I read a lot of terrific sportswriting this year. Dave Andrews and Joel Zuckerman emerged with solid efforts, the first a fictional account of life on the Duramed Futures Tour, (Pops and Sunshine), the other the definitive work on Pete Dye golf courses. Even Dan Jenkins got into the action with his laugh a minute skewering of the LPGA, (The Franchise Babe).
Honorable mention must also go to Le Anne Schrieber, the ESPN ombudsman, who is the voice of outrage against many of the questionable broadcasting policies at ESPN. Her archives is here.
Nevertheless, Kevin Cook’s Driven is a stunning, eye-opening account of the Bradenton Bunch, as the Leadbetter Academy junior golfers are called. “The epicenter of a sports world gone mad,” as dubbed by The Old Gray Mare, The Old Gray Lady, the Academy is one reason why the balance of golf power world is being transferred to the young and ultra-rich, a sinister phenomenon that flies in the face of golf’s egalitarian roots. Students pay upwards of $100,000 per year, that’s more then twice the yearly price tags of the three best high schools/prep schools in America, Deerfield Academy, Phillips Academy (Andover), and Phillips Exeter Academy. Get this: CEO’s and PGA Tour pros pay $50,000 for a one hour lesson with Leadbetter. Maybe we ought to get his client list and cancel their bailout or at least keep a watchdog on them to make sure they don’t ever waste company money like that.
The book is a sizzling read, and a disturbing look at how rich kids with gobs of daddy’s liquid cash get churned out in machine gun fashion into plus-handicap automatons, both in America and across Asia. “Enjoy the sacrifice,” doesn’t just seem to be the mantra of one Latin American player, but every player and parent. “Many saw school, non-golf travel, and dating as distractions,” writes Cook.
Worse still, the win at all costs environment leads to joyless golf. Se Ri Pak the godmother of Korean golf was a famous burnout case. “I hate to be on the golf course,” she once famously lamented. You’d feel that way too if you got one day of every three weeks.
Maybe this is a negative aspect of the “Tiger Effect” and “win at all costs.” As Cook wrote, “parenting has become the most competitive sport in America.” Just ask Michelle Wie if she’d like a mulligan on her career. Listen to some of the searing details about Michelle’s epic collapse that made Icarus’s look like a stumble:
Once in a generation talent could be a fragile commodity. Even Michelle might be subject to the malady that strikes players who get out of their depths….But Team Wie figured it could train her better than Earl Woods had trained Tigder, or at least faster.
Why did Leadbetter go along?….It wasn’t Leadbetters call.
“Lead was on the team, but BJ WAS the team,” a source close to the Wies said…”He solicits advice from everybody, and takes advice from nobody.”
Then Cook adds this about Team Wies repeated acts of entitlement:
She was unprofessional at best – untutored by a father who knew less about pro ettiquette than she did – and arrogant at worst.
“Either way, her behavior is not right,” says Steve Elling [now with CBSSports.com]. “The other players resent her and she deserves it.”
The problem is two-fold: a misguided childhood dream that might be better abandoned for a while until she gets used to adulthood, and…wait for it…the parents. I see it all the time with young musicians and nip it in the bud: if the parents insist on being part of their kid’s business organization, they can find another lawyer.
Anyway, Cook examines the Tiger Effect on making junior golf “cool,” Michelle’s Wie’s wipeout from mismanagement, (and you won’t believe the stories he has to tell about her parents…), the LPGA language imbroglio (pre-Bivens’s edict of this fall), and a great one-liner about which golf magazine is number one with men with E.D. It’s a super book you won’t be able to put down. Most importantly, it’ll make you think about how we can turn the pendulum the other way and get sanity back into professional sports.
Previous Winners
2007: Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, San Francisco Examiner
2006: Jason Whitlock, Fox Sports
2005: Robert Thompson, Canadian National Post
