By Clair Goodwin
sports@joplinglobe.com
Ben Pell was as much a friend as a tutor. Not just for me, but for everyone who knew him.
Few people have touched as many lives in golf across the region. He was always ready with a bit of advice to make the game easier or a tip to make your swing better.
My first contact with him came when he was an assistant pro at Twin Hills Golf and Country Club.
I was pretty much self-taught in golf, with all of the idiosyncratic glitches that brings, and so I decided that I needed “a lesson” to straighten me out. So I asked Bill Parker, head pro at Twin Hills, for assistance. He declined, saying that he gave lessons only to members, but he also suggested that I give Ben a chance.
The first thing Ben told me was that he didn’t give “a” lesson. He would determine when I had completed my odyssey to a good swing. It took five weeks and I went from shooting 78 to 82 at Schifferdecker Municipal Golf Course, depending on how well I putted, to not being able to break 90.
Pell changed everything about my swing. He weakened my grip, had me stand straighter at address and tried to instill in me a sense of balance. I became a wreck. Nothing felt right.
But Ben kept telling me to give everything a chance to fall into place. It was an arduous ordeal. But on one Saturday at Schifferdecker I shot a 91 and the next day — and this is gospel — I had a 69. By the end of summer, I carried a one handicap.
I went back for a tune-up the next spring. Ben looked over my swing, made a couple of suggestions and pronounced me ready for the spring. He refused to take any money, saying that all he did was simple stuff. I wasn’t the only one that Ben helped over his years as Parker’s assistant at Twin Hills and then as head professional at Loma Linda Country Club.
Ben was most content, I believe, when he was giving lessons. It didn’t matter to whom. He not only enjoyed working with kids, but also with groups of beginners and with a par-shooter.
I saw him on any number of occasions go out to the practice tee at Twin Hills or Loma Linda to give some advice to a golfer who was struggling with his swing. He would spend 15 or 20 minutes getting the player back on track and then refuse to take a penny because it “wasn’t an official lesson.”
When Ben died in 2004 at the age of 70, I talked with many area golfers who told similar stories of Ben’s generous sharing of his time and knowledge in order to make the game more enjoyable.
Pell was voted by the Joplin Golf Foundation into the Joplin Golf Hall of Fame in 1992, but he declined induction for personal reasons. In 2006, he was posthumously taken into the local shrine.
Although Ben is gone, his memory lives on. The 2008 Ben Pell Classic is scheduled Aug. 23-24 on the Bald Eagle course at Eagle Creek Club. Format calls for two-man best ball competition as well as individual play. The entry fee is $125 per player for the teams and $20 additional for the individual championship.
Here’s a nifty extra touch. After the Aug. 23 round, the two-person best ball field will be divided into two flights. Each flight then will be divided into two flights at the conclusion of play on Aug. 24.
Entries should be mailed to Card Sappington, 5343 Walnut Drive, Loma Linda, Mo. 64804 or dropped off at the Eagle Creek pro shop (formerly Loma Linda Country Club).
I suspect that Ben would have been a little embarrassed by such hoopla. He was a pretty low key individual. But he also would have been appreciative of the support for the tournament’s beneficiaries: junior golf and golf scholarships.
New cart paths
About five miles of concrete cart paths are being installed on the Bald Eagle course at Eagle Creek Golf Club (formerly Loma Linda Country Club) by United Golf of Tulsa, Okla., and crews of Golf Cart Path Co. of Atlanta, Ga.
The concrete is mixed with a special fiber mesh so that no rebar is required. The mesh reportedly sets up quickly and is resistant to extremes in weather, said Mike Maier, Eagle Creek superintendent.
Words of wisdom
Bob Charles, who had been considered golf’s greatest left-hander until Phil Mickelson came along, said that the biggest advantage he had in being a lefty was that no one knew enough about his swing to mess him up with advice.
