By Davis Love, Jr. with Jack McDermott

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Davis Love Jr. was a Head Instructor at the Golf Digest Schools and father of Davis Love III, one of the PGA Tour's longest hitters. He wrote this article especially for Guiding Eyes the spring of 1987. Last December, on his way to a Schools meeting in Florida, he and two fellow-instructors were killed when the small plane carrying them crashed approaching the Jacksonville airport. Visibility was reported as one-sixteenth of a mile.

I was doing a school down in New Orleans a few years ago and somebody asked me if I could take some time the next day to look at Pat Browne's golf' swing, explaining, of course that Pat was a blind golfer.

"No problem," I said. "Be happy to do it."

And then that night I started thinking about it. And all of a sudden I was scared to death. I was thinking about the enormity of working with a person who can't see. How difficult it might be to try to teach someone when you couldn't do or say any of the things I take for granted every day. For instance I tell sighted students where to aim, how to identify and relate to the target line, show them and tell them all about ball position -things they can see!

I didn't know it then but that night I made a decision that would teach me one of the greatest lessons I've ever had. I decided that in order to help Pat I'd somehow have to experience something close to what he was experiencing.

Next day on the lesson tee I watched his caddie guide him over with a club and go through that unique pre-shot routine of theirs. I watched him hit three or four shots and I told him I'd like to try the same thing before our golf lesson. I would close my eyes and let his caddie put me through the same routine so that I could try to feel exactly what was happening.

I never really hit a solid shot. In fact, I whiffed it four or five times in a row. The feeling and the fear of falling was dramatic. I was so scared I was going to fall down and maybe get hurt that the first few times I could hardly turn my body at all. I talked to Pat about that and he said that balance was his biggest problem. I didn't know how enormous that problem was until I'd gone through it myself. It wasn't so hard to trust somebody else to aim your club or the alignment of your body. And measuring off to get the club to the ground - that wasn't so bad. But then swinging the club and returning it to the ball with no way to measure whether you are going back to the same place again or not - I mean that is really tough.

And that's what made the turn so difficult. The first thing that happened is that suddenly I had a lot more respect for his ability and composure - and the ability and composure of anyone who can teach themselves to strike the golf ball without being able to see it. I realized that not only did I have a remarkable student on my hands -remarkable because he was such a great listener - but I had a person with extraordinary capacity for functioning under stress and under pressure. Every blind golfer, I thought, should be given a medal - just for being able to hit the golf ball. I had no idea how long it would take for me to get to where I could do it. One thing I knew - I would have to change my teaching methods tremendously.

First thing we had to do was address the balance problem - how to get trunk rotation without losing it. Footwork, I told him, was the key. "I'm willing to give it a try," he said. "I know I'd like to do better and I'm willing to give it a try."

We worked on feeling the weight moving through the centerline of the foot. I held his right foot and told him I wanted the weight to go right through a line between the ball of his foot and the heel. As the weight moved toward the heel that would let his body turn to the right. And as that occurs the left heel will come off the ground a little. "But all that's really necessary," I told him, "is for-that weight to move toward that right heel so your hip can turn and you can get some body rotation ' "

He picked right up on that. Soon we could feel a natural progression - that change in footwork moved the weight across the feet and then he could feel how much the body could turn. And the more the body turned the more stable the balance became. Once you get rotation started the easier it is to feel yourself in balance with the center of gravity still between your feet. And the faster you rotate back to the left again the more you tend to keep that center of gravity between your feet.

So we got into slowly moving and turning, with me standing behind him and holding his hips and turning them back and forth to prove that rotation would actually improve balance rather than upset it.

It was amazing to see how well he responded and how much he trusted the idea that he could stay more balanced with more turn - and how willing he was to try it. We didn't hit golf balls at first, we just tried standing there and turning. Swinging the club and turning back and forth. And he did get a lot more turn, more on the backswing than the forward swing, which was harder for him. To this day I wonder how much better he got at turning through the ball into his left side.

I hope that he learned a little more from the lesson. At least he was kind enough to say that he got something out of it. I know one thing - I got a heck of a lot more out of it than he did. I learned that I ought to be a lot more aggressive with students I work with - the ones who can see and have all the advantages in front of them. If someone like Pat, who can't see, is willing to try something that is different and maybe even a little scary, I need to push a little harder on those who have the blessing of sight.

I learned a lot that day about the fact of blindness and how Pat overcomes it. He overcomes it by ignoring it. He just totally ignores it. He doesn't consider himself to be under a handicap whatsoever. As we were working, people would come up and say hello to him and he'd holler something back like, "See that game last night? Boy the Bears really killed them. He used words and actions and movements that made it pretty difficult to tell that he couldn't see.

For sighted golfers there is much to learn. When a blind player can learn to play a game as difficult as golf it proves how much can be learned through feel. Pat has no other choice. He can't visually monitor his grip and set his ball position. He can't visually look at his target. He couldn't watch me swing and try to copy it. He can't watch himself in a mirror. He has to do the whole thing by feel. And that's going to help me convince sighted golfers that they are missing out on a marvelous learning experience.

Fellow golfer Browne, I am in your debt.

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