OUR REGULAR GAME NO. 19

I began playing golf when I was ten years old.  I learned the game from the late Gray Little, a wonderful man who was the golf professional at our home course.  As a tribute to Mr. Little, I even included him in a story that I told in The Greatest Course That Never Was.

             Mr. Little was an excellent teacher.  So were some of the other pros that I’ve had the benefit of being around in the forty or so years since I first took up the game.  And, at times, their instruction helped me play the game reasonably well.

             But I made a recent discovery, which is startling in its dimensions.  When I share it with you, it will change your game forever.  You see, I’ve only recently learned that golf pros have been holding out on us.  That’s right, those wonderful pros whom we all know and love, not just the ones who teach us the game but also the ones we watch on television, all of them are part of this conspiracy.

             I would never have stumbled upon the truth were it not for my work with Charley Hunter.  You may remember Charley. He’s the young law student who discovered the real story about Beau Stedman in The Greatest Player Who Never Lived and who followed it up by unearthing the truth about Bragg’s Point in The Greatest Course That Never Was.  If you’ve read either of these books, then you know that Charley enlisted me to help tell those stories.

             I can’t explain how, but Charley has a remarkable way in penetrating golf’s deepest mysteries.  And while the stories about Beau Stedman and Bragg’s Point made big news in the world of golf, what Charley found recently just may blow the roof off of everything.

             Let me put it this way: When we get through telling the world about this story, the game of golf will be forever changed.  Everyone in the game, from the USGA’s Executive Committee to the green-jacketed members of the Augusta National Golf Club to the kilted royalty at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, will talk about this as the watershed event in golf history.  This will be bigger than when steel replaced hickory in golf club shafts, bigger than Bobby Jones’s Grand Slam in 1930, . . . bigger even than when my friend Larry Parsel and I won the Lake Charles Country Club Member-Guest twice in the 1980s.

             What am I talking about, you say?  I’m talking about Charley Hunter’s discovery of the heretofore untold secrets of how to play the game like Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Byron Nelson, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Gary Player, and, yes, even Tiger Woods.  They’ve all been in on it, sworn to secrecy, and dedicated to keeping their little society of golf champions as exclusive as possible.

             It’s astonishing news, because these are men we’ve admired, even adored.  These are men whose products we’ve faithfully bought, whose pictures we’ve hung in our clubhouses and homes, whose trials and tribulations we’ve cheered.  Yet the awful truth is that they’ve all been holding out on us, keeping us from finding golf’s promised land.  Hard to believe, but true.

             But now, for the first time, the truth can be told here.  Because Charley Hunter, while digging deep in the basement of the clubhouse at Bragg’s Point, just as we described it in The Greatest Course That Never Was, found a journal.  Kept by Bobby Jones all those years when he entertained golf’s royalty at his secret course, this secret bible reveals everything that all of us who have fought so hard to master this impossible game have suspected all along: It just ain’t as hard as it seems.  It turns out that all of these great players have made it look so easy for one reason, and one reason alone: It is that easy . . . when you know “the secrets.”

             In the weeks and months to come, Charley and I will be sharing those secrets.  Watch out, Augusta, because we’re all about to qualify for The Masters.

             For our Regular Game, this is Mike Veron.

 About the Author

J. Michael Veron is the acclaimed author of The Greatest Player Who Never Lived and The Greatest Course That Never Was. His third novel, tentatively titled The Caddie, is scheduled for release in the spring of 2002.

Mike's work has earned him the title of "master of fiction" from USA Today, and Travel and Leisure Golf Magazine has called him "The John Grisham of Golf." In addition, the New York Times hailed The Greatest Player as "Golf's Literary Rookie of the Year," and the Seattle Times ranked The Greatest Player as second on its all-time list of "Five Wonderful Golf Books." At one time, The Greatest Player and The Greatest Course were the first and third best-selling sports fiction in the country.

Please contact us for more information on Mike and his work.