The 41st annual Haggin Oaks Golf Expo was held in Sacramento this past weekend. The Expo has been called “The best golf promotion in the country” by Golf World magazine and the folks at Haggin Oaks like to call their extravaganza “America’s Largest Demo Days.” There are close to 200 booths and exhibits at the Haggin Expo. All of the major manufacturers are there promoting The Bridgestone Challenge or the Titleist Ball Fitting Center or the Srixon Putting Contest. There are clubs to be demoed and club fittings to be tried. Golf courses, mostly from beyond the Sacramento area, are there to promote their stay and play packages in such places as Bend, Clio, Sisters and Bodega. There are also a few quirky exhibitors like Enovative Technologies, makers of the E-Pulse Massage, as well as those culinary folks who promote the Fore Fun Salted Nut Roll.
My main purpose in attending on Saturday afternoon was to check out the talk and the clinic that was going to be put on by Johnny Miller. While the current generation knows Miller for his golf broadcasting work, the members of my generation know him as one of the game’s top players of the 1970s. A Lincoln High School of San Francisco product who attended Brigham Young University, Miller shocked the world of golf when he won his third professional title while shooting a final-round 63 at the 1973 United States Open at Oakmont. Miller’s 63 was the greatest final round in major championship history and it jumped-started a three-year reign when he was the game’s dominant linkster. Miller won eight times in 1974, four more times in 1975, and took home a trio of titles in 1976, including the British Open as he defeated Seve Ballesteros and Jack Nicklaus by six strokes. When all was said and done, he won 25 times on the PGA Tour, won another 10 titles worldwide, and culminated his career with a victory at Pebble Beach as an almost 47-year-old in 1994.
For those of you who know of Miller as a broadcaster, he is a most interesting character who doesn’t have much of a filter between his mind and his mouth. He is especially unpopular with some members of the PGA Tour who have felt the bite of his commentary. Miller has been known to describe certain instances during the heat of battle as “choke jobs” and is normally quite willing to point out lapses in concentration or mistakes in course strategy by the latest generation of golf pros. I figured Miller would be a most interesting speaker.
Johnny Miller didn’t pull any punches, but he was also quite interesting and informative during his presentation and junior clinic. He told the close to 1,000 people in attendance surrounding the first tee at the Mackenzie Course that he was a 2-handicapper as a 14-year-old and a plus-2-handicapper as a 15-year-old. When he turned 16 years old, his teacher and coach, John Geertsen of the San Francisco Golf Club, told him that from that point on, the only thing he could help him with was his short game. Geertsen challenged Miller and asked him, “How good can you become from 100 yards in?” From that point onward, Johnny spent the remainder of his golfing career focusing upon partial wedge play, sand play, chipping and putting. He went from being a swinger of the golf club to a scorer on the golf course.
Miller talked about the desire to own the newest in golf equipment, yet he implored his audience to do what’s best for your golf game. He stated that there were several levels of golf, from casual and friendly golf, to that weekend Nassau with your golfing buddies, to tournament play. He contended that “if a club works for you under tournament pressure, then you need to keep it until it falls apart, especially your wedges and your putter.” He felt that there was nothing wrong about having a beautiful new set of irons in your golf bag while still carrying your beat up but very reliable sand wedge.
During the junior clinic portion of his presentation, Miller had a local 13-year-old girl named Lucy demonstrate what he was talking about. Maintaining his theme about the importance of wedge play from less than 100 yards, Johnny had Lucy hit knockdown wedges into the stiff wind that was present throughout the day. Lucy hit shot after shot of 50- and 75-yard wedges into the wind, controlling the flight of the ball so that it bored through the 30 mph winds. He talked about the sound the ball was making as it rocketed off the clubface and shot into the wind, landing softly some 75 yards away. Miller talked about the importance of making good decisions on the golf course to shoot the best score possible and from there he morphed into the notion that one needs to do the same in life by constantly making good decisions while avoiding life’s hazards. It was all good stuff and was directed at the many youthful faces in the crowd. The Johnny Miller symposium was the highlight of the day.
Of course, the Haggin Expo had a whole lot more to offer. On Friday, golf instructor supreme, Hank Haney, best known as Tiger Woods’ teacher, gave a clinic. Later on Sunday, former NASA scientist and short-game guru Dave Pelz was scheduled to appear. At the Sacramento Golf Hall of Fame ceremony on Saturday afternoon, five women were inducted into the Sac HOF including Marysville’s Alice Miller. Miller had a two-decade career on the LPGA Tour. and won eight times. She won a women’s major in 1985 when she beat Jan Stephenson by three strokes to win the Dinah Shore. Miller was the protégé of Plumas Lake golf professional George Twitchell, who later served as the head pro at Hobergs Golf Course and Adams Springs Golf Course in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
I completed my day by having an “Olympic Club burger” at the Haggin Oaks outdoor barbeque. An Olympic burger is a hamburger that is long and narrow and is eaten on a hot dog bun. I don’t exactly know why it’s called an Olympic burger. Yes, I have had one at the halfway house at San Francisco’s Olympic Club, but I’ve also had the same kind of burger at Silverado in Napa, Ravisloe in Chicago and LaPurisma in Lompoc.
On a final note, I’m also glad that I don’t live within much proximity to Haggin Oaks. It’s the adult version of Toys-R-Us and I could see going seriously bankrupt simply by shopping at their giant pro shop every month of so. After all, following a day at the 2016 Haggin Oaks Golf Expo, there are all sorts of golf clubs to try out, all types of new golf courses to play, and plenty of new gadgets to experience. Then again, if I had truly listened to Johnny Miller, I would be hanging onto my trusty, tournament-hardened golf clubs and instead spend my quality time working on my wedge game and my putting.
