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Authors: Adam Lazarus

Tags: #Palmer; Arnold;, #Golfers, #Golf, #Golf - General, #Pennsylvania, #Sports & Recreation, #Sports, #United States, #Oakmont (Allegheny County), #Golf courses, #1929-, #History

Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont (55 page)

BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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Despite Schlee’s injuries and his graying temples, his power remained fully intact: He was on the green in two on three of Augusta’s par-fives. His great first round placed him in elite company in Masters tournament history: In three consecutive rounds (the closing thirty-six holes in 1977 and the opening round in 1978), Schlee shot below 70 each time, becoming just the fifth man to do so.
“I’m really not surprised that I’m leading,” he said. “I’ve worked real hard on my game lately. Every time I’d hit a practice shot back at my course in Rancho Viejo [Texas], I had the Masters course on my mind.”
That opening round proved to be the final “lunar high point” of John Schlee’s PGA career. He suffered terrible back pain on Friday morning, and could barely get out of bed to play the second round. Schlee relied on his tremendous physical prowess to finish the tournament with rounds of 75-77-75, tied for forty-second place.
Schlee played in only four more PGA events in 1978, earning just $835, then retired from tour competition. By no means was he embarrassing himself—not once did he score 80 or higher in 1978—but he could no longer earn a living once serious back problems reemerged. Although he had earned $1,850 for his performance at Augusta National, the week cost him more than $2,000: He still insisted on staying in a house complete with a chef and maid, flying first class, and driving a Mercedes.
“How many millionaires do you think are on tour?” he hypothetically asked a reporter. “Maybe three. I mean those whose actual net worth is a million. Palmer, Nicklaus, and Player are about the only ones I can think of offhand.”
The thought of living frugally and planning conservatively for the future never crossed John Schlee’s mind.
 
SCHLEE HAD MANY CONCRETE IDEAS about how to swing a golf club. Although he liked to sell himself as Hogan’s Oracle, in fact, he was quite a teaching innovator on his own. In the decade following his retirement from the tour, Schlee became a nationally recognized golf instructor, leaving Rancho Viejo in 1979 to establish his own Maximum Golf School, first in Industry Hills, California (just east of Los Angeles), then, starting in 1985, in Carlsbad (north of San Diego).
According to Schlee, he sought Hogan’s formal endorsement of his new school, but Hogan gently declined.
“When I retired from competitive golf in 1978, I went to Ben Hogan with a plan for a golf school. I asked him, ‘Can I use your name?’
“He fell silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘John, my name is all I have. I’ve worked all my life to develop adjectives that would please me when my name is mentioned. I would like to be involved with your golf school but my duties here at the Ben Hogan Company come first. I think it’s time for you to start building your own adjectives.
“And so, my answer is no. When you want this school in your heart, ten years from now you will understand my answer. Go build your name from your guts out ... and love doing it!’”
Schlee loved to scientifically narrate and pontificate about golf swing mechanics, but he did not enjoy being a full-time teacher of the game. Therefore, the Maximum Golf School featured a group of instructors that carried out much of the nitty-gritty, labor-intensive work with individual students: video-taping their swings and analyzing their faults to death. As Tom Bertrand, one of the school’s most devoted instructors, recalled, “John also passed all of the individual lessons my way, which I appreciated as an act of confidence in my abilities, but I knew that, like Hogan, John didn’t have the patience or the inclination to deal with students on a one-on-one basis.”
Schlee had always struggled to be a patient, nurturing golf instructor. Early and late in his career, he held numerous club positions in Tennessee, Florida, Arizona, Texas, California, and Oregon. But his overtly direct and critical nature frequently discouraged his well-to-do students. Just as in Seaside and Memphis State, Schlee projected a transparent disdain for country clubbers who didn’t welcome him as their social equal. He simply wasn’t cut out for the full-time job of club professional.
Schlee did feel comfortable lecturing to large groups of “students” about his ideas-as long as they didn’t talk back. He would not tolerate opposition, especially from a student who dared point out that some of his ideas were not consistent with Hogan’s. Schlee would rather return the money of disbelievers, and tell them to get the hell out of his school. Maximum Golf’s three-day weekend seminars were run with such fervor and demand for obedience that a third of the group would often quit the training before Sunday.
Schlee’s school remained reasonably successful for a decade, and the staff he hired appreciated his passion, knowledge, and financial generosity. But expanding the school to national prominence just was not in the stars. Golfers struggled to implement (or even understand) Schlee’s complex and unorthodox golf ideas, and the overbearing, didactic way he ran the school was really not much fun. Many students didn’t get too far beyond the opening injunctions about how to address the ball.
Replicating Schlee’s extremely weak grip was often too much for the students; as was Schlee’s instruction to load their weight almost entirely on their left side, from the start to the finish of the swing. Completing those two maneuvers—white making sure the right knee didn’t “bow out” on the “back turn,” and then “laying off” the club, with the right wrist appropriately “cupped” on the downswing—required radical adjustments that many good golfers were loath to make, and that were beyond the capacity of average golfers without injuring themselves.
Many of Schlee’s ideas were ahead of their time, and they certainly worked for him. And several of the gadgets Schlee created to help students assume the appropriate swing positions proved quite useful for serious golfers—especially a device to promote a “cupped” right wrist (Greg Norman later acquired the legal rights to and marketed this gadget as the “Greg Norman Secret”). Some experts even consider Schlee the inventor of the modern-day “stack and tilt” approach to the golf swing, used by many of today’s top pros.
“I think there will be a lot of changes in equipment in the next few years,” Schlee said in 1968, “and I’m doing some pioneering.”
In
his
time, however, Schlee failed to popularize his ideas: just too many fundamentals, rules, and procedures for each and every body part for the average golfer to follow. And Schlee’s long-term commitment to the enterprise likely diminished when he received a negative response from Hogan, regarding Schlee’s request to endorse a book he’d written to spread his ideas.
Hogan’s representatives told Schlee he wanted nothing to do with Schlee’s book. According to Bertrand, Hogan’s representatives punctuated their rejection by saying that Hogan “didn’t even remember John Schlee.” In actuality, he likely
did
know who John Schlee was: Hogan had gone out of his way to let Byron Nelson know just how displeased he was by Schlee’s unauthorized use of his name to market his school.
By the late 1980s, Schlee’s enthusiasm for the Maximum Golf School had begun to wane, and his lectures didn’t seem as sharp as they had once been. With his
Maximum Golf
book (and the accompanying videotape) clearly not bound for great commercial success, Schlee had to generate alternative financial means. He experimented with a variety of putters (starting with the Taylor Raylor), and, along with other gadgets he invented and marketed, he managed to diversify these products of his livelihood.
And by June 1989, Schlee found another source of income. He turned fifty that month and headed back onto the pro circuit—the senior circuit (because he ranked high enough on the PGA tour career earnings list, he was immediately eligible). Running the Maximum Golf School had kept Schlee from playing regularly—although he could still blast the ball on the driving range and dazzle students by making the ball do whatever he wanted—and his game was nowhere near tournament ready.
Even on the Senior Tour, Schlee remained an ardent preacher of golf theory. In his second Senior Tour stop, the prestigious MONY Syracuse Senior’s Pro Golf Classic, Schlee played the Wednesday pro-am with local sports anchor Mike Tirico.
“He’s already given me five lessons on nine holes,” said Tirico, who would one day be the lead voice for ABC/ESPN’s coverage of the NBA Finals,
Monday Night
Football,
and the British Open.
During that second half season of 1989, Schlee played in twelve events and earned $7,250: With travel and expenses, he struggled each week to break even. And he posted virtually identical numbers in 1990: twenty-four appearances, just over $14,000. Schlee’s days on the Senior Tour were proving to be as unprofitable as his last two years on the PGA Tour. The money he made marketing his long putters and selling equipment and gadgets to his fellow Senior Tour pros rivaled his share of the purses.
Rocky Thompson, who won the Syracuse MONY tournament in 1991, attributed his success largely to the long-shafted putter he bought from Schlee for the extravagant sum of $650. Thompson could afford to help Schlee out, given the $60,000 winner’s check he took home; Schlee played in each round and earned only $500.
After just two Senior Tour events in 1991, Schlee’s tournament playing career was over. Physical conditioning was a small factor in his retirement: His mental acuity had deteriorated.
For the 1990 Transamerica tournament at Sonoma Golf Club, Darryl Donovan caddied for Schlee for the first time since 1976. Donovan—who a year later would join the pro tour—was now stationed at nearby Fort Ord, following overseas service flying AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters. He was delighted to see Schlee again and, knowing Schlee had not played well in his first year on the Senior Tour, eagerly offered his assistance.
From the start, Donovan saw an enormous decline in Schlee’s shot preparation. Donovan knew that, even in his prime, Schlee rarely concentrated on all seventy-two holes. Still, Donovan had always been impressed by Schlee’s “orchestrated and regimented” setup routine, which included ample discussion of yardage and strategic goals—the same preparations he had taught at the Maximum Golf School and in his book. There was even a plan for where the caddie should stand before each stroke.
Donovan quickly noticed that Schlee no longer played this way. There was no routine, no mental preparation whatsoever. Everything was done impulsively.
At first, in a practice round, Schlee advised Donovan to “keep it light,” so he didn’t say anything to Schlee. But on the tenth hole of the opening round, after shooting several over par on the front nine, Schlee reached into his bag while it was still on the ground and pulled a sand wedge for his second shot.
Donovan asked him what he was doing, to which Schlee replied, “Hey, man, I know what I’m going to hit.” Donovan then asked what the yardage was, to which Schlee responded, “About a hundred yards.” But Donovan had already measured the precise distance, which was 112 yards to the back pin location. For that shot, Donovan knew that Schlee’s sand wedge would come up short. When Donovan raised the point, Schlee brashly said, “I can hit this that far.”
This time, Donovan could hold his tongue no longer.
“Man, you’re not focused,” he said in obvious frustration. “You’re not concentrating; you’re not doing what you’ve done in the past.”
“You’re bumming me out,” replied Schlee. “I’m out here to have fun.”
“No, John, you’re out here to make a living and have fun making a living, but making a living comes first, not having fun.”
Around this time, Donovan introduced Schlee to Steve Chapman, the head professional at Monterey Peninsula Country Club. Chapman eventually offered Schlee—who had been teaching intermittently on the driving range at Pleasant Valley Golf Club near Portland—a full-time instructional position.
Chapman soon noticed friction between club members and Schlee, who could not recall the names of individuals he’d recently taught. He also wore out his welcome when he played nearby Pebble Beach. Schlee repeatedly tossed cigarette butts onto the ground, and even after apologizing (course officials rightly worried about fires during the dry season), the chain-smoking Schlee continued to do so; he was having difficulty remembering the recent conversations.
At Chapman’s urging, Schlee finally saw a doctor. The preliminary diagnosis indicated that Schlee was already far along in Alzheimer’s—increasingly forgetful, but still able to function for most everyday purposes.
Schlee’s response to the diagnosis was denial. He refused to take additional tests that the doctor advised. Instead, Schlee resigned his position at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, cleared out his house in Carmel (with Donovan’s help), and headed south, apparently to Palm Springs, sometime in 1994. Donovan never saw him again.
“People either loved John or didn’t care for him. He had that effect on people,” recalled Donovan, who eventually regained his amateur status and won the 2001 California State Amateur. “I always looked forward to watching him compress and control a golf ball like only a select few on the planet ever could.
“I loved John and miss him. He was like a second father to me and was always good to me.”
 
A FEW DAYS AFTER SHOOTING 68 in the first round of the 1978 Masters, Schlee spoke to the United Press International’s top golf reporter, Milton Richmond, a man who had covered his runner-up finish in the 1973 U.S. Open. In dire back pain, the thirty-eight-year-old Schlee could sense his playing career was coming to a premature end.
BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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