Brian Manzella
Administrator
I am a two-time Golf Magazine Top 100 instructor. I played college golf on scholarship, playing some #1 man and was captain of the team my senior year. I have talked at seminars in over a dozen states and in a couple of countries. I have one the most popular websites in the world run by a golf instructor. I've taught some of the best golfers on the planet. I've got 16 Manzella Certified Teachers and I have done over 70 videos and articles on Golf.com and for Golf Magazine. But before I did any of that, I quit golf when I was 19 years old. But then I saw this picture….
I was playing in a band back in 1980 and I dropped an amplifier on my left thumb and probably broke it. I never got it X-Rayed, but from that day until months later, I couldn't even pick up a golf club with my left hand. I started to work hard on my football skills and was going to try to walk on that spring at Southeastern Louisiana University, where I had transferred to from the University of New Orleans.
Four or five months after the thumb injury and right before football tryouts, I was talked in to hitting some balls and trying start playing golf again. I was intrigued by the idea of "learning to play all over again" because I was mostly self taught and knew almost zero about golf mechanics. I was going home for the weekend and thought I'd look at some of the golf magazines my Dad would have laying around the house and develop a plan to remake my swing.
As soon as I walked in the door, I asked my Dad where the maga were. He told me he had just taken a whole pile of them and thrown them in the trash. I went outside to rummage through the smelly mess and could only find one magazine that was mostly readable. It was a Golf Magazine and the issue featured one in a series on Johnny Miller's golf swing shot at very high speed by the famous golf photographer Leonard Kamsler.
Miller had been my idol since his near win at the Masters in 1971. He dressed better than everyone else, swung at it better, and could light a scoreboard up anytime the mood was right. I even had sort of tried to copy his walk. But not his swing. Not anyone's. But this time I would start with this picture of Johnny—just pre impact. I tore the large photo out of the magazine and put in one of my school books.
When I got back to my dorm room Monday morning, I took the picture out and put it on the top right corner of the mirror above the sink. I didn't care much what my roommate thought of its placement, mostly because it was perfectly situated where I could see it often. I quickly grabbed a club and posed a "down the line" pre-impact position as close as I could get to what was left of my old swing. Looking at my pose in the mirror I compared it to the picture.
Whoa!
I didn't look a thing like Miller. His right arm was very bent and very inside his left arm. You could easily see though them. Mine looked nothing like that. It was the pre-video camera days and I had nothing to go by but my pose. I then worked my way into Johhny's position, shocked by how different it felt, and took off for class.
I don't remember paying much attention in the three classes I had that morning. My head was spinning with the image burned in my mind of a tall blond haired Tour star, red sweater and green slacks, and that darn position that I could barely pose and knew I had never even approximated on any shot I had hit in the 10 years I tried to play the game.
After an ultra-quick lunch, I was off to this almost magically perfect area to hit balls. Dead flat, 500 by 200 yards, with great bermuda grass and no one else in sight. I dumped my dusty shag balls out and posed that position a few times and then tried to make contact doing it. It didn't take me long to flush a high draw with my 5 iron. A shot I had never ever hit before.
I hit more balls the next 4 days than I ever had before—or have since—in that amount of time. That weekend I went home again and played my old home course on Saturday morning with my dad and our cousin. I was a couple under par through 14 holes, choked like a dog but shot 73 anyway. My pop was more than impressed, and said I should start playing and practicing my golf game and forget about football for now.
I did just that, and had a really good summer of amateur golf, made the SLU team that fall and went back to UNO in the spring for a much better scholarship offer.
And here I am, in the same June 2013 issue as my old idol Johnny Miller, with both of us having an instruction article and with his utilizing the same picture that started it all for me.
How about that?
I was playing in a band back in 1980 and I dropped an amplifier on my left thumb and probably broke it. I never got it X-Rayed, but from that day until months later, I couldn't even pick up a golf club with my left hand. I started to work hard on my football skills and was going to try to walk on that spring at Southeastern Louisiana University, where I had transferred to from the University of New Orleans.
Four or five months after the thumb injury and right before football tryouts, I was talked in to hitting some balls and trying start playing golf again. I was intrigued by the idea of "learning to play all over again" because I was mostly self taught and knew almost zero about golf mechanics. I was going home for the weekend and thought I'd look at some of the golf magazines my Dad would have laying around the house and develop a plan to remake my swing.
As soon as I walked in the door, I asked my Dad where the maga were. He told me he had just taken a whole pile of them and thrown them in the trash. I went outside to rummage through the smelly mess and could only find one magazine that was mostly readable. It was a Golf Magazine and the issue featured one in a series on Johnny Miller's golf swing shot at very high speed by the famous golf photographer Leonard Kamsler.
Miller had been my idol since his near win at the Masters in 1971. He dressed better than everyone else, swung at it better, and could light a scoreboard up anytime the mood was right. I even had sort of tried to copy his walk. But not his swing. Not anyone's. But this time I would start with this picture of Johnny—just pre impact. I tore the large photo out of the magazine and put in one of my school books.
When I got back to my dorm room Monday morning, I took the picture out and put it on the top right corner of the mirror above the sink. I didn't care much what my roommate thought of its placement, mostly because it was perfectly situated where I could see it often. I quickly grabbed a club and posed a "down the line" pre-impact position as close as I could get to what was left of my old swing. Looking at my pose in the mirror I compared it to the picture.
Whoa!
I didn't look a thing like Miller. His right arm was very bent and very inside his left arm. You could easily see though them. Mine looked nothing like that. It was the pre-video camera days and I had nothing to go by but my pose. I then worked my way into Johhny's position, shocked by how different it felt, and took off for class.
I don't remember paying much attention in the three classes I had that morning. My head was spinning with the image burned in my mind of a tall blond haired Tour star, red sweater and green slacks, and that darn position that I could barely pose and knew I had never even approximated on any shot I had hit in the 10 years I tried to play the game.
After an ultra-quick lunch, I was off to this almost magically perfect area to hit balls. Dead flat, 500 by 200 yards, with great bermuda grass and no one else in sight. I dumped my dusty shag balls out and posed that position a few times and then tried to make contact doing it. It didn't take me long to flush a high draw with my 5 iron. A shot I had never ever hit before.
I hit more balls the next 4 days than I ever had before—or have since—in that amount of time. That weekend I went home again and played my old home course on Saturday morning with my dad and our cousin. I was a couple under par through 14 holes, choked like a dog but shot 73 anyway. My pop was more than impressed, and said I should start playing and practicing my golf game and forget about football for now.
I did just that, and had a really good summer of amateur golf, made the SLU team that fall and went back to UNO in the spring for a much better scholarship offer.
And here I am, in the same June 2013 issue as my old idol Johnny Miller, with both of us having an instruction article and with his utilizing the same picture that started it all for me.
How about that?
