tightdraw

Started golf at age 11;  now 74.  Played what was at the time the junior circuit and college golf.  When I started teaching Philosophy at UC Berkeley I drove to Carmel to work with Ben Doyle. Played competitive amateur golf right through my mid forties.  By then I had been teaching for over 10 years at Yale Law School (where I attended law school) and was a member of the Yale Golf Course where I have been a member ever since.  My serious amateur career came to a screeching halt after a serious injury on a Lat Pulldown machine at the gym while preparing for CT Amateur.  Took me five years of PT to get back on the course and my game changed as I had experienced atrophy on right side of my body and had to build up all the small muscles to compensate.  Worked my way back from someone who had been scratch or better to someone who all of a sudden couldn't break 80 to a competitive golfer again from my 60s on.  I play a number of the top courses on the east coast and only at the age of 70 did I move from the championship tees to the member tees.  Recently I have become a certified professional golf coach with Tyler Ferrell and Golf Smart Academy.  Other than giving lessons to friends, I teach injured and disabled vets and kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods and do so at no cost to anyone. I have never stopped working on my game and have spent time recently with Mac O'Grady, an old acquanitance from Rancho Park in LA days and TGM days, Dana Dahlquist and Adam Porzak as well as George Gankas.  My two sons live in LA and I am in the area regularly as well as up northern CA with Tyler.  

The part of my game that I find hardest to deal with is driving.  I want to be a competitive golfer into my 80s and I work out and am in very good shape but I can't drive longer than 220.  I want to get back to scratch and need to get my driver to go another 20 yards as I refuse to move tees forward until I am 80!  Im straight as an arrow off the tee and pretty much with all my clubs and have a sound short game, but...  I guess I still remember how I hit the ball before my injury and can't get it out of my head!!