Category Archives: Sports – Golf

"He’s got enough cotton in his mouth to knit a sweater"

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Lee Trevino - PGA That’s how Lee Trevino describes a golfer who is choking under pressure.

But as noted in this outstanding Jaime Diaz/Golf Digest interview of the now 70 year-old Trevino, Merry Mex didn’t choke much during his career on the PGA Tour.

Winner of 29 Tour events, Trevino won six majors (Jack Nicklaus finished in second place in four of them!) and probably would have won several more had he not been badly injured by an on-course lightning strike in 1975. After Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, there has been no better Texas golfer than Lee Trevino.

Trevino remains a genuine character. Here are a few gems from the interview:

On Jack Nicklaus:

"In those days, when Jack parked his car he was already four under."

On handling tournament pressure:

"Pressure was never really there for me.  .  .  . Where I came from, and where I’d gotten, I was playing with house money."

Who is better? Jack or Tiger?:

"[T]o answer your question—and I bite my lip every time I say this—Tiger’s better."

On winning the 1984 PGA at Shoal Creek:

Going into the last round, on the practice putting green, I broke everyone up.

Herman [Mitchell, Trevino’s longtime caddy] has got the gout, he’s in a bad mood, and we’re walking to the first tee, and some guy in the gallery yells at me:

"What do you feed that caddie?"

I look at the guy and say: "Rednecks!"

And Herman says: "And I’m getting hungry, too!"

Looping for Legends

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Tom Watson_3 Mark over at the Kaddy’s Korner provides this interesting post about his experience in filling in as Tom Watson‘s caddy during the Champions Tour’s Administaff Open at the Tournament Course in The Woodlands last weekend. Mark concludes his post in the following manner about spending a week with a legend:

Growing up, most of my heroes were baseball players, and I might be too old for a new one, but I think I found one.

During the week, I watched one of the top-10 golfers of all time practice his trade. Most guys work into their practice routine slowly with their wedges first, but Tom started warming up each day with a 3-iron, and none of them sounded clunky. He made sure he acknowledged all the fans, sincerely understanding what they do for the game. He walked through the crowds gazing into their eyes, waving, and none of it was forced. Most guys work up a strained smile and a nod.

There were only two people at the tournament who gathered a larger following: Arnold Palmer and former President George H. W. Bush. That’s not bad company.

Which reminds me of the classic video below of Bill Murray hilariously describing the experience of looping a round with another legend. Hint — he was very well compensated ;^):

Innovative teaching

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Ritter Bunker Having been raised by one, I’ve always been drawn to great teachers wherever I find them.

Jeff Ritter is a young golf teaching professional in the Phoenix area who combines excellent analytical ability with formidable communication skills to provide some of the best golf swing instruction that I’ve seen on the Web.

In this 10-minute video, Ritter shows how, over the course of a week, he improves the swing of a low-handicap amateur golfer who had come to Phoenix to work with him. In so doing, Ritter takes a good golf swing and turns it into a very good one.

Here are some more Ritter teaching videos, generally 1-3 minutes in length, that focus on various aspects of the golf swing. This is a wonderful example of how a talented teacher is using the Web in innovative ways to reach thousands of students who would not otherwise have access to his insight.

Some other sites in which to discover great teachers:

Top 7 Places to Watch Great Minds in Action

100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists

One Day University

Ali and Arnie

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Ali The Observer provides this entertaining compilation of quotes from Muhammad Ali, who just turned 67. My two favorites:

On his Parkinson’s disease: "It wasn’t the boxing, it was the autographs." (2003)

On his biggest battle: "My toughest fight was with my first wife." (1967)

Arnold Palmer And don’t miss this Tom Callahan/Golf Digest piece on Arnold Palmer, who turns 80 on September 10th. Palmer’s old friend, Dow Finsterwald, makes an interesting observation about Palmer that some current Tour pros should take to heart:

"But the thing Arnie and I truly had in common, the thing both of us enjoyed most of all, was playing golf. That may sound funny, but you’d be surprised how many good players, how many pros, weren’t able to enjoy it nearly as much as we did. To us it was an avocation as well as a vocation. I think of him as the greatest amateur-professional who ever lived. By that I mean he never stopped playing the game for the love of it, like an amateur. Sure, he liked making a nice living. But he loved to play. Still does."

A Texas original

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Dan Jenkins Given the achievement of covering his 200th major golf tournament at the U.S. Open this past June, Clear Thinkers favorite and fellow Texan Dan Jenkins has been making the interview rounds and it has been a rollicking good time.

Last week at the PGA Tournament (Jenkins’ 201st major tournament), the PGA presented Jenkins to the press corps one afternoon and the interview session ended up being the most entertaining of the week. Here are a few snippets:

"It’s been a great geographic trip, because I got to cover the dominant player in the world from Texas [Ben Hogan] and then the one from Pennsylvania [Arnold Palmer] and then the one from Ohio [Jack Nicklaus], the one from Missouri [Tom Watson] and the one from Spain [Seve Ballesteros], and now a guy from California [Tiger Woods]. Pretty good geographic journey."

Recalling an anecdote from an Atlanta hotel that Jenkins stayed in while covering a tournament:

Jenkins: "What exactly is the name of the property we’re staying in?"

Julius Mason, a Jenkins friend: "It’s the Sheraton Four Points."

Jenkins: "Four points out of 10? No air conditioning, no ice, no TV, no phone. It was a grand slam."

On his future:

Question: "How long are you going to keep doing this?"

Jenkins: "I’m not qualified to do anything else. So I’ll be here until they carry me out and the message on my tombstone will be ‘I knew this would happen.’"

On his two passions, golf and college football:

"Hey, golf is fun. It’s beautiful. It’s elite. It’s gorgeous and all those things. But college football — it’s important. People live and die for that sport."

And, as noted earlier here, the 79 year-old Jenkins has taken to Twitter like a fish to water. Here are a few of his twit gems from last weekend’s PGA:

"Tiger three-putts for bogey. Still gets standing ovation."

"Tiger throws grass in the air on the fifth fairway. Gets another standing ovation."

On Vijay Singh’s 3rd round putting woes:

"Vijay putted today like your member-guest partner. The partner you don’t invite back."

"I see ‘Squeaky’ Fromme was let out of prison Friday. Maybe the Eagles will sign her."

"Female mixed martial arts seems to be catching on. Some of my friends believe they might have been married to a couple of them."

"I just noticed I’m closing in on 4,500 [Twitter] followers. My daughter says, ‘Great, Dad. Still two million behind Britney Spears.’"

On Irishman Padrig Harrington’s quintuple bogey 8 that took him out of contention on the final day:

"The Irish do love funerals."

On South Korean Y.E. Yang’s victory in the PGA:

"After conquering the LPGA Tour, the South Koreans have now set their sights on the men. And after all we’ve done for them."

A good sign

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obama-golfing One of the many fascinating aspects of golf is that you can learn much about a person by playing a round of golf with them.

Based on this Time article (h/t Geoff Shackelford), President Obama sounds as if he would fit in quite well with the groups in which I play golf regularly.

That makes me feel better.

Can he do it?

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Watson A year after 53 year-old Greg Norman flirted with winning the Open Championship, 59 year-old Tom Watson, just two months shy of his 60th birthday, is leading the Open going into the final round Sunday at Turnberry in Ayrshire on the western coast of Scotland.

Leave it to Clear Thinkers favorite Dan Jenkins, who at 79 has provided the best commentary on the Open through his Twitter page, to put Watson’s remarkable feat in perspective:

"I was Watson’s age 20 years ago–still drinking a lot, practically buying Elaine’s. I thought I was immortal. What’s the big deal about 59?"

As with Norman, I don’t think Watson can do it, but I will be pulling for him along with millions around the world. Watson’s run as a dominant player on the PGA Tour ended in the 1980’s when he inexplicably lost the deft putting stroke that had been the common thread through his eight major championships (5 Opens, 2 Master’s and 1 U.S. Open). Watson has magically regained that stroke this week and, if it holds for one more day, he could pull off the most improbable victory in the history of golf.

One thing going for Watson — playing golf as a youth during the winter months in his native Kansas City helped him to become on one of the best bad weather golfers of the modern era. And it will probably be blustery in Turnberry on Sunday.

Update: Watson gave it a great go, but lost in a playoff to Stewart Cink. It is Cink’s first major championship. Dan Wexler does a good job summing up Watson’s accomplishment.

The swing that won the U.S. Open

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No wonder 2009 U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover is one of the leaders on the PGA Tour in the total driving statistic. At 6’2", he achieves amazing extension on his backswing and then delivers a powerful but controlled blow to the ball as he swings around his body on the downswing. This is the type of swing that holds up well under the pressure of tournament golf.

 

Houston’s connection to the new U.S. Open champion

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Lucas-Glover-2_2319691 Houston is synonymous with golf, so it’s appropriate that new U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover‘s former teacher and mentor was the late Dick Harmon (see also here), who was one of Houston’s most respected golf instructors for decades before his sudden death in 2006. Glover was one of Dick’s pallbearers, delivered one of the eulogies at the funeral and had to fight back tears when he was asked about his relationship with Dick during his post-U.S. Open interview session. What a fitting tribute for a student to give to a wonderful teacher whose spirit still permeates Houston’s golf community.

The 29 year-old Glover has long been considered a likely star by other professional golfers and appeared to be ready to fulfill that promise in the 2005-2006 seasons when he won his first tournament (the 2005 Walt Disney Classic), recorded 16 top-10 finishes and just missed earning a spot on the 2006 Ryder Cup team.

DickHarmon However, Glover struggled after Harmon’s death in late 2006 and fell all the way to 178th in the World Golf Rankings after last season. Things got so bad that Glover put his clubs away for two months after last season to refresh himself from the grind of PGA Tour golf. Before the U.S. Open, he had already shown signs of regaining his form this season with a tie for 3rd at the Buick Invitational, a tie for 2nd at Quail Hollow and a jump to 71st in the World Golf Rankings. But Glover now appears ready to vault into the top echelons of golf with his U.S. Open championship at Bethpage. He has a superb all-around game.

Finally, as satisfying as Glover’s victory was, it may not have been as gratifying as David Duval contending for the title and finishing in a tie for second. As noted here almost five years ago, it’s been a long, strange trip back to the top tier of professional golf for Duval. Here’s hoping that he stays this time.