golf lessons

The Old Goat Project, Update 1: Why not be in control?

The Project: To break an old goat’s bad habits and rebuild a reliable, repeatable golf swing for writer Bart Potter.

Potter

The Task: Huge.

The Student: Lateish-50s; 6-foot-4; loves golf, hates playing bad golf; USGA handicap index 26.0.

Staskus

The Teacher: Tom Staskus, 52; PGA professional since 1998.

Short-term Goal: To break 90.

Long-term Goal: To shrink the student’s handicap index to 18 or lower.

The Timeframe: However long it takes.

In this space, we’ll first recap the earliest lessons of the Old Goat Project. Stay tuned as we bring it into real time.

(From December 27, 2010) THE OLD GOAT PROJECT pairs a seasoned teacher, Olympia, Wash., professional Tom Staskus, with a student who’s lost his golf groove, if he ever had one. Early work – some nine hours of practice and lots of conversation about putting – has yielded promising results.

The teacher: The student didn’t practice in the week between yesterday and the previous session, so Staskus, who was inclined to move into some chipping and longer swing work, kept the whole lesson on the indoor green.

From the ground up, the student built on concepts introduced in prior lessons:

Weight spread evenly over feet;
Firm legs and core, held still through the stroke;
Solid grip, one that won’t let the wrists break down or the fingers guide the club;
Shoulder turn controls the swing back and through the ball.

As the lesson went on, a theme emerged: “Why not be in control of the situation?”

By this, Staskus meant reducing the possibility for breakdowns in the club path. In his own putting, he takes a tiny backswing and strikes the ball firmly, rather than pushing it, and the ball rolls crisply to the hole.

When every element of the putting stroke – the stance, the grip, the turn – is of a piece, it can only enhance the control a player has over the situation that arises on every putting green of every round of golf.

The student: I didn’t make the time to practice between last Saturday and this Monday. The case could be made that family comes first during the holidays, and man, it’s busy, you know?

But I want to hold up my end of the bargain, and that means putting in the work and being honest when I don’t.

It’s completely absorbing: the hours roll by, and Staskus is patient. He doesn’t want to tell me, necessarily, what I’m doing wrong. He would prefer that I feel and recognize where a breakdown, no matter how small, might have pushed or pulled the ball by the hole. It’s getting there.

It’s eye-opening to realize all the different reasons I missed putts in the past. What is more amazing is that I ever made a putt at all.

One of a kind: It’s Tom’s place now

OLYMPIA, Wash. — In an era when “hybrid” is applied to anything not otherwise easy to classify, even when there’s no need to classify at all, this place is true to the word.

It’s not quite a golf course, and it’s not just a practice range. It’s Tom’s Golf Center, and if you’re like me and think “unique” should describe a hybrid, it’s that, too.

It’s on Yelm Highway, but not by address, and if you missed the sign and missed the turn, you might struggle to find 8000 72^nd Lane S.E., Olympia, Washington.

Train station, turf farm, Van’s Drive-In, Spurgeon Creek Road … you’ll get there.

It’s got a history, this place, and it continues.

“I don’t think anybody would have taken it when I took it,” says Tom Staskus, who stepped in to assume the reins in late October 2011 when the previous owner hung up a sign announcing he was shutting it down.

Tom Staskus, lord of the manor at Tom's Golf Center

First order of business: Kill the rumor that the place was closing.

Second order of business: Survive the winter months.

“It’s been rough, but we got things going,” says Staskus, a 52-year-old PGA teaching pro, fine player, and now, entrepreneur.

For many years, the facility was owned by Kevin Bishop, a veteran local pro and coach of the Saint Martin’s University men’s golf team, and it went by the name PGA First Tee Golf Center. It will remain the Saints’ home practice site.

Bishop sold the business in early 2011 to Mike Givens, who then owned (and still does) Tacoma Firs Golf Center out near Cheney Stadium. Givens called it Olympia Golf Learning Center.

The facility was also for many years the home base for Joe Thiel’s International School of Golf. Thiel has recently relocated, which is enough said on that subject, except to say his time here and his more-or-less abrupt departure has a rightful place in the history of this patch of ground.

It’s Tom’s place now, and he’s already writing his own story.

Where once the facility had four live golf holes, the entire sprawling acreage had been converted by Bishop into practice areas for the long, intermediate and short games.

Staskus has reinstituted live golf, three holes worth, two par-4s and a par-3. He’s got plans for a Night Light Golf Tournament on the three-holer (no date set). A “horse race” tournament is in the plans, too.

He’s a car buff, and often drives a beauty of a 1946 DeSoto, with a shiny orange-red paint job that makes it one of the more recognizable rides in Thurston County.

He envisions having hot rod shows out there, and given the size and configuration of the place, and the access off Yelm Highway — a great road for a rod run — it seems like a grand idea.

But golf remains the game at Tom’s Golf Center … he’s open for business for lessons, range balls, and treks around the short course (six holes, five bucks).

“People are happy,” says Staskus, “that it’s being kept around.”