a big, violent pass at the ball, and hit it cleanly and well. The ball rose quickly, passing one tree on the left, whizzing by another on the right, over a third tree, soaring into the daylight until it reached its apex. There, my ball made a soft righthand turn before landing 20 feet from the flagstick, which stood at attention 220 yards from where my father stood in awe.

"Of all the millions of people who play this game," my father said to me, "the two most exciting are Seve Ballesteros and you."

I was a kid, a teenager. Seve Ballesteros was one of the best players in the world, maybe the best, a winner of the British Open and the Masters. He was one of my heroes.

Analyzed rationally, my father's praise was absurd; there was no sensible way to discuss Seve and me in the same sentence. But my father did, and in so doing he made me the golfer, and the person, I am today. Seve is no longer a hero to me; he's a colleague, a friend, a competitor. He's another guy I'm trying to beat. My late father, for whom I am named, is still my hero. He always was; he always will be.

I wish every golfer could have the kind of golfing education I had. I wish every child could have the kind of father I had. If someone could grant me those wishes, the world would be a better place, and scoring averages would be a lot lower, too. I miss him. Writing this book has made me miss him more. Today, people who follow professional golf in the United States know my name, and that's nice, but to me it was always my father who was the famous one. Everywhere we went, people knew him, people admired him, people respected him, and I knew at a young age that I wanted those same things for myself. As a little kid I'd say to people, "My dad's the pro!" And they would nod and murmur, "Yes, son, we know that." The way he introduced me to golf is the way I plan to introduce my two children to the game. The way he taught me is the way I plan to teach them. The way he raised me is the way I hope to raise them.

One of the things I remember best about him is his hands. Dad had the most amazing hands. He never wore sunscreen or golf gloves and he was outside all day long, all year long, and he always had a golf club in his hand, so his hands were really dark and really tough. I can remember as a little kid, walking hand-in-hand with my father, how hard his skin was, like the skin of a lizard. I used to love to poke at his calluses. You couldn't make a dent in them; they were like a piece of leather left in the rain and then baked in the sun. Now my children -- my wife Robin and I have a daughter, Alexia, who was born in 1988, and a boy, Davis IV, who was born five years later -- do the same thing with my calluses -- they poke pins right in them. They think that's sport.

My father wore a rather peculiar expression on his face most of the time. It was like a serious smile, as if he was enjoying what he was doing, but what he was doing was serious. You seldom saw his whole face unobstructed. It seemed as though from the moment he woke up in the morning until he went to bed he wore his glasses and a white or light blue bucket hat with the brim down, to cover his mostly bald head. (Of course, he took the hat off inside and when he talked to ladies. There was a lot of the Old South in him.) But even with the glasses and the hat, when you looked at his face you noticed right away that his eyes were alive. They were always moving. There was always light in them.

Dad was kind of fidgety. The only jewelry he ever wore was a plain gold wedding ring, and he was always fiddling with it. When he gave lessons, he was always jangling the change and the keys in his pocket. That sound drives me berserk to this day. I'm not temperamental on the golf course about crowd noise, but when we're playing on a cold day and the old men in the gallery have their hands in their pockets, jingling, jingling, jingling, it makes me crazy.

(Now that I think about it as an adult, I think the reason my father was so fidgety was that he was probably addicted to nicotine, even though he wouldn't even admit to being a smoker. The fact is, he smoked a fair bit, he just never bought cigarettes. If he was giving a lesson and he saw something green in somebody's pocket -- Kools, Salems, whatever -- he'd go right for it, bum a cigarette from a complete stranger. Then he'd run off to the snack bar or behind a tree and sneak a quick smoke. I think he honestly thought my brother, Mark, and I didn't know that he smoked -- as if we couldn't see the billows of smoke coming from behind a tree, as if we didn't see Dad popping out from behind the tree when he was done, as if we couldn't put two and two together. It bothered Mom that Dad smoked, and rightly so. He wasn't a drinker and never used profanity but he was addicted to cigarettes. Cigarettes and ice cream -- those were his vices. He snuck his cigarettes because he didn't want us to see them. Looking back, it makes me realize that he wasn't perfect. But as best he could, he tried to present himself as a model.)

My father read, all the time. He loved to read. Golf books. Books about philosophy. Self-help books. Books about religion. Detective novels. He loved to read Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain and Stephen King. I think you pick up the habit of reading from your parents. I love to read now, too. Once at a tournament I was talking to Frank Hannigan, the TV golf commentator, and I said, "That reminds me of that Hunter S. Thompson story about..." Hannigan interrupted me and said, "You read Hunter S. Thompson?" I said, "Sure." And he said, "Well, you and I are the only two out here who do." My father felt reading could take you to places you wouldn't otherwise know existed.

Because he loved to read, he loved to write. When he died in a plane crash in 1988 at age 53, he left behind closets and cabinets filled with loose pages and legal pads containing his notes about the golf swing. I go back to these notes often. Most of the ideas expressed in this book can be traced, in some form, to something written somewhere on one of my father's legal pads. He used the long ones and he preferred yellow, but he'd use white, too. He'd also use envelopes and hotel stationery and the back of shopping lists, if that's all that was available.

Whenever my father had an idea, he wrote it down. He was interested in many things, from the lyrics of country music to the afterlife of the soul, but it was the golf swing that motivated him to put pen to paper. He felt that if he didn't write an idea down he might lose it when the next one popped into his brain. He believed in the written word. Over the years, he wrote many instruction articles for Golf Digest; he was a longtime member of the magazine's teaching staff.

Dipping into my father's notes, I find hundreds of pages where he recorded my every shot in a round in a shorthand that wouldn't be intelligible to anyone but me. I see outlines for instructional articles....

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Simon and Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0684834006
ISBN 13 
9780684834009
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
204
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande