Coach's corner: Swing doctor David Leadbetter talks Wie, Woods and Faldo

I know people often complain that the Toronto Golf Show is nothing more than a travel show. I’ve never really had an issue with that — and I can rarely walk more than 10 feet without running into someone I know, so it makes the show a great networking event for catching up after the winter and finding out what gossip is going on.

This year started a little differently, as I hustled down to the Toronto Convention Centre to spend some time with famed swing doctor David Leadbetter. I’ve interviewed Leadbetter before, but it was for five minutes in a building on Bay Street two years ago when he was in town doing a Callaway promotion. This time I was scheduled for 20 minutes, but that became closer to an hour when another interview canceled.

I’m going to write about the conversation in my Sympatico column later this week. Needless to say, the talk was wide ranging and included everything from discussion of Michelle Wie and whether she really loves the game of golf through to whether Tiger Woods will be the same player when he returns. We also talked about the influx of Korean golfers into the LPGA, and Leadbetter had some strong remarks in that regard as well, saying he thinks they are mechanical, but don’t have the drive and fascination for the game that leads to lengthy careers.

On the role of swing coaches:“In some cases we get too much credit. I got a lot of credit when Faldo broke through. The fact that we worked hard for two years… that was a different case. That was a solid two years of work. These days you don’t do that with players. These days it is on the job work. They can’t afford to take two years to make a change.”

On Tiger:  “You had this image of Tiger as being Mr. Perfect. The way he dressed, the way he played, the family, the way he worked out. Everything was perfect. And that image has been shattered. I don’t think the level of his play will decrease in any way. In some ways he might be even more determined to prove himself. But I think the other players will see him in a different light I think he intimidated so many players for so long that basically playing with Tiger was a transformation … he would find an extra gear and they couldn’t. Now you have the players like Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler and they are going to go in with an attitude that this guy isn’t perfect, he’s human after all and they have a chance. And really believing it, which is a big difference.”

On Wie:“She has the ability, whether she wants it or not that badly… life is a choice. I know she definitely wouldn’t enjoy playing golf 24 by 7 like some of these other girls. She has other things in her life, other interests. It is healthy to some extent. But within certain limitations to what she wants to achieve, she could be very dominant. She and Suzann Pettersen are the best going. Nothing against these Koren girls out there, who are very good players, but there is no dominant player among them.”

On Stack and Tilt: “There’s no point in the game where a method has ever worked. And stack and tilt is a method. Those commercials they have on TV — do any of them work with them any more?”

We also talked about swing coaches and what leads to a lengthy career. Canadian Sean Foley’sname came up several times, including a conversation about former Masters winner Trevor Immelman, who moved to Foley last year, only to head back to Leadbetter soon afterwards:

“He went to Sean and they tried to everything different from what they did with me. But Trevor was hurt and it didn’t really work out. Eventually it was, ‘Well what was Lead doing with you?’ And Trevor was like, ‘If I’m going to do what Lead was suggesting, why not work with him?”

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Oak Bay's opening hole -- the Georgian Bay course will open late this year or in 2011

I attended two golf course launches, something that will become more rare in coming years. The first was for Oak Bay, a course in the Georgian Bay region, that is part of a housing development with designer Shawn Watters creating the course. Nine holes are complete and seeded, and nine more are nearly finished and should be seeded when the weather warms. The course won’t likely open until next year. I spoke with Watters about the course, which he says “has the flavor of a Muskoka golf course.”

He also pointed out the course will have plenty of great views: “Many [Muskoka courses] don’t have the vistas of the water,” he said. “We have five holes with those vistas.”

Interestingly, the course is only 6,700 from the tips, a smart move in the era of resort golf being 7,400 yards. Many don’t know Watters as a designer — he’s largely done smaller projects — so it’ll be interesting to see whether that changes with this course.  The routing has a couple of drivable par-4s, which is cool, and the front nine looks walkable. The back nine, on the other hand, is really spread out, and I’m worried the course might feel disjointed.

The other course launch was for the badly named “The Lakes” in Cape Breton. Considering it resides in a place called Ben Eoin (pronounced Ben Yawn), it is hard to determine how someone came up with such a generic name, one that sounds like a gated community in Florida.  That already looks to be changing and there was lots of discussion about calling it “The Lakes at Ben Eoin.” That’s a step. The course is part of a ski facility, has a bunch of government cash in it, and some crazy number of partners involved in the ownership group. The design was created by Graham Cooke (with associate Yannick Pilon working on it as well), and is on the side of a hill. Cooke, who was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame last week, was his typical gracious self, and after his presentation told me the course wasn’t that difficult to route considering its location. Once again he talked about the views, adding the course wasn’t going to be exceptionally hard: “When you play this golf course there are about five areas that transfix you,” he said. The Lakes opens in May.

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Finally a comment on the show itself. While there were the typical groups of golfers looking for freebies, the private clubs that are looking for members are now staying away, as are a lot of out-of-town courses. Gone are the likes of Firerock in London, and all the private clubs that flocked to the show a few years back in hope of scoring members. I suspect most of the private courses simply found attendees were more interested in a 4-for-2 or a free round than potentially paying $6,500 per year to play golf. I guess the market just isn’t quite right.

I also participated in a panel discussion with some other notables — golfer/announcer Jim Nelford, CanTour commissioner Rick Janes, golf teacher Henry Brunton and course builder Dick Kirkpatrick — that was interesting for me, but not well attended. Richard Zokol had a public discussion about Sagebrush with Score’s Jason Logan that was also pretty quiet. That’s too bad — it was a neat concept. But I think if given the choice about filling their bags with coupons versus listening to pundits talk golf, the coupons always win out. Which is fine with me…

Well, it won’t be just me, but I’ll be heading down to the Toronto Golf Show in a couple of hours to interview David Leadbetter, and then head to events that will become increasingly rare — new course unveilings (one for the horribly named “The Lakes” on Cape Breton Island and one for Oak Bay Golf and Country Club in Muskoka, which I know next to nothing about).

From there I’ll wander around the show — and then take in a couple of new elements. At 3 pm, Richard Zokol is going to be interviewed by ScoreGolf managing editor Jason Logan Bob Weeks in a public forum to talk about Sagebrush, his award-winning golf course in BC, and that will be followed by a panel on the “game of golf, its growth in Canada.” The panel will include yours truly, designer/builder Dick Kirkpatrick, instructor Henry Brunton, Canadian Tour commissioner Rick Janes and Weeks, and will be moderated by John Boykin, a writer and industry consultant. It runs from 4 to 5 pm. Feel free to come down and ask questions, boo, or even throw things, as long as they aren’t too big and won’t hurt too much.

This is all taking place at the Sandra Post Side Theatre — whatever that is.

Weeks isn’t finished — he then moves on to interview Leadbetter at 6…

The other night I had difficulty sleeping. So I went downstairs and watched John Daly’s new reality program on my PVR. No problem falling asleep after that. Anyway, that experience, coupled with the revelations that Daly has been suspended by the PGA Tour multiple times, was the basis for my latest Sympatico column. Here’s a taste:

Fat or thin, drunk or sober, on the course or off it, John Daly is a train wreck.

This week he was a disaster and he didn’t even play golf. Instead a reality television series based on the golfer’s life kicked off on the Golf Channel. With its bizarre mix of pop-philosophy and images of Daly chain-smoking while discussing the difficulties of packing the appropriate clothing for a tournament, Being John Daly was equally as confounding as its subject. We learned plenty about what Daly’s latest girlfriend thinks about his comeback, while the recently thin golfer sat on a couch smoking, played guitar while smoking or hit the occasional golf shot between puffs. If this is John Daly’s reality, it is far from compelling.
On the other hand, Daly’s life sounded more interesting in a story in the Florida Times-Union tale about the golfer’s trouble with the PGA Tour over his 19-year career. The paper, which was sued by Daly for libel, gained access to his PGA Tour disciplinary file as part of the court case, which the golfer lost and has been ordered to pay costs of $272,000. The file shows a string of strange incidents involving Daly, from a case where he swore at another golfer months before he won the 1991 PGA Championship, through to 2008 when the golfer passed out in front of a Hooters and spent the night in jail, eliciting a suspension from the PGA Tour. And then there’s the case where Daly once allegedly tried to run down a U.S. federal official at a U.S. Open. According to the file, he’s been ordered into rehab seven times by the PGA Tour.

The full column can be found here.

In another of a series of unexpected moves by the RCGA and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame, three new inductees were announced today: former PGA Tour pro and longtime club pro Ben Kern; noted amateur Brent Franklin and great amateur/architect Graham Cooke.

I’d have expected Richard Zokol, who turned 50 last year, to be on the list, but he was again excluded. I have a strong suspicion that he was nominated — though I didn’t put him up. I wonder who Richard has pissed off at the ultra-political HOF and the RCGA. After all, he had two PGA Tour wins, was a long-time PGA Tour pro, led the NCAA champion BYU team, and won a Canadian Amateur. And this is the organization that kept Moe Norman out of its HOF for a long period of time before begrudgingly admitting him. Zokol has been outspoken — often about the RCGA — so I wonder if that keeps the door shut for him.

Are Kern, Franklin and Cooke worthy? Without doubt, so I guess that is compensation for overlooking Zokol. Cooke is one of the country’s great amateurs, and a well-liked designer by many. Franklin won everything as an amateur and had a successful pro career that was cut short when he was hit by a truck in 1995.  Kern played on the PGA Tour off-and-on for six years with limited success, but was one of the first pros at the National Club of Canada in Woodbridge, and a pro at Devil’s Pulpit.  “He was a true professional, and he was a great guy,” said Lee Trevino of his frequent playing partner when Ben attended the New Mexico State University in the late 1960s.

Who is missing? AV Macan, the Vancouver golf designer behind Shaughnessy, Royal Colwood, etc. and a great amateur, should be there. Zokol goes without saying and has been overlooked. Lorie Kane also should be there, though I suspect she still considers herself an active player. Designers Doug Carrick and Thomas McBroom would seem like obvious in time. Stephen Ames?

I’d add that I feel the nomination process for the Canadian HOF is flawed. Practically every other sport has a standard nomination process(years from active service, points, etc.)  – where the RCGA’s is a lengthy, strangely public, yet far from transparent process. It would make more sense to have some sort of standardized nomination process, and perhaps a veterans committee that looks at those that might have been missed, as well as getting the decision-making into more wide-ranging hands. There’s currently no media presence in the group that decides who gets in and who doesn’t  – for better of worse. Of course that runs completely contrary to organizations like Major League Baseball.

My final word on this matter is that HOF induction should involve greatness in some capacity. Whether or not the inductee was a great guy shouldn’t make a difference. It matters what they brought to the game of golf in Canada.

A few weeks ago a G4G reader sent me a note about a fine of $25,000 to Mitchell G&CC near Stratford for “excessive water use.” Here’s the short blurb that appeared in the London Free Press:

STRATFORD — Mitchell Golf Club Inc. was fined $25,000 in provincial offences court Tuesday for using excessive amounts of water in 2007.

The Ministry of Environment issued the golf course permits for irrigation and other uses from the Thames River.

Justice Terence Steenson accepted guilty pleas on five charges for exceeding the permitted limit and a joint submission on penalty of $5,000 on each count against the corporation.

A couple of weeks back Rob Steinbach, president of the semi-private club with about 500 members that does about 30,000 rounds annually, called me to talk about the issues. He said the club was allowed to draw 700,000 litres of water from a nearby waterway if water was running over a specific point. If it dropped below that point, the club was only allowed to take 675 litres — enough “run our washrooms,” says Steinbach.

Interestingly, if you Google Mitchell Golf and ”water,” you find this post from the club’s superintendent dating back to 2007:

Even though this has been an extremely dry summer, the rains we have received of late have been great.  Our water levels were almost down to the point where we would have had to stop pumping, due the limitations of our water permit issued by the Ministry of the Environment (M.O.E).  Speaking of the M.O.E., we have had two surprise inspections, first by the water division.  They wanted to see that we were in compliance with the permit.  The second visit was by the pesticide division.  After the M.O.E looked over our records and did a visual inspection, everything was satisfactory.

Thanks,

Fred Schmoelzl, Golf Course Superintendent

So did the club violate the water rule? “Yes, we took more than we should have,” Steinbach says. “Basically there was a settlement.”  But he didn’t want to add much beyond that, saying he had to be very careful with any remarks about the situation. I asked him if he felt this incident provided more fuel for the fire of activists and others who say golf is bad for the environment. “I really can’t comment,” Steinbach said.

He did point out the club was trying to guarantee the issue wouldn’t come up again but adding a holding pond and a well. But he admitted Mitchell was struggling to make that work.

“The club has been here for decades,” he said. “And we’ve been taking water for years before there was any consideration given to this.”

He’s right — the club (est. 1930) predates Ministry of Environment rules. But that doesn’t help its case.

Do I feel this is significant? What actually happened probably harmed no one. But the perception of what happened is more damaging. If this involved a more high profile club, the impact on Ontario golf could have been significant — or at least raised the issue of water use at a time when many clubs are struggling to find a way to satisfy their water requirements going forward.

A lot of this could be solved by referencing what I mentioned the other day: Brown is the new green.