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Island brings out best in golf (Sea Island)

Posted on Jun 27, 2009 by Reg Murphy, The Brunswick News  | 

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Trivia question: What small, lovely coastal island can claim three major golf champions?

Not so trivial answer: St. Simons Island.

When Lucas Glover calmed himself to drop the final three-foot putt for par at Bethpage Black Golf Course, he won the U. S. Open championship this week.

That is when he joined Davis Love III, the PGA champion, and Zack Johnson, the Masters winner, as a winner of a golf major. Thought you heard that Glover lives in Greenville, S.C.? You did. But if you check into Cafe Frederica at breakfast time you just might find him there.

During the day, he may well be fishing on the Frederica Golf Club lake or practicing on the Frederica course.

Nighttime, he may be dining on Mexican fare at Bubba Garcia’s with his buddy and agent, Mac Barnhardt.

Visit Sea Island Website

Like Love and Johnson, he is a member of the Frederica Club and the Sea Island Club. And he was a teammate with Jonathan Byrd, another St. Simons Island resident, and winning PGA tour professional, at Clemson (and also a Frederica member).

What has caused all this golf concentration on an island foreign to all of them, save Davis Love, you ask.

As in most of life, education plays a huge part. Talent attracts other talent. Quality facilities in beautiful settings certainly don’t detract. And the people who live, work and play in harmony always are at the heart of a settle-down decision.

Education first. The Research Triangle in North Carolina drew thousands of scientists who had access to UNC, Duke and NC State. The area prospered.

On St. Simons, some of the best golf teaching in the country has drawn the best golfers. First there were Jack Lumpkin and Davis Love Jr., both of whom honed Davis III’s game so that he has won 20 PGA tournaments.

Mike Taylor, who is Glover’s swing coach for the past three years, has been a mainstay at the Sea Island Golf Learning Center for several years. Taylor is the quiet one, especially when he is sitting in the hotel lobby with irrepressible pro Boo Weekley, as he was at Bethpage. Boo is around the island and club frequently.

Huge acquisitions followed. Todd Anderson moved from The Breakers in Palm Beach to become the head of instruction and brought a double handful of pros as teachers. He joined Top-50 instructor Gale Peterson, who has taught many female stars as well as males.

Fitness second. An unknowing federal judge ruled several years ago that golf does not require stamina. (He did so to give a cart to a good player with a permanently diseased leg.)

When Randy Myers prescribes a workout regimen for a tour player, that player has been sentenced to hours and days of sweat and toil. Davis Love stepped into a hole and severely injured his ankle a while back. Myers had him walking backward and throwing a medicine ball over his head (among other tortures) for rehabilitation.

Mental preparation third. A flustered or distracted state of mind doesn’t work in any line of work. Total calm is a rare thing. Sometimes athletes in all fields call it “in the zone.” They really are speaking about a method of concentrating without distracting thoughts.

Glover won his first PGA tournament a few years ago by sinking a 40-yard bunker shot for birdie on the last hole. He later talked about walking up the final fairway finding a way to calm himself and concentrate totally on the single act of striking a golf ball lying in the sand.

He has worked for years with Morris Pickens, the sports psychologist at the Golf Learning Center.

Some sports broadcasters and writers talked mistakenly of Glover looking almost bored during the last round at the Open. Hardly! He is an impatient man. He tried to tell them he was exercising patience as an act of will, but they were too impatient to listen. (Associates swear he has been known to take out a crossword puzzle while waiting for slow players to play.)

And of course any golfer will tell you that making putts is where you win the bet. Mike Shannon is the putting guru, also at the Golf Learning Center.

This almost sounds like a house ad for St. Simons Island. It is not. It is, rather, like a love letter to a place where we all have chosen to live our lives, particularly by those of us who have come from somewhere else.

- Reg Murphy, a St. Simons Island resident and former president of the United States Golf Association, has been editor of The Atlanta Constitution, publisher of The (Baltimore) Sun and editor and publisher of the San Francisco Examiner.

Tagged: sea island, ga, reg murphy, lucas glover, davis love iii, frederica golf club, st simons island, ga, us open championship, mac barnhardt, pga tour