Left: The range at the PGA Championship on Wednesday. Right: Jay Herz banging balls at a field down the road.
Left: Getty Images / Right: Michael Bamberger
NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — On Wednesday morning the smallish range here at the Aronimink Golf Club was a sea of golfing humanity, what with all the players and caddies and coaches and equipment techies toiling the same soil. Guys working it out, looking for swing thoughts — for feels, as Tiger used to say — with the opening bell of this PGA Championship a day away. One-hundred and fifty-six professional golfers, 20 of them club pros, looking for a piece of the $19 million purse, plus a piece of golfing immortality, for the winner, and a different sort of immortality, for any club pro who should make the cut.
There was Tim Wiseman, teaching pro from the Different Strokes Golf Center, in New Albany, Ind., playing in his second PGA Championship. Just down the range from him was Jon Rahm, winner of two major championships. Wiseman and Rahm were working on the same thing, broadly speaking. We’re all working on the same thing, broadly speaking.
As it happens, one of the 156 players was, notably, not on campus Wednesday morning. Braden Shattuck was eight miles down the road, on the range at the Rolling Green Golf Club. Remember how Phil Mickelson, in his prime, used to go offsite on the Tuesday or a Wednesday of a major to a nearby club and try to work things out there, in the name of privacy and lack of distraction? He’d practice at, say, Sage Valley, down the road from Augusta National, in the days leading up to the Masters. Shattuck, the director of instruction at Rolling Green, wasn’t doing that.
Every Wednesday morning in season, Shattuck runs a women’s clinic at Rolling Green, and he wasn’t going to miss this week’s session just because he was playing in a major championship. These women are trying to get better, too! To one lady righthander with a chronic push-fade-slice, Shattuck offered this age-old advice: Go to the right side of the tee box and aim left. Talk about your fairway finders. A slice-fix tip to top all slice-fix tips. The woman had something new to think about. Maybe Shattuck will use the tip himself, come Thursday and Friday, if he finds himself coming down with a case of the shoves.
You’re always working on something in this game.
Here was Tim Wiseman on the Aronimink range, teeing up his ball with the toe of the iron in his hands, trying to get his ball to sit just right on the spring grass. Here was Jon Rahm, a short walk away, teeing up his ball with the toe of the iron in his hands, trying to get his ball to sit just right on his patch of grass. A chasm, in talent, between the two golfers. But the ball is the ball and the club is the club and the only thing on it is your hands. Rahm and Wiseman and Shattuck and the women in his Wednesday women’s clinic will all attest to the accuracy of that statement. And, of course, Jay Herz, will, too.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Herz, a retired GE engineer who will be 80 on his next birthday, was in an open field about three miles from Aronimink, a bumpy 20-acre lawn owned by Radnor Township where golfers are allowed to hit their own balls, fetch them and do it again. His balls were orange and pink and white and gray. He carried them to his spot in two late-model plastic shoulder bags and in a long opaque plastic tube. His collection of tees, many of them plastic, were scarred by experience. He wore Levi dungarees, a plaid shirt, a floppy white hat, two golf gloves and a tan he brought north from his winter in Jupiter, in South Florida. The field is public, if you’re a Radnor township resident. GOLF AT YOUR OWN RISK a sign reads. There were two other golfers, out in the field, each at least 200 yards from the other. There were no risks in play, not in this day.
“What am I working on?” Mr. Herz said, repeating the question posed to him. “My wrist snap.” He described what Shattuck, or Ben Hogan, might call delaying the release of the hands to the latest possible moment in the swing. Mr. Herz was looking for more lag. He was looking for more distance.
Jay Herz at Radnor Township’s makeshift range. Michael Bamberger
Anything surprising here?
Mr. Herz has been to Aronimink, once — to play tennis, which is his main sport. He was aware of the PGA Championship unfolding down the road, of course. He has a buddy, one of his regular golf partners, who is working the tournament, driving disabled spectators from one location to another. Mr. Herz was preparing for his twice-weekly golf game at local public courses with his regulars. He has a plan to watch the tournament on Sunday, from the comfort of his home.
He hit a shot.
“Could use more wrist snap,” he said.
He can hit his driver 150 yards regularly. Some of his good ones will go longer than that.
Mr. Herz has never seen Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy in his travels through South Florida. He has seen Tiger’s restaurant.
Mr. Herz was asked if he imagined the players on the range at Aronimink were doing, essentially, the same thing he was doing.
“I do,” he said.
And could he define what that is?
“They’re trying to get better,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
He teed up one of his old balls on an old tee and hit it with his old driver. It was a line drive. It was a beauty.
Michael Bamberger writes for GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. Before that, he spent nearly 23 years as senior writer for Sports Illustrated. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter, first for the (Martha’s) Vineyard Gazette, later for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has written a variety of books about golf and other subjects, the most recent of which is The Second Life of Tiger Woods. His magazine work has been featured in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. He holds a U.S. patent on The E-Club, a utility golf club. In 2016, he was given the Donald Ross Award by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the organization’s highest honor.
