Harvey Penick - Harvey penicks little red book : lessons and teachings from a lifetime in golf

The venerable sage of golf instruction.

Chicago Tribune

There are a million golf instruction books, but Penicks... is the bestand the most widely readbook in sports. His innovation? Golfers need to keep it simple.

Golf Digest

Americas favorite golf teacher.

Los Angeles Times

Some sixty years worth of wisdom... from anecdotes to maxims, delivered in a pithy, down-to-earth manner.... His teaching offers hope that at least some of our crookedness can be made straight.

The New York Times Magazine

The golfers equivalent of
The Elements of Style .

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The most beloved golf book of all time, Harvey Penicks Little Red Book has become required reading for all players and fans of the game, from beginners to seasoned pros.

The legendary Harvey Penick, whom Sports Illustrated called the Socrates of the golf world, began his golfing career as a caddie in Austin, Texas, at the age of eight, and over the course of nearly a century worked with an amazing array of champions. In this classic book, which is named for the red notebook he always kept, Penicks simple, direct, practical wisdom pares away the hypertechnical jargon thats grown up around the golf swing, and lets all golfers, whatever their level, play their best.

This twentieth-anniversary edition features a treasure trove of rare images from the Penick family archives, commemorates Penicks lasting achievement with a moving new foreword by 2012 Ryder Cup captain Davis Love IIIwhose father learned the game under Penicks tutelageand reminds golfers everywhere to take dead aim.

HARVEY PENICK was a renowned golf pro who began his career at the Austin Country Club as a caddie. Though he coached golf at the University of Texas for thirty years and worked with the likes of Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, and Betsy Rawls, he never left the country club, where he continued to teach until his death in 1995.

BUD SHRAKE , a Sports Illustrated writer and an avid golfer, was the coauthor of all of Penicks books. He died in 2009.

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JACKET DESIGN BY JANET PERR COPYRIGHT 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

Also by Harvey Penick with Bud Shrake

And If You Play Golf, Youre My Friend

For All Who Love the Game

The Game for a Lifetime

The Wisdom of Harvey Penick

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Copyright 1992 by Harvey Penick and Bud Shrake, and Helen Penick

Forword copyright 2012 by Davis Love III

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

This Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2012

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Penick, Harvey.

[Little red book]

Harvey Penicks little red book: lessons and teachings from a lifetime in golf/Harvey Penick with Bud Shrake.

p. cm.

1. Golf. 2. GolfUnited StatesAnecdotes. I. Shrake, Edwin.

II. Title.

GV965.P4151992

796.352dc2092-202

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 9781451683219

ISBN 9781451676303 (ebook)

Photo Credits

Pages 196, 197: Carrell Grigsby Photography

Page 183: Austin Country Club Archives

All other photos courtesy of Tinsley Penick

This book is written not only to help all golfers with their own games but to help club pros and teachers with their teaching.

Harvey Penick,

Austin Country Club,

Austin, Texas,

1992

Foreword to the
20th Anniversary Edition

by Davis Love III

My father taught me golf the way he was taught it by Harvey. Not that he ever called him that. It was always Mr. Penick. Dad must have started ten thousand sentences to me with the words As Mr. Penick would say. Mr. Penick spoke not of the U.S. Open, but of the National Open , and so did my father. I doubt that was a coincidence.

Harvey was a model for how my father taught golf, as he was for many others. In the early 1950s, my father, Davis Love Jr., was a good schoolboy golfer in Arkansas. Harvey was the head pro at the Austin Country Club and the golf coach at the University of Texas. He recruited my father to Texas, I imagine sight unseen. No high-resolution e-mail attachments of youthful golf swings in those days. What my father had were junior titles in Arkansas and write-ups in the El Dorado newspaper. He left for Texas at seventeen and played for Harvey for three years before being drafted into the army.

They were important years, and not just because Harvey made my father a much better player. My fathers teammate Ed Turley will tell you: Harvey and my father were cut from the same cloth. They both lived to be on the range, looking at swings.

Harvey became like a second father to my dad, with a personality distinctly different from his own father. My paternal grandfather was strict and formal, a sort of boom-and-bust oilman entrepreneur. In good times, he drove a big black Lincoln. Harvey had a warm and unimposing manner and he held that one job at the Austin C.C. pretty much his entire life. He didnt seem to have any material needs. He lived simply. He was absorbed with the act of teaching and the desire to help a player improve. He had a servant heart.

For many decades now, the PGA of America has held special seminars where club pros and teaching pros learn how to teach from master teaching pros. My father would invite Harvey to speak at those sessions. In the 70s and 80s, when my father was on the Golf Digest teaching staff and active in the Golf Digest golf schools, he would often bring in Harvey as a guest instructor. He was always picking things up from Harvey. My father knew about the little red book long before it became Harvey Penicks Little Red Book . My father did something similar, writing down little squibs about what worked and what did not in golf instruction. He kept his notes on long yellow legal pads.

There are so many things that Harvey told my father that my father told me, things that I am now telling my teenage son, Davis Love IV, who goes by Dru. Dad used to tell a story about being on the range one day at Austin when Harvey came by.