Brian Manzella
Administrator
20 Years Ago Today…Thanks Ben.
After five years of teaching curriculum of my own concoction, and reading every book and magazine I could get my hands on for more years than that for new material, the time had come to go visit Bentley J. Doyle in Carmel, California.
He was the first Authorized Instructor of The Golfing Machine, my favorite book at the time, the book I had learned much from since getting my hands on a copy in 1982 after two years of looking for it. As the story goes—shorthand, I got mad at the book one day, flipped across the room, and my mom put me on a plane to see Ben.
I was doing a great job back then as a 25 year-old teaching pro, if I do say so myself. A young Jimmy Ballard in better clothes, who actually could break 80, and had better hair. A guy trying to teach his way to the top, right out of a Driving range in a third-tier market, with 20 other teachers cutting my throat daily. Was I nuts?
I had developed my own system—Absolute Golf. I had written the manual out long hand, and looking back, I should have published it. It was damn good for what it was. In fact, I had asked George Peper, the arrogant former long-time Golf Magazine editor, about just that in 1984. He laughed, patted me on the head, told me to go get some alphabets next to my name, and come back in a few years. I did just that—but that’s another story for another day.
So, the man scared of flying—the one who now flies every week and is writing this in First Class—got on a plane to San Francisco, on Sunday the 31st of May, 1987, and drove down to the Monterey Peninsula to play Pebble Beach. I played great, 3-putting six times and missing least three others from gimmie range, for an 82. I had never really hit it any better than I did that day. I miss that old swing—it was long gone by noon the next day.
For those of you who have never made the trip to see Ben Doyle, you really need to go book your flight. Lots of folks go thinking they are going to get a golf lesson in the classical sense. You know, the pro watches you hit a few balls, and says, “Look like you have the club a little open at the top, and you flip it to close it. Let’s fix it.” The teacher then painlessly as possible, baby-sits your every move, holds your hand, and viola, you leave with your swing looking similar to your friends, feeling somewhat the same to yourself—only better, and you go off and win your Club Championship or The U.S. Open.
Ah….no.
That’s exactly not what you get from Ben. But, I knew that. I had done my research. Ben was a very demanding teacher, very complex, and you had to jump in with both feet. I had no problem with that, especially because I was “only going to get Authorized.” Ben Doyle, to my knowledge, never Authorized someone that couldn’t pass his muster by hitting shots "correctly" from 2 feet to infinity, but especially the short ones. Of course, I had no chance at all. See “Flipper” for further details.
I warmed up for Ben by literally rolling balls by a flag 140 yards out with an 8-iron, like I was chipping at it from 30 ft. Unimpressed, Ben proceeded to change everything I did over the two hours—except for my bunker shots. So you know how good that was.
As I leaned up against a tree a few hours later with atear in my eye, pondering how life as an insurance salesman might be, I was a broken man. Or at least broken golfer. But I knew, he was right. And it got better over the next couple of days, and I left with the golfing equivalent of plans for a nuclear bomb. I was going to take over golf, both as a player and a teacher.
Over the next few years, as I developed my style of teaching the material, constantly refining, questioning, and self-reviewing, I went back to see Ben. Starting with Tom Bartlett, then Mike Finney and Chris Hamburger, we would make our yearly pilgrimage to the mountain, to see the high priest. Ben would tweak and over-tweak us, until eventually, we all knew what he was going to say way before he said it.
Ben spent countless hours with us over the years on the phone, and we can literally all imitate him his lessons, his speech and his movements very well, but Chris Hamburger is in a league of his own there.
My dad passed away only a few months before I went to see Ben twenty years ago today, and Ben and Don Villavaso have filled in for him very admirably since. I have probably spent close to 1000 hours with Ben, taking lessons, sitting next him at every unimaginably sophomoric summit and seminar, rooming with him at many of them. We've done countless golf schools and seminars together, and shared too many meals to mention, most with the standard “Ben gets up and gives a lesson with a salt shaker” shtick. Ben and I are the only teachers that have been to every PGA, TGM and MIT Summit. And we have been to all of them together.
When I heard that a certain teacher called another teacher his “teacher, mentor and friend,” I am sure he meant it, but when I hear that it sounds kind of silly to me. Mike and Tom might call me that, but they have spent 10,000 hours with me each, and have been my best friends for years. When I say it about Ben, it has substance. Ben has given me countless hours of live one-on-one lessons, made thousands and thousands of insightful comments to me—leaning up against me—watching other teachers give lessons and presentations. He has cheered me up and gave me fatherly advice when I was down about non-golf life issues, and has given me so much good business advice, he should get a commission check. He is my teacher, mentor, and friend. Really.
Long, long ago, my teaching style and content has moved away from parroting Ben. Ben thinks it is all very amusing, but he loves “Flipper” and “Never Slice Again,” and would be the first person to tell anyone how much I know, how well I can teach and how proud is is of me.
But, who knows where I’d be, and what JUNK I’d be teaching if it wasn’t for Ben. I do know this—I wouldn’t have a website with over 3 million hits a month, teach a Major winner, have people from all over the world coming to take lessons from me, and thousands more buy my videos.
No way.
Thanks Ben. See you soon.
by Brian Manzella, PGA, G.S.E.D.
After five years of teaching curriculum of my own concoction, and reading every book and magazine I could get my hands on for more years than that for new material, the time had come to go visit Bentley J. Doyle in Carmel, California.
He was the first Authorized Instructor of The Golfing Machine, my favorite book at the time, the book I had learned much from since getting my hands on a copy in 1982 after two years of looking for it. As the story goes—shorthand, I got mad at the book one day, flipped across the room, and my mom put me on a plane to see Ben.
I was doing a great job back then as a 25 year-old teaching pro, if I do say so myself. A young Jimmy Ballard in better clothes, who actually could break 80, and had better hair. A guy trying to teach his way to the top, right out of a Driving range in a third-tier market, with 20 other teachers cutting my throat daily. Was I nuts?
I had developed my own system—Absolute Golf. I had written the manual out long hand, and looking back, I should have published it. It was damn good for what it was. In fact, I had asked George Peper, the arrogant former long-time Golf Magazine editor, about just that in 1984. He laughed, patted me on the head, told me to go get some alphabets next to my name, and come back in a few years. I did just that—but that’s another story for another day.
So, the man scared of flying—the one who now flies every week and is writing this in First Class—got on a plane to San Francisco, on Sunday the 31st of May, 1987, and drove down to the Monterey Peninsula to play Pebble Beach. I played great, 3-putting six times and missing least three others from gimmie range, for an 82. I had never really hit it any better than I did that day. I miss that old swing—it was long gone by noon the next day.
For those of you who have never made the trip to see Ben Doyle, you really need to go book your flight. Lots of folks go thinking they are going to get a golf lesson in the classical sense. You know, the pro watches you hit a few balls, and says, “Look like you have the club a little open at the top, and you flip it to close it. Let’s fix it.” The teacher then painlessly as possible, baby-sits your every move, holds your hand, and viola, you leave with your swing looking similar to your friends, feeling somewhat the same to yourself—only better, and you go off and win your Club Championship or The U.S. Open.
Ah….no.
That’s exactly not what you get from Ben. But, I knew that. I had done my research. Ben was a very demanding teacher, very complex, and you had to jump in with both feet. I had no problem with that, especially because I was “only going to get Authorized.” Ben Doyle, to my knowledge, never Authorized someone that couldn’t pass his muster by hitting shots "correctly" from 2 feet to infinity, but especially the short ones. Of course, I had no chance at all. See “Flipper” for further details.
I warmed up for Ben by literally rolling balls by a flag 140 yards out with an 8-iron, like I was chipping at it from 30 ft. Unimpressed, Ben proceeded to change everything I did over the two hours—except for my bunker shots. So you know how good that was.
As I leaned up against a tree a few hours later with atear in my eye, pondering how life as an insurance salesman might be, I was a broken man. Or at least broken golfer. But I knew, he was right. And it got better over the next couple of days, and I left with the golfing equivalent of plans for a nuclear bomb. I was going to take over golf, both as a player and a teacher.
Over the next few years, as I developed my style of teaching the material, constantly refining, questioning, and self-reviewing, I went back to see Ben. Starting with Tom Bartlett, then Mike Finney and Chris Hamburger, we would make our yearly pilgrimage to the mountain, to see the high priest. Ben would tweak and over-tweak us, until eventually, we all knew what he was going to say way before he said it.
Ben spent countless hours with us over the years on the phone, and we can literally all imitate him his lessons, his speech and his movements very well, but Chris Hamburger is in a league of his own there.
My dad passed away only a few months before I went to see Ben twenty years ago today, and Ben and Don Villavaso have filled in for him very admirably since. I have probably spent close to 1000 hours with Ben, taking lessons, sitting next him at every unimaginably sophomoric summit and seminar, rooming with him at many of them. We've done countless golf schools and seminars together, and shared too many meals to mention, most with the standard “Ben gets up and gives a lesson with a salt shaker” shtick. Ben and I are the only teachers that have been to every PGA, TGM and MIT Summit. And we have been to all of them together.
When I heard that a certain teacher called another teacher his “teacher, mentor and friend,” I am sure he meant it, but when I hear that it sounds kind of silly to me. Mike and Tom might call me that, but they have spent 10,000 hours with me each, and have been my best friends for years. When I say it about Ben, it has substance. Ben has given me countless hours of live one-on-one lessons, made thousands and thousands of insightful comments to me—leaning up against me—watching other teachers give lessons and presentations. He has cheered me up and gave me fatherly advice when I was down about non-golf life issues, and has given me so much good business advice, he should get a commission check. He is my teacher, mentor, and friend. Really.
Long, long ago, my teaching style and content has moved away from parroting Ben. Ben thinks it is all very amusing, but he loves “Flipper” and “Never Slice Again,” and would be the first person to tell anyone how much I know, how well I can teach and how proud is is of me.
But, who knows where I’d be, and what JUNK I’d be teaching if it wasn’t for Ben. I do know this—I wouldn’t have a website with over 3 million hits a month, teach a Major winner, have people from all over the world coming to take lessons from me, and thousands more buy my videos.
No way.
Thanks Ben. See you soon.
