Women's Teachers - Men's Teachers
 by Betty Hicks
Most of you are not old enough to remember the days before golf teachers were hawked like Sears’ catalog merchandise, when “method teachers” were mocked because golf was a complex game which defied the application of methods to it. This was before there were big ticket golf schools. There was no Golf Channel, because there was no TV. There were no marquee names, because the golf theatre didn’t have a marquee.
There were women’s teachers.
There were men’s teachers.
“Oh, you don’t want to go to him, Charlie. He’s a women’s teacher.”
Or
“I’d think twice about taking lessons from him, Marge. He’s a man’s teacher.”
Women’s teachers were Ernest Jones, Harry Pressler, Jerry Glynn, Eddie Williams, and Stan Kertes. There tended to be more “method” teachers among them. They acquired their reputations by:
Teaching women students to be stylists, to have pretty swings.
Teaching several outstanding women stars; important titleholders.
Teaching a swinging action, as opposed, we presume, to a hitting action, although Ernest Jones would arise in wrath and charge we were just playing a semantics game. Every swinger, he would point out, must of necessity, also be a hitter.
Men’s teachers were Tommy Armour, Harvey Penick (although Harvey would protest this categorization; he taught an equal number of PGA stars (Kite and Crenshaw, among them) and LPGA stars (Rawls and Whitworth), Claude Harmon, Bob MacDonald, Joe Novak, Alex Morrison, and Byron Nelson. Men’s teachers:
Taught hitting as opposed to swinging.
Had several PGA tour stars as students.
Were not reluctant to use profanity as a propellant.
Were known for their theories, as Armour’s “Hit the hell out of the ball with your right hand.” Their methods emphasized vigorous foot and leg action, as well as aggressive hand action. As an adolescent golfer, I was jealous of Harry Pressler’s pretty-swinging women students, except for those he married. Harry probably married as many of his women students as he coached to titles. Harry was meticulous about good footwork; balance followed. The balance was asethetically pleasing, as was the hand and arm action resulting from Harry’s square-the-club face exhortations.
No one ever accused me or being a pretty swinger or of being a stylist, although Harvey Penick, with whom I had the unmatchable experience of working with for thirty years, once confessed he’d like to make a stylist of me. Good idea, I agreed.
Is there a woman’s swing?
Is there a man’s swing?
Do the sexes play differently?
We thought so, fifty years ago. That is why, before TV and before Ben Wright, the teachers were segregated as to gender, as needless a ritual as doing the same with golf course porta-potties.
I was giving a golf clinic in a rural community one day when the common question arose of how amply-endowed women could swing. “Just throw ‘em over your shoulders, honey,” came a shouted answer from the gallery. Copy that, Ben Wright?
Harvey Penick probably taught more champions, both men and women, than any golf professional in history. Once the first pilgrim reaches Mecca, the balance flock, fearing they might miss some unique blessing. “C’mon,” Betsy Rawls said to me in 1953, when my tour swing problems reached a crisis point. “I think you’d better come with me to see my pro (Mr. Penick) in Austin, Texas.” Thus began an incomparable thirty-year relationship. Every sentence that man uttered exuded homespun golf wisdom. “Takin’ a golf lesson,” said this humble, shy man, “is like makin’ love. It’s hard to do with somebody watchin’.”
Another reason for the half-century ago existence of women’s teachers and men’s teachers was that men seem more receptive to high-tech approaches. Multi-step swings and golfing machines have more appeal to the masculine love of technology than to women’s favoring of wholeness and simplicity. Whatever, for with modern teachers and teaching methods the requirement for “Vive la difference!” appears to be dissolving. We’re probably better for it.
Betty Hicks is one of three LPGA T&CP Division founding members and served as its first chairperson in 1960. She has taught golf for more than 50 years and has coached at seven colleges and universities around the country. Ms. Hicks is a member of the Women’s Sports Foundation International Hall of Fame and the California Golf Writers Hall of Fame. She won the 1999 Ellen Griffin Rolex Award in recognition of her contributions to golf instruction. Hicks has co-authored two books and has written over 400 articles in more than 10 publications on golf and golf instruction.
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