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A good start for Boydee
My son’s first time at the range

By |  September 23, 2015 0 Comments

s_jonesI was a few days away from my fourth-ever round at Pinehurst No. 2, and I was near rock bottom. If you played golf with me this summer, you know what I mean. ¶ And I apologize to those kind folks who had to endure my golf game: Wayne Kappelman (at Half Moon Bay), Troy Flanagan (at the Olympic Club) and my friends at North Coast Media (at both Chagrin Falls CC and Nemacolin Woodlands Resort). You’re all good people and don’t deserve to have to play golf with the player that I was. I probably should send flowers, but I’m not going to.

So I crawled back to my golf coach, Jeff Burey at Twin Oaks Golf Complex in Eudora, Kan. I’ve written about Jeff before. He has had a celebrated career in golf, including, coincidentally, a stint as the head golf pro at Pinehurst Golf & Country Club in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

It doesn’t matter if I’m playing the Annual Eudora Pitch & Putt Classic or a round at his favorite course in the world, Pinehurst No. 2, Jeff is eager to help me. Jeff is a Golfdom fan, and I think he enjoys that of all the driving ranges in the world, I ended up on his. It was Jeff who arranged this month’s cover story on Wolf Creek, where he was the head pro for more than two decades.

So when I came to see Jeff in a panic recently, he was happy to help.

Jeff is the kind of golf coach that anyone would be lucky to meet. He’s enthusiastic (“Great grip!”) and philosophical (“You have to kill the pig.”) He’s a worrier (Recent quote: “I know you’ve been traveling, I know you’ve been playing and I know I haven’t seen you.”) He’s a big believer in youth golf (see Starter, page 8.) And most of all, he’s a friend.

I believe that if I met Burey 30 years ago, I’d be less of a mess on the golf course than I am today. I say this based on my son’s recent appearance at the range.

As I was stepping out the door to hit the range recently, my wife encouraged me that it would be good to get our 3-year-old boy, Boyd, “out of the house.”

That’s all fine and good, but how long is a 3-year-old going to let anyone hit balls?

I grumbled this out loud to Jeff. He and his wife, Cathy, weren’t having it.

Turns out “Boydee” got more of a lesson than I did. It started with him underhand-tossing Velcro tennis balls at a target (I’m not going to lie — my kid was money. I think he could have even taken a few bucks off the 6-year-old he was playing with if he understood the concept of money.) Before I knew it, Jeff and Cathy were shooing me out the door so I could hit balls while they worked with their new student.

Jeff came outside and watched me hit — after mowing greens, fairways, picking range balls and fixing an irrigation leak — to talk about swing thoughts and where my head should be as I step up to No. 1 tee at Pinehurst No. 2.

After we left, my son wouldn’t stop talking about his first day at the golf range. He even told his mom, “Mom, I’m a really good golfer.”

So he’s already exaggerating how good he is. Clearly, Boydee is off to a good start.

This is posted in Columns

About the Author: Seth Jones

Seth Jones, a 18-year veteran of the golf industry media, is Editor-in-Chief of Golfdom magazine and Athletic Turf. A graduate of the University of Kansas School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Jones began working for Golf Course Management in 1999 as an intern. In his professional career he has won numerous awards, including a Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association (TOCA) first place general feature writing award for his profile of World Golf Hall of Famer Greg Norman and a TOCA first place photography award for his work covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In his career, Jones has accumulated an impressive list of interviews, including such names as George H.W. Bush, Samuel L. Jackson, Lance Armstrong and Charles Barkley. Jones has also done in-depth interviews with such golfing luminaries as Norman, Gary Player, Nick Price and Lorena Ochoa, to name only a few. Jones is a member of both the Golf Writers Association of America and the Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association. Jones can be reached at sjones@northcoastmedia.net.


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