Sam's need is unquestionably one of the greatest golfers who ever lived.
His longevity in golf is equally remarkable.
Sam, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, won 84 official USPGA Tour events
through December 1979.
It has been credited with a total of 134 tournament victories since 1934.
These days, Sam makes his home here at the Meadowood Golf and Tennis Community in Fort
Pierce, Florida.
Meadowood features a long, challenging course in the heart of Indian River-Cypress Country,
about an hour north of West Palm Beach.
Now to have the swing that you have, and you still do have it, there obviously must be
some basic fundamentals that you come back to time and time again.
Well, I found that I try to make my swing as simple as I could make it.
I go by keys.
I try to make it simple.
Tell me the keys.
What are we talking about here?
I think the most important one now, you won't come over.
When I address the ball, I make the club come back in that same position as I started.
But if I do that, I can't do this.
And if I do that, I can't do that.
So in other words, that's cut out two or three, but it's got to be slow.
You have to stop up here to start back anyway, but you stop up there.
I played my best golf when I had a slight hesitation at the top.
Well, then I wouldn't come over here or do these funny things.
Sam, you've taught so many, many people over the years.
What are the most common mistakes that you see the average golfer make?
Grips.
Grips?
Bad grips.
I was with Golf Digest and I went to the school at least three a year.
And it's funny, if you upset a man too much, like keep your head still, keep your left
arm straight, turn against his straight left leg now, keep your head back when you come
in, he don't know what he's doing.
I mean, he's out in the left field.
You've finished him.
You can only tell him one thing at a time to do.
What are some of the other keys that you think about?
You said tempo.
How important is tempo?
I think that's everything.
You hear him in football.
He said he's got the rhythm now.
He's got the tempo.
Well, rhythm and tempo is the same thing.
And golf to me is timing and rhythm.
You've got to have rhythm in almost anything.
In music, anything you do, it's rhythm.
Tell me about that story that you were teaching a fellow who could barely get the ball off
the tee and you told him something about rhythm?
I was doing a lot of teaching at that time and this fellow came down and the side's going
further than the ball.
I said, hey, you can't knock the ball over that mountain.
He says, well, I'm trying.
And I used up about every repertoire I knew of and whatnot.
And finally I said, you know, the old timey pros used to teach by well style.
La la la la la.
He said, I should know something about that.
So what do you mean?
He said, I'm a professional dancer.
I said, could you swing?
He had a five iron.
I said, could you swing the five iron in Walsh time?
He says, hell yes.
I said, well, have at it.
You never saw so many pretty beautiful shots in your life.
And he'd been playing for a while.
And he said, why didn't somebody tell me about this before?
I said, well, I've been trying to tell you.
I said, it's rhythm.
And he started timing the thing just building.
He says, boy, he says, how easy can it get?
I said, wait till tomorrow.
Oh my, take a look at that classic swing.
Good for accuracy and distance.
But which one interests the average golfer?
And what about chipping?
Well, there's no question about it.
Everybody wants to hit a long ball.
You go to a baseball game, want to see the home run.
The fault of the average player, he has two fulcrums.
One in his wrist and one in his elbow.
You'll see him do this.
He'll go and he doesn't.
Your left arm on your chip, you never break your left arm.
Your left arm stays straight.
It stays straight.
And you don't need a lot of wrist action
unless you have to pop the ball way up in the air.
And that's a different kind of shot.
Does that hold true in the sand traps as well?
Sand traps, that left arm must stay straight down here.
If it doesn't, and you start breaking,
you won't get out of half of them.
Well, since we're talking about swinging, Sam,
why don't we go out to the course
and let's put a few swings on the ball and see how we do,
OK?
Oh, this is going to be great.
Well, it turned out to be even better than that.
For as soon as we set foot on the par 5 first hole,
Sam went about fine tuning my grip.
You learned from an average golfer, didn't you?
Yeah, yeah, he was a little better than I was.
Well, he taught you what to do, your grip and everything.
Right.
Well, remember, the grip's the most important part
of your golf game, OK?
All right, now, in years gone by,
we used to have our clinics, and we'd
give them a start with the grip.
Now, if you'll put both knees formed by thumb and forefinger
and point over your right shoulder,
now put your right hand.
How about like that?
Oh, yeah, that's fine.
Put your right hand down.
How about like that?
Now, that groove coincides with this groove.
Now, we think that's the perfect grip.
That's what you call an overlap, Harry Barton grip.
But we think that is the perfect grip.
Now, your hands can work normally
and come back to the ball without having to turn over
or lock out or anything.
You can just let them go.
Well, with my new grip and a little more instruction,
I went for broke.
Not bad, but now it was the master's turn.
Oh, my, that's as pretty as can be.
Oh, ho.
Well, it's just a hair off the center.
Oh, hair off center.
Now, let's go up and see what we can do with those shots.
OK, Sam.
Well, Joe, this is long part five.
Yeah.
And you'll have to play your second shot over
to the right pinch cut left.
So you'll have a straight shoot into it.
So you think a three wood?
Oh, from here against this wind, we both can use woods.
I can use a cannon, probably.
We'll try the three wood then.
Yes, a long ways.
Sam, what about the business of sweeping the ball?
Or am I going to try to pinch the ball?
I want you to pinch the ball, sort of like you're
playing an iron.
Oh, OK.
Hit right down through it.
It'll come up.
Oh, OK.
How's this look?
Good.
Got to get my fanny on a little bit, huh?
Yeah, got to get that in so those shoulders can turn.
OK, let's give this a whack and see what happens.
Hey, Sam, that's not half bad.
You hit that good and solid, brother.
Now, after one more stroke, Sam's ball was, of course,
in perfect position.
But he agreed to play along with my ball, which later,
due to circumstances beyond my control, ended up in the trap.
While we were at it, he said he'd give me
a few sand trap pointers.
The most important thing here is keep your weight
entirely on that left foot.
On that left foot here?
Yeah, you don't come off that left foot.
OK, so it's going to stay right there.
Yeah, stay right there.
When am I playing that ball?
About here?
Yeah, you're perfect.
OK.
I open this club up a little bit, do I?
Yeah, just a little.
OK.
Just take your normal swing right behind the ball now.
Just behind here, about 2 and 1.
OK, keep that left arm straight.
Yeah, well, just keep that weight over on that left.
Oh, let me keep that left.
That's the most important thing, yeah.
OK.
All right.
Hey, I like that one.
Well, I sure was happy with that shot,
but I wanted to see how the master would play it.
Now, if you notice, I work my feet in the sand
so they don't move.
If you stand up on the sand and you don't,
your feet are up to move.
So you work your feet down so that they're
a nice, firm foundation.
OK.
But if you'll notice, my weight is on this left foot,
just like you did.
I want to keep that weight there so I don't move.
And it's just a nice, smooth swing.
Oh, that looks sweet, Sam.
Yes!
Hey, Joe, you got inside of me.
How about that?
That was a great shot.
All right.
Well, let's see what you can do with it.
Let me mark my balls, Sam.
Here we go.
You know what they call these?
What's that?
These are soul searchers.
Soul searchers.
I call them character builders.
Well, actually, if I'm reading it right,
it must break to the right a little bit.
OK.
See how it works.
If I strike it firm on it, then on the inside of that hole,
it should go right, dip right down in there.
Oh, my.
Nothing to it.
Nothing.
Oh, you're a wizard.
All right.
Sam, I want to thank you.
That was just great.
That was nice.
That was super.
Thank you so much.
Hey, so you learned fast.
Well, I got the greatest teacher in the world.
Why not?
All right.
Here's a situation that you may come upon.
If you've just missed the green, you're
just off the collar of the green, and you're in the rough,
the ball's sitting down in the rough,
and there's a little bit of grass behind the ball.
You can't put the blade on the ball.
You can't quite get the club on the ball,
so you've got to come in with something
that's going to work for you.
What I recommend is this.
You've got to stand fairly close to the ball.
Rather than the golf club's entire leading edge
on the ground, we're just simply going to toe it,
so that the golf club is a little bit more in a putting
style than your normal wedge shot and chip
shot around the green.
So we've got it standing fairly much straight up
like a putting stroke.
You've got the ball on your right foot.
You've opened your stance.
There's going to be absolutely no weight transfer,
so you've got your weight essentially on the left side.
You're going to grip it as if you're
going to use your putting grip, and all I'm going to do
is employ my putting stroke.
And just simply make sure that you follow through
and accelerate through the shot.
Let me try.
As you can see, there's no weight transfer,
no shifting of the weight at all.
It's just simply putting stroke and accelerate
through the shot.
We asked long driver Mark Kalkovekia,
why can't amateurs consistently hit long drives?
And is there a way to change this?
The average player a lot of times
takes it back way too fast.
They get too excited when they try to hit one hard.
They take their backswing back so fast
that they lose all the momentum on their feet.
And they're just going to have to do it again.
They're going to have to take it back so fast
that they lose all the momentum on their downswing.
I think to hit the ball a long ways,
you need to take a nice, slow, smooth backswing,
coil up, get yourself turned, and then unleash
all your power on the downswing, delaying
your release and whatnot.
That's not easy to do.
If you start getting into that, you
might get a lot of directional problems.
So I think just slowing down the backswing
and taking a good full turn, and then go ahead and ripping
at it on the downswing.
Players keep in mind when playing around.
If you're tall, you have to work more on your timing
and a lot on your short game.
Because you're going to have a tendency probably
to miss more greens because I think
they try to overpower the ball most of the time.
The guys that swing within themselves,
and what I mean by that, have a smooth swing,
that's usually the ones that are going
to score a little bit better.
And if you don't have a smooth swing,
you better get your wedge out and start working.
Hale, you have a reputation on the tour
as being one of the fiercest competitors.
What does that mean exactly?
I don't know.
Somebody labeled me with that a long time ago.
I don't think fierce is necessarily the right word.
I think I've been in sports an awful long time.
And I think to play successfully,
or do anything successfully, whether it be in business,
or whether it be in sport, the arts, artists,
I think you have to be competitive and look
at your competition and say, I have to be better than they.
I think some people look at being competitive
as something nasty.
And I think those are the people that are losers.
When it comes down to being under the gun,
is there some things that you do that the average golfer can
do when you're under pressure?
What are some of the key thoughts that you think about
to keep you focused on your shot?
Well, I think what I always try to get from my amateur partners
when I'm playing with them is for them to try not
to remember the dozen things they have
to remember on the backswing.
Try to eliminate the tension of the backswing,
because at least I've not ever seen a ball hit
on the backswing.
So I try to focus their attention on hitting the ball.
And I think there's an awful lot of tension and anxiety
and nervousness prior to the takeaway of the club.
So if you can cleanse your mind of so many things
and just think of what target area are you hitting at.
Now, that can be general.
It can be specific, however your talents are.
Make sure you have enough club.
If you're improperly aligned, and that's relatively easy
to do, just lay a club down from toe to toe.
And that'll pretty much tell you how you're aligned.
Most people have poor alignment, so they
do something else in their swing that's wrong
to correct that wrong.
So two wrongs don't necessarily make a right.
Of all the things I try to do in my golf swing
is make sure I'm aligned properly,
make sure I have enough club to reach my target area,
and make sure that I swing the club within my abilities.
Hale, do you find that amateurs have a tendency to score
too much in their heads during the course of a round?
I think they worry too much about what they've done,
instead of what they need to do.
And play the game backwards.
Backwards meaning they're thinking back there,
or they're thinking so far ahead that they don't concentrate
on the shot at hand.
What would you advise amateurs to practice most?
All facets of the game have to be understood.
Most people don't understand the short game.
Short gaming, how the ball can be pitched.
You can pitch and run it.
You can hit it high and soft.
And they don't realize that clubs
aren't just to hit one way.
They can be used in different fashions.
And I think the professional will take his 13 clubs
outside of his putter, and even possibly his driver.
But the 13 clubs, other than the putter,
he'll use those in a variety of ways.
And he's learned to do so by experimentation.
Now, as far as putting is concerned,
that seems to be almost another art form.
When you're putting, you have to visualize the line.
And a certain amount of that is from practice.
You have to practice putting.
There's no way to just go up and get over a putt
and know how hard to hit it.
Some people will ask, how hard do you hit a 30-foot putt?
I don't know.
How far do you throw a ball?
20 feet.
You can't have that put in definitive form.
I think you have to look at it and say,
my hand-eye judgment tells me that I
must apply this amount of force to propel the ball from point
X to point Y, being the hole.
And you have to acquire a feel for that.
Now, some people make that acquisition very naturally.
And some people really have to work at it.
Hale, how about the visualization?
How much of it actually goes in the round of golf for you?
The visualization sometimes, putting, for instance,
you can just see that line as if somebody put a chalk line
down there.
The next hole or the next day, you look at it,
and there's just nothing there.
So I think what you have to do is train yourself
to take in all the factors of your shot selection,
whether it be lie, wind, slope, whatever it may be, distance,
and try and imagine the parabola of the shot, the direction,
the height that you want to hit it.
But don't take forever to do it.
We're about to tackle the par 5 17th hole here at Meadowbrook.
And to make life easier, head pro Rick Meskel
gave me some valuable advice.
The unusual part of this hole is that it is a double dogleg.
The key to this hole is set up for the approaches
into the green.
Our drive is going to take us out to the right hand
side of the fairway.
And the second shot has to be up to the left hand
side of the fairway to gain a real nice entry into the green.
OK, fine.
That having been said, let's say we give this ball
a little bit of a nudge.
How does this look?
I'd appreciate any tips you can give me here.
How does this look right now?
Well, I think it looks good, except for two things
I'd like to show you.
Oh, great.
I might step in here and show you what I'd like to do.
Number one, I think the ball position in your stance
was a little bit too far back.
And of course, with the driver, we'd
like to position it a little bit more
toward the front part of the stance,
a little closer to the left heel.
That's going to help us when we make contact with the ball.
We're going to be swinging up to it, which is going
to help the flight of the driver.
Joe, the second thing I'd like to show you
is that the height of the golf ball, I think,
is too low for the driver.
I'd like to bring that up just a little bit.
And the one thing to keep in mind with the driver
is that you would like to have half of the golf ball
over the top of the club.
That's going to help you be able to sweep through the shot
and certainly enhance the direction of the driver.
Well, I tell you, for me, Rick, that wasn't a bad drive at all.
Joe, this is perfect.
It really sets up a great second shot
positioning for this hole, which is really key.
What you want to try to do is keep this shot
to the left-hand side of the fairway,
and that will really set up a nice approach
shot into the green.
And I want you also to keep in mind what we discussed back
on the tee, which is the ball position.
Keep it up toward the left heel, and that will certainly
help this shot.
OK.
Go ahead and let it go.
Oh, I kind of pulled that one, Rick.
What makes you do that?
I think we were overprotecting a little bit,
trying to keep it away from the right-hand side,
and your swing just looked a little bit too fast.
OK.
Well, at least one of us did it by the book.
Rick's shot really put us in a nice position for our approach
to the green.
Rick let me have another go at it,
and I did a bit better the second time.
I think we're going to have to get
a little bit more of a lead on that one.
I think we're going to have to get a little bit more of a lead
on that one.
Rick let me have another go at it,
and I did a bit better the second time.
What do we got here now?
140 yards to the green?
Joe, you're right.
It's just about 140 yards, and you've
hit a great second shot, which is going to set up
our approach into the green.
OK.
What we want to do is we've got two big sand traps up here.
The flag is cut a little bit towards the left side
of the green, and I think what we want to do
is stay away from the flag.
It's a little bit too close to the sand.
Is that going to be a good deal, like I did with the driver?
That's a good question, Joe.
With the irons, we want to play it much more
in the middle of our stance.
That's going to enhance us to hit down
on the golf ball, which is going to get it
up in the air for this shot.
OK.
So I'll move just a little bit, sort of like this.
That looks great.
Why don't you go ahead and give it a try?
All right.
I think I might have pushed that just a little bit.
Whoops.
That's all right.
That's the part of the green that we want to be on.
A little bit more to the right, and I think
that'll set up a nice putt for it.
Well, Rick, how far do you think this is?
Well, Joe, I think we're about 30 feet.
We're in a nice position.
We've got a 30-foot uphill putt to the pin.
And I think the one thing you want to keep in mind here
on a longer putt is keep your hands soft on the club head.
Or excuse me, keep the hands soft on the grip
so that you'll gain a better feel of the putter hit.
And it will certainly help the stroke.
So we're looking to get this ball close,
because I really don't make these kind of putts.
We're not trying to make this putt.
If it goes in, Joe, that's a bonus.
But what we're trying to do is just make
sure we gauge the speed.
OK.
I didn't hit it.
That's not too bad.
All right, Joe, I've got a nice putt for my birdie here.
Is that a straight-in kind of putt, Rick?
Joe, yes, it is.
A little uphill.
I'm going to make sure I hit it firmly
into the back of the cup.
That was a great putt, Rick.
Thank you, Joe.
Why don't you go ahead and knock yours in?
OK.
That away, good stroke.
Thank you very much, Rick.
I want to tell you, this has been an absolute pleasure.
I learned a lot, and I'm sure our viewers did, too.
It's our pleasure to introduce Lee Trevino.
If there is a dominant force in golf
today, it is this gentleman. Lee, so good of you
to be with us today.
Good.
Thank you, Joe.
How are you doing?
We're doing real good.
You're doing fantastic.
Do you ever think the senior tour is
going to be this great for you?
No, not really.
I knew that they had the tournaments out here.
The sponsors were behind it.
A lot of great players out here.
But I practiced very hard for it, though, Joe.
5 and 1 1
Lee, no offense intended, but you don't have what is considered
a picture book swing.
Well, you know, when you talk about the senior tour,
it's not a picture book swing.
Well, you know, when you talk about picture swings,
people tend to get into a Sam Snead swing or a Gene Littler swing.
And that came over to this country 150 years ago,
because someone from Scotland came over and introduced golf
to this country.
But who is to say that he brought it over correctly?
Ah.
You understand?
I mean, those guys that have that picture swing
might not be the right way to swing.
They're not going to copy.
Now, what I was going to say before was that despite the fact
that it's a golf book, it's a golf book,
the reason, in my opinion, that 98% of the people slice a golf ball
is because they go over the top of it.
Because if you read any golf instructional book,
it tells you, it gives you the fundamentals of the game
about the grip and the stance and the weight distribution, whatever.
But taking the club away is the most important one of all.
And everybody teaches taking it back inside.
And every book is written the same way.
But in the second chapter, once you have completed your backswing,
they say, what's the first movement of the downswing?
And they say, well, you must set the club off.
Well, if you take the club back inside,
there's no place to set it off.
And what happens, people go over the top of it.
I taught myself to go open position.
Instead of the right foot being back, I make my left foot go back.
I take the club back outside the line.
But that's done automatically simply because my hip alignment
is left of target.
So the club goes outside the line.
I reroute the club.
And that's one of the things that Norman is doing now,
Kalkovecki is doing it now, Kathy Whitworth,
the greatest lady golfer ever, does it.
But I brought this onto the tour 25 years ago.
People looked at that swing.
And they said, my, my god.
They said, this man will linger, but he won't last.
But you understand what I have here is we've got two automobiles here.
You have got 5,000 moving parts.
And I've only got 1,500 moving parts.
Now, which one's going to last longer?
I don't care who you are.
If you're a junior, a lady player, a senior player, or a tour player,
there's one thing that you have to remember.
When you grew up that golf club, and you look down at that club face,
they're both pointing in the same direction.
The back of your left hand and the club face
is pointing in the same direction when you're standing out there
hitting the shot.
So then it makes sense to you that if the back of the left hand
goes toward the target, the blade has to go there.
Makes sense to me.
And people don't do that.
They take the hands up here, and they get down here,
and then they try to do all this.
Well, let me tell you something.
That golf club, when your left hand moves,
whether it moves open or it moves closed,
that blade has got to do the same thing.
So this is one of the reasons that I aim so far left,
is simply because I accelerate the back of the left hand out.
In other words, if I put this hat, how many times
have these people that are watching this show,
how many times have they had a golf lesson where
they call it the connection?
Stay connected, and they say, well, they put the hat under your left arm,
and you must swing the golf club and keep it there?
That's wrong.
When I swing a golf club, this hat would drop out,
automatically drop out.
OK, does that mean that you fade everything?
You can draw the ball on demand, can you?
And I draw it from the same position.
I draw it.
I just tell my left hand.
I give my left hand the command.
Remember I said about the left hand?
Whatever it does, the club face does.
So when I get down into the hitting area,
I just give it a little help so it closes the blade.
Now, this applies to all clubs, irons, as well as drives?
Everything.
It applies to everything.
But the majority of the people that slice the golf ball, Joe,
simply is because they have their hands too far back at address.
I see.
And when they come into the ball, if you have ever
seen a picture of a professional or anyone hitting a golf ball,
when they get into the hitting area,
have you ever noticed that their hands are way out in front?
Mm-hmm, yes.
Well, what happens if their hands started in the back?
When the hands get in the front, the club
hadn't gotten to the ball yet.
It's wide open.
So what you must do is you must try to get your hands back.
I'll keep from getting them back.
Get them forward to where the butt of the club
is missing your body.
Keeping the face of the club always on your target.
I don't want you to take your stance.
And then all of a sudden, remember and say,
oh, Lee said to put his hands forward.
And you push your hands forward, now the blade's wide open.
So you've got to start with your hands forward.
Lee, this is all fine and dandy.
And it applies to all the clubs, as you've indicated.
But if you had to advise an amateur player
to improve his game, to take strokes off it,
what area of golf would you advise him to practice?
Never driving.
Oh.
Everyone wants to hit driving range.
They go to a driving range to take the driver.
They pound the ball.
Remember, you're only going to hit that driver 14 times.
That's it.
You got four par 3s, 14 par 4s, or 10 par 4s, and four par 5s.
Where you can really bring your score down,
if you don't have a lot of time, is spend all that time
from 100 yards in.
It's a proven fact that 65% of the game
is played from 100 yards in.
Bunker shots, putting, chip shots, wedge shots.
I mean, if you're an amateur, you're an 18 handicap,
how many greens are you going to hit?
You're lucky if you hit five.
Sure.
You see?
So now, the only way that you're going
to bring that score down is you're
going to have to be able to get out of a bunker.
And you're going to have to be able to chip
the ball on the green.
And don't use a favorite club to chip with.
Most people, oh, the 7-9.
I don't care if I got to run it through grass that high.
They want to use the 7.
Always use the club that's going to land the ball
onto the green and trickle to the hole.
If you're 150 yards out, you have one shot and one shot
only.
You better go high.
You better go soft.
And you better have the right distance.
But you invent shots.
You and Seve invent shots.
That's why it's so wonderful to watch you.
You don't do the same thing all the time.
You make it up as you go.
We don't want to invent them, Joe.
It's just when we get in trouble, we invent them.
You like to play from the short grass all the time?
I wish I could hit it just straight and high every time.
Oh, would you?
It doesn't happen.
Every once in a while, we get out in the shade
and under those trees.
And you've got to invent something out of there.
Doesn't it get boring to be in the fairway all the time?
Not at all.
That's one of the reasons I'm so dark.
I don't stay in the shade very long.
No.
I'd like to start out today by showing you
a few things that the average golfer does
wrong with the golf swing.
One of the things I've noticed the most in teaching
is the turn.
Let me just demonstrate what your average golfer does wrong.
As he takes the club back, he keeps all the weight
on the left side and lets the weight stay here.
Now from here, when he tries to hit it,
he takes the weight and transfers it back to the right side.
You'll find this quite common in your average golfer.
Let's just go over and show you what it looks
like if you do it right.
Same setup.
From here, I'm going to try and take my shoulder
and put it underneath my chin over here.
From here, I can work my left side out of the way
and get the club working underneath
so I can finish up on the toes of my right foot.
Most of your golfers don't finish here.
If you don't finish here, that means the left side
did not turn out of the way.
That's one of the main problems in your average golfer.
Picture perfect.
Perhaps the phrase that best describes
this little neck of the woods, California's Monterey
Peninsula, home to, without question, some of the world's
greatest golf courses.
Yes, beauty is the name of the game here,
the place where you might find your next green deep
in the woods or literally on the beach.
Now among the Pebble Beach area courses, seven in all,
the most notable are, without question,
the three that host the legendary AT&T Pebble Beach
Pro-Am.
First, there's Spyglass, an exceptionally long course
which winds its way through forests and beachfront
and which seems to attract most interesting visitors.
Next up, Poppy Hills, the newest member
of the tournament family.
Many of the pros are just starting to learn the ins
and outs of this course, especially those wild putting
surfaces, which make for some interesting breaks.
Finally, we come to the jewel in the crown, the Pebble Beach
Golf Links, opened in 1919 and easily one of the world's
most spectacular golf resorts.
Witness the sand and surf of Carmel Beach,
the ocean mist always in the air, the cliffs, plateaus,
beach dunes, and the lodge.
No wonder Pebble Beach is a favorite picture taking spot
for non-golfers as well.
Many people from around the world
visit us just to take pictures.
They don't have the opportunity to play golf because they're
not here for very long, but they come down
from San Francisco, they come up from LA,
and they take nice little short juckets here to Pebble Beach.
Now although Pebble Beach is relatively short,
about 6,300 yards from the middle tees, don't be deceived.
There's a reason Bob Hope referred to this course
as Alcatraz with grass.
It's not that long a golf course.
The difficulty is just simply the conditions here,
the weather conditions here, the heavy bunkering,
the small greens.
There are probably three or four of the toughest golf
holes in succession in all of golf.
I'll say they're known as the fearsome foursome, hole 7
through 10.
And while you're playing them, your number one goal
is to keep your ball out of the Pacific Ocean,
especially on the par 3, 7, which is completely surrounded
by rocks and water.
The seventh hole may be the toughest hole on this course,
about 105 yards.
Downhill is all.
But boy, try to hit it.
Well, the pros try to hit it every February at Pro Am time
when Pebble Beach is transformed.
In come the crowds, business leaders,
and some of Tinseltown's most famous golfers.
Later, when the crowds and the media and the stars leave,
Pebble Beach calms down a bit.
But the magic remains.
The magic in the ocean, the sky, the mountains.
For when you come right down to it,
Pebble Beach is a state of mind.
Now, after hearing so much about that famous par 3, 7
hole here at Pebble Beach, I figured, oh, why not?
Let's try it.
But not before I gathered some background.
A lot of times on the seventh hole,
you hit a pitching wedge or a lofted club down there
on that hole with a crosswind.
And a lot of times, if you hit the ball solid,
the wind will not affect the spin of the ball.
And the ball will go and cut right through the wind
if you hit it real solid.
So you have to be careful.
Now we're ready.
And who better to bring along than Pebble Beach head
pro, R.J. Hopper, who first described the hole for us.
This is 105 yard par 3, probably one of the most, if not
the most photographed hole in the world.
The reason being is you can see it here
from the oceans roar around you.
You've got a small green, a postage stamp of a green
that's tightly bunkered all the way around,
with no room to hit beyond the green
and to the right of the green.
And even though it's just a wedge shot,
it's got to be one of the most terrifying, knee-knocking wedge
shots in the game.
By now, I felt like I knew the hole blindfolded.
But R.J. proceeded to do nothing less
than realign my entire swing.
Well, in your setup, you've got two things, I think,
that fundamentally need to be addressed.
Number one, we're hitting a wedge shot.
Again, we're not hitting the driver.
So I think we need to have the golf ball back
in our stance somewhat.
Oh, I got it too far forward, is it?
Too far forward on the left heel.
So why don't we have you just simply move your feet forward?
About how much?
Well, I'd actually like to play the ball
even in the middle of my stance, which just simply means
straight down from this axis, which
is the middle of your nose, right there down the ball,
either middle of your stance or even maybe just
a slight bit back, because we're playing a wedge shot
here.
So slide your feet forward just a bit more.
How's that?
That's perfect, Justin.
Is that good?
Now, flex your knees just a little bit,
because we're hitting a wedge.
Get the club down to the ball.
OK.
And I'm going to just do one more thing.
I'm going to ask that you put your hands forward.
Yeah.
We want to get our hands positioned forward,
because if I can have you image or mirror your impact
position with your address position, which
is what you're in now, I think you'll
have a much better chance of returning the golf club back
to this position.
The last thing I'd like to have you do is,
you've got your shoulders turned to the left here.
Right.
By that, I mean you've got this right arm
as straight as you have your left arm.
Soften your right arm.
There we go.
OK.
And just simply turn your right shoulders.
Oh, you mean I was pointing left of the target there.
What that will do is that will force a cut shot,
or a lot of times, a player will just simply start
with the right shoulder over, and you
get that big, wicked slice.
Well, as it turned out, a wicked slice
was the least of my problems, my biggest problem
being the Pacific Ocean.
R.J. put us back on track with a beautiful shot
right on the money.
I tried again.
Well, at least I hit dry land this time.
Before we played this sand shot, R.J.
gave us several important pointers
that we'd like to highlight.
For example, while from the tee we play the ball
back in our stance, in this situation,
R.J. recommends we play it off the left heel
and move the ball up a bit.
This will enable the ball to get airborne quickly.
Next, in addition to the slightly open stance,
we keep our weight strictly on the left side,
keep our hands forward, the blade open,
and then we slide the club under the ball.
Now let's watch R.J. in slow motion.
Notice the weight on his left side
and the smooth sliding stroke.
Finally, when putting at Pebble Beach,
remember one simple rule.
All putts break to the ocean.
Finally, when putting at Pebble Beach,
remember one simple rule.
All putts break to the ocean.
We asked Tom Kite, Tom, when your game goes awry,
what fundamentals do you check?
It's paying attention to the details.
And I check my alignment, I check the path of the stroke,
I check my rhythm, I check my tempo, I check my routine.
There are so many things that go into it.
It's not just one thing.
You can't just say, do this, and you're
going to be a better player.
There's no one secret.
It's just doing the same thing over and over and over
to the point of being monotonous,
but enjoying the monotony.
What is the one thing amateurs do wrong
when it comes to putting?
A lot of times, they don't follow through.
They'll cut off their stroke, and it
causes a lot of different problems.
You pull it, push it, and whatever.
And when you just follow through,
you might hit it by the hole, but it'll be on a better line.
You have a better chance of making it.
What problems do amateurs have in windy conditions,
and how can they solve them?
When they get a little fast, when they squeeze it
a little harder, that means they swing it faster.
And of course, that can affect them very drastically.
If they're conscious of it, they can caution themselves
to give themselves just another extra half a second
to relax a little bit and not squeeze that club so tight.
And I find that, in my case, if I swing a little slower,
I work a lot better in the wind.
YoYo JR
One great thing about golf is that even a famous duffer can have a moment in the sun.
You just never know when an otherwise ordinary golfer can crank up and hit a shot that's just simply amazing.
See what I mean?
Wow!
See what I mean?
This ball even walks on water!
And these shots need no explanation.
Incredible!
Amazing!
So close, yet so far.
And this has to be seen to be believed.
So close, yet so far.
Wow!
So we know, and this isn't easy.
See, he's got that little gully between him and the flag.
He's got to use that slope.
Now it should swing to the right, but has he missed the slope?
He's played a little gem.
Lovely shot.
Good shot partner.
Now Faldo's got to come up this quite steep bank.
Keep going.
Left or right?
So close, yet so far.
And this has to be seen to be believed.
Thank goodness for the rocks.
Mother Nature fashioned the origins of the sport.
It was here that God sent the North Seas against the windswept rolling dunes.
Where hollows developed with flourishing bent grass,
and where a shepherd could hit a rock with his crook into a rabbit hole.
These are the links, the sandy, well-drained soil along the ocean and river estuaries,
and the sport is golf.
Bernard Darwin describes golf as deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.
A child can play it well, and a grown man can never master it.
Any single round of it is full of unexpected triumphs and seemingly perfect shots that end in disaster.
It is almost a science, yet it is a puzzle without an answer.
It is gratifying and tantalizing, precise and unpredictable.
It requires complete concentration and total relaxation.
It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect.
It is at the same time rewarding and maddening,
and without doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.
Golf originated on the East Coast of Scotland where sheep would be grazing.
Sir Walter Simpson suggested that very probably a shepherd might have become bored
and turn his crook round and hit a stone for a while,
and then he would get tired of that and he would make a hole in the ground
and hit it into the hole, and that would be the origin of it.
Bobby Burnett is the historian of the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse in St. Andrews,
located behind the first T on the old course.
This impressive club stands proudly overlooking the birthplace of golf.
Thank you.