The Long and the Short of It

by Andy North, Burton Rocks

Overview

The drama, the excitement, and the suspense of professional golf are all captured in The Long and the Short of It. Golfers of all ages will enjoy Andy North's unique perspective on golf.

Andy North is a two-time United States Open champion, current player on the Senior PGA Tour, and a commentator for ESPN. In this book, Andy offers golfing fans a treasure chest of anecdotes and shares his insight and wisdom into the game of golf. Andy first talks about the pioneers of the game and shares memories of his time with the likes of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Gary Player, and many others. He shares the heartwarming story of his life growing up in Wisconsin and his rise to success on the PGA Tour.

He offers advice on how to better understand and play golf. This book has both the drills and games you can play with your children to make golf fun and the games that you as an amateur golfer should play to improve your own game.

Finally, Andy talks about the changes facing golf in the coming years and shares his experiences working with his friends at ESPN.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250111203
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/12/2016
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Andy North is a three-time All-American at the University of Florida and one of a select group to win two United States Opens on the PGA Tour. A member of the 1985 Ryder Cup team, Andy joined the Senior PGA Tour in 2000. An analyst for ESPN, Andy endorses Calloway Golf and promotes the game tirelessly. He and his wife Susan live in Madison, Wisconsin. They have two daughters, Nichole and Andrea.

Burton Rocks is a sports attorney and writer who has collaborated with several major athletes. His coauthoring credits include Yankee outfielder Paul O'Neill's New York Times bestseller Me and My Dad: A Baseball Memoir.

Burton Rocks is a sports attorney and writer who has collaborated with several major athletes. His coauthoring credits include two-time U.S. Open winner Andy North's The Long and Short of It and Yankee outfielder Paul O'Neill's New York Times bestseller Me and My Dad: A Baseball Memoir.

Read an Excerpt

The Long and the Short of It

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By Andy North, Burton Rocks

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2002 Andy North and Burton Rocks
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-11120-3

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CHAPTER 1

Not Your Average Golfing Story

Golf, for me, was not a sport of first choice, but rather one that was adaptable to my physical condition. The love of the game that is often referred to came, for me, right after I was diagnosed with a rare bone disease.

My father, Dr. Stewart North, and my mother, Mary, gave me the fundamental values that both my sister Pam, now an M.D., and I would carry with us and would enable us to build exciting futures for ourselves in our twenties. My family's firm foundation, even when fame and fortune came my way through golf, kept me grounded at all times. My father and mother were both educators. My dad holds a Ph.D. and taught for years at the University of Wisconsin, in their graduate department, and my mother taught high school home economics. Mom and Dad gave me the love, encouragement, spirituality, and support necessary for me to venture out on my own in my early twenties and try my hand at professional golf.

I was a kid who grew up in a family in which involvement in sports was encouraged by both my parents. My father was my coach, and I was always partaking in some athletic event. Whether it was running track in the spring, playing football in the fall, or playing baseball in the summer, Dad and I could always be found together as a team. I loved sports and loved him because he made them enjoyable for me. My dad was my mentor and pal. Life at age ten seemed perfect.

I can't pinpoint the specific date or week that my life became drastically changed, but I remember the intense pain in my left knee. To say I began having trouble with my knee is to put it mildly. I had this pronounced limp, which my dad noticed while I was playing basketball, that just rapidly worsened with time. It reached a critical stage where we had to consult our physician, who in turn performed a series of rather involved tests on my knee. The result of two weeks of these tests: discovery of a rare bone disease.

The disease was called osteo chrondritis disicance. In laymen's terms it meant that there was a small portion of bone in the joint of my left knee that was degenerating very quickly. This was due to a lack of proper blood supply to that area. No one knew why this condition struck me. We did know that the immediate response had to be a sudden stoppage of all physical activity that placed any extra stress on my knee.

I was only twelve years old at the time, and the diagnosis was devastating. Instead of playing ball, I would be hobbling around on crutches for the next few years of my life. But often, life doesn't give people a choice. I had no choice. It was either the crutches or just stay at home and do nothing.

I didn't have many medical options open to me, either. One possible decision my physician presented was to undergo surgery and have the bone in my left knee that was degenerating cut out. At that time this type of operation was viewed as a radical option. Surgery didn't make much sense, either, because if anything went wrong the side effects were just too grave. The other option presented to us was for me to just accept my condition and use crutches on a permanent basis. This was exactly what I chose — and for good reason. I spent all of seventh and eighth grade using those crutches, and to say that it was devastating me is an understatement. It seemed as if the love of sports I had had up until that point was being washed away with this disease. My weekends were suddenly reduced to hobbling over to the refrigerator and peering inside to see what was for lunch.

While I was hobbling around on crutches, the idea of being an athlete seemed almost ludicrous. I even bought a book that listed all of the possible sports, the equivalent of a world sports almanac. I went through the book with my doctor one sport at a time. Each time I asked him if "this" was a possible sport for me, he answered with a resounding no. It was demoralizing. Sport after sport, the answer was the same. That day in his office seemed like an eternity. "Doc, can I play this?" "No," he would reply. Then I came upon the game of golf, however, and something surprising happened. He kind of scratched his head and after a rather long pause he said that I could play golf. He said it was the one sport that would not stress my knee. However, there was one condition, and a big one. I could play golf as long as I used a cart, because golf required an inordinate amount of walking. The only way to overcome the constant walking was to use a cart. That way I could hit my shot then hop in my cart and take off down the fairway towards the next shot. The cart was the answer! However, my young age was a tremendous obstacle to overcome when it came to the use of carts. The clubs didn't even let healthy thirteen-year-olds ride golf carts on a golf course. It was just something that clubs felt went against golf protocol.

Before that day in the doctor's office I had played a few rounds of golf with my dad, who himself had been a good golfer as a young adult. He had left the game for a while but decided he wanted to play golf again. So we were in the process of joining a club in Madison, Wisconsin, when I was diagnosed with this bone disease. I started taking lessons from the club pro, Lee Milligan, who I still see to this very day. We've been friends for forty years, and he's worked with me throughout that time. He obviously saw in me some potential, and so he took it upon himself to lobby the board of directors at the club to allow me to use a cart.

Despite Lee's efforts my situation looked rather bleak. It seemed that a lock-solid rejection was on its way. Carts were just frowned upon at that time, and the logic was that if you were a golfer, you walked the course. Otherwise, you did not play the game, especially at my age.

However, Lee returned with a favorable verdict. How did he do it, I wondered. He told me that he simply made a great presentation to the board of directors, and they bought into the idea of this thirteen-year-old playing golf even if it meant using a cart. He said that he convinced them that they would be helping someone with great potential who truly loved the game of golf.

I threw myself into golf with unbounded enthusiasm. I often wonder now whether my doctor actually played golf. If he truly had played the game with the zeal that most physicians do today, he would have known that golf was extremely stressful on the knees, but just not to the same extent as football or the other major sports. However, because of Lee Milligan and a golf cart, I was able to walk ten yards to the ball, hit it, then walk back to the cart and take off to the next shot.

Golf became one of the most important things in my life at this time because it made me feel "normal." Feeling normal made me feel good about myself; it brought out my positive thinking and my happy personality. The game was an oasis for me, which I could retreat to any time life became tough and unbearable, whether it be from being teased or from being alone.

By the time I was a freshman in high school, my bone disorder had dissipated. Whether it was because of my young age and maturing process or simply because the pressure had been taken off my knee in the critical growth year, allowing the proper blood flow to be reestablished, I was now fit to play any sport I desired. I did participate in a number of other sports — basketball, volleyball — however, my love for the game of golf won out. I felt that the game seemed to love me at a time when I needed that love; I didn't want to abandon the very thing that had afforded me a sense of normalcy in my life when I desperately needed it.

I enjoy telling this story because it's typical of what happens in life. When I was thirteen, what seemed like the most devastating thing that could have happened turned out to be one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. Too often people get so focused on the problems that they're having that they can't seem to move through them, but if they do, something great may come out of it. I read stories of men who are forty-five or fifty years old and have mild heart attacks and then change their lifestyle and start exercising and eating properly and go on to have forty or fifty great years after that heart attack.

It's amazing now when I think back to those days of solitude in my room. There was this empty feeling that I wouldn't be perceived as normal. I can see myself as clear as day, sitting in my room and crying my eyes out after learning of my condition. Ironically, now I can honestly say it was one of the most auspicious things to ever happen to me. However, one result of overcoming adversity is that it usually forces a person to mature more quickly and think beyond his or her years. This happened to me, so I viewed the world differently from other kids. Thus my childhood illness, which at first was perceived by me and everyone around me as a tragedy, gave me a great perspective on golf and on life itself.

CHAPTER 2

Growing Up

As a teenager growing up in Wisconsin I would spend the whole day at the golf course when I wasn't in school. My dad would meet me at 4:30 in the afternoon after work during the week in the summer, and we'd play nine holes of golf. It was a lot of fun. Dad and I had golf in common, and I can't tell you the number of times we'd arrive home at nine o'clock at night and have to reheat dinner. Mom understood and always managed to keep her smile, even though we were hours late for dinner.

As I said earlier, I was on crutches for a while and if you were to ask my father he would still get choked up to this day about how introverted I became because of feeling "different." Kids can be quite mean to each other, and a lot of my friends abandoned me, leaving only a few close ones to stay by my side.

When I would ride a cart at a tournament the folks there thought I was some pampered rich kid, not realizing that I was using the cart because of an illness. Many times if people can't see an illness with their eyes, they don't understand and they don't give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

Until my bone disease my life was just as routine as anyone else's life. I played kick the can, hide-and-seek, football, baseball, basketball, hockey — you name it, we played it. Life was good as a kid, but the bone disease changed everything. By then I was off the crutches, and because I'd played a heck of a lot of golf the summer before I entered high school, I entered many tournaments. Though I did not win a significant number of competitions, I shot a 72 on the second day in the city junior championships and I won that tournament. This was the best score I had ever shot and it was a big deal at that time.

My dad always supported my love of golf, but he was also an educator at heart and understood the need to do well in school. In junior high I had "citizenship" as a grade on my report card. Back then you had civics and not social studies and the courses had different titles. We were having supper and it was report card time. My dad was talking to me and I asked him if he regarded himself as a good citizen. He looked at me and said the proverbial yes. I asked him if he took his civic duties seriously and he said yes. "Good, because I got a C in citizenship," I announced to him. He suddenly was not very pleased. Nevertheless, he overlooked it and was still proud of me, anyway, but I tell the story because even though a parent can be proud of their children, they want to see them do well in school and they're disappointed when they bring home that type of grade.

The nicest times I've ever had on the golf course were when I was younger and was playing with my father. It's so difficult for parents to talk to their children about anything, but if you're on the golf course for four hours, there's a pretty good chance you and your mother or father will talk about something important. I've told an awful lot of dads to play golf with their children and to use it as a time to have a heart-to-heart talk with them.

Our spring trips to different golf courses in neighboring states were exciting. They were really golf adventures. When the lingering winter snows finally washed themselves away in spring's sunny skies, the adventures started. My basketball season was over, and so Friday nights were free for my father and I to go on some great weekend excursions, arriving home late Sunday night just in time for me to get to bed and go to school on Monday. We'd drive to Memphis, Tennessee, and to southern Illinois. For us driving two hundred miles south was a breeze and we'd arrive late Friday night or early Saturday morning. We'd get a few hours' sleep and then play thirty-six holes of golf on Saturday. After an exhausting day we'd do the whole thing again on Sunday, playing thirty-six holes of golf and then driving back home late at night.

I was always nervous about playing tournaments in front of my parents, and so they'd drive me to the tournament, drop me off, and then pick me up afterward. However, the Western Junior, which was held in Bloomington, Indiana, was a trip on which my parents could not accompany me until the weekend, but I would have to make the cut. I shot a 69 on Monday and I called my dad to tell him I was in great shape. Then came Tuesday and I shot a 71. I missed the final 64 by one shot. I called my parents and they couldn't come and get me because it was in the middle of the week, so I had to take the bus home. When I got home the first thing I said to them was, "I'm not missing any more cuts because that bus ride home wasn't so good."

My relationship with Lee Milligan has lasted a lifetime. To this very day Lee lets me call him at home and he gives me instruction when I need it most. He was the golf professional at the Nakoma Golf Club in Wisconsin, and then he left to become the golf professional at Barrington Hills Country Club in Illinois. My father and Lee both understood athletics and both saw the same vision in me: that I had what it took to be a professional golfer when I grew up. Thus, I had two sets of eyes watching over me, which was a comforting feeling. I knew everyone cared about me and I took this with me out on the golf course.

When Lee moved to Illinois I thought at first that it might hurt my game, but he had me visit with him on numerous occasions so that he was still able to coach me. More important than the lessons he gave me were the lessons he had me watch. He allowed me to watch him instruct other pupils. This was how I perfected my golf swing. I observed the faults and good swings of others and it helped me tremendously. I finally was able to understand my own golf swing and what worked well for me and what did not. I had a good foundation, which included as far as I was concerned a good grip, a good stroke, and a good short game.

I met Manuel de la Torre, a renowned teacher in Wisconsin, who works with Tommy Aaron on the SENIOR PGA TOUR today, and he and Lee had been good friends since their association on the Caribbean tour. Manuel changed my grip. He wanted me to weaken my grip and hit the entire bag of golf balls, hitting "the bag." I was supposed to hit the golf bag itself to get the feeling of a weakened grip. However, I hit the bag so hard I made a hole in it. Here was this beautiful kangaroo shag bag and I ruined it. Needless to say I felt terrible, but aside from ruining this great teacher's bag I came away from the experience with two important lessons. First, I had found my natural grip. Second, Lee wasn't afraid to go ask other great teachers for ideas and advice about what to do in certain situations. This was why I have always said that Lee Milligan was a great player and a great teacher. He also had a terrific short game, and I learned my entire chipping game by watching him.

Dad had spent so much time with Lee during my lessons that he knew when I was doing something wrong. Dad helped me a great deal when I played in high school because he was trained to look at me from a mechanical standpoint and told me what I was doing wrong, whether it was with my use of irons or with my chipping or putting.

High school golf in Wisconsin was always an adventure. The weather is cold and it's not really conducive to golf. It would be cold, windy, and really bad outside, and if you shot 36 in a nine-hole high school golf match, you'd kill everyone else. The weather was the X factor. The weather was so extreme that I would leave home in the morning and it would be great, but by the time my match started that afternoon the cold front would have dropped the temperature thirty degrees. And there I would be in my short sleeve shirt, freezing to death. This makes for interesting games of golf.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Long and the Short of It by Andy North, Burton Rocks. Copyright © 2002 Andy North and Burton Rocks. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Foreword by Chris Berman,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction by Andy North,
PART ONE: My Story,
1. Not Your Average Golfing Story,
2. Growing Up,
3. My First PGA TOUR Victory: Westchester,
4. The 1978 U.S. Open,
5. Life on the PGA TOUR,
6. My U.S. Open Victory at Oakland Hills,
7. My Golfing Career,
PART TWO: Improving Your Golf Game,
8. Good Foundations,
9. Golf Games That Teach,
10. The Best in the Long,
11. Some Long-Game Advice,
12. Where the Short Game All Begins,
13. Out of the Bunker and onto the Green,
14. Chipping,
15. My Putting Story,
16. The Best Putters,
17. My Advice on Putting,
18. Let Me Help Your Game!,
PART THREE: Golf's Senior Personalities,
19. The King,
20. "Iron" Byron Nelson,
21. Gene Sarazen,
22. Sam Snead,
23. Charlie Sifford,
24. Tommy Bolt and Tom Weiskopf,
25. Johnny Miller and Seve Ballesteros,
26. Gary Player,
27. Chi Chi, the Ambassador,
28. The Golden Bear,
PART FOUR: Parting Putts,
29. The Armchair Golfer,
30. The Changing Game of Golf,
31. The LPGA Goes Television,
32. My Favorites,
33. Designing Your Dream,
34. The U.S. Open,
35. The ProAm,
36. My Broadcasting Career and Friends at ESPN,
37. The SENIOR PGA TOUR: These Guys Are Good,
38. Thank You, Golf,
About the Authors,
Copyright,