My golf obsession started when I was 13 years old. My parents had uprooted our family and moved from lush and beautiful Denver Colorado to baron, and seemingly ugly, Las Vegas Nevada. I say seemingly because any change in environment that dramatic provokes serious culture shock (or environment shock) but, with time, the desert grows on you and you see the beauty in it.
My brother, who was almost 15, and I had no friends, of course, and so our father bought us each a cheap set of golf clubs from Sears, yes in the old Sears & Roebuck days, and dropped us off at the tiny golf club and course in Henderson, the city where he became a bank manager and were we rented a house.
The interesting name of the course.
Black Mountain, in the shadow of a big hill (by Colorado standards) of volcanic rock named, you guessed it, Black Mountain. It was a nine hole golf course in that mostly working class town. It attracted the few people with some wealth in Henderson and others like our family. At least my dad, brother, and I were game to play. My mom always went along with what my dad did. My sisters weren’t interested.
So my brother and I began learning the game. We started off using a baseball grip (like holding a bat) that had us firing shots left and right and we realized that that needed to change. We had read about the other grips that were popular with golfers, and we decided one day on the course, I remember it was on a long par 4 hole, maybe hole number two, that we really realized this was the fix our swing and game needed.
So, how were we to grip the club?
The two other grips we had read or heard about were the overlapping and interlocking grips. The former having the pinky finger on the right hand (for right-handers) overlapping the index finger on the left hand and the later having those two fingers interlocking. Both designed to force your hands to act and work as one mechanism, not two separately shifting entities.
With the baseball grip, there is too much tendency for the hands to work independently, to twist and move out of sink, causing major shifts in the angle the club head contacts the golf ball. And this, in turn, caused the shot to go in all kinds of directions except for the one intended, straight down the middle of the fairway or straight at the flag on the green.
The interlocking and overlapping grips, as I said, cause the hands to work in unison and create a more consistent approach of the club head as it is about to strike the ball. The end result, much more consistent ball striking and better results and straighter shots. The difference was dramatic even though it felt totally weird at first. We got used to it real fast and, pretty soon, the baseball grip felt weird. I am guessing it improved our scoring by at least a stroke on every hole. That was huge and the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction with the game went up dramatically.
I fell in with some cool guys, during those first couple weeks in Henderson, that got me steeped in playing the game. Stuart and Steve, who’s dad co-owned the local lumber store, and Kenny, who’s dad was a big golf player there.
The really cool thing was!
Both of their families owned golf carts so we could fit in 27 or 36 holes on a Saturday and often did. Before I forget to mention it, my dad was key in helping me learn the game because, he was interested in learning it too and he made sure that we got lots of magazines on the game with tips from the pros on every aspect of playing golf. Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, and Jack Nicholas just to name a few.
I actually saw Arnold play in those days of Arnie’s Army. He was playing in a tournament at Sunset Valley in Henderson and a few of us decided to ditch school one weekday and go out to watch some of the tournament.
And to be honest,
We didn’t have the money to afford an entrance fee so, we drove out into the desert behind the course on a dirt road and walked into the tournament from there. On the way out, we got stuck and had to find some plywood boards to put under the tires to get traction. But, we got to see Arnie and be surrounded by his Army.
I had played so much golf in the summer of 1963 that, by the time the school year started, I actually felt capable of trying out for the Basic High golf team and, that’s exactly what I did. And, I made the team but, before you get too impressed, let me tell you the whole story.
Truth is,
All you had to do to make the team is be willing to subject yourself to the humiliation of being soundly beaten by one of the members of the more elite Las Vegas schools who’s members had grown up at country clubs and were very good golfers for their age. Don’t get me wrong. We had a couple pretty good golfer and I wasn’t bad but, no match for the number three guy on the Vegas clubs.
When we played the Vegas schools, we had a secret weapon and, that was none other then, you guessed it, Black Mountain.
Why was Black Mountain course so challenging?
Because everything sloped away from the mountain. Especially the greens but, they didn’t show it. You couldn’t read that in your puts unless you knew that secret. And, we weren’t about to tell them that slope. That’s local knowledge that players have about the courses they play regularly on. And that could cause lots of puts to miss the cup of lip out. It was a small advantage of the extreme talent of the kids we played when the match was held at, you guessed it, Black Mountain.
More Black Mountain golf stories to come. Stay tuned. Next time, the Basic High Wolves golf team.