ESPN did a short feature on 18-year-old Elena Delle Donne last weekend. One year ago, Elena was the top-ranked female high school basketball player in America. A 6-foot-4 guard at Ursuline High School in Delaware, she led her team to three state championships and also played on two AAU national teams. She was recruited to play college hoops at the University of Connecticut and went so far as to skip her high school graduation to attend a UConn scrimmage. Some journalists went so far as to call her the future face of women”s basketball.
Two days after enrolling at UConn, Delle Donne left school. She cited “burnout” as the reason for her withdrawal. She contended that she had been unhappy playing basketball for the past five years. She immediately enrolled at her hometown college, the University of Delaware, and although she had limited experience, she did play this past autumn on the Delaware women”s volleyball team.
Elena Delle Donne”s story is no longer a shocking expose. It is something that is happening in a number of sports to a number of kids across America. An excellent book that came out earlier this year is Kevin Cook”s Driven (Gothan Books, $26). The book”s subtitle is “Teen Phenoms, Mad Parents, Swing Science, and the Future of Golf: A Year at the David Leadbetter Academy.”
The Leadbetter Academy in Bradenton, Florida, is a part of a multi-high school sports complex run by the International Management Group. IMG is the sports management giant that was founded by Mark McCormack some 50 years ago. IMG”s first client was Arnold Palmer and since then the firm has had its hand in many aspects of sports management. Its Nick Bollettiere Tennis Academy at Bradenton was the genesis of its school project in the mid-1980s. Its notable tennis graduates have included Andre Agassi and Maria Sharapova.
David Leadbetter is a well-known golf instructor who was a fringe player on the European Tour. He built his reputation in the 1980s by taking two journeymen professionals under his wing and painstakingly rebuilt their golf swings. The process was brutal, but the results cemented Leadbetter”s reputation. The two journeymen pros were Nick Price, who went on to win three majors, and Nick Faldo, earlier chastised by the British press as “Nick Foldo,” who won six major titles.
Leadbetter”s concept behind his academy was that children couldn”t necessarily hone their skills with a series of one-hour lessons, but if they lived and breathed their golf game on a daily basis, then they could be directed to be champions. Leadbetter Academy students attend school for four hours daily and then head to the driving range, and on occasion to the links, located on the 300-acre gated complex. The $71,000 annaul fee plus the $13,000 tuition certainly seems upscale, and yet some students accumulate an additional $25,000 in expenses for private lessons, sessions with a sports psychologist, and various tournament entry fees.
Past Leadbetter students have included Sean O”Hair, Paula Creamer and Ty Tryon. O”Hair was featured on 60 Minutes II in 2002 and was victimized by his super-aggressive and heavy-handed father. O”Hair”s life has stabilized. He is married with two kids and has won twice on the PGA Tour. He is also completely estranged from his father. Creamer, who grew up in the East Bay prior to attending the Leadbetter Academy, is one of the LPGA Tour”s up-and-coming stars. Tryon turned pro at age 17 at his parents” behest, amazingly got through Q School as a teen, bombed out on tour during his rookie year, and nowadays struggles on golf”s mini-tours. And of course, there”s also Leadbetter client Michelle Wie, the poster girl for all that”s wrong with teen golf.
Current Academy students include Peter Uihlein, the son of the Titleist CEO, Manka; Isabelle, and Crash Lendl, the daughters of tennis great Ivan Lendl; Mu Hu, the Chinese government”s Tiger Woods of the future (how”s that for pressure?); Oscar Sharpe, England”s top junior golfer; and 14-year-old Carly Booth, Scotland”s top girl golfer.
The behind-the-scenes story of Driven is the personal development of the children who attend the Academy. For every Paula Creamer there are a whole lot more former Leadbetter students who are currently working as chefs in upscale New York restaurants.
The biggest indictment to the questionable morality of this system is the role of parents in the development of their junior golfing children. In the case of Uihlein, an avowed golf nut who is currently on the golf team at Oklahoma State University, the Academy was probably more of what he wanted than what his famous dad wanted. However, that doesn”t seem to be the case with the majority of the parent-child relationships. Sad to say, many of the parents of the Bradenton kids seemed to see their children as a meal ticket to the future. Some, such as O”Hair”s father, went so far as to have their children sign contracts guaranteeing percentages of future winnings once they turned pro.
Lastly, the book sorely pointed out the lack of personal development of the full-time golfing students. Most of the kids had little or no social life and their day-to-day existence sorely mirrored the activities of longtime tour pros. Strange to say, while there was a state-of-the-art driving range at the Leadbetter Academy that was constantly used, the 18-hole golf course there seldom had play. The kids pounded balls all day long and putted into the darkness, but seldom played the golf course.
There are a lot of different ways to make it to the top of the professional golf ladder as evidenced by the path to glory taken by Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, Sergio Garcia and Padraig Harrington. Kevin Cook gives us a great inside look at how the wealthy and the extremely driven are attempting to have their kids take that path.
All of this reminded me of my son”s line following the U.S. Junior Qualifier this past summer. When I asked him about his playing partners that day, he stated, “They were socially retarded. They couldn”t do anything without their parents” help.”
