Harry Hurt III - How to Learn Golf: The First Complete Guide to Golf Instruction Based on Exclusive Sessions with the Games Top Teaching Pros

The First Complete Guide to Golf Instruction Based on Exclusive Sessions with the Games Top Teaching Pros

Harry Hurt III

ATRIA BOOKS
New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore

Copyright 2002 by Harry Hurt III

Portions of this book previously appeared in Travel & Leisure GOLF

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information address Atria Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 WWW.SimonandSchuster.com

Hurt, Harry.

How to learn golf / Harry Hurt III.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-7434-1726-7 (alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7434-1726-6
eISBN 978-0-7434-1931-4

1. GolfStudy and teaching.

I. Title: How to learn golf.

II. Title.

GV962.5 . H87 2002

796.3523dc21

2001059816

First Atria Books hardcover printing May 2002

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ATRIA BOOKS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798or business@simonandschuster.com

Printed in the U.S.A.

For W.H.H., A.B.H.,
and W.R.H.

The author owes special thanks to all the golf instructors mentioned in this book, and to the following people: Sam Walsh(photographs), Jon Rizzi, Bart Richardson, Stan Rumbough, Barbara Hearst, Victor Ayad, Shannon Wynne, Arthur Dodge, Rick Teischgraber, Scott Bertrand Sr., Scott Bertrand Jr., Jaimie Roggero Carbone, Dick Clark, Tina Bradley, William Beatty, Will Katz, Anne O. Katz, Dr. Dana Harper, Techla Harper, John Brown, John Tolbert, Charles Grubb, Paul H. Livingston, Barbara Smith, Patricia Birch, William R. Hurt, Dana Hurt, Harrison Hurt, Alison Hurt, Judith Curr, Ian Jackman, Luke Dempsey, Suzanne ONeill, and Mark Reiter.

PREFACE:
Golf Is a Game of Hope

Golf Is a Game of Hope

If you go to a public or private golf course anywhere in America, chances are you will find the vast majority of golfers in the same states. Some will be in a state of confusion. Others will be in states of embarrassment, frustration, or despair. Precious few will be in states of joy or rapture. Golf is a game of hope. We all want to play better than we did the last time out, even if we havent practiced since. Most of all, golf is a game thats supposed to be fun. But the nations links are teeming with hookers and slicers muttering all sorts of four-letter words other than golf and hope. And judging by the expressions on many of their faces, they arent having a whole lot of fun at it.

Ironically, average golfers are even more likely to be discombobulated if they are taking or have taken golf lessons, especially if they have sought help from more than one instructor. Americas teaching professionals often seem to be operating on entirely different wavelengths, offering diametrically opposite advice. Pro number one tells you to control the golf swing with your hands and arms, and let your body respond. Pro number two tells you to control the golf swing with your body, and let your hands and arms respond. Pro number three says you should stroke your putts on a line path straight back and straight through with a pendulum motion. Pro number four insists you should stroke your putts on a semicircular arc path like a swinging gate.

The hope of playing better, meanwhile, remains nothing more than a pipe dream. During the past two decades, we have witnessed the introduction of high-tech equipment ranging from titanium-headed drivers to solid-core balls that offer both more distance and more control. These innovations have no doubt benefited already proficient golfers. On the PGA Tour, average driving distances have increased more than ten yards in the last ten years, and long-standing tournament scoring records are being broken with increasing frequency. But according to United States Golf Association statistics, the average handicaps of male and female amateur golfers have not declined by a single stroke in thirty years, a fact apologists for the golf instruction establishment try to explain away by pointing out that the total population of golfers has grown threefold and that architects have been making golf courses more difficult and more penal.

No wonder the current golf boom is teetering on the brink of a bust. Between 1970 and 1990, the number of people playing golf in the United States more than tripled from 8 million to an all-time peak of 27.8 million, according to the National Golf Foundation. But over the past decade, even as estimates of potential participation or latent demand have zoomed toward the 50 million mark, actual participation has declined by 4 percent to a current level of about 26.4 million. While the phenomenal exploits of Tiger Woods have driven up television ratings for PGA Tour golf, they have not staunched an ongoing attrition in the number of people playing the game. In 1999, an estimated 3 million people took up golf for the first time, but roughly 3 million others quit.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, most people who quit golf cite at least one of four principal reasons. First, golf is expensive, particularly compared to recreational sports such as tennis, bowling, or swimming. Second, golf is time-consuming. It typically takes four and a half hours, and often over five hours, to complete a round at most publicly accessible courses during peak months. Third, golf is intimidating. Even veteran PGA Tour pros confide that they feel nauseous prior to competing in an important tournament. And finally, golf is difficult to play well with any measure of consistency, as pro basketball star Michael Jordan, one of the worlds greatest athletes, will readily attest.

It is my belief that most of the blame for the problems presently stunting the growth of golf lies not with the people who are trying to learn the game but with the people who are teaching it, including the vast majority of professional golf instructors and the golf media who publish and broadcast instructional information. Let me hasten to add that I count myself among the guilty parties.

My inspiration and qualifications for writing this book stem from the fact that I am a kind of missing link between teaching pros and their pupils, the golf media and the average player. I am both a dispenser and a consumer of golf instruction, a golf writer who has also been a touring pro, a teaching pro, and an inveterate duffer. I know what it is like to try to learn golf from scratch, what it is like to quit the game, and what it is like to try to relearn the game after an extended layoff, because I have done all three.

I first started playing golf in Texas at age ten and competed in junior, high school, collegiate, and amateur golf tournaments against future PGA Tour stars such as Ben Crenshaw and Bruce Lietzke. At the age of nineteen I quit the golf team at Harvard, sold my clubs, and embarked on a career as a journalist and author of books about subjects other than golf. After a twenty-five-year hiatus from the game, I launched a golfing comeback, which I chronicled in my 1997 book Chasing the Dream: A Midlife Quest for Fame and Fortune on the Pro Golf Circuit.

In the course of researching Chasing the Dream, I competed on professional mini-tours, experienced the trauma of failing to make the cut in the first stage of PGA Tour Qualifying School, and won a pro tournament on the 40+ Tour of Florida. I subsequently passed the Playing Ability Test prerequisite for membership in the PGA of America, the organization that certifies most of the nations club pros and teaching pros, and became a contributor to leading golf publications. I am presently editor at large of the magazine