Newton Square, Pa. – On Wednesday morning the little verse here at Aronimink Golf Club it was a sea of golfing humanity, what with all the players, teams, coaches and equipment technicians toiling on the same ground. The boys process it, looking for swinging thoughts—for feelings, as Tiger used to say—with the opening bell of this The PGA Championship a day away. One hundred and fifty-six professional players, 20 of them club pros, vying for a share of the $19 million purse, plus a share of golf immortality for the winner and another kind of immortality for every club professional who makes the cut.
It was Tim Wiseman, the teaching pro from Different Strokes Golf Center, in New Albany, Ind., playing in his second PGA Championship. A little further down the distance from him was Jon Rahmwinner of two major championships. Wiseman and Rahm were working on the same thing, in general. We are all working towards the same thing, in general.
As it happens, one of the 156 players was, notably, not on campus Wednesday morning. Braden Shattuck was eight miles down the road, on the range at Rolling Green Golf Club. Remember how Phil Mickelsonin his prime, he would go abroad on the Tuesday or Wednesday of a major to a nearby club and try to sort things out there, in the name of privacy and lack of distraction? He would practice at, say, Sage Valley, down the road from Augusta Nationalin the days before the Masters. Shattuck, the director of instruction at Rolling Green, wasn’t doing that.
Every Wednesday morning during the season, Shattuck runs a women’s clinic at Rolling Green, and he wasn’t going to miss this week’s session just because he was playing in a major league. These women are trying to get better too! To a right-handed woman with a chronic slice of the putt, Shattuck offered this old tip: Go to the right side of the tee box and aim left. Talk about your freeway finders. A slicing tip on top of all slicing tips. The woman had something new to think about. Maybe Shattuck will use the tip himself, Thursday and Friday, if he finds himself coming down with a holster.
You are always working towards something in this game.
Here was Tim Wiseman on the Aronimink driving range, lifting his ball with iron fingers in his hands, trying to get his ball to land right on the spring grass. Here was Jon Rahm, a short walk away, pitching the ball with iron fingers in his hands, trying to get the ball to land right in his patch of grass. A chasm, in talent, between two golfers. But the ball is the ball and the club is the club and the only thing in it is your hands. Rahm and Wiseman and Shattuck and the women at his Wednesday women’s clinic will all attest to the accuracy of that statement. And, of course, Jay Herz, too.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Herz, a retired GE engineer who will be 80 on his next birthday, was in an open field about three miles from Aronimink, a 20-acre bumpy lawn owned by Radnor Township where players are allowed to hit their balls, pick them up and do it again. His balls were orange and pink and white and gray. He carried them to his place in two late model plastic bags and a long dark plastic tube. His collection of theses, many of them plastic, were damaged by the experience. He was wearing Levi’s, a plaid shirt, a white hat, two golf gloves and a t-shirt he brought north from his winter in Jupiter, South Florida. The field is public, if you are a resident of Radnor township. GOLF AT YOUR OWN RISK reads a sign. There were two other players, out on the field, each at least 200 meters from the other. There were no risks involved, not on this day.
“What am I working on?” said Mr. Herz, repeating the question put to him. “My wrist snapped.” He described what Shattuck, or Ben Hogan, might call postponing the release of the hands until the last possible moment in the movement. Mr. Herz was asking for more delay. He was looking for more distance.
Jay Herz at the Radnor Township impromptu area.
Michael Bamberger
Is there anything surprising here?
Mr. Herz has been to Aronimink once – to play tennis, which is his main sport. He was aware of the PGA Championship unfolding down the road, of course. He has a friend, one of his regular golf partners, who is working the tour, taking disabled spectators from place to place. Mr. Herz was preparing for his golf game twice a week at local public courses with his regulars. He has a plan to watch the tournament on Sunday, from the comfort of his home.
He hit a shot.
“I could use more wrist snaps,” he said.
He can regularly hit his driver 150 yards. Some of his goodies will last longer than that.
Mr. Herz has never seen Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy on his travels through South Florida. He has seen Tiger’s restaurant.
Mr. Herz was asked if he imagined that the players on the range in Aronimink were doing, essentially, the same thing he was doing.
“Yes,” he said.
And can you define what that is?
“They’re trying to get better,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
He hit one of his old balls into an old fairway and hit it with his old driver. It was a line car. It was a beauty.
;)
