First Coast, FL Edition by The Golf Almanac

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First Coast, FL Edition Advertising Sales James Lynam - Senior Advertising Director

Business Relations Stephan Roose • F. Isabel Simler

Editors

Graphic Design

Brent Williams • Jeff Carpineta Michael O’Donnell • Michelle Wood Ryan Fleming

F. Isabel Simler - Director of Operations Brent Williams - Director of Graphic Design Ryan Fleming - Layout Coordinator

Contributing Writers

Contributing Designers

John Carpineta • Elizabeth Evers Larry Denton • Henry Vernon Lorraine Simpson • Alan LeStourgeon Lisa Kai Lee • David Ferrers Debra Fortosis • Noel King Daniel Collins • Jim Burke Leila Mackie

Brent Williams • Doriano Riosa Marc Hoffenberg • Adriane Marseille

Website & New Media Blake Wilhelm - Senior Web Developer Brent Williams - Junior Web Developer

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First Coast, FL Edition

Rule 3-2: Failure to Hole Out

Salute to PGA Pro Vince Sullivan

Golfâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s New Legend: Jordan Spieth

2016 LPGA Tour Schedule

2016 PGA Tour Schedule

Secrets to Clubhead Speed

The Walter Hagen Story

2016 Champions Tour Schedule

Golf a New Way

PGA Junior League

Top 10 Putting Rule Situations

The Health Benefits of Golf

History of Phil Mickelson

Business Directory

Quality Practice

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The Walter Hagen Story

Walter Hagen (1892-1969), often referred to by golf fans as “Sir Walter” or “The Haig,” was the first superstar of American golf. Hagen earned his fame by winning tournaments with spectacular recovery shots and unmatched putting ability, skills that made up for his unpredictable tee shots. He is remembered as a master gamesman with an uncanny ability to remain relaxed and make the game of golf fun.

Hagen was born in Rochester, New York, on December 21, 1892, into a middle-class family of Dutch descent. His parents were William, a blacksmith for auto shops, and Louise Balko Hagen. As a child Hagen excelled at both golf and baseball. He became the leading baseball pitcher in the district, honing his fastball in his backyard after teaching his sister to catch for him. He was also exposed to golf at an early age, shagging balls at the Country Club of Rochester by the age of seven. During his teenage years Hagen wavered between pursuing a career in baseball or golf. Finally, speculating that baseball required the skills of eight teammates, Hagen decided to choose the sport over which he alone controlled his destiny.

Became a Golf Professional When the National Open came to Buffalo, New York, in 1912, 20-yearold Hagen, having been promoted to working in the pro shop, asked his boss, club pro Andy Christie, for time off to play the tournament. Christie, afraid Hagen would be easily out-played by the professionals, refused to allow him to enter, but afforded him time off to watch the tournament. When Hagen returned from watching Johnny McDermott win the Open, he was wholly unimpressed with the play of the field. The following year Hagen was determined to enter the ranks of the golf greats. In his first outing at the 1913 Shawnee Open he played respectably but failed to finish in the money. Hagen’s brash personality first came to the attention of the pros in 16 | Priority One Marketing Group, LLC

the same year when he entered the National Open in Brookline, Massachusetts. The odds makers were favoring Harry Vardon or Ted Ray to win the tournament. Hagen made a legendary entrance into the locker room prior to the start of play and introduced himself to McDermott amidst a group of onlookers, explaining that he had come down from Rochester to help him stop Vardon and Ray. The golfers chuckled, but Hagen won new respect by finishing in a tie with McDermott for fourth place, with Francis Ouimet taking the victory away from Vardon and Ray. In 1914 Hagen won his first tournament, the U.S. Open at Midlothian in Chicago. Hagen led from first round, shooting a new course record of 68. Going into the final day of play, Hagen held a four-stroke lead over crowd favorite Chick Evans, an advantage that Evans reduced to one by the time Hagen reached the final hole. According to Herbert Warren Wind in The Story of American Golf, “All Chicago, it seemed, was following Evans. Playing about three holes ahead of Chick, with no gallery to speak of, Hagen heard one mighty roar after another come from Evans’ mob. All the way in Hagen heard the bursts of applause from Evans’ gallery telling him that Chick was still coming.” Hagen showed the first signs of his uncanny ability to focus and stay calm despite unnerving pressure, sinking an 8-foot putt on the final hole to win by one stroke.

Wins and Losses Many were skeptical that the new champion could maintain his place among the leading golfers. His swing on his tee shots was unorthodox at best, and whether his drive would land in the fairway or in the rough to the left or to the right, no one, not even Hagen, was ever sure. But his putting skills, deft short iron play, and ability to get himself out of the trouble caused by his regular miscues gave him the ability to win tournaments. Grantland Rice, a sportswriter who followed Hagen throughout his career, wrote in The Tumult and the Shouting: My Life in Sport, “Walter Hagen, a dazzling ornament to the history of sport, had the soundest golf philosophy I’ve ever known. More importantly, he applied it. ‘Grant,’ he said, ‘I expect to make at least seven mistakes each round. Therefore, when I make a bad shot I don’t worry about it. It’s just one of the seven.”’ According to Rice, “A mistake meant nothing to him. Neither did defeat. He scorned second place. ‘The crowd remembers only the winner. I’d as soon finish tenth as second,’he said.” Hagen’s distracters were not entirely wrong. Hagen’s career performance was, in fact, a series of peaks and valleys. He always went for the win when other golfers opted for safer play to place in the money. He won in spectacular fashion, and sometimes he lost in similar style. In 1915 Hagen failed to defend his U.S. Open crown, and the following year was not even in contention. He took an even bigger blow in 1920 during his first attempt to play in the British Open, characterized by barren, bunker-filled courses and strong winds. Because Hagen lofted his shots high in the air, some predicted that his basically unsound game would be completely dismantled by the winds and bunkers. Confident as always, Hagen teed up the first day of play but ended with an abysmal score of 83 and finished the second day in last place of the field of 53. However, nothing could shake the unshakable Hagen. The next year he finished in sixth place at St. Andrews. In 1922 he won at Sandwich, becoming the first American to win a British Open. He would return to win again in 1924, 1928, and 1929. Priority One Marketing Group, LLC | 17

By the end of the 1920s, Hagen had established himself as one of the greatest and most colorful golfers of his time. During his career he won the U.S. Open twice (1914 and 1919), the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) Championship five times (1921, 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1927), and the British Open four times (1922, 1924, 1928, and 1929). He also won the French Open (1920), the Belgian Open (1924), and the Canadian Open (1931). Preferring to have a major title to his name throughout the year, Hagen did not mind working his way around the U.S. circuit. He won opens in Massachusetts (1915), Michigan (1921 and 1931), New York (1922), and Texas (1923 and 1929); three Metropolitan Opens (1916, 1919, and 1920); two North and South Opens (1918 and 1923), five Western Opens (1916, 1921, 1926, 1927, and 1932); one Eastern Open (1926); and the Gasparilla Open (1935). He was also selected to play as a member of the American Ryder Cup team, which played golf against teams from other nations, in 1927, 1929, 1921, 1933, and 1935. He was the nonplaying captain of the Ryder Cup team in 1937.

(Above) Walter Hagen holds the Claret Jug, which he retained after winning the 1929 British Open at Muirfield

More than a Superstar

Hagen did more for golf than win tournaments. He was the sport’s first superstar, ambassador, and flamboyant personality. According to Stephen Goodwin in Golf Magazine, “Hagen could have been a poster boy for the 1920s. As a professional golfer, he became an international celebrity, known not only for his accomplishments on the golf course, but his extravagant lifestyle. His story wasn’t exactly a tale of rags-to-riches, but he made pots of money and spent it with legendary abandon. He liked to travel in chauffeur-driven limousines, and he once showed up on the first tee of an exhibition match in top hat and tails, and a wee bit tipsy.” Hagen enjoyed drinking and was known to occasionally arrive at a tournament or exhibition match slightly late and still wearing the clothes from the day before. His love of show did not bode well for his two marriages. He wed Margaret Johnson in 1917. They had one child and were divorced in 1921. He married Edna Strauss in 1924, and they divorced in 1934. Financially, Hagen was the first professional golfer to reach 1 million dollars in earnings and spent it all on extravagance as he went. He was also the first golfer to hire an agent to represent him. Hagen, like no other pro before him, knew the power of image and appearance. 18 | Priority One Marketing Group, LLC

The King of Match Play Match play was where Hagen was the king of his domain, which included the PGA Championship. He won 29 consecutive matches in the PGA Championship and 34 out of the 36 he played. He also played in some legendary match play exhibitions. Perhaps the most famous was the 1926 challenge match between Hagen and the great amateur golfer, Bobby Jones. Publicized as a battle between amateur and pro, Jones was considered by most to be a better golfer; however, Hagen was the supreme match player. According to Pat Seelig in Golf Magazine, Jones, who was already considered a great golfer and a favorite of the press, represented golf in its unsullied purity as an amateur, whereas “on the other hand was Walter Hagen, a brilliant showman for whom money was nothing more than something to spend-and the only way to get it was by playing golf. In other words, professional golf at its best-or worst.” In his usual manner, Hagen combined ridiculously poor shots with brilliant recoveries and spectacular putting to take the lead. Jones, who agonized over every errant shot and bemoaned each Hagen recovery, lost his focus, and Hagen won the two-round match, 12 and 11. He was not only a master of playing golf, he was also a master at playing people. This made match play, in which score is tallied by the number of holes won, not total shots, a perfect venue for Hagen who loved to play with the minds of his opponents. John M. Ross described Hagen’s “applied psychology” in Golf Magazine, “One of Hagen’s most successful tactics was to lull an opponent into swapping banter between shots, getting him so amused he was vulnerable to a crack in concentration when important shots were played. Hagen, on the other hand, could turn off the fun like a light switch and devote total attention to the task at hand.” Hagen would distract younger opponents with conversations of a possible invitation to a future exhibition tournament. He acknowledged in his autobiography The Walter Hagen Story (1956): “Through the years I’ve been accused of dramatizing shots. Of making the difficult shots look easy and the easy shots look difficult. Only that last came naturally, believe me. Well, I always figured the gallery had a show coming to them. I deny I ever held up a game by any such shenanigans, but I don’t deny playing for the gallery. I don” deny trying to make my game as interesting and as thrilling to the spectators as it was possible for me to make it.”

Sir Walter Despite his love for flashy clothes, limousines, and nightclubs, Hagen was the consummate gentleman, always charming and at ease, making others, including Hollywood stars and British royalty, desire to be in his presence. As Sir Walter, Hagen was both golf star and entertainer. Wind concludes, “Great as he was as a golfer, he was even greater as a personality-an artist with a sense of timing so infallible that he could make tying his shoelaces seem more dramatic than the other guy’s hole-in-one.” Hagen was named a charter member of the PGA Hall of Fame in 1940 and retired the following year. He died in Traverse City, Michigan, on October 5, 1969. Priority One Marketing Group, LLC | 19

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The Health Benefits of golf by: Norleen Gray

BELIEVE IT OR NOT... golf is actually good for your health. Even the United States Golf Association thinks so; they also advise that you should walk the golf course and try to avoid – as much as possible – riding golf carts. Although riding golf carts is the most convenient way to get yourself from one hole to the next, it will actually be good for your body if you walk your legs along the greens. Doing so pumps your heart, circulates the blood all over your body, and is a good and fun way of exercising. David Fay from the United States Golf Association also thinks that the most pleasurable way to play golf is by walking. Riding carts, he said, should as much as possible be stopped now. Walking is a good form of exercise. It is the most basic and easy program of getting fit which almost anyone could do. Simply put, walking is good for you. Although some believe that walking the golf course is a very unhealthy thing to do because of the nature of the game – the start and stop process of golf playing. In actuality though, there have been scientific studies as well as evidence of people actually telling their personal experiences on the positive effects of walking through a game of golf. 42 | Priority One Marketing Group, LLC

In Sweden in particular, there are researchers who discovered that walking through a game of golf equals to about forty to seventy percent of intense workout in an aerobics class. This is assuming that about eighteen holes were played. In another study by a cardiologist named Edward Palank, golfers who walked were found to be in a better state of health because the level of bad cholesterol in their body decreased. Meanwhile, the level of their good cholesterol was steady. Those golfers who settled to ride their way across the golf course on golf carts, however, did not show these same positive health results. Also, according to Golf Science International, four hours of golf playing was found to be comparable to attending a forty five minute fitness class.

The Health Benefits of golf by: Norleen Gray

Another golf association, specifically the Northern Ohio Golf Association, stated that when a golfer walks across a course, it is roughly equivalent to walking for three to four miles. This included walking around hills, over greens and tees. Not convinced yet? Maybe you should try doing the following activities and see, as well as feel, the difference for yourself. During a round of golf, try to walk along alternating holes so that by the end of your round of golf you should be able to have walked through a total of nine holes. If you are feeling not up to it yet as fully as you should, that is okay. Maybe you could try walking on a set of nines while you can ride the other set. If you have a golf partner and he or she insists that you ride along with him or her, make sure that you only ride on the path of the cart. You can then walk down to the fairway towards your ball and then your partner could bring the golf cart up.

Are You Convinced Yet? Believe it or not, golf carts do create damage around sand traps and around the greens. Even if carts are not supposed to ride along these areas, sometimes though, depending on who is behind the golf cartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wheel, they still at times do. For the sake of the greens, go walk! Because of advances in technology, there are now grasses that are able to grow on areas that they originally are not supposed to grow on at all. As a result of this, golf courses look as amazing as they were before. Unfortunately, these same golf courses are as subject to a lot of wear and tear as well. Driving a golf cart along these beautiful greens subjects them to unnecessary damage. So now that you know, it would not hurt you to consider walking along, across, over, or through those greens now would it?

Are you convinced yet? If not, try to look at it this way. If your health is not good enough for you to settle to walk those legs and pump that good old heart of yours, then at least take pity and be considerate of the damage that golf carts do to fairways. Priority One Marketing Group, LLC | 43

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