Speaker 1: What up few sticks. My name is Brodi McPherson.
Speaker 2: I'm from Nova Scotia, Canada and I play out a
Kabact Brett.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Golf Smarter Boys.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Thad Thomas from Cottage Grove, Minnesota and I
play at River Oaks Golf Course.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Golf Smarter.
Speaker 3: Episode one twenty four.
Speaker 2: When I was writing, the publisher that I worked for
owned a little golf magazine in Philadelphia, and I was
the staff writer for that magazine and I interviewed Barbara
Tello once. It was really cool. It was me another
writer in him for like an hour, just firing questions
at him. He said, if you went to the range
at a tour event and you took away the name plates,
so you didn't know who anybody was, and you just
went up and down and watched each person swing the
golf club, except for like Jim Furick or Tiger or
somebody like that, you knew what their swing was like.
You wouldn't know if they were the fifth best player
in the world or the five hundred and fifth best
player in the world because they hit the ball so
well and so something had to separate them. And it's
the mental game. Can you do it when it matters most?
Can you manage your waywhere on the golf course? Can
you swallow your pride a play for four rather than
going for a pin tuck behind a bunker or over
the water hazard. So he'd said, you can't recognize the
fifth best player from the five hundred and fifth best
player in the world. So something has to separate them,
and that's what it is. But mental game for sure.
Speaker 3: Oh Caddie at Marion Golf Club wrote a fun golf
novel for all ages called The Philly Phenom by Nate Osman.
This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from
great golf minds to help you lower your score and
raise your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome
to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Speaker 2: Nate.
Speaker 1: Thanks Fred, appreciate you having me here.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll be completely honest with you. When your publicity
people reached out to me about your book, I'm like, really,
I don't know about this book. It's like they said,
just can you just read it and let us know.
I couldn't put it down.
Speaker 1: Oh, thanks so much.
Speaker 3: Well, let's just say this I read when I go
to sleep. So I fall asleep reading. So I put
it down all the time. But I couldn't let me
say it this way. I couldn't put it down till
I finished. I had to get to the ending of
this story to see how it turned out.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, that's what I want to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of
fun with this book.
Speaker 1: Thanks. That's the whole goal.
Speaker 2: You know, it's geared towards you know, younger kids, you know,
ten to fifteen, but I was really hoping that adults
would enjoy you two and would help spread the word
for me, you know, for their children or their grandchildren
or kids at their country club or whatever. So thanks
so much for your kind words. And I'm glad to
see that I'm doing something right.
Speaker 3: Well, I am a ten to fifteen year old, so
it falls right in line. At least I act like
it most of the time. But it's a unique story.
And we'll get into the story because there's a lot
of things in it that were golf lessons. That's why
I was so intrigued about having this conversation with you.
You really sneak in some great golf instruction on this
But give me the background story of what this book
is about, or give us an overview of what the
book is about.
Speaker 2: Sure, it's a middle grade sports fiction novel, you know,
focused on golf. The main character is a ten year
old boy named Lima Lomax, who's based on me. You know,
a lot of the stories in that book are based
on my childhood growing up at this really blue collar
country club in Philadelphia that really shouldn't have been called
a country club. No pool, no tennis, nothing, just golf.
But I guess they wanted a sound.
Speaker 3: So it was a private golf club.
Speaker 2: It was a private golf club, but they called it.
It was called Edgemont Country Club. And in you know,
a crazy golf rich as far as private golf goes
there in Philadelphia, this place was at the bottom. And
I don't think the members, you know, it's no longer there,
but I don't think the members would disagree with me
on that. And my my dad was a member there.
He worked across the street at this safety equipment company,
you know, and I tell people all the time, there's
no no coincidence that he picked a golf club right
across from his work, so he played there when he
was younger, and then you know, when I got old
enough to play, you know, he would bring me with him,
and I just fell in love with the place. It
was a place with you know, where plumbers and electricians
would tee it up, with doctors and lawyers and all
sorts of people, you know, Philly sports athletes. So I
kind of gathered all these stories from my childhood just
observing all these people you know, on the on the
golf course, on the practice range, in the bar, and
I filed them away, and then you know that kind
of built into this book. And I first started writing
it maybe ten years ag go when my kids were
little and I was you know, up late at night
feeding them bottles, and you know, I couldn't sleep after that,
so I would just like kind of hammer away a
few pages at a time. And then I read a
book by John Strgy called When War Played Through about
how you know, the major stopped and because so many
of the professional golfers you know, enlisted, and you know,
they had these Red Cross exhibition matches staged around the
country to raise money for the war effort. You know,
local PGA pros or local amateurs would play against these
touring professionals, and I thought it'd be cool to kind
of bring that to modern times and weave nine to
eleven into that. So the main character Lee experience is
nine to eleven when he's home from school one day,
and I kind of tie that in, bring in that
Red Cross exhibition match into this country club, and you know,
Lee's goal throughout most of the stories to get his
dad to be able to be one of the participants
in that match.
Speaker 3: I figured as much that this was something from your
childlihood the way this book was reading. But I'm curious
about when you said your dad worked across the street
from the golf club. Well, this is a chicken and
egg story. Yeah what came first? Did the country club
come first or his job come first? And he was like, oh,
there's a golf course across the street.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I probably didn't say that right the first time.
Speaker 2: So I guarantee he picked that job because the office
was right across the street from a golf club. And then,
like you, he later went into business for himself. So
he runs his own business and he makes his own
hours and has played golf, you know, two or three
times a week since I was a little kid. I'm
forty four, So for thirty years he's been playing golf
two or three times a week. He and my uncle
caddied on the PGA Tour before I was born in
the seventies, so there was no choice. You know, I
was going to be a golfer whether I liked it
or not. And you know, I'm happy that he put
a club in my hands when I was like eight
years old, and it's been a great love affair with
golf ever since.
Speaker 3: Uh. Yeah, we use the word love of fair but
we know better, Na, we really do. Your history is
but you know you started playing at a your dad
was a caddy, your uncle was a caddy, and then
did you start caddying as well before you you know,
got married, had kids, started your professional career or how
did that work?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I did, So we were lucky.
Speaker 2: Again, there's so many private clubs here in Philadelphia, and
you know we have Marion Golf Club, you know, top
ten club in the country, top fifteen club in the world,
you know, literally right in our backyard. So when I
was I was born in the town where Marion is,
and then you know, when we were in second grade,
we moved to a town an adjacent town, but it's
still only a mile and a half from the club.
And then when I was fourteen years old, I don't
remember my dad, you know, asking me if I wanted
a caddy. He just took me in his van one
day and dropped me off and said, go up there
and ask the caddy master if you can caddy. And
I was crazy shy when I was a kid, you know.
He used to take me to PGA Tour events in
the area, and the Champions Tour, I remember, was in
the same cut a neck in the woods, and you
know Jack Nicholas and Palmer and Chiechi Rodriguez and Lee
Trevine was when they were like big time on the
Senior Tour before the Champions Tour, and I would be
deathly afraid to ask for their autograph, so he would
have to do it. But for some reason I was
okay with going and asking for this job. I don't
know if just something inside me, you know, the caddy
in me was already there, right, And so I started
when I was fourteen, and I caddied all through high
school and college, and then when I was I studied
journalism at Penn State. And when I was looking for
a full time gig. I was still caddying, and then
you know, I found that full time writing position. I
took a couple of years off, and then I went
back to school to get certified to teach. And when
I did that, I went back to Maryon. So I
pretty much have been there since nineteen ninety five, with
the exception of two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
those two years I took off. You know, so thirty
years roughly of carrying golf bags. A pretty great place
to do it at Marion.
Speaker 3: At Marion, Wow, you got to give me a story
about looping at Marion.
Speaker 2: I tell a couple of quick ones a lot. So
I maybe fifteen years ago I caddy for Patty Harrington.
He was like, you know, making an appearance for some
company at charity outing on a Monday, and it was
my job to drive him around in a golf cart
and you know, play a hole with each group. And
he got to number eleven, which is, you know, a
famous hole in golfer. Bobby Jones clinched the Grand Slam
in nineteen thirty and he stood on the tee and
he was just going to hit like a probably like
a five or six iron down the fairway because there's
a creek that wraps around and cuts off the end
of the hole, makes you force carry into the green.
And and then he went back and got his driver,
and he took like five steps behind the back of
the tee and I didn't know what he was doing.
And then he started running toward the ball and he
did the happy Gilmore and hit it over the green
like so it was at least a three hundred and
forty yard carry and it probably ended up, you know,
traveling three hundred and sixty yards or so.
Speaker 1: So that's one of my favorite stories.
Speaker 3: That's a great one. I mean, you must have been
just completely bamboozled by the fact that he's standing, that
he starts running at the ball.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't know what he was gonna do. He
didn't announce it, he didn't say like watch this or anything.
He just kind of did it. And I think the
other guys who were playing were just like, oh my god.
But it's pretty cool, you know. You see so many
celebrities come through there. I've been lucky enough to caddy
for you know, Troy Aikman and Darius Rucker. So I'll
tell Darius Rucker story. So I caddied for him. Maybe
let's see, my oldest daughter is just turned thirteen, So
it was when my wife was pregnant with her and
I caddied for him, and then he gave us tickets
to his show and we got to go backstage afterwards,
and you know, they were about to go to the
after party, and she was like, you guys are gonna
come right and I just like pointed to my wife's belly.
I'm like, now we got to get home. And he's like, well,
I'll make a deal with you. If you name your
baby after me, I'll pay for her to go to college.
He was like, you can call her Darisa or something.
And we didn't end up doing it. But I caddied
for him like five years ago and I brought up
that story.
Speaker 1: He was like, yeah, he's like sounds like something I
would say.
Speaker 3: You didn't take him up, or you could have told
him you couldn't give him the kid the middle name.
Speaker 2: I know that's what people say they should have, like
just make it the middle name.
Speaker 1: He would have been cool with it.
Speaker 2: He was fun to caddy for super competitive, you know,
very focused, but he was fun. Oscar Robertson I Caddy
for which was pretty cool. I'm a huge basketball fan.
My dad was a big basketball player and golfer, so
those guys are pretty cool, and you know, you see
so many different people come through, it's cool to be
a part of it.
Speaker 3: I'm still kind of stuck on you not naming someone
else paid for the college education, I know, especially.
Speaker 1: Right now, Like what are you thinking.
Speaker 2: In like five years, it's going to be astronomical, even
though I guess.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's it already is. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of
had a story. I tell people that my dog that
I had from the time I was fifty till like
mid mid sixties. We named the dog Lulu. But when
I got the dog, I wanted to give it a
real good golf name, and we ended up long story.
I'm gonna cut him down here because I've told it before,
but I need to share it with you. It's like
someone suggested which named the after Tiger's mom because I
wanted a real good golf name for my dog, right
and I didn't want to divot and I didn't want Bogie.
It's overused. They're like Tiger's mom, and I'm like, I
don't get it. Why would I name the dog after
Tiger's mom, He goes, well, because then you know her
name is Caltita and they call her Tita, and the
dog's name would be Tita Green. Oh my god, that's great.
So I've told every golfer my dog's name is Tita Green,
but her real name is Lulu. Everyone knew her as Nancy.
Do you love the Marian golf Course?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's you know, people say all the time
that it's the best inland golf course in the country,
and I firmly believe it. One of the best things
about it I tell guests all the time who haven't
been there before, is that there aren't two holes anywhere
close to like one another, and there aren't two greens anywhere,
you know, close to being like one another. So you
have eighteen different holes kind of on this tight property
less than one hundred and thirty acres. The greens are
really cool, really tough to read, really tough to putt.
And this time of year, you know, May in October
the two best months to play. And we were in
a great stretch with you know, cool nights and on
the temperatures, you know, hovering in the low sixties. So
you know, they're running fourteen and the wind's blowing a
little bit and it's really, really, really tough. So it'll
be interesting to see next year if we get some
dry weather in May for the US M You know
what those kids are able to do, because they hit
it so far.
Speaker 1: Let's see if.
Speaker 2: They can you know, bomb and gouge their way around.
And you know, I got to caddy the last time
the US Amateur was there in two thousand and five,
so it'd be cool, you know, maybe fingers crossed to
get to caddy in that next year.
Speaker 3: Oh, that would be awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a caddy for a California guy the for two
thousand and five, Kevin Chapel, you know UCLA NCAA individual champ,
which was fun. He im original guy missed the cut.
And then I was writing for a small newspaper in
the city. And again, like I said before, I only
lived a mile from the club, and I was in
the shower getting ready to go to work. My mom
like knocks on the door. This is I don't think.
I didn't have a cell phone then I don't think.
And so my boss for Mary and called and said
a caddie didn't show up. Can you meet us on
the first green? So my mom drove me to the
back of the first green and I run up the
little hill and everybody's standing around the green and this
Marian member was carrying Kevin Chappele's bag for the first
hole because his caddie didn't show up, and he just
took his bib off and handed it to me and
I put it on. And he had this like fifty
foot putt, huge left to right swinger, and she's like,
what do you think. I don't even think he introduced
himself to me. He just asked me to read the
putt and I just pointed to a spot and he
buried it and we were off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was cool.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a good one. Wow. Wow. But you didn't
maintain being you know, a caddie as your career, right.
Speaker 2: I mean I would have if I could have, But
then you got married. I got married and my wife
was a teacher, and when I was writing for the newspaper,
I was covering a ton of high school sports, so
I would go write, you know, go cover a high
school baseball game, then go back to the office write
the story, and then help lay out the newspaper. So
I was working pretty much, you know, three pm to
three am most nights, and my wife was on the
opposite schedule, and she quickly laid down the law and said,
you know, if this is something that we want to pursue,
we probably need to make a change. And I yeah, yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 1: And I was.
Speaker 2: I was a coach, a basketball coach, you know, even
when you know, I just graduated high school. So I
loved working with kids. And you know, as a shy person,
I was a little hesitant to kind of dive into teaching.
But you just kind of either I think have it
or you don't. And somehow I'm able to to bond
and connect and motivate, you know, ten to twelve year
old kids. You know, I have a hard time still
speaking in front of adults, but my time in the
classroom is great. You know, it's kind of like the
doors closed and it's it's our own little world. And
you were able to be who you want to be
and let the kids see that and let the kids
kind of let down their guard, which is what it's
all about. You know, if you create a great environment
where the kids are ready to be themselves, and you know,
to take risks and you're going to get them to
do great things. So I've enjoyed that over the last
you know, fifteen plus years. And I still work out
Marian too as one of the assistant Caddy Masters, but
teaching is my full time.
Speaker 3: But your tea are you teaching writing to these kids?
Speaker 2: I taught sixth grade English and language arts, so reading
and writing for a little more than ten years, and
then the last few years I switched over to math
because it was just a little bit less of a workload,
and with young kids and another job, it was really
hard to give it everything I had. You know, when
you're grading ninety essays every week and it's a lot.
Speaker 3: Oh but Matthew can.
Speaker 1: Matthew can manage. You know.
Speaker 2: It's it's much easier to grade. But I miss it
for sure. I missed teaching Elah.
Speaker 3: Interesting uh And and you're still writing though, and and
out came a book.
Speaker 1: Out came a book. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I took a sabbatical to finish my masters about three
years ago, and I had some extra time, so I
finished the manuscript and then I shopped it around to
a few publishers and this small independent press from Austin
picked it up. So that was like a year and
a half maybe two years process, just editing and chopping
it down and proofreading, and you know, it was really
really tough.
Speaker 1: To go back in and reread my work.
Speaker 2: I've always hated that, even when I was a student,
just hated reading what I wrote, and when I was
a journalist too. But you know, you're your reputation kind
of stands on the product you put out right, So
if you're it's full of you know, grammatical errors that
you know an editor's not catching it too in the morning,
you know, going to hurt your credibility, especially like in
twenty twenty five with so much social media, people are
going to ram you with posts, you know about you
didn't catch this capitalization mistake or you use this word
incorrectly or whatever. So I really tried to force myself
to go back and proofread, you know, as carefully as
I could, you know, with the help of the publisher,
because I wanted it to be a great product. And yeah, yeah,
so I got it done. It came out June seventeenth,
and the response has been great. I'm gonna see if
I can keep pushing it and get into the hands
of as many kids as possible. I think it's a
great book for kids who know golf already and as
well as for those who've never picked a club up before.
You know, I try to give you know, as much
explanation on some complicated golf terms as I could and
try not to make it too overwhelming or harder to
break down for the kids. Yeah, that was one of
the goals.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We we were so close to the city here and
there's so many young people who are I think, you know,
kind of closed it off from the golf world. The
public golf scene in Philly isn't great, and it's going
to be. It's gonna be elevated big time once. You know,
the municipal course that's being redone right now, Cobbs Creek
opens up in a couple of years. Gil Hanson, Jim Wagner,
you know, kind of tweaked the routing a little bit,
bringing it back to how it was in nineteen sixteen.
You know, it's really it was one of the best
municipal courses in the country when it opened up. We
had Hugh Wilson, who designed Marion came and did some
more designing the golf course at Cobbs Creek, and he
brought in some of the other architects from Philly, William
Flynn and George Thomas and Tillinghast and Crump who did
Pine Valley. All those guys came to the land the
site at Cobbs Creek and you know, gave their two
cents about what they could do to build a great
golf course. And it was a phenomenal golf course. The
land is unbelievable, tons of elevation, changes, cool creek that
flows through the property, and it's going to be, you know,
one of the top fifty golf courses in the country,
public or private. I think when it opens it has
that potential. And it's so it's the Tiger Woods, says
is involved his learning lab. There's one in Anaheim, California.
His second one opened in the spring here in Philly.
So you know, there's a big education piece too, and
we're going to teach They're going to teach the kids
how to play golf. So if I can use this
book to help reach some kids too, then I'm doing something.
Speaker 3: Well, well, it's interesting you talk about reaching out kids,
getting kids, but I'm telling you this is an entertaining
book for adults as well, and if you have kids
at home, especially if you you know people who are listening,
if they if they have a kid that is interested
in golf or want to get interested in golf. The
parents want the kids to get interested in golf, and
they like to read these, uh these you know, teen
novels and whatnot. This is this is a great one
because I'm sure there's not a lot of golf content
for teenagers. Yeah, in novel form.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought so too, And you know, I think
it's it's also great for hopefully for you know, kids
who are interested in golf or want to get interested
in golf, but aren't readers. You know, there's I remember,
you know, as a as an English Language arts teacher,
you know, there were so many kids who just got
turned off to reading because we were spending ninety minutes
a day just dissecting every single word an author chose
to use and you know, why did a character do this,
and why did the setting change? And they just got
turned off to reading. They lost their love for it
because they were asked to do so much analysis. And
I really try to write this book, you know, in
a way that the kids could follow the plot without
any problems. You know, they didn't have to stop and
reread and you know ask themselves what's happening here? Why
did the character do this? It was just you know,
an easy light reads.
Speaker 1: Could relate to the character.
Speaker 2: There's a an antagonist, you know, this old crotchety member
at the club who battles with the ten year old.
And I think I did a really good job of
creating that old antagonist. His name is Hal Rustin and
he's based on a few guys who I knew at
Marian when I was a kid, and some guys from
you know Edgemont Country Club, which.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I wanted to I wanted to get into hell.
And like the where is where did he come from?
Is this something that you I mean, it's kind of
like a movie character. Yeah, where he came from. But
it's like there's got to be something behind this, right Yeah.
Speaker 2: I won't I won't name any names, but you know
when I was a kid, when I was a kid,
like there were you know members at Marion who like
were really old school and you know it was their
way or the highway, and you know, if you were
the caddy, they didn't want they wanted you to carry
the bag and clean the clubs and give them the
right yardage, and if you said a word you know
other than that, you know, they were going to jump
down your throat or they were really quick to like
pick out something that you did wrong, you know, or
something that you could have done better.
Speaker 1: So I I.
Speaker 2: Definitely basically, well, that was like, you know, maybe five
percent of the membership. And it's changed over time, right,
you know, you know, ninety nine point nine percent of
the membership now is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Everywhere you go, you're going to have, you know, some
tough characters.
Speaker 2: But when I was a kid, there were a lot
of old school guys who again like things a certain way,
and just the kind of the cat caddy player dynamic
has changed, I think overall in golf, you know, it's
there's more of a a collaborative relationship rather than just
the you know, the member of the guest you're caddying
for telling you what to do. You know, this is
what I want. You know, give me this information now,
don't talk to me, you know. Other than that, I
think it's you know, there's a bond most of the
time that forms pretty quickly, you know, once the member
of the guests trust you and knows that you know
you're there to help them, especially a Marian where you
know there are so many blind shots and it's such
a difficult course that if you can't trust the caddy,
no matter how good of a player you are, you're
in trouble.
Speaker 3: Right absolutely. Uh Oh, I had a question in my head,
and now it's not there anymore. Okay, So we can
talk about one of the things. That the character the
book is Philly phenom. We haven't even mentioned the name
of the book, so you were the editor created that name?
Speaker 1: That was mine.
Speaker 2: I wanted, you know, a catchy title, you know, so
the alliteration I think works there and you know, the
title of the book comes out at the end, and
I just really thought that it worked.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I was hesitant at first to include the word Philly
because I didn't want to limit the audience. But you know,
the more I thought about it, I didn't think it
was a big big deal, and I think it fits.
Speaker 1: I don't know what else I would have called the book,
you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, the fact that it's Philly and not Philadelphia
or Maryan or anything like that kind of it works
because it could be a person from Philly living anywhere.
I mean, you know, the Philly phenom. It could be that. Yeah,
I find it interesting again. You know you talk about
that it was partly your story growing up, you pulled
from it. But the main character here he would draw
golf holes. He would design golf holes. That part of
your story as well. How did that.
Speaker 2: I'm a terrible, terrible artist, terrible, Like I can't even
draw stick people, So I definitely didn't draw any golf holds.
Speaker 1: But I U to math right, yep.
Speaker 2: But I used to, you know, make like a miniature
golf course in my house, like going up you know,
not up the stairs, going down the stairs and through
different rooms and.
Speaker 1: Down the hallway.
Speaker 2: And then my backyard was not huge, but big enough
where I could make a couple of little golf holes,
chip and putholes. And then you know, as I got older,
you know, maybe like an eighty yard pitch shot. And
then in the book, the book starts out, you know,
where the lead is out his elementary school kind of
hitting balls on the fields there, And I used to
do that too, just go up. Before you know, I
was able to go to this COF club, my dad
was a member. He used to go up to our
elementary school in the summer and just knock balls around.
And then I got my friends to come and do
it too, and then before we knew it, you know,
we made a golf hole from the top of this
hill down to one of the baseball diamonds. We dug
a little hole in the pitcher's mound and that was
the hole. So we definitely did that too until one
of my friends broke one of the windows in the
school and that that story's in the book.
Speaker 1: Too, Yes it is. And then we kind of stayed
away for for a little while.
Speaker 2: And then, you know, I talked about this in the
book a little bit that you know, there was a
sign that got put up that said, you know, no
golfing on school grounds. After that window got smashed by
one of my buddies. We didn't get in trouble or anything,
but they figured out that it was probably from a.
Speaker 1: Golf a golf ball.
Speaker 2: And by then I was old enough, you know, to
start going to this club, Edgemund Country Club with my dad.
And then you know, when I started caddying at Maryan
when I was fourteen, I used to play at Marion's
other course, the West Course on Mondays and in the summer,
and I spent a lot of time at this place
that I talked about before, this municipal course in the
city called Cobbs Creek. My dad would drop me off
and I would go and you know, mess around on
the range and the practice screen. And they had two
courses too, and one of them was pretty bare bones.
Speaker 1: So you used to go out and do whatever you.
Speaker 2: Wanted out there, and then you know, kind of hang
out and have lunch in the clubhouse and listen to
stories and people argue about who won this bet, who
lost this bet, and that. Like Edgemont, the course that
the you know, the course in the book is based
off of where there were just so many different people
from all walks of life. Cobbs Creek was like that too.
You had people coming from the city, you know, who
could you know, maybe just afford to pay their green fee.
And then you had people coming from the suburbs who
weren't a member somewhere, you know, but you know we're
you know, as a doctor or a lawyer, you know,
playing with you know, just these average people. And it
was a really cool place to learn how to play.
Speaker 3: Are you still getting free golf at Marion? Is that
why you keep keep pulling carrying bags.
Speaker 2: I'm very very fortunate. You know, I've been an assistant
caddy master since two thousand and nine. So in the summer,
if i'm you know, closing as the caddy master, you know,
if if people are off the golf course, I'll sneak
out and play a few holes from seven o'clock or
so until dark. So that's definitely a big perk, you know.
I I can pretty much play when I want, as
long as I don't do anything stupid.
Speaker 3: If a Golf Smarter listener finds you at Marion and says, hey,
I heard the podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah I could help them. I could help them out
if they if they're nice to me.
Speaker 3: Okay, there you go there, right there, you want to
go out and play at Marion. You have an inn now,
just got it to mention Golf Smarter. Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's one of the cool things that there's people who
come from all over the country and all over the world,
you know, yeah, flying on their private plane and play
and then fly off.
Speaker 3: And it's not a Golf Smarter listener. I can almost
almost be assured of that and if you do have
your own plane, please write to me Golf Smarter Podcast
at gmail dot com and let's make a date to
go play golf. You can pick me up here at
Nossfield and there you go. That would be fun. Have
you ever been a golf instructor?
Speaker 2: No, but I was a high school golf coach for
like six years, so I could, you know, I'm I
think my index is a little over five. So I'm
on a good day, you know, I can shoot you know,
seventy five and on a bad day, I could shoot
you know eighty five.
Speaker 1: That's golf, Yeah, exactly. You know.
Speaker 2: So when I was a I was a high school
golf coach for six years and my dad was my assistant,
which was pretty cool. I didn't pay him. He was
my volunteer assistant. So you know, we used to help
kids on you know, alignment and grip and tons of
course management stuff. Not too much on swing, you know,
unless you know, we it was clear that somebody was
coming over the top, you know, or doing something you know,
blatantly obvious like that. But you know, as long as
you can help the kids, you know, care and focus
on every shot and really focus on course management, you're
going to get them to put up good numbers. Our
home course was Marion's second course, the West Course, and
we played a lot at the Cops Creek Municipal Course too,
so it was it was fun to get to do
that for six years before we had our third daughter.
And my wife said, please stop.
Speaker 3: I'm curious because when I go through the book, and
I mentioned this already, but there's a lot of great
little golf nuggets, instructional golf nuggets in the book, and
that's why I was asking me if you've taught, because
you know, that's a lot of what I'm trying to
do here with the podcast is get nuggets from my
own game. Right. I'm just I'm not a golf professional.
I just have a lot of questions. So I look
through the gamut of the golf world to get insights
and instruction and things. And there are some things boy
like here, chapter twenty eight, page two nineteen. When putting
from front to back, the ball usually moved right to
left here, but when you get far enough over to
the left side, it straightened out and sometimes even sloped
ever so slightly the other way. I mean, this is
a subtle way of helping us read the Green. There's
a lot of these things in the book. So where's
your primary motivation on this to tell a story or
to give golf instruction? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Both for sure.
Speaker 2: You know, I figured that it'd be boring if I
just said, okay, let's talk about green reading, right, And
I wrote some kind of you know, non fiction instructional
story for ten to fifteen year olds. So I tried
to weave in that those little, you know, instructional bits
like you mentioned into the story. As Lee was kind
of learning the game and getting better at the game.
You know, these are things that he picked up from
his dad and from you know, some other people at
the club, and I wanted to you know, tell that
in a way that was easy to understand for their
reader right through these words. And like I said before,
I wanted to make it a light, easy read. So
the every word I chose was something that you know,
I really paid great attention to and asked to myself,
you know, is this a word a ten year old
kid would say? And thankfully, since I've been a sixth
grade teacher for so long, you know, I've been observing
you know, ten to twelve year old kids for a
long time, so it was easy for me to write
in a language I think that you know, those kids
would understand, and the little things like you know, if
you if you're just learning how to read greens right,
and you dump a bucket of water on the green,
you know, where's the water go to pool? You know,
so you find a low point on the green, and
you know, if you're really unsure of which way putts breaking,
you know, maybe pick that way. You know where they
think the water would end up. So little things like
that elevation changes, you know, adding and subtracting yardage, and
paying attention to the wind. I weave those things in
there too, just because those are much more important than
you know, where your hands are supposed to be an
impact and you know those kinds of things. Course management,
I think, is a way for people to shave strokes
without you know, beating balls on the range for hours
and hours and hours, don't you think?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: That was the primary premise of this podcast. I know,
I literally I I had because I was new to golf.
I didn't start playing until I was in my forties,
and I was like, wow, I figured, if you understand
course management, you know the strategy of golf, and you
have a strong mental game, emotional game that you can
lower your scores faster than if you just work on
swing mechanics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 3: That's been supported the entire.
Speaker 2: Time when I was writing full time. You know, the
publisher that I worked for owned like Little Golf magazine
in Philadelphia, and I was the staff writer for that
magazine and I interviewed Barbara Tello once.
Speaker 1: Wow, it was really cool.
Speaker 2: It was me, me, another writer and him, you know,
for like an hour, just firing questions at him. And
obviously there are exceptions to this, but he said, if
you took away if you went to the range at
a tour event and you took away the name plates,
so you didn't know who anybody was, and you just
went up and down, you know, and watched each person
swing the golf club, you know, except for like Jim
Furick or Tiger or somebody like that, you know who
you knew there's what their swing was like, right, You
wouldn't know if they were the fifth best player in
the world or the five hundred and fifth best player
in the world because they hit the ball so well.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Again, there are exceptions, some are you know, unbelievable ball strikers.
But for the most part, you know they could they
could hit the ball just as well, no matter you know,
where they were on the money list, right, and so
something had to separate them, you know. And it's you know,
the mental game. You know, can you do it when
it matters most, right? And can you manage your waywhere
on the golf course, can you swallow your pride and
you know, play for four rather than you know, kind
of going for a pin tucked behind a bunker or
you know, over the water hazard or something. So he
talked about that, and he said, you can't recognize, you know,
the fifth best player from the five hundred and fifth
best player in the world. You know, So something has
to separate them. And that's what it is. Mental mental
game for sure.
Speaker 3: Oh that's an excellent tip. The dad in the book.
I'm bouncing on a little the place here. The dad
in the book is he's in enigma to me in
the sense that he's a great golfer. We're not giving
away the ending. He's a great golfer, but he doesn't
play much, right, He doesn't I apparently need to, but
I mean he just he's and he's kind of a
loo about the game itself. The main character that the
kid is really attached to his grandfather, right, I mean
that's the relationship and how his his interests and his
passion for golf grows through the grandfather. But the dad,
how much of that is your story?
Speaker 1: That isn't you know? We're pretty close to my story.
Speaker 2: My dad, like I said before, played you know all
the time from the time as far back as I
can remember, and he was great about bringing me to
the golf club or taking me to Cops Creak and
dropping me off there. So I don't know, I think
it was just something that kind of developed.
Speaker 1: I wanted.
Speaker 2: I wanted there to be some conflict with you know,
the dad wanted to play, but you know, had other
things going on in his life that prevented him from playing,
and that allowed lead to kind of be at the
club by himself for a lot of the time because
I wanted him to have you know, a bunch of
run ins with the antagonist, and I wanted the great
and father to kind of you know, be a part
of that conflict too. And you know, he has a
little backstory with hal Rustin, so it's I never I haven't.
Speaker 1: You're the first person.
Speaker 2: That's asked me that, and I'm glad I'm able to
reflect on it, because I don't think I intended to
do that when I started out, but it just kind
of developed and I thought it worked well held. You know,
the dad's being pulled a couple different directions raising a family,
you know, working, and you know, he wants to play.
He loves the game, but not as much as he
did when he was younger, before he had kids. And
that's something I'm going through, you know, as a forty
four year old with three kids. You know, it's very,
very tough to get away, especially since I have two jobs.
To play golf, you know for four hours. So like
I said, I play a lot of like two three
four holes at the end of the night, and then
I try to take a couple of big, big trips
a year.
Speaker 1: So I try to make account when I do when
I do play.
Speaker 3: And how old are your kids?
Speaker 2: I have three girls, thirteen, nine six, and I'm interested.
The younger two like it. I can bribe them with,
you know, riding the golf cart, a soda, a chocolate
chip cookie or something, some ice cream afterwards, but they'll.
Speaker 3: All sugar if you come out and play golf with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll hacking around the backyard. And then in the
summer we go on vacation to this little place in
the mountains where there's a really cool old William Flynn course.
So they'll hang hang out with me for an hour
or so. But I'm not going to force it on them.
My oldest had a great swing when she was a kid,
but her friends don't play, so it's hard for her
to kind of, you know, pick pick out that as
her sport when she's trying to find her way.
Speaker 3: Well, we're not going to spoil We're not going to
spoil the story. But the antagonists at the club and
the grandfather there, I thought I thought for sure the
grandfather was going to run them over golf cart. I'm
not giving anything away, but I thought for sure this
guy was going to get hit in the head with
a golf club. Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I figured there could be something like that that
would happen, but I didn't want to make it too.
Speaker 3: No audience, right, yeah, right, right? And how's the book
being received?
Speaker 1: Uh? Pretty well. You know.
Speaker 2: I one thing that I need to start pushing to
be honest with you is you know the reviews on Amazon,
which I guess you know are really important, but to me,
you know, I'd rather I'd rather hear you know, great
things like you mentioned you know that you enjoyed it.
So I've gotten a lot of positive verbal feedback. I've
won a few awards that I applied for, so but
let's see, I won UH Pencraft Awards for UH Summer
Let's see preteen Best Like Summer Fiction Award.
Speaker 1: I should have these, like a list of them.
Speaker 2: I just got a third place award for something called
the Collective of Independent Publishers and Authors. I've won a
couple other local awards, so it's nice to have that
confirmation that I did something well. Because even when it
got published, right, that was the first show, right, getting
a publisher to pick it up, so I said, okay,
there's something there. And then when we went through the
publishing process, you know, I had some of my former
students read it and they said, okay, you know this
is interesting, but we're not golfers, so you know, we
don't know, you know, if it's going to be relatable
to those kids too. And then you know, when I
submitted it for some more awards, you know, and one
a few I was like, okay, somebody thinks it's you know,
worth reading too. So I'm just happy that that, you know,
all that that hard work has paid off, even if
it's not paying off with dollars and cents.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it depends what you're motivated by doing.
And you wrote a book to get a great story
out there, and you really did it again. The book
is called Philly Phenom by Nate Oxman. I'm sure it's
available at local bookstores will order it for you if
they don't carry it, but you can. Finally, you can
get it at Amazon, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, in Amazon and other retailers online, Target, Walmart,
all the Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 3: Excellent, excellent. Well again, I really enjoyed it. And I
have a nephew that this book is going to definitely
be going to awesome. He's a twelve year old kid
who is incredibly passionate about golf, and I think this
would be this is the perfect book for him. So
I'm going to do that. And I'm really glad that
I ended up reading it because I enjoyed it tremendously
and I hope everyone else thinks about it. For this
holiday season. If you have young people in your life
that are interested in golf, get him this book. They'll
really enjoy it. Nate, it's been a pleasure speaking to you. Congratulations,
good luck for the future.
Speaker 1: Thanks Fred, thanks for having me on. This is a
lot of fun and appreciate it very much.