Dear Harvey:
Thanks for writing The Little Red Book, the number one selling golf book. Since joining Austin Country Club, 20 years ago, I have learned much about the game we love. For example, many influential golf coaches with Texas ties were from your era. It has also been fun to learn about golf traditions here in The Kingdom.
I am told you based your teachings on lessons from Jack Burke Sr. in Houston. (Burke Sr. moved to Houston from Philadelphia, a hotbed for golf in the US in the early 1900s.) Burke Sr., of course, taught his son, Jackie Burke, who won the 56 Masters. He also worked with Claude Harmon, who won the Masters in 1948. Additionally, he influenced Jack and Dick Grout when they were teenagers, and both spent considerable time in Texas.
From that list of Burke’s protégés came some rather remarkable golfers. From Claude Harmon, his three sons: Dick, Craig, and Claude Harmon Jr. (i.e., Butch.) From Butch, of course, came Tiger. From Grout, none other than Jack Nicklaus. And from you, Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite. Plus, you were an essential coach to Davis Love II, who brought us Davis Love III. In the forward of the 20th Anniversary Edition of your book, Davis Love III notes that his father must have started ten thousand sentences with the words, “As Mr. Penick would say . . .”
Furthermore, with three daughters, I am super proud that you were instrumental in founding the LPGA and worked with five LPGA Hall of Famers: Betty Jameson, Judy Rankin, Betsy Rawls, Kathy Whitworth, and Mickey Wright. The women you worked with won nearly 250 LPGA tournaments! I find this all quite remarkable, and it makes me proud to be a Texan and a member of your club.
I promise to write more soon.
gPage
- Dear Harvey: Bucket list month of July
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- Dear Harvey: St. Enodoc Golf Club – Church Course (Cornwall)
- Dear Harvey: Trevose Golf & Country Club (Cornwall)
- Dear Harvey: Ernie Els or Ernie the Milk Man
- Dear Harvey: Grateful is the right word (#GDTBATH)
- Dear Harvey: (Uncle Charlie) McDowell trumped by (Great Uncle Fred) McLeod
- Dear Harvey: The Jack Burke Sr. Golf Legacy Tree
- Dear Harvey: gPage-A-Palooza 2022
- Dear Harvey: The Stage Golfing Society (London)
- Dear Harvey: First Woman Captain (The Richmond Golf Club)
- A couple of gems: Muirfield and North Berwick
- Tube to Tee: Sudbury Golf Club
- Hugging Harvey Goodbye and off to London for a Bit
- I Knew Harvey Invitational Golf and Dinner + Ode to Harvey (tribute poem)
- Dear Harvey: “Up against a kid” by Bo Links (slightly modified for gender)
- Dear Harvey: Life is long if you know how to use it
- Stay Whole Tuesday: Stillness, Rome, Herb Brooks, and Harvey Penick
- Patty Sheehan: “Some kind of peacefulness about what you are doing.”
- Oscillate, as in Oscillating Dynamic Variable Resistance
- All bets are won or lost on the first tee
- 5.5.05 – 5.5.20 It has been 15 (Bart Star) years since I wrote this . . . Stay Whole!
- Pete Dye (1925 – 2020)
- Dear Harvey: Ace on 16
- Swing sequence – 4th of July (thanks, Emily)
- Fit as a Fiddle Friday: Deceleration with Tom Kite
- My Flat Ass Fitness Rules (12 of them)
- Rudy’s 360 boys with Tom Kite – two-time NCAA champions!
- Roane Puett: Austin CC Legendary Golf Member and Friend
- It’s complicated: A special video clip from Emily’s college golf experience
- Celebrating Dan Bates: Why do men have a hard time getting to know each other?
“Millions of people were charmed by the homespun golf advice dispensed in Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, a sports classic that became the best-selling sports book of all time. Yet, beyond the Texas golf courses where Penick happily toiled for the better part of eight decades, few people knew the self-made golf pro who coaxed the best out of countless greats — Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, Betsy Rawls, Mickey Wright — all champions who considered Penick their coach and lifelong friend.” – Kevin Robbins, author of Harvey Penick: The Life and Wisdom of the Man Who Wrote the Book on Golf.
