THE NEW #1
shed at his course – but I needed to earn money. I started giving les- sons to anybody and everybody and learned how to break the language barrier (so to speak) by connecting with people and fixing loads of slices. As good as that experience was, I was determined to make it as a player. I was getting ready for Q school in 2000 when I tore a bunch of liga- ments in my wrist and couldn’t even hold the club. I had to withdraw, and my sponsor sat me down for a hard talk. He wasn’t going to give me any more money to play golf, but I seemed pretty good at this teaching thing. If I wanted to give that a go, he would build me a facility to get things started. ● ● ● I travelled the Hooters Tour with DJ Nelson, who ended up as Heath Slocum’s caddie. In 2004, Heath was struggling with his game, and DJ suggested Heath come talk to me. We worked together that week, and Heath ended up winning later that season. That was my golden ticket. He took a chance on me and turned into a phenomenal ball-striker. He Mark Blackburn reveals some of the teaching insights that propelled him to the top Photographs by J D Cuban
even beat Tiger at the Barclays in a playoff event. ● ● ● Golf is a small world, really. Robert Karlsson is from Sweden, but his cad- die was somebody I had met through college golf. That was the link that got us together, and Robert became the No 1 player in Europe in 2008. Four years later, Kevin Chappell asked Sean Foley for help, but Sean was busy with Tiger and suggested me instead. That started a nice 10-year run. I met Joe Greiner when he was Kevin’s caddie. Joe went on to work for Max Homa, and at the 2020 US Open at Winged Foot, Max was strug- gling. Joe asked if I’d be willing to take a look. We identified the issue straight away, and Max wanted to test it, so we set up a round at nearby Westchester Country Club. He liked what I had to say, and he hit it great. I also happened to make a hole-in-one that day, which is a good marketing strategy but tough to repeat. ● ● ● I started working with Justin Rose in November of 2022 when he was struggling with consistency. He had a lot of slide towards the target in his downswing, which makes it hard to control the low point of the swing. That almost always translates into having to manipulate the face to save shots. We fixed the issue, and you can
This ranking is different. Now that Butch Harmon and 20 of his fellow trailblazers have been promoted to Golf Digest’s first-ever roll of the Legends of Golf Instruction, it means there’s a new No 1, and many new faces on Golf Digest’s biennial ranking of the 50 Best Teachers in America. The larg- est voting population in the history of our survey – more than 3 000 teachers nationwide – picked Alabama-based Mark Blackburn as the top instructor in a close race with fellow tour coach Chris Como. Sean Foley, Cameron Mc- Cormick, Claude Harmon III, James Sieckmann, Martin Chuck, Michael Jacobs, Dana Dahlquist and Michael Breed round out the top 10. Among the notable teachers who are new to the list are Joseph Mayo, who helped Viktor Hovland to a record- breaking season; Justin Parsons, who coaches Open champion Brian Harman; AimPoint inventor Mark Sweeney; and Alison Curdt, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology. On the following pages, you’ll meet Blackburn and learn about his meth- ods for teaching golfers of all levels. – MATTHEW RUDY I was a 23-year-old from England living in Alabama trying to play on the Hooters Tour. A sponsor gave me a spot to practice and a place to live – in a room above the maintenance
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 37
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024
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