Follow His Lead, for Better or Worse

He’s tall, he’s skinny, he wears a hat with a brim so big you could land a jet on it, he knows more about golf than you could shake a fairway wood at and he keeps getting fired.

Man, it’s tough being David Leadbetter these days. Or is it? Leadbetter, the straight-talking, plain-sense-making golf guru and one-man conglomerate from Worthing, England, south of London, is the best golf teacher in the world to lose two of the top players in the world as clients in the last year.

Put that on your resume and drive it.

First, Nick Faldo bid adieu, saying his warmest farewells to his longtime teacher by having his manager send a letter. Buh-bye.

Then there was Se Ri Pak, so grateful to her teacher for helping prepare her to win two major titles as an LPGA Tour rookie that she shed Leadbetter faster than you can say tee time.

What’s a teacher to do?

“It’s been interesting,” Leadbetter says.

“It’s a fickle game, isn’t it? I don’t blame the players, to an extent, always looking for a reason why they aren’t happy.”

And Leadbetter just happened to be the guy caught in their lines of sight. Of course, Leadbetter is so good, he’s still busy as a teacher. His top client is Nick Price, the three-time major champion who has turned himself around again the last couple of years.

Leadbetter also works some with Ernie Els and has spent time teaching Greg Norman, David Frost and Brandel Chamblee as well as Pearl Sinn of the LPGA Tour. As it turns out, Leadbetter is one busy golf guru. Besides teaching big-name clients, Leadbetter’s other business is David Leadbetter Enterprises, which includes everything from instruction to books to videos to television.

But it’s still Leadbetter’s reputation as one of the first and most visible teacher-to-the-stars that makes the whole thing go. When it became in vogue for players to have teachers, the media picked up on it. Faldo was the top player in the world--three Masters titles and three British Open championships tend to do that--and Leadbetter was right there beside him.

In fact, the Faldo-Leadbetter association probably is responsible for golf’s current trend of coach-psychologist-trainer.

Said Leadbetter: “Because Faldo became so successful and it was so widely reported, when he did the slightest thing, people started to think, ‘Well, it must be OK to have a teacher.’ ”

It got really good before it got really bad. With Leadbetter in his employ, Faldo won the British Open in 1987, 1990 and 1992 and the Masters in 1989, 1990 and 1996. Faldo was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1998 and in his acceptance speech, credited Leadbetter for making it all happen.

A couple of months later, a letter arrived in Leadbetter’s mailbox. It was from Faldo’s manager. It notified Leadbetter that he was being sacked. Immediately. Leadbetter accepted his dismissal with good grace, but did note with some irony that he must have become pretty dumb pretty fast.

“I’ve had players leave in the past,” Leadbetter said. “It’s the nature of the business. With Faldo, well, he wasn’t playing well and he really needed to do more stuff on his own anyway. He was becoming so reliant on me, it was ridiculous.”

Faldo later said Leadbetter was too busy to spend enough time with him.

“Nick needed to take responsibility for his own game,” Leadbetter said. “. . . I remember one time I was watching him practice and he turned and said to me, ‘How do I hit a chip shot?’ What? Here’s a guy who’s won six majors and he’s asking me that? Oh, my goodness.

“You’re upset about what happened because you put a lot of time and effort into these players. Their success, that’s the exciting thing for me. The television and books, that’s gravy. I just love the teaching. You form close relationships with these players. You just hope there are reasons why you no longer have them.”

Leadbetter said he is not wounded about what happened and neither has it affected his popularity as a teacher.

“I’m sure people just say, ‘Gee, you had a great relationship with Nick.’ I think it was a pretty poor thing the way the whole thing ended, though, with a letter from his manager. Nick should have been man enough to talk to me himself. But change is inevitable. That’s just the way it is.”

Maybe, but Leadbetter surely didn’t foresee his teaching job with Pak change into unemployment. Pak waffled for a while about Leadbetter’s status when she returned to South Korea after her rookie-of-the-year season. In the end, Leadbetter was out, even if he had a hard time figuring out why.

Leadbetter said Pak was bombarded with advice from everyone around her, from her father to her sponsors to her management to her caddie and in the end, never had a chance to think for herself.

“I don’t think the girl had a clue,” Leadbetter said. “With Se Ri, look at it. This is crazy. Why would you want to change a coach after winning two majors in one year?”

Actually, Leadbetter knows why. He’s a teacher, so he has learned his lessons well.

“Golf is a very self-centered game. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for niceties. That’s the way of the world, so you accept it. Nothing is forever.”