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Golf on Cape Cod - Personal Profiles
BOB MILLER It starts with a seemingly innocuous question. “How are you?” Bob Miller asks. This invariably leads the person he is addressing to lament their lack of feel around the green, or the deficiencies in their iron play, or the fact that they’re “getting stuck” at the top of the backswing. When you have been a golf instructor as long as Miller has – virtually his entire adult life – the responses come with the territory. “What I am really asking is, ‘How are you?’ ” Miller says with a shrug. “How is your family? What’s going on?” iller, 53, is a Cape Codder who spent many of his formative years at Dennis Pines Golf Course, and most of his adult years at Blue Rock Golf Course in South Yarmouth. Now he has embarked upon a new adventure as the Director of Golf at The Club at Yarmouthport (formerly Kings Way Golf Club).
Miller can point to consistency and longevity in both aspects of his profession. He was the 1990 New England PGA Teacher of the Year and has won the Cape chapter teaching honor three times. He has competed in national club pro championships and has been the top player on the local “circuit,” also known as the Cape Cod Pro-Am League, several times over the past few decades. For an example of a teacher who isn’t necessarily going to play as well as he preaches, Miller goes to the top. “If you asked David Leadbetter, who is the No. 1 teacher in the United States, to go play four rounds in the U.S. Open, he’d probably have trouble breaking 80, because that’s not his priority.” If Miller inherited his golf instincts, then the trait skipped a generation. His father, Bob, worked in the heating oil delivery business and was not a golfer. The younger Miller absorbed skills and etiquette from the veteran players at Dennis Pines, and along with contemporaries such as Kevin Carey, one of the state’s best amateurs, he played in high school at Dennis-Yarmouth. Miller captained the D-Y team in 1972. “I didn’t appreciate what people like Ralph Sanders and Jay Haberl (the first two pros at Dennis Pines) and the members taught me until much later,” Miller said. “They really gave me a wonderful introduction to golf.” Miller’s grandfather, Norman Vickery, brought another aspect of the sport to his attention. Vickery had an engineering degree from Brown, and in the 1930s, when steel shafts were in their formative years, Vickery designed prototypes with different flex points and sold them to American Fork and Hoe Company — which you might know by its present name, True Temper Sports, Inc. True Temper is to shafts as Titleist is to golf balls. Miller went from D-Y to Cape Cod Community College, but dropped out after a semester to pursue a career in golf. He latched on as an assistant at Blue Rock and supplemented his income by repairing and regripping clubs. “Every Friday, I would stop at several courses from Woods Hole to Eastward Ho! and I would pick up clubs,” Miller said. “I would repair shafts, clubs, grips, and return them the following week. It was a big part of my income.” Miller became the head pro at Blue Rock when Karl Warnick left in 1978. Miller was 23. “When people ask me where I went to college, I tell them the University of Blue Rock.” In his time there, Miller worked for owner Pete Davenport, a man Miller has called a mentor, an employer and a great friend. When Davenport died of cancer in 1999, his sons John and Dewitt took over the business. And although Miller had a good relationship with them, he came to a realization: “I figured I was at the point where either I was going to be at Blue Rock forever or I was going to really reach for my dream,” he said. That brought him to The Longest Drive in South Dennis, where Miller envisioned building a golf academy, but permitting issues stalled and ultimately caused him to abandon that effort. “My wife Lisanne and I leased the property with an option to buy,” Miller said. “And in our first year there, we did gang-busters. But we went to see an attorney and after studying it fully, we declined the option to buy. It was devastating – I wanted to get into health and fitness, club-fitting, all the things that I have wanted to do. But it wasn’t in the cards.” Trevor Bateman was retiring as pro at then-Kings Way, and Miller took over. Within a year of becoming the head pro at Blue Rock, Miller had suggested to Davenport that Blue Rock open a golf school. A few years later, Miller proposed that the Red Jacket Hotel affiliated with Blue Rock offer golf packages. Neither idea had been tried there, and both were very popular. Now he is at it again. Miller recently launched Cape Golf Connect, a free program by which local players can meet and share insights about the game. There have been five programs already, and they have covered topics such as equipment, swing tips, golf psychology and fitness.
GOCC: What does the average golfer lack? BM: Consistency. The other thing is that the average golfer, when he walks on the first tee, is in ‘think mode’ as opposed to ‘play mode.’ When you step on the tee, you’ve got to switch your mode from thinking to playing. You can’t be thinking, ‘Is my swing on plane? Is my grip right?’ Your playing mode should be club selection, lie of the ball, wind, course management. I think that holds a lot of people back. GOCC: What makes a good teacher? BM: A good teacher must identify the player’s learning style. Do we learn by listening? Or do we learn more with a ‘show me what to do’ approach? That’s why I think video is critical and can be such a time saver. It’s such a convincing thing. Another thing to remember when you take a lesson is to try to climb the ladder one rung at a time. You can only master one thing at a time. You’ve got 30 minutes! If you walk away from a lesson or golf school having learned one or two things in a session… that’s a lot! GOCC: Do you sometimes see people looking overwhelmed, like they have gotten too much information? BM: Everyone has a different way of learning. I find myself teaching the exact same thing three different ways, just the way Jim Flick once told us at a seminar. As a teacher and a student, we’re on the same team, and we’re going to work on this together. It’s not when ‘you’ do this wrong, it’s when ‘we’ do this wrong. You want to build relationships with the students, become their friend, become their coach. In a very short time I can identify their personalities. Are they analytical? How do they process the information? Once you learn that, you can almost pinpoint what they do in their career. When you tell someone to take the club back and they ask how far back, they’re most likely engineers, because they measure everything. GOCC: That plays into the mental aspect again, doesn’t it? BM: If you interview 100 people and ask what percentage of your game is mental, you’d get some interesting answers. I think you start out with a baseline of 50 percent and, as your game gets better, you may go up to 90 percent or 95 percent mental. If the percentage is that high, where do you get help, where do you get fixed? The majority of us can’t hire Dr. Bob Rotella, the foremost sports psychologist, for five grand a weekend. GOCC: How do you help with that? BM: I suggest you read (Rotella’s) “Golf is Not a Game of Perfect,” or “Every Shot Must Have a Purpose” (by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott) ... something about the mental aspect, because it’s such a huge part of the game. The other way that I am trying to shape my teaching is with more playing lessons. When we take lessons we work on fundamentals, but then we have to make that huge transition to the course. Even if it’s just playing three or four holes, it is helpful; because oftentimes a player can go to the practice range and get into a repetitive mode, they can start to groove things. But when you get on the course, now you’re hitting a shot every five or 10 minutes… GOCC: Taking it onto the course must help a lot. BM: It does. When you play tennis, the court’s always level. In golf, you practice on a nice level tee, but then you get out on the course, and suddenly you have an uphill lie with a bunker in front of you and the wind’s blowing 20 miles an hour. It helps to work on these scenarios with players. GOCC: Even the course you play 30 or 40 times a year can change from day to day. BM: It changes virtually every time you play it. GOCC: We heard someone describing today’s swing as almost more like a martial arts move than a tempo thing, where they are just attacking the ball. Obviously, in the past few years the technology has improved, but have you had to change your teaching techniques in general? BM: On my computer I have a few swings, the modern-day swing and a few swings that are 50 years old. I put up a split screen, with Annika Sorenstam on one side and Sam Snead on the other. When you analyze just the upper-body swings, from the hips to the top of the backswing with a driver, you would say, “Wow, they are close together.” GOCC: How has the swing evolved? BM: The lower body today is not moving around as much; the left heel used to come up a lot, and now it’s a little more grounded. Athletes today are bigger and stronger – they hit the ball farther. They’re working on both strength and flexibility. GOCC: Do you work out a lot? BM: I work out some, both for flexibility and for strength. One of the things that I encourage people to do is that when some of them come to me, they’re a little overweight. I am limited in what I can do to help them and in what they are able to do. There’s no question about it. So I encourage them to get into a program. After an evaluation, Jack Maher from Handler’s Health and Fitness in Hyannis helped me with my flexibility over the winter. I also encourage young golfers who want to play at a high level to get into that kind of program. GOCC: One nice aspect of these programs is that they are golf-specific. BM: Yes, they are. The trend in major golf schools is to offer a health/fitness program as a supplement to the golf. Yoga has gotten some buzz, too. What we’re seeing now is, it’s not sitting around at the 19th hole anymore. It’s stretching, it’s working out, it’s working on the mind, and it has to help you. No matter what level you’re at, it has to help. GOCC: We have heard that as you get older, as you play less frequently, the fundamentals become even more important. BM: When I teach the game of golf, there are three areas I look at: first is pre-swing fundamentals, which are grip, stance, ball positioning and posture. Most of a player’s flaws or inconsistencies are going to be traced back to that. If you’ve got a bad grip, you have bad aim. It affects your ball flight, both trajectory and dispersion. When you look at posture, great posture will allow you to swing the club around your body properly, which affects the plane of your swing… plus it’s a huge factor for power. If you get someone standing up there with bad posture, they’ve already got two strikes against them. When someone says, ‘Fix my swing, Bob’ – well, I’ve got to fix your posture first before I can get the swing to work. It’s a chicken-and-egg thing – if you don’t have good posture, you’re not going to keep the club on plane and you’re not going to improve your power. GOCC: It goes back to what you’re saying about being limited in what you can do for someone… BM: Part of posture is good fitness. If your core is weak, you might be able to sustain posture for a few shots, but for four hours and a round of golf, you are probably not going to be able to. So then we revert back to the nutrition issue, and the Diet Coke and the hot dog at the turn are not the answer to sustaining your energy level for the long term. Sometimes it’s hard to convince people to change their lifestyle. GOCC: We were surprised when we realized you have been here four years. BM: I realized when I was at The Longest Drive that I missed having the membership and running the tournaments. It has been a great experience, and we’re trying to change old perceptions about Kings Way – that it’s a short course for older people and that it’s a retirement community. That’s why we changed the name to “The Club at Yarmouthport”. We feel like we started a new legacy when we officially changed the name on Feb. 1. It’s a great place for families, and we’re also looking to bring in corporate meetings and corporate memberships. GOCC: What do you think the future of the game is? Why is it not growing? BM: It’s true that it’s not growing. Since 1999 or 2000 it has gone down – it’s a non-growth market and it’s an overbuilt market. I’ll tell you the three reasons it’s not growing… And if you’re married and you have kids, you have even less time. The second thing that’s happened is the expense of the game. It’s not as affordable as it was. About 70 percent of private clubs today are looking for members. A private club offers more social activities and easier access to tee times, but it can’t compete with the municipal courses here on the Cape in cost – they’re far more affordable for juniors and seniors. The other thing that is holding the game back is its challenge… many of the courses that have been built in the past few years are too hard. Because we don’t have the time to devote to practice, because the game is too hard to learn, people are doing other things. Whether they are playing tennis or they’re kayaking or something else they can do quicker, again it comes down to the time factor. GOCC: And this course, like Southers Marsh in Plymouth, offers real advantages, BM: Well, from a buyer’s view, this is a 4,000-yard course – I refer to it as a short golf course that plays long. We have 13 par 3s, five strategic par 4s. I guarantee you that you will shoot as many over par, if not more, as on your regulation course at home. But the beauty of this course is that you can play it in 3 or 3 1/2 hours instead of five hours or more at another course. And that’s a real plus. Our job now is to get the word out that it’s a great place to work on your game, to get a lesson, to have an outing… GOCC: What about some of the initiatives to grow the game? BM: I see a huge effort by the PGA of America and the USGA. There are 400 kids involved in the Cape’s junior golf association. But again, when you look at the surge of kids taking up golf, when they turn 18 they go to college. Unless you’re an exceptional player, you’re putting down the clubs. As they march through their 20 and their 30s, these people are raising kids. When they get to their 40s, they have college tuitions – that segment of the market, in my experience, is not growing very fast. And then we get to the 50-year-olds, the so-called baby boomers. These people with more time and more disposable income are taking up the game a little later in life, and it’s harder because you might not have done anything athletic for a number of years… so that’s why I think getting into a good instructional program, getting yourself into decent shape, and playing golf courses that aren’t killing you, are so important – because right now for every person who takes up the game, someone else quits. It can be discouraging. GOCC: You have been local player of the year, won some events. Is there a memory that stands out? BM: I go back to what we started talking about, it’s what I have wanted to do since I was a kid. If you took a golf professional’s clubs away, for most of us, it would be devastating. As you get older, it’s harder to win. But the thing that I’ve learned – and part of it is maturity – is that it’s not so much about winning, it’s about competing. It’s fun if you are doing your best and if you come up a little short, that’s OK, because even Tiger doesn’t win every time. It’s fun playing with your peers, with your fellow pros. I know I’m not going to win the U.S. Open; I gave up that dream many years ago. But I still have a passion to compete and to try to play well, because I think it’s important to your career. GOCC: How about favorite courses? What would be your top choices? BM: Sankaty Head has been my favorite course for the past 20 years. I just love the lay of the land, and I think part of it is going to the island, the whole ambience of the trip, it’s a treat. But interestingly, Eastward Ho! did a major project a couple of years back. They’ve opened it up by removing a bunch of trees, and now it gives you the flavor of Sankaty Head, with the fescue grass, and looking out over the beach… It would be No. 2. Nationally, I would have to pick Shinnecock Hills on Long Island. Of course, there is a reason why they call Sankaty Head “Little Shinnecock.” GOCC: And what about the state of your game? BM: I’ve played my best golf the past three years… since I’ve been here. I’m playing smarter, and I think my short game is better. I still hit the ball a pretty good distance. I think my iron game has improved. … To be honest with you, this is my second marriage, and we’ve been married five years now; my little guy (Brady) is 2, and I have two great children (Robert, 25, and Deirdra, 20) from my prior marriage. My wife (the former Lisanne DiNapoli) is my coach – everybody’s got to have a coach. You can’t do all this stuff by yourself. She is my biggest influence; she encourages me to play, encourages me to practice, and encourages me to compete. If I have a swing problem, which I do from time to time, she is another pair of eyes. She’s got good suggestions. She knows the game – she played a little bit on the women’s Futures Tour. She’s a very good teacher herself, and we’re a pretty good team.
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“There is an interesting perception among the public,” Miller said. “If someone is a pretty good player, the perception is that they’re a pretty good teacher. Someone who doesn’t play quite as well – maybe they don’t have the time because of their jobs, their family, whatever – if they don’t play as well, they’re not perceived as a good teacher. It’s false, but it’s still there.”
“No other sport is on television 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Miller said. “But there is so much information in golf, I try to narrow it down a bit. I usually do something on equipment, I do a section on the swing that I call the swing doctor’s workshop… and then I usually do a segment on the mental game.”