I just read a Blog I wrote in 2005 about "Teaching Golf in the Real World."
I've come a long, long way from 2005.
Was that just 4 years ago? Couldn't be, huh?
Must be the Katrinamnesia.
Well, we tore down our Katrina flooded house, and built another. Had 200 large stolen from us by a contractor. Got through some even tougher things—trust me—but here I am.
Video sales are brisk, the website is doing well, and so am I.
I am now primarily a destination teacher, and I teach at a world-class facility.
But I remember where I came from.
It may be instructive for others to know as well.
I just got finished watching the 3rd episode of the T.O. Show. Yup, as in #81.
Some folks
hate this guy. He can be cocky as hell, and he says and does all sorts of things you
think are off the wall, and come out of nowhere. Oh yeah, he
can flat ball.
Why bring up T.O.?
It just proves one thing—everyone does
everything for a reason.
Terrell Owens had a rough childhood. His dad lived across the street raising a whole other family. He was raised, very strictly, by his grandmother.
He and his Dad barely talked, and his Dad never came to his ball games—or so T.O. thought.
Owens was just an average ball player in High School, and couldn't get a date. 139 touchdowns later, he is world famous, and he gets lots...of "dates."
When Terrell Owens says something you think is from left field, it didn't come from left field, it came from a field with clovers in Alexander City, Alabama.
When I say some of the things I say, trust me, they did not come out of left field either.
They came from some range mats.
Walk a day in a brother's shoes...
I grew up at a public course and I worked there pretty much all my life. I parked carts for $3 an hour when I was 13. Picked the range at 17. Ran the Junior Program at 20. Merchandised a top 10 golf shop at 21.
When I turned pro in May of 1984, I was not allowed to teach at the Driving Range at the Golf Course where I worked, ran a now thriving Junior Program, and worked 365 days a year in the pro shop (no, we didn't have Christmas or Thanksgiving off).
Why wasn't I allowed to teach at the City Park Driving Range?
Because the totally crooked, gangsters that taught there, didn't want me to. And they had something on the Pro, Mr. Thomas. So there was a 14-teacher limit, and I was #15.
Gangsters? Really?
Really.
Frank Costello's brother-in-law and nephew.
Google it.
So I taught in a field at my university where I just finished captaining the golf team. Bag Shag in hand.
I'm sure Hank Haney had a similar start.
Later that year, City Park Head Professional Henry Thomas' wife, fired me because I sold a pack of lead tape for $1 instead of the $1.50 retail price in the Hornung's Golf Products catalog.
Really.
No you can't google that.
No wait, you'll be able to tomorrow. Get it?
You see, we sold everything in the pro shop with a price in our heads—so to speak. You learned them, and that was that.
Except Mrs. Thomas. She sold everything at
full retail, and for the most part, because of it, nobody bought anything from her.
So when I sold Ricky Diamond—who I just gave a lesson to at English Turn a couple of months ago—a pack of lead tape for a dollar, Mrs. Thomas exclaimed at the top of her voice in front of at least 20 customers in the very busy shop, "I can't believe how STUPID you are." Meaning me.
She pulled out the catalog, nearly tearing the pages to get to the right one, and almost broke her Olive Oil fingers pointing and hollering at me, "You see, it is A DOLLAR FIFTY!!! Now go get that 50 cents from that man."
No chance.
I took two quarters out of my pocket, and put them in the 1940's vintage cash register, and edited the composition book we kept the sales in. I then calmly said this to her:
"Miss Thomas, I know the retail price is $1.50, I just about have that catalog memorized. But we don't sell anything in here at full price." Then I went right through our staff. "Marty sells the lead tape for a dollar, so does John, so does Larry, and Mr. Thomas—who writes my checks—sells the lead tape for a dollar as well, so
I sell it for a dollar."
Unfazed, she replied, "Well it is
my shop and the price is $1.50!"
She then walked into Mr. Thomas' office and sealed my fate.
Mr. Thomas was almost in tears writing my check out and telling me it was me or him.
I am sure Michael Breed had a similar experience early in his career.
I was allowed to teach at "The Range" later that month believe it or not, as the golf committee found out about the limit, and I found out shortly after it never even existed. Imagine that.
I was cold bluffed.
Now teaching on New Orleans' then center-stage, I got my career in high-gear fast. I bought the area's first video camcorder about six months later, and two years later with the help of Tom Bartlett's brilliant play as a Junior, and my new info form Ben Doyle, the local paper and #1 TV station did feature stories on me.
The gangsters threw my 200 page sequence book in Bayou St. John.
That happened everyday to Butch Harmon when he was working for his daddy.
A few years later, after we got another head pro, the infamous Frank Mackel, another local teacher was given the job I wanted, Director of Instruction of the range. He had it for almost 10 years. But then...
It was later found out, during the Louisiana State Inspector General's criminal investigation into improprieties at the City Park Golf Course and Driving Range among multiple offenses, the Director of Instruction's contract was dead illegal.
Bluffed again.
That kind of stuff happened everyday in Jim McLean's career.
Somehow, through all of that, I managed to get David Toms on Tour, write a manual that was stolen from me, smartened up my competition, became a PGA Member and a TGM AI, and teach Tom Bartlett and Nakia Davis into SEC Scholarships.
That was the easy part.
Giving lessons while all the other teachers told every new student how terrible I was while they waited in the lobby, while at the same time across the street, the head pro was calling everywhere I was applying for a job not to hire me, all the while eschewing money-making mechanics for ones that were better for my long term goals everyday, while the local media then totally ignored me—that was a wee bit harder.
Just like Leadbetter, huh?
I remember sitting in Don Pablos' Mexican restaurant in Orlando, Florida in about 2001. I was there with my pals Mike Finney and Mike McLaughlin, and we were discussing how far I was away from my goals.
We were talking about what to do to get anyone to listen to what I had to say.
The Golf Channel laughed at me, the Magazines rolled their eyes at me, and the PGA told me if I was any good, "They'll ask you to speak at the Section level."
Saved by the internet.
Whew!
My tips are now featured on PGA.com, and I did a DVD for them as well. Talking at my fourth PGA Seminar in the last year and a half next week. Golf Schools—sold out.
104,000 results for
"Brian Manzella" + Golf on Google.
But I remember where I came from.
I came from the REAL WORLD of GOLF TEACHING.
In the last 5 months of being at English Turn here in NuWallins, I can tell you that I now have to go "back in the day" every so often, and give some "real world" lessons.
Folks that would come to whomever was the teacher for a lesson. Folks that want to play a round here and there but will probably never ever break 100.
I didn't forget how to do it, but whoa,
is it harder than being a destination teacher.
Real World baby.
Just like back in the day.
Boy, I wish I still had that sequence book...
