Brian Manzella
Administrator
It is one of the oddities of post-Katrina life in New Orleans. There are so many individuals that so many people never saw again. Jimmy Self was one of them. And in his case it was literally thousands of people.
James M. Self, Jr., or "Jimmy," or “Mr. Jimmy” to me, was a golf pro. He had worked as a club pro, a greens keeper, course builder, and architect. He even designed a training aid that became more well known than its inventor—The Putt Band. Jimmy was all of those things, but what he really was, was a teacher of golf. Jimmy Self—golf instructor. And not just any golf instructor. Jimmy Self undoubtedly gave more golf lessons from 1976-1996 than any other person on the planet.
I met Jimmy when I was about 13, and took a lesson from him when I was 16. He was teacher at the City Park Driving Range in New Orleans, Louisiana, and he basically opened and closed the place from the day it opened to the day before Katrina in 2005.
Jimmy had been married when he was younger, and had a son named James as well. "Little Jimmy" won over 100 junior tournaments, got a scholarship to LSU and then got involved in "other things" so-to-speak. He gave a bunch of lessons himself, at the same City Park range where I picked balls, where I learned to teach, and where I gave lessons to three different eventual PGA Tour winners.. But at "The Range," "Big Jimmy" was always king.
Self had built several courses, including one on Jekyll Island in his home state of Georgia, and the Robert Trent Jones designed front nine of Timerlane Country Club in New Orleans. But he was most proud of his design and build work at Bayou Barriere Golf Course in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. He had hoped that it would springboard him into many more courses. Alas, just before the course opened, he was informed that he had to turn it into 27 holes, and even though he had some extra land at his disposal, the main 18 was nowhere near what he intended.
"Brian," he often told me, "that course was a championship caliber layout, capable of being stretched to 7,500 yards. I should take you out there sometime and have you play it the way I wanted it to play."
We never did.
After Barriere—a place locals pronounce Berry-A, but Jimmy always said Berry-Air—he leased a driving range that had to close because of an expressway. Another expressway resulted in a state-of-the-art range in New Orleans' City Park. He never "owned" it, but he owned the place just as well.
Jimmy could teach. When he was a pro at Bayou Barriere, and was giving loads of lessons, he once had a new competitor move into town and open a range right down the street from him. Jimmy taught the guy right out of town in a couple of seasons. The guy's name was Paul Bertholy, who later became a well-known teacher.
At City Park, he mastered the art of "taking care of" the cashiers that answered the phone. "Jimmy Self; telephone," was uttered over the PA system so many times over a 25 year period, that you'd have thought that it was a type of phone. Then again, it was, actually.
Almost every good player in the area worked with Jimmy Self at one point or another; Sammy Trahan, Stan Stopa, Warren Cervini, Lisette Lee, and a skinny kid with glasses that could hit it 280 when he was only 102 pounds soaking wet, who later became the #9 ranked junior in the USA under Jimmy's tutelage. His name is Michael Finney.
Jimmy taught all-day, every day, from 8 am until 10 pm, except for a few Saints games, for over 20 years. He HAD to be the #1 lesson giver on earth over that period; no contest.
When Jimmy invented the Putt-Band, it was an ingenious $10 device that worked, and he thought he'd get rich with it. He went to dozens and dozens of PGA Tour events, hawking it to the pros, and several PGA Merchandise Shows trying to sell it to Club Pros.
Calvin Peete credited the Putt Band for his success during his best run on Tour. A picture of Peete, and a later $75 version of the Putt-Band appeared in a feature story in Golf Digest.
Through a myriad of bad decisions, bad partners, and horrible advice, Jimmy probably lost money on the best idea he ever had.
In the years leading up to Katrina, Jimmy started teaching less, and getting around less well. A routine eye surgery gone wrong and the onset of Alzheimer's had slowed him, but but they couldn’t stop him. Just down to five or six lessons a day, and a near permanent place on the couch in the Range foyer.
We got along quite well for the rivals we became, and then later weren't anymore. Hundreds of lunches, and thousands of days teaching one stall over from each other made us very good friends.
When Katrina came, I was out of state at a golf school, and Jimmy—who lived about a par 4 from my house across the 17th Street canal in an apartment complex—decided to "ride out the storm."
As luck, or maybe bad luck would have it, Jimmy was on the "good side" of the 17th Street canal levees. His side didn't flood with the 11 plus feet like my side did. But the cruel irony was that since Jimmy didn't drive anymore, he walked to a convenience store a few blocks away after he ran out of food and drink.
He was mugged, beaten, and left for dead by a couple of thugs.
His brother, who lived in Atlanta, came to the hospital, nursed him back to some heath, and then brought him to Georgia where he placed Jimmy in an Assisted living home in Roswell.
I sure hope he was still "there" enough to know his beloved Saints won a Super Bowl.
Nobody in New Orleans knew where he was, and I probably told a couple of hundred folks what I knew of his whereabouts. No one I knew, who knew Jimmy, and that is a few thousand golfers, ever found him.
A couple of months ago, an old student of Jimmy’s came to see me for a lesson. We talked about him and I asked if he knew anything of Jimmy’s whereabouts. He told me Jimmy had passed on. But, he hadn't; yet.
Tonight, Tuesday October 18th, 2011, I was thinking about Jimmy, and Googled around for an obit. I found it.
James M. Self Jr. - December 16, 1929 - October 15, 2011
When you are on this earth, all you can do is your best. If you can, you ought to make a dent. If you are really lucky, the man upstairs will give you the opportunity to touch people's lives, make them smile, and make their lives just a little bit better.
Jimmy did that by the thousands.
I was one of them.
| In Memory of James M. Self Jr. December 16, 1929 - October 15, 2011 Obituary Mr. James M. Self, Jr., formerly of New Orleans and more recently a resident of Hearthstone Assisted Living in Roswell, GA. died October 15, 2011. Mr. Self was a graduate of North Fulton High School, a veteran of the U. S. Navy and a member of the PGA for more than 50 years. He is survived by his son, James M. Self, III of New Orleans; sister Sarah Hentosh of Atlantic Beach, FL; brothers Frank Self of Atlanta; Johnny Self of Tulsa, OK; grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Funeral services will be held Thursday, October 20, 2011, at 3 p.m. at Sandy Springs Chapel. Rev. Gary McEntire will officiate. Private family interment will be held at Midway United Methodist Church Cemetery. The family prefers memorial contributions to be made to the Alzheimer's Association , 1925 Century Blvd. NE Suite 10, Atlanta, GA 30345 or the American Parkinson Disease Association, P.O. Box 49416, Atlanta, GA 30359. The family will receive friends on Thursday from 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. at Sandy Springs Chapel, 136 Mt. Vernon Hwy. NE, Sandy Springs, GA 30328. |
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