Hi Meeks, you're new. Nice to have you.
This is for all the people who have yet to 'figure me out.'
Ever heard the old saw about if you are really good at what you do, people will tell you and you won't have to say it yourself?
I did too.
The Itallion Stallion Story
When I was really young (I am 43 now), I took a test that most students in the US 4th or 5th grade took. I was in second grade. I made an obscenely high score on it. They then IQ tested me at school and I was supposed to score off the chart.
I went from a kid that had NO IDEA I was any smarter than any other kid in class, to a kid that was told by the adults that I was not only the smartest in my class, but maybe the one of the smartest period. They wanted me to skip two grades right away and maybe more later. My drum instructor (I have played since I could hold two spoons) was all for it.
I NEVER went to school and bragged about it for a second. It fact, I shyed away from it and made sure my parents knew I wanted to be a "normal kid" and stay with my grade. They let me have my way.
Later that year, one of the top 2 or 3 jazz drummers in the world, JOE MORELLO, came to New Olreans to do a concert and clinic for Werlein's Music (a place were many a future music legend started their studies). About halfway through the concert, Joe answered some questions. Then, totally unbeknownst to me, Mr. Doria (my teacher) had told Joe about this prodigy of his and asked me to "come up and play a 'number.'" I did. All I remember was Mr. Morello's band members laughing when I asked them if they knew "Watermelon Man" and laughing even louder when I asked them if they wanted ME to start (the song). I did, made no mistakes and Morello jumped all over Mr. Doria later for not "promoting" me properly. I was 7.
Doria got me an audition for a regionally televised ADULT talent show. When I arrived with my dad for the audition, they told us I couldn't audition because I was too young. My Dad didn't take no for an answer and I not only got on the show, they put me on last, a coveted spot in a talent show.
I finished a razor-close second to a 29 year old black singer (He was really good). He got a recording contract. I got a $200 gift certificate to a Furniture store.
When I got back to school on Monday, after the LIVE Saturday telecast of the Talent Show (Sort of a Star Search type show), I didn't take long to hear the comments from the kids (my age). "Hey Superstar, wanna sign my shirt?" and that kind of thing.
From THAT DAY on, It has been me against the world.
And of course, sometimes, The Stalion hit the s&^% out of Appollo Creed, even though he lost.
Me too.
Here's more:
Interview with Brian Manzella
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When did you start playing?
I played my my first eighteen hole round at ten years old.
When were you hooked?
Like just about everyone else, during my first round of golf.
Did you play much junior golf?
Very little. I was a much more of a football player than a golfer until I was seventeen. I did shoot 77 the last round of my high school career in the state tournament.
What was your next move?
After I graduated I wasn't recruited to play collegiately in either football or golf. Too small for football, too inexperienced for golf. So I started college and really began to work on my golf game.
Did you start getting better?
No. In fact for about a year I got slightly worse.
Why?
For the same reason that everyone who doesn't improve, doesn't improve. They are all working on the wrong things.
About that time, there was a guy at my course named Brad Pitre, a professional dancer with golf talent, that hit more balls for a three year or so period than anyone, anywhere, EVER did. He literally wore in his clubs. He got worse faster than you'd believe.
Did you try lessons?
Yes. I took five lessons from four different teachers from age twelve through age sixteen.
Why didn't you continue?
They couldn't answer any of my questions. Why do I slice? Why don't I hit it farther? Why are you doing what you are doing in this lesson right now? Etcetera, Etcetera. Looking back they were doing their best. They just didn't know the answers. Most teachers don't.
When and how did you start to improve?
I got a key swing thought from an old pro named Alvin Jewel that really helped.
What did he tell you?
My arms did not swing from my shoulder sockets at all. He said, “Schwing dem orms, Brian, Schwing dem orms.” I got the message and got five shots better overnight.
Did you work with him on your swing after that?
For no particular reason, no. But years later he watched me teach and hit balls and said he was very proud of me.
What happened next?
I began to play with better players, Carl Poche', Stanley Stopa. I got a little better through watching.
My Dad could see that I was really improving. “Boogs” he said, “If you improve one shot a year for the next seven years you can play the Tour.”
It sounded good to me.
Was your dad a good player?
My Pop shot 72 (even par) at 57 years old on a 6,800 yard course. He did it on his own. He was a six handicap at his lowest, but it was kind of deceiving. His game even impressed a very unimpressable local pro named Larry Griffin. My dad could really golf his ball.
What was his influence on you?
He really believed that I was destined for great things. I know all dads wish it for their sons, but my dad really believed it. We would be grocery shopping and we would see a guy who looked like a football coach of mine. My dad would say, “He can play Coach So-and-so in the movie.” He was totally convinced Hollywood would do a movie on my life someday.
Did you believe him? Do you now?
Oh yeah. We lived it.
I always did something, every now and then, from as far back as I can remember, that would show a flash a greatness. Just enough to make us keep believing. The last thing he said on the subject that I can recall, was when my ex was complaining about the cost of my new driver. He said, “Don't worry sugar, that will be the one that gets him on the tour.”
He passed away in 1987, at age 59, in his sleep. He was a great man.
And yes, despite all the millions of things that have happened to the contrary, I still believe him.
You wound up being a scholarship player at the University of New Orleans. How did that happen?
I went out for the team my second year in school. I made the team as the seventh man out of twelve. I broke my thumb and had to quit for a while. I was also thinking of transferring to Southeastern (Louisiana University) the next semester. I didn't play or pick up a club or a golf book for six months. One of the best things that ever happened to me.
Why was that?
Because when I started playing again I did it with the thought of teaching myself to do it correctly this time.
I had transferred to Southeastern and had a great place to beat balls. The only new information I had was a picture of my idol at the time, Johnny Miller, at impact, target view. His right arm was well below his left. Looking in a mirror, I could tell mine was not. I was intent on fixing it. I did.
Did it help?
It did plenty.
But in the big scheme of things it was much more important for another reason. I found out that you can completely change a golf swing. It was not something you were born with and die with.
Why did you switch back to UNO?
The golf coach at SLU wasn’t the nicest guy around. This guy wouldn't even let me tryout until Bob Brown (UNO's Coach) called him and basically chided him into doing it. I was five under through my first fourteen holes in the qualifying, choked and shot 74. But I easily qualified in the top five and did so for every tournament. I couldn't play because I was still ineligible from transferring. I even won the team's match play championship.
Believe it or not, after all that, he didn't even offer me books (as a scholarship). So I went back to UNO.
I was hired right out of a Journalism class to write for the Sports Information department. While I was filling out my W-2's, Coach Brown walked in and asked me if I was back at UNO. I said yes and he offered me a scholarship on the spot.
Did you have any success?
Not Much.
I played number one about half the time, but never broke par once. To be honest I choked a lot. Nobody could understand why my tournament rounds never measured up to my practice rounds. I did lead the nation in swinging hard and histrionics. I looked like Arnold Palmer in his prime, but I shot ten shots a round higher.
Why didn't you score better?
To be honest, because my technique was flawed and it would just break down.
When did you decide to be a teacher?
Actually it happened twice.
The first time was at SLU in 1981. I had done that swing change (right arm lower at impact) that turned my cut in to a draw. Well eight months later I got the duck hooks real bad, so I read in a magazine where Jerry Pate's teacher Conrad Rehling had Pate hit balls with just his left arm to combat his hook. Well I hit balls for a week with that drill and my hook got worse.
So I realized that all of that left side business was bunk. At the time I would play as good as I could, and all I could shoot was even par on a good course. I knew something was wrong. I felt like I was a better athlete than, say Tom Kite, but if he played as well as he could he’d shoot ten under. So I knew my technique was the problem. I started listening to the guys at SLU that had grown up taking lessons at their country clubs. Tried it all. Got ten shots worse fast. I told my dad I was going to start studying the swing so I could teach myself. To me, nobody knew what they were talking about.
When was the second time?
My second job in the golf business was at (New Orleans) City Park in 1982. At the time we had 81 holes, a double-decker driving range and a large discount golf shop. The pro was Henry Thomas who had been a head professional since 1927. He was Mr. Golf. The shop was the number one or two account for Ping, Titleist and Spalding in the country. They hired me as a stock boy, but I quickly moved up to head salesman and merchandiser.
I was majoring in communications at UNO and knew how to work a video camera. Henry and Larry Griffin were going to teach in a booth at the National Real Estate convention in the downtown Marriott. They brought me along to shoot video. After the first three hours of teaching they left for lunch along with most all of the conventioneers. They had me stay behind to teach any stragglers. I had never given one lesson in my whole life. A lady walked up and I watched her swing. She moved her right leg too much and I fixed her. After I fixed maybe six more students, I had a crowd. So I started giving an impromptu clinic. Before I was done there were sixty or seventy people intently watching.
When Henry and Larry got back, they watched me for the next two and a half days.
I went home and told my dad that I was probably a lot closer to being the best teacher in the world than the best golfer in the world. I've been teaching ever since.
Did you continue playing?
Oh yeah.
I was still ineligible at UNO at the time, but I stuck it out and played for two full school years. My teaching at the time consisted of running City Park's junior program. In ‘82 when I took it over, we had about forty kids. When I turned it over in 1987 we had close to two hundred. I never got one bit of credit for that.
I turned pro in May of ‘84 to start teaching professionally.
How did you do at first?
Great.
The City Park Driving Range (in New Orleans) was a gold mine of students who needed help. Looking back, I really didn't know exactly how the swing worked, but I had a good eye and my desire to systematize information kept me refining my message. I developed a decent repertoire of good swing keys, images, and drills that got results. But my results were always limited.
Limited by what?
The same thing that limits most teachers—a lack of factual knowledge about the golf swing.
What did you do about it?
I kept digging for information.
I was the first teacher in New Orleans to use video in every lesson and I did tons of my own research. I got to the point in my research that I started to come up with ideas that I, at the time, thought I had never seen before. I’d go to sleep happy that I had discovered something. Then I wake up at three in the morning and realize I had seen it before, only in different words, in a book that I read every day.
What book was that?
The Golfing Machine.
Why did you think you were coming up with new ideas if you were reading the book daily?
Because Homer Kelley (the author) had done several things to the text of the book that made it very difficult to comprehend if you read it like a novel. He wanted it small enough to carry around, so the concepts were not exactly crystal clear to someone who was reading the book without the assistance of an authorized (Golfing Machine) instructor.
Is this what led to your association with (renown Golfing Machine instructor) Ben Doyle?
Indirectly.
These “discoveries” of Golfing Machine concepts happened pretty regularly for a little over a year. Then it stopped. I was getting frustrated with my inability to continue learning the book. One day at my mom’s house, I threw the book across a couple of rooms. My mom and I had been through a lot the early part of that year (1987), with my divorce and my dad passing away, and she wasn’t about to let me or her get upset over a book. So she convinced me to go and study with Ben an get authorized myself.
How did that go?
I spent four full days with Ben, taking lessons and watching him teach. Ben started by asking me to show him how I would give a chipping lesson. Then he had me hit some eight-iron shots. I absolutely flushed every shot and was hitting the ball ridiculously close to the flag I was aiming at. Ben didn't blink and began to reconstruct my whole golf swing. I said, “Ben I came here to get authorized, not to fix my swing.” He told me that I had to be able to demonstrate correctly to become authorized, and why wasn't I thinking about playing (the tour)? He really felt that I had enough talent to play at any level I wanted to. That meant a lot to me.
I got the full dose of Ben’s changes and Ben sent me and about six hundred practice balls to this area by a tree. I preceded to hit all six hundred as fat as possible and didn’t hit a full six iron a hundred yards once. So here I am three thousand miles from home, out a couple grand for the trip, and I can’t make contact. I leaned up against the tree and had tears in my eyes. I knew that Ben knew his stuff, but I didn’t think I could ever do it. Three days later I was hitting it thirty yards per club further and better than I ever had in my whole life.
The last day that I was there I asked Ben for the (authorized instructor’s) test. He handed it to me. I asked him where was I supposed to go and “take” the test. Ben said it was a take home open book test and that I should try to do one page a day. I thought I would do it in a week. It took me two and a half years.
How did you do when you started to play and teach after you returned home?
The amount of useful material I learned those four days was tremendous. When I left to go home I felt like I had the plans for the atomic bomb. I was scared to death to teach it to anyone just yet. I was even more scared to try to demonstrate my new swing for anyone. It was so new to me, I thought I might miss it completely.
How long did it take before you were comfortable with the changes?
I saw Ben the first of June. By mid July I couldn’t shoot over 73 if I fell down. I was hitting it so far and straight it was a joke. Me and a dear friend of mine, Don Villavaso, played in a PGA of America Pro-Pro that August. I hit it unbelievable and we won fairly easy after being picked to finish dead last in a big field. The information I had applied from The Golfing Machine and Ben’s teaching had turned me into a much, much better player and teacher almost overnight.
What kind of changes were happening with your students?
Well, like I said I was kind of scared to teach all of it to anyone at first. It was, at that time, radically different then anything that was being taught. I had a 15 year old student named Tom Bartlett that I thought could be the next Nicklaus if he could become more technically sound. I intended to teach the material to him bit by bit. Tom was very impatient and excitable and he wanted to hear it all. So I taught it all to him all at once, just like Ben had done to me. Darned if that sucker didn’t learn it all, better than me, in about a week.
Michael Finney, who had seen Tom’s progress, wanted me to redo his swing after years of my prodding. He had trouble with the changes for about a month, but when he got it, he got it. He was about as dynamic as you could possibly be. Ben used to say, “Michael Feeney, ooooo so pure.”
Michael’s was playing collegietely at LSU at the time. His much improved swing and ball-striking made his teammates, and other college players that were his friends, very curious. They had heard bits and pieces of Golfing Machine mechanics and they wanted to know more.
Is this the reason that David Toms, Craig Perks, Mike Heinen and Greg Lesher began to work with you?
Yes, it was.
Michael Finney, David Toms, Mike Heinen, Greg Lesher and me all went to Jackson, Mississippi to try to qualify for the PGA Tour event in Mississippi in, I think, 1987.
We played a fivesome in the practice round and went to dinner that night.
Michael has always been a great straight man for me. He got me going about the golf swing at dinner and on the ride home. By the time we got back to the motel, I had three new students.
Did they like their first few lessons?
It was almost like magic with the LSU guys.
I went to a LSU practice session and videoed the whole team. We went back to Michael and Jimmy Tritt’s (another LSU player) apartment to watch. I looked at David Toms first.
I remember saying, “Wow David, you don’t turn your hips at all on the backswing.” Everybody laughed. I guess because they couldn’t believe anyone would say anything negative to a stud player like David. Of course, I am just like that—very honest and frank about golf stuff, and David appreciated the comment. I told him that if he did fixed his hip turn, his club would flatten out a bit and get deeper on the backswing and that he would be unbeatable.
Greg Lesher had a couple of little things to work on and so did some others.
I started coming to Baton Rouge and then Coach Britt Harrison sort of made me the unofficial team teacher. He had worked with Ben Doyle when he played at Oklahoma State and knew about The Golfing Machine from him and Mike Holder. So he just let me at ‘em.
Well after a month or so, everyone on the top five was striping it.
They won two major tournaments by over twenty shots each, shot up to #1 in the country and they did a story on them in Golf Digest.
Did Golf Digest mention your influence?
The title is of the story was LSU “semi-coachless, semi-awesome” and the point was that Britt wasn’t doing much coaching. He wasn’t.
And no, they didn’t mention me.
Tell us about working with David Toms.
David and I continued to work together through his LSU eligibility. He turned pro that summer to get prepared for the (PGA) Tour school that fall. At that time besides teaching David, I also caddied for him when I could. For a while, It was like cheating. I was playing little “teaching pro” games with him while I was caddying. I would tell him to aim and tell him how putts would break based on his swing and stroke at that time.
The first time I caddied for him was the U.S. Amateur qualifying at Lakewood Country Club in New Orleans. There was a Tropical storm in the area and the rain was heavy at times and the wind blew from every direction. It was so wet that I took off my shoes and caddied barefoot. The wind blew so hard, that a super large branch fell right in front of him, just before he hit his tee shot on #17 (a par 3). It could have killed him. He backed off, laughed, and hit it his 1-iron a foot.
David bogeyed #1, but after 27 holes he was 12 under par. That was when I knew he was the real deal.
Anyway we worked hard and went off to the first stage of the Tour school. No problem. Second stage. No Problem. Finals—After round four he was in 4th place. Forty-five players get their (Tour) cards.
He shot 78-80 and missed by a shot. It was maybe the biggest fluke I have ever seen in sports. It took him two more years to finally get his card.
What kinds of things did you work on with David?
He needed a later release and he needed to get the clubshaft “up” his left arm a little more through impact. He tended to hang left with his upper body on the backswing. After he was on tour we tried to get his hips to turn more through the ball. We fixed every one of these little things and a dozen more. Sometimes I overdid it. But, for the most part, they were all upgrades.
Did it help you to have a PGA Tour player at that point in your career?
Believe it or not, not much.
When David qualified for the Tour, I was only 29. When I went to tournaments to work with him, I was the youngest teacher on Tour.
But locally, in New Orleans, I got no press at all. Michael Finney’s dad Peter is a big-time sports writer in town and mentioned me a couple of times. But the golf writer in New Orleans at the time, Dave Lagarde, really didn’t care much for me. He never wrote about me in ‘89 when LSU has their run, Tom Bartlett won the New Orleans City Championship at 18 years old, Nakia Davis won the State Junior, Greg Lesher was low amateur in The U.S. Open and he and David were All-Americans. A dream year for a teacher. Not a single WORD in this clown’s column. And never ever, did this guy ever mention my teaching in his column. He recently got let go at the paper. I danced a jig.
And of course, no national press either.
You worked with David through 1997 but didn’t work with him again until the 2003 HP Classic in New Olreans. Did his swing change a lot?
When we worked together in the spring of 1997, we spent three days in Dallas making big changes. He had gotten flat and was hitting hooks.
I told him that we needed to attempt to “go back” to trying to swing like he did when he was a kid. So we worked on a more straight back and up backswing and the “feel” of coming straight down at it and then left through the ball. Also the corresponding less hip turn back and more through. He improved a bunch right away.
He went to the New Orleans event and shot 63 in the first round and gave me credit in the press room. Nothing in the paper the next day about it, of course.
He had worked with Rob Akins some before the Dallas lessons and almost exclusively since ‘97. They didn’t change very much of what we did in Dallas for a long time that I could see. But his swing did get better and better. Rob is a good teacher and David played great for most those six years.
What was behind the lessons at the 2003 HP Classic that led to his dominating victory at the first Wachovia championship?
I always watch David when he is on TV. In that years Masters I noticed it looked like he was trying to hit a hook with his irons from the middle of the fairway. I just didn’t look like his little hold shot or maybe subtle draw.
When I saw him in New Olreans he told me he was struggling and I knew he had missed a few cuts which is very unlike him. I told him about the “hook look” and I took some video on the course. When we got to the range and looked at it It was obvious that his club was coming way to much from the inside and below plane. I folded a towel into a plane board and told and showed him what he needed to do. He statred hitting it better right away and by the end of the session he was really on his way.
The next day I took some more video on the course in the Pro-Am and he looked liked a different person. Even though he missed the cut he hit a lot of good, solid shots and I knew he would play great soon. I just didn’t know how soon.
After he tore ‘em up in Charlotte (Wachovia) he said that that was the best he ever hit it. I have to say it was very impressive to watch on TV. He made so many really good swings it was silly.
You and David worked together in New Orleans again this past year (2004). Is it going to be a tradition?
In general, if David wants to work with me, it is because he is struggling. No problem—that's how it is for most of the people who take lessons from me,
David was in a mini-slump and although he was a little worried, I wasn't. He was doing the same thing wrong he always does wrong and I knew I could fix it. It took a couple of days, but I did.
David's six rounds coming into New Orleans were 73-75-76-79-78-73, a 75.67 average!
His first two rounds in New Orleans were 69-66.
He won again three weeks later.
David is such a good guy and is so good for golf that I was my supreme pleasure to help him play the way he can. Which is as good as anyone in the game.
What is different about working with PGA Tour players?
First of all they are ALL high maintenance. You are under much greater pressure because you are fooling with their careers. Working with David Toms, Craig Perks and Tommy Moore helped me as a teacher tremendously. You find out what to say and how to say it to a player going out to try and shoot a score. I am so much better at that now, it is a joke. Experience matters, but if you don’t understand the swing, it doesn’t matter much.
Having said that, I feel that it is important not to appease them. Teach them what it is they need to know and need to do. The trick is not just the what, it is the when and how.
Why did you move to Louisville in 1993 and again in 1997?
Being an expert in your hometown is very, very difficult. People remember you when you didn’t know anything.
When I moved to Louisville in ‘93, I saw how people looked at me for what I was then. The only reason I didn’t stay was the place where I was teaching lost their lease. When I moved back in to Louisville in ‘97, I had the experience of starting over for a second time in New Orleans as well as that first time in Louisville. I was very prepared. I haven’t made very many strategic errors since then.
Now that I am teaching again in New Orleans (since January 2003) as well as Louisville, I get to try that same strategy in New Orleans.
Strategy?
Teaching golf is a business. People pay a fee to me for real and perceived value. At $100 an hour I am 30 to 40 dollars an hour more expensive then the norm and THE most expensive in both cities. So people really need to think I am better. It is not enough for me to actually be better.
This is a mystique business. David Leadbetter charges $500 or more an hour and I feel like I am a much better teacher then he is. But the perception in the “golf world” is that he is the #1 guy and I am not in the top 100. But, my students, especially the one who have gone to “Top 100” teachers know better.
90% of my new students are referrals from other students.
What has been the most difficult thing about the golf teaching business?
Without a doubt, it is trying to become “world-famous” or being acknowledged as one of the best in the world. Trust me there are easier ways to become famous than giving lessons at driving ranges in Louisville and New Orleans. No matter how well I teach this year—even if it is better than anyone has ever taught for a year—I probably won’t be any more known than I am now.
There is no U.S.Open for teachers. No American Idol for golf instructors, no auditions for the Golf Channel. Its tough. But I really think I am as good as anyone at what I do and I’m going to keep trying to get better and maybe one day I’ll be the Rush Limbaugh of golf.
The Rush Limbaugh of golf?
Currently there is NO real discenting opinion in the golf business.
The business is full of yes men. The golf teaching business is full of guys with bland personalities and no real strong opinions. If I am anything, I’m colorful and opinionated.
If not me, golf surely needs someone like that.
