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Sussex County, DE | 10th Edition Advertising Sales James Lynam - Senior Advertising Director
Business Relations Stephan Roose • Jennifer Masson
Editors
Graphic Design
Brent Williams • Jeff Carpineta Michael O’Donnell • Michelle Wood Ryan Fleming
Jennifer Masson - 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
Brent Williams • Doriano Riosa Rafael Baez • Adriane Marseille
Website & New Media Blake Wilhelm - Senior Web Developer Brent Williams - Junior Web Developer
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Sussex County, DE | 10th Edition
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Rule 3-2: Failure to Hole Out Slammin’ Sammy: History of Sam Snead 2014 PGA Tour Schedule 2014 LPGA Tour Schedule A Higher Wedge-U-Cation Top 10 Putting Green Rule Situations Overcoming the Pitfalls of 2013: Rory McIlroy
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Eastern Amputee Golf Association 2014 Champions Tour Schedule How to Lower Your Scores NOW! The Walter Hagen Story Arold Palmer Biography Driving Growth with Golf 2.0 Business Directory
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NOW!
HOW TO LOWER YOUR SCORES…
Do you want to lower your scores? Silly question isn’t it? Everyone wants to lower his or her scores. High handicappers and low handicappers alike want to shoot lower scores and it’s the lifelong quest golfers search for. The search goes on to develop the ideal swing and lower scores. There are 3 Keys to shooting lower scores and they are keys you can use to shoot lower scores NOW! Here are the 3 Keys #1 PLAY THE SHOT THAT NEEDS TO BE PLAYED... NOT THE ONE YOU WANT TO PLAY
The first way to lower your scores is to be honest with yourself. You need to know your game; wherever it is right now; you need to know what clubs to hit and when. There is no point in using what other golfers are using. If they hit an 8-iron from 155 and you should hit a 6…hit the 6-iron. More scores balloon because players are playing what I call “EGO Golf” instead of “Scoring Golf”. If you want to score well, you must put yourself into the best position to do that. Hitting an 8-iron because someone else is doing it won’t get you what you want. (Continued) Priority One Marketing Group, LLC
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You will lower your scores when you begin playing the BEST shot instead of the shot you want to hit. Hitting the shot you want to hit is not always the BEST shot to hit at the time. Play the percentages. Play the correct shot even if you want to go for the risky or low percentage shot. Take a look at how many times playing the shot YOU wanted to hit has gotten you in trouble. Each time it has, you’ve added strokes to your round. Play the shot that needs to be played in every situation, not the one you want to play. If you don’t have the distance then lay-up and take a bogey if that’s what it means. How many times have you “gone for it’ only to add 2 or more strokes to the hole? You must play the game you know how to play and play within that game. Take an honest look at how far you hit each club right now. As you improve your game, this will change but you must play the game you have RIGHT NOW! #2 KEEP IT SIMPLE: PROCESS VS. OUTCOME Simplify your round of golf. Each hole is presenting you with the exact information you need to make the right choices…for your game! The architect has laid out all the obstructions for you so you know exactly where NOT to go and where TO go. Focus on WHERE TO go.. Simplify your round by thinking simple. “Fairways and greens” is such a simple idea that players tend to either forget it or get TOO caught up in it trying to be too perfect. Simplify your round by thinking fairways and greens. It doesn’t matter whether you are a 30, 15 or 5 handicap. Hit the shots you are capable of hitting and no more! When you try to “outwit” or “outplay” the course or other golfers, you will get into trouble. How can you simplify your round? Easy. Focus on process versus outcome. Process thinking is focusing on what you have 100 control over; at all times. Focus on your routines, your breathing, your pace between shots, visualization, rhythm and balance in your set up and swing. You have complete control over ALL of these things. You don’t have control over things like conditions, course layout, playing partners attitudes, score or any other outcome or result type of thought. You’ll find that when you focused on outcomes in the past, you probably didn’t play as well and your scores reflected that. Keep it simple. Focus ONLY on what you have control over. These are PROCESS THOUGHTS.
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#3 PRACTICE YOUR SHORT GAME!
It’s important to spend time on your short game skills. The tendency is to go to the range, hit the driver and other irons, and then call it a day. Take a close look and you might find that chipping, pitching and putting is where your strokes add up during a round. Imagine what your scores would be like if you learned to chip and pitch the ball closer to the hole? You can lower your scores by taking the time to practice chipping and pitching the ball closer to the hole. The more you do it, the more confidence you gain as well. In addition, your putting can improve because of the confidence gained by getting closer to the hole more often. Great players spend a lot of time on this part of their game because they understand that this is where their strokes can add up. There are professional golfers on the developmental tours who still don’t work on their “weaknesses” in practice and it costs them dearly when they compete. While the long ball looks beautiful, it’s the short ball that brings the numbers down on your scorecard.
You can lower your scores by acting on these 3 Keys right away. Good Luck!
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Arnold Palmer is many things to many people...world famous golf immortal and sportsman, highly-successful business executive, prominent advertising spokesman, skilled aviator, talented golf course designer and consultant, devoted husband, father and grandfather and a man with a down-to-earth common touch that has made him one of the most popular and accessible public figures in history. His popularity and success have grown with the tremendous golf boom in this latter half of the century to heights few ever anticipated. Certainly each contributed to the other, a fact given recognition when he was named “Athlete of the Decade” for the 1960s in a national Associated Press poll. Before, during and after that great decade, the famous golfer amassed 92 championships in professional competition of national or international stature by the-end of 1993. Sixty-one of the victories came on the U.S. PGA Tour, starting with the 1955 Canadian Open. Beside the magnificent performance record, his magnetic personality and unfailing sense of kindness and thoughtfulness to everybody with whom he comes in contact have endeared him to millions throughout the world and led to the informal formation of the largest non-uniformed “military” organization in existence - Arnie’s Army. Seven of his victories came in what the golfing world considers the four major professional championships. He won the Masters Tournament four times, in 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1964; the U.S. Open in spectacular fashion in 1960 at Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver and the British Open in 1961 and 1962. He came from seven strokes off the pace in the final round in that U.S. Open win and has finished second in four other Opens since then. Among the majors, only the PGA Championship has eluded him. He has finished second in the PGA three times. Arnie’s springboard to professional fame and fortune was his victory in the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1954. He turned professional a few months later. His hottest period was a four-year stretch from 1960 to 1963 when he landed 29 of his titles and collected almost $400,000 at a time when the purses were minute by today’s standards. He was the leading money-winner in three of those years and twice represented the U.S. in the prestigious Ryder Cup Match, serving in 1963 as the victorious captain. It was also during this period that his rapidly-growing business interests got their start, through the impetus of Palmer himself and with the guidance and efforts of his business manager, Mark McCormack, and his wide-ranging
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organization. Arnold is president of Arnold Palmer Enterprises, a multi-division structure encompassing much of his global commercial activity that is centered in Cleveland. He has been involved in automobile and aviation service firms in his Latrobe (PA) hometown, Charlotte NC, and elsewhere around the country for many years. Arnold is president and sole owner (since 1971) of Latrobe Country Club and president and principal owner of the Bay Hill Club and Lodge, Orlando, FL, which he and a group of associates acquired on lease in 1970. Bay Hill hosts the annual Nestle Invitational on the PGA Tour. Arnold also is tournament professional and member of the Board of Directors of Laurel Valley Golf Club, Ligonier, PA, with which he has been affiliated since its founding in the late 1950s. He is a major stockholder and member of the Board of Directors of ProGroup, Inc., Ooltewah, TN, (Chattanooga area), a sporting goods company which manufactures and markets various leisure-industry products focused on golf, including equipment bearing the Palmer name and design. Another important facet of his activities involves golf course design, management and teaching in businesses operating as Palmer Course Design Company, in which he is associated with Edwin B. Seay, past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects; Arnold Palmer Golf Management Company, and the Arnold Palmer Golf Academy. Since the mid1960s, Palmer has put his stamp on some 200 new courses throughout the nation and world. His modest business empire and tournament play keep Palmer on the move much of the year, most of the travel in his Cessna Citation VII jet aircraft with Arnold at the controls when aboard. Palmer was born on September 10, 1929, in Latrobe, a small industrial town in Western Pennsylvania at the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains some 50 miles east of Pittsburgh. He still spends the warm months of the year there, but makes his winter home in the Orlando area. He has numerous active and honorary memberships in clubs throughout the world, including famed St. Andrews inScotland and prominent Oakmont in Pittsburgh. Priority One Marketing Group, LLC
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The golfing great has been the recipient of countless honors, the symbolic plaques, trophies and citations scattered throughout his personal, club and business worlds. He has received virtually every national award in golf and after his great 1960 season both the Hickok Athlete of the Year and Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year trophies. He is a charter member of the World Golf Hall of Fame and a member of the American Golf Hall of Fame at Foxburg, PA, and the PGA Hall of Fame in Florida. He is chairman of the USGA Members Program and served as Honorary National Chairman of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation for 20 years. He played a major role in the fund-raising drive that led to the creation of the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Women in Orlando in the 1980s. A long-time member of the Board of Directors of Latrobe Area Hospital, he established a major annual fund-raising golf event for that institution in 1992. The saga of Arnold Palmer began when he was four years old, swinging his first set of golf clubs, cut down by his father, Milfred J. (Deacon) Palmer, who worked at Latrobe Country Club from 1921 until his death in 1976, much of that time as both golf professional and course superintendent. Before long, Arnie was playing well enough to beat the older caddies at the club. He began caddying himself when he was 11 and worked at virtually every job at the club in the ensuing years. The strongly-built young man concentrated on golf in high school and soon was dominating the game in Western Pennsylvania. He won his first of five West Penn Amateur Championships when he was 17, competed successfully in national junior events and went to Wake Forest University (then College), where he became No. 1 man on the golf team and one of the leading collegiate players of that time. Deeply affected by the death in an auto accident of his close friend and classmate, Bud Worsham, younger brother of 1947 U.S. Open Champion Lew Worsham, Arnold withdrew from college during his senior year and began a three-year hitch in the Coast Guard. His interest in golf rekindled while he was stationed in Cleveland. He was working there as a salesman and playing amateur golf after his discharge from the service and brief return to Wake Forest when he won the U.S. Amateur in 1954 following his second straight victory in the Ohio Amateur earlier that summer. It was during this period that he met Winifred Walzer at a tournament in Eastern Pennsylvania. They were married shortly after he turned professional in the fall of 1954 and Winnie traveled with him when he joined the pro tour in early 1955. The Palmers have two daughters - Peggy Palmer Wears, of Durham, NC, and Amy Palmer Saunders, of Windermere, FL; four granddaughters, Emily (11/27/81), Katherine Anne (9/21/82), Anne Palmer (9/14/84) Saunders and Nicola Wears and a grandson, Samuel Palmer Saunders (7/30/87). Arnold’s brother, Jerry, who succeeded their father as course superintendent at Latrobe CC, and sisters, Mrs. Lois Jean Tilley and Sandra Sarady, live in the Latrobe area. Jerry is now general manager of Latrobe CC and all Palmer properties there. Their mother, Doris, passed away in 1979 after a long, brave battle against crippling arthritis.
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