The Pro: Lessons from My Father About Golf and Life by Claude “Butch” Harmon, Jr.

At its core, “The Pro” is nothing more—or less—than a son’s touching memoir of his father. Like all sons, the author has stong memories of his father and of the life lessons that he taught.

What makes the memoir different is that the father in this case is Claude Harmon and the son, Butch (Claude Jr.)—two very recognizable names in the world of golf.

For the uninitiated, Claude Harmon was a well respected, lifelong club and teaching pro who has the distinction of being the last club pro to win a major (the 1948 Masters). Son Butch also is a well known teaching pro who is perhaps most famous for guiding the game of the young Tiger Woods.

The book is not a linear biography, but rather a collection of vignettes that tell the reader much about the life and times of Claude Harmon, Sr. Butch details his work as a pro, efforts on the Tour, business failures, his ousting as the pro at Winged Foot and resurrection at a club in Texas and of course, his relationshiops iwth family and friends.

Claude Sr seems to be a guy that I very much would liked to have knows: honest, forthright, and generous to a fault. Butch clearly has the utmost love and respect for the man.

The book also is interesting for the role that Ben Hogan plays. Claude, Sr. and Hogan were close friends—so close that Hogan apparently cried upon hearing of Claude’s death. Hogan comes across in the book as a much different fellow than the man of legend—a kind man who loved children. (Another interesting point: Like anyone who ever met him, Butch refers to Ben as Mr. Hogan.)

At the end of each chapter, Butch summarizes his father’s lessons by offering a page of “Claude’s Pearls,” such as “Improvement requires taking a long term approach.” There are no actual golf lessons here, but anygolfer would do well to heed the pro’s wisdom.

It’s a good book, and one I recommend.

My favorite times of the day to play are at sunrise and sunset. I love the quality of the light at those times, glowing rather than glaring. And I love the quiet. In Northern Michigan, at the height of summer, I’ve often finished rounds of golf at ten o’clock at night, and still had enought light to putt for a while afterwards.

Eternal Sunset is a site for those who love the twilight. It shows live, rotating webcam shots of the world as sunset passes over each location. The one on the left is from Portugal.

Michaelangelo’s David it’s not.

The GolfBlogger is doing a little bit of an informal, unscientific survey here: What’s the most you’ve paid for a round of golf? Name the course, location and price.

For me, it was $85 at the Little Traverse Bay Golf Club in Harbor Springs, Michigan. Nice course, great vistas.

Golf Ball and Tee Cufflinks

Ridiculous Golf Item of The Week

Eye Spy Golf is a site with a fabulous premise: using Google Earth to catalog every golf course in the US. The courses are organized by state and city, and you can run a search on a particular area. Once you’ve found the course you want, you click on the link to download the KML file and launch Google Earth (all this assumes that you have the Google Earth app already installed; it’s a free download from Google). The app then takes you directly to a detailed satellite photo of the course.

You can see a screenshot of my home course above.

Of course, you can do this without the help of Eye Spy Golf, but you’d spend a lot of time whirling about on Google Earth looking for courses from a birds eye view. And then when you found one, it’s possible that youi wouldn’t know which one it was.

In addition to letting you pick and zoom in on specific courses, Eye Spy also gives you information abotu he courfses, such as fees, addresses and a driving map.

Its neat stuff.

Let’s welcome the Aspiring Golfer  to the golf blogosphere.