Carolyn Glassman's smile broadens into a full-blown grin as her solidly struck iron shots ascend against the morning sky. She steps away from the ball as though she can't believe what's happening. But her next swing is yet another foray into that transcendent realm of pure pleasure that golfers feel when their club sends the ball on a long, arcing flight.
"I've learned more in one lesson than I have in 12 years of golf," Glassman says of her first session with John Edmond Jr., a teaching pro at Rancho Park Golf Course's driving range. "He was peeking at me while I played the par-3 course earlier today. From that one little glimpse, he knew immediately what to tell me."
For months, Glassman's friend had nagged her to see this teacher who was like no other. That friend, Wanda Brown, was inspired by how Edmond "instills confidence that you can do it. Other teachers are too technical. He taught me to trust the club, to let the club do the work."
For most golfers, nothing about the game is easy. It is likely the most chewed over, dissected, analyzed and cursed sport--some would say mania--invented by man. Golfers spend a lifetime looking for the magic swing, often enlisting the help of a teaching pro, or two, or three.
What makes a good pro is a puzzle. Why does one pro have success with a student while another doesn't? What seems to matter is that an instructor and student "click," and from that a fierce loyalty develops. It is most often a one-sided affair--the student rehashing the instructor's words long past the end of the lesson, while the instructor may not give another thought to the student until the start of the next session. Not so in Edmond's case. Rather, his students say, his involvement has taught them about living.
Edmond smiles when he hears those comments, insisting that there is no hocus-pocus in what he does. For nearly 30 years he has taught grip, stance and posture--the golf pro's mantra. But, he quickly adds, golf is "about the person, getting the person to believe in himself. My teaching is all about positive reinforcement. I teach to the person. I do not have a system where I say, 'This is how you have to hit a golf ball.' I believe in a lot of different methods--body rotation, swinging the club head. There's no one thing I believe in. I believe they all work.
"Golf is like life," he says. "It's about being comfortable with who you are. The more comfortable you are with who you are, the better your chances of success."
Edmond strides about the range in an easy, rhythmic gait belying his 61 years, smiling as though lit from within. "My earliest recollection of John is tall, striking, elegant, patient," says San Francisco marketing executive Dean Catalano, who took his first lessons from Edmond and went on to play on the Canadian PGA Tour. Edmond's laughter, say his students, can erase a frustrated player's foulest mood, and he can deliver a single word or gesture that converts butchered shots to soaring works of art.
"I've taken lessons from other pros, including well-known guys," says FBI Special Agent Mark Hunter. "They didn't make a difference." Hunter was a teenager when he started nine years of lessons with Edmond, and he later won a golf scholarship to Cal State Fullerton.
"He is straightforward, a man of integrity," says Hunter, crediting Edmond with teaching him on and off the course "about dedication, discipline, hard work." Hunter was 13 and about to throw a club after hitting a bad shot when Edmond told him: "The first club you throw will be your last because I'm not going to work with you." That lesson, Hunter says, "has always stuck with me. I've never thrown a club in my life."
For all of his success as a teacher, John Edmond Jr.'s days at the Rancho Park Golf Course--and those of other popular pros there--may be numbered, the fallout from a management change earlier this year at the storied municipal course on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles.
Ron Weiner, who hired Edmond and ran Rancho Park's pro shop and range for 35 years, is gone, the loser by a margin of a single point on a city evaluation to Yong "Steve" Oh. Under his contract, Oh, who also operates the pro shop and range at Alondra, a Los Angeles County course in Lawndale, will run Rancho Park's pro shop and range for the next 15 years.
The city's Department of Recreation and Parks required that the winning bidder demolish Rancho Park's dilapidated driving range and build a new facility--one that Oh estimates will cost as much as $2.8 million. That construction is scheduled to begin early next year and should be done within 90 days, he says. The new range, part of an ongoing face-lift at Rancho Park, will feature artificial turf landing areas, target greens and simulated sand traps and water hazards.
