Golf : At 97, Teacher Joe Norwood Is Proving It’s a Game for Lifetime

Joe Norwood could refer to George Burns as a kid without blinking an eye.

That’s his privilege, considering that the 97-year-old Norwood is still active as a golf instructor.

Even though he is now confined to a wheelchair, Norwood is teaching golfers his concept of the golf swing every Saturday at the Studio City driving range.

Pros and hackers have been his pupils since he became a teacher in the early 1900s.

Norwood, who grew up in Boston, recalls that he played Sunday rounds of golf with Francis Ouimet, got putting instructions from Walter Travis and helped Horton Smith refine his game.

Ouimet, as a young amateur, beat Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in a playoff for the U.S. Open championship in 1913. His surprising victory over the esteemed British golfers helped popularize the game in the United States.

Travis won the U.S. and British Amateur championships at the turn of the century.

Smith came along later and became the first winner of the Masters in 1934.

Norwood was exposed to the game when he was 13 and got a job in the golf department of the Wright and Ditson sports store in Boston.

His boss, Alex Findlay, a renowned Scottish golfer and developer of golf courses of that era, influenced him to become an instructor.

Baseball had been Norwood’s game, but he said that Findlay told him, “You can play baseball for 15 years, but golf will last for a lifetime.”

Norwood smiled and added, “And I’m still going at 97.”

He was at the Riviera Country Club last week to watch the Nissan Los Angeles Open. It was only fitting that he would be there, since he helped organize and conduct the first Los Angeles Open in 1926 at the Los Angeles Country Club.

As the pro at LACC, a job he held from 1921 to 1946, Norwood instructed Roger Kelly and Charles Seaver, who became top amateur golfers.

Kelly won the California State Amateur championship in 1936 and 1937 and the Los Angeles City title in 1936.

Seaver, the father of former major league pitcher Tom Seaver, was a member of winning Walker Cup teams in the 1930s.

There have been countless other players who credit their development to Norwood, such as Charlie Sifford, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Ralph Terry and Mac O’Grady.

Terry, a former star pitcher with the New York Yankees, said that Norwood is “Truth in the golf swing,” adding he wouldn’t be on the Senior Tour now without Norwood’s help.

Norwood, a friendly man with bushy eyebrows and large hands, recalled when O’Grady came to him for instruction.

“He told me, ‘I have a golf swing, but I want it better,’ ” Norwood said. “He was with me for a year and he now has every move that I teach, which is few.”

O’Grady now teaches his fellow pros and it’s presumed that some of the concepts of the Norwood method are incorporated into his own teaching format.

There are as many theories on the golf swing as there are golfers, many of them contradictory. Paralysis by analysis is endemic to the game.

Norwood tries to keep it simple, teaching a no-rotation method that includes a horizontal backswing and vertical downswing.

He is fond of saying, “Bad golf is a gift. Good golf is acquired.”

Norwood has made a golf instructional video and he has what he calls a Preservation of Golf History Foundation. He is willing to share his knowledge, free, to high school players throughout the city.

Norwood doesn’t drink or smoke and has eaten the same breakfast every day for the better part of his life: oatmeal, two poached eggs and a cup of cocoa.

He is the last surviving charter member of the Southern California chapter of the Professional Golfers’ Assn. that was founded in 1924.

While at the driving range at Riviera preceding the L.A. Open, his keen eyes watched the pros practice.

He turned his attention to Jeff Sluman, the 1988 PGA champion.

“He’s turning his right shoulder around the ball, instead of in back of it,” Norwood said. “He rotates his right hip at address instead of sitting on it.”

Sluman was out of hearing range from Norwood, but he could get more personalized instruction by just stopping by the Studio City driving range any Saturday.

Norwood says he can improve anyone’s golf swing in five minutes. After all, he has been doing it for nearly 80 years.

Mark Calcavecchia, who has been on the PGA Tour for eight years, has won $1,875,672, which is only $17,000 less than Arnold Palmer did in a lifetime on the tour.

“Arnie just came along at the wrong time, said Calcavecchia, who has already won the Phoenix and L.A. Opens this year. “There is no comparison to the money we’re playing for now. But the competition is far greater now than when Arnie and Jack Nicklaus were winning tournaments, and they’ll tell you that.

“There are so many great players out here now. On the other hand, how many tournaments did Arnold Palmer have to win to make $180,000? (the winner’s share at the L.A. Open). Before the Seniors Tour, $50,000 was the largest check Arnie ever made in a golf tournament other than a skins tournament. That’s mind boggling.”

“The money (now) is phenomenal. It blows me away and I like to spend it.”

Calcavecchia, who is the leading money winner on the tour this year, earning $358,952, says that you can’t compare golfers from one era to those of another.

He said that the equipment and conditions are better today, but the greens might have been slower and the rough not as formidable in other years.

And he believes that leadership on the tour changes about every five years.

“Now it’s the Sandy Lyles and, hopefully, the Mark Calcavecchias,” he said. “Tom Watson is sort of sliding out now. A new era of players is coming in and an old era is going out.”

Golf Notes

The United States Golf Assn. has announced an increase in purses for the U.S. Open, Women’s Open and Senior Open. The purse for this year’s Open will be $1.1 million, an increase of $100,000. It will be played June 15-18 at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y. Prize money will be $450,000 for both the women’s Open and senior tournaments, increases of $50,000 and $75,000, respectively. . . . PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman said that agreements have been reached with the Korakuen Co. for the development of a series of Tournament Players Club courses in Japan. Plans call for as many as eight TPC courses. After it is completed, the first of the new courses, Batoh, near Tokyo, will play host Nov. 16-19 to a U.S. versus Japan Senior Tour match with a purse of $450,000. . . . Chi Chi Rodriguez recently received the Bob Jones Award, presented annually by the USGA to golf’s man of the year.

Spectators at the recent L.A. Open had access to results, including hole-by-hole scoring, through 20 computer terminals stationed at 18 locations around the Riviera Country Club course. . . . For the eighth consecutive year, golf play on city golf courses surpassed the 1 million mark with 1,184,585 rounds recorded in 1988, according to statistics compiled by the Los Angeles City Recreation and Parks Dept. It was the second-highest number of rounds recorded in the history of the department.

The 10th annual Mayor’s Scholarship tournament will be held March 20 at the Alta Vista Country Club in Placentia. . . . Prize money has been increased to $400,000 for the Vintage Chrysler Invitational, a Senior Tour event, Feb. 28-March 5 at the Vintage Club in Indian Wells. . . . The first St. Catherine’s Military School Celebrity tournament will be held Monday at Alta Vista. . . . Headquarters for the Women’s Southern California Golf Assn. have been moved from North Hollywood to San Dimas.