Getting Ben Doyle to Smile, revisiting
Below is what I originally wrote after meeting Ben Doyle for the first time back in 2012. Etc., etc.
By BRETT CYRGALIS
When you start digging through the rubble of the current golf-instructional landscape, you will inevitably come back to one man.
His name is Ben Doyle, and he sits on a wood bench next a light-pink concrete fountain in the hills of downtown San Francisco. Ben was born on Bastille Day, July 14, 1932. His 80 years in the sun show on his face.
His life’s work in golf sits in front of him on the ground, a plastic mat the size of a twister board – and just as colorful. He calls it his “Facts & Illusions Mat.” It has outlines of golfers in different positions, a large set of feet, and lines and diagrams and angles. It’s confusing if you don’t know what you’re looking at.
I sit down next to Ben and say hello, put an arm on his shoulder, feel his faded nappy sweater. I told him I’d meet him here, the Arden Wood Nursing Home, around 11 a.m. Since I landed at 9:30 a.m., he has left me two voicemails, saying he’s sitting outside. It’s maybe 60 degrees, and in the shade, he looks cold.
Ben was the first authorized instructor of The Golfing Machine, the seminal text written by Homer Kelley, originally published in 1969. In it is described a complex scientific explanation for how to swing a golf club. Anyone professing to know anything about the golf swing is familiar with The Golfing Machine. Anyone worth listening to has read it and studied it, even if it hasn’t continued to be his or her bible – which it still is for Ben.
“The geometry doesn’t lie,” Ben says.
But before that, before me or Ben stand on his mat, before his ever-present Hogan cavity-backed 6-iron starts waggling in his hands, before we go anywhere to hit golf balls or even begin to talk about sport, Ben cries.
He cries because his heart is broken, and quickly so is mine.
***
Ben is standing behind me as I hold my own 6-iron, swinging to and fro as I try to impart some of what he’s saying into my motion.
“Shorter, slower, heavier,” is what he says as I chip with the mid-iron, hitting balls first 15 yards, then 50 yards, then 140 yards, then a full and sturdy 185. One goes left, flushed. One goes right, thinned. Ben just watches, silent.
We’ve been at Presidio Golf Club for about 40 minutes. It’s a neat little semi-private place with a Fowler & Simpson-designed course. It’s been around since 1895, but it’s now run by Arnold Palmer Management, so it seems shinny and new.
The driving range slopes down into a deep depression, with some tall pines surrounding. Hitting off nice new plastic mats, there are a plethora of targets to aim at. Before me, Ben’s grandson Bentley (which is Ben’s given name, as well) hit about 50 balls like the professional he is. After graduating from Principia University – the only Christian Science college in the world – Bentley taught at a club near the school in St. Louis called Forest Hills Country Club, then went to the Bhutan Youth Golf Association to teach with Rick Lipsey. Now he’s at Quail Lodge in Monterey, Ca., where Ben taught for over four decades.
“He’s a great teacher,” Ben says of his grandson. “I hope he keeps on doing it because he’s so natural.”
“He’s a great teacher,” says Suzie, Bentley’s mother and Ben’s daughter. “The first time I saw him giving a lesson it was like watching my dad. It was a strange moment, but I knew he was meant for it.”
Bentley now stands next to his Granddad, the handsome resemblance striking. The numbered chapters and sections of The Golfing Machine can be tossed out to Bentley with no context, and he knows exactly what Granddad means. “When I was nine, I didn’t know what he was talking about,” Bentley says. “As I got older and read the book, I started getting it.”
The two stand close, with Bentley looking down the range and Ben with his eyes fixed on me. He’s now more focused and present then when he was on that bench in front of Arden Wood, just as Suzie told me he would be. “He comes alive when he teaches,” she says.
He gives me an aiming point, a white pole with a yellow top. I set up, swing, and the ball flies high and straight, landing 10 feet left of it on a hill.
I look back and Ben is smiling, staring, quiet. If you’ve ever taken a golf lesson, and done something good, just the way the teacher wanted, you know this moment. It’s an unspoken connection between professor and pupil, a pat on the back without a pat on the back.
After about five seconds, Ben says with a slight shrug of the shoulders, “That’s negotiable.”
I laugh out loud. I have to make sure I heard him right. “That’s negotiable, Ben?”
“That’s negotiable,” he says again. “We can score from there.”
My smile now feels like it’s going to rip my face in two. Ben takes about a dozen small and rapid steps towards me, shuffling his feet along the green carpet to pull out another ball and set it in front of me. I can see his back straighten a bit from his normal hunched position, and his chin is raised just a bit more off his chest. I put my hand to his arm.
“Wonderful,” I say to him quietly, and he looks up and smiles.
***
Just over four months before I visited Ben, he said he had been in St. Louis to watch his youngest twin daughters graduate from Principia. He used to travel a lot to give talks about golf, and normally his wife of 57 years, Joanne, would stay home.
In this instance, he got off the plane alone and headed back to Arden Wood. He opened to the door to their joint room. He walked into the bedroom.
“She was just beautiful,” he says through tears, “just laying there, just gorgeous.”
Joanne Doyle died on May 13, 2012. It was Mother’s day.
***
“So, are you married?” Ben asks me.
I tell him I’m engaged, and that I’m getting married in the summer.
“It’ll be good,” he assures me. “Be good to her. I don’t have her anymore.”
“I will,” I say, “I will.”
Hours later, I watched Ben smile for the first time. There were golf clubs in both our hands, but golf was not the subject at all.
brett.cyrgalis@gmail.com
(Originally written Oct. 3, 2012)