Golf: The Teacher

It is not quite accurate to say that Ross Sobel has been playing pro golf for 49 years without ever winning a tournament. In 1922, he beat Willie MacFarlane for a new suit of clothes in the John David Invitational—a pitch-and-putt tournament that was played in midtown Manhattan on the cutting floor of a men’s clothing store. “It wasn’t as easy as it sounds,” says Sobel. “The greens were trapped with buckets of sand and water, and I had to shoot a 40-ft. hole-in-one to win.”

A slender five-footer who parts his hair squarely in the middle a la Rudolph Valentino, Sobel, 74, is one of the oldest and best-known of 5,000-odd U.S. teaching pros, who make their living by selling clubs, balls and assorted haberdashery, and by giving lessons—mostly to amateurs, but often to the big-name stars of the tournament circuit. Arnold Palmer still takes lessons from his dad, a teaching pro at Pennsylvania’s Latrobe Country Club, and Jack Nicklaus polishes his game under the watchful eye of Jack Grout at Miami Beach’s La Gorce Country Club.* “If you wanted to learn how to play the violin, you wouldn’t go to Jascha Heifetz,” explains Sobel. “You’d go to a violin teacher. The same thing holds true for golf.”

Sobel taught Ed (“Porky”) Oliver, who won nine pro tournaments between 1940 and 1959, was runner-up in the U.S. Open, the P.G.A. and the Masters. He put the first golf club in Frank Sinatra’s hands, tutored Joe Louis, Adlai Stevenson (“Short but straight as a string”), Rocky Marciano, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Eddie Arcaro, and Sophie Tucker (“Anybody with a pair of hands like that . . .”).

Tails & Patent Leathers. Sobel’s own introduction to golf came at the age of 22, after he had already made something of a name for himself as a ragtime pianist in Europe. Early one morning, after a show at Ciro’s in Paris, Ross and some friends set out by car for a tour of the French countryside. As luck would have it, the car ran out of gas alongside a suburban golf course —so Sobel played his first round dressed in tails and patent leather shoes. Within four years he was good enough to attract the attention of the Maharajah of Cooch Behar, who was looking for somebody to design him a golf course and teach him the game. Sobel packed off to India. “His Royal Highness was a pretty vain fellow,” Ross recalls, “so I decided not to push my luck. I laid out a nine-hole course that was only 2,800 yds. long and didn’t have a single hazard. That was long before the days of golf carts, of course, but the maharajah didn’t walk a step. He rode in a howdah on an elephant. Half a dozen servants marched behind, armed with rakes and spades to smooth out the divots that the elephant made.”

Back in the U.S. in 1920, Sobel took a brief fling at the pro tournament circuit (“I couldn’t make a dime”), settled into a succession of club jobs—at Long Island’s Valley Stream Country Club, at the Westchester Embassy Club, at Grossinger’s in the Catskill Mountains. His students included Steelman Charles M. Schwab (“The lousiest golf swing I ever saw”), and his reputation grew quickly. In 1953, as head pro at Miami’s West View Country Club, Ross taught Cleveland Indians Third Baseman Al Rosen the fundamentals of golf. That summer Rosen clouted 43 homers, drove in 145 runs, was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player—and credited his performance to “the hand action Ross Sobel taught me.”

Floating Golf Game. Semi-retired now, Sobel’s latest venture is a kind of floating golf game—a driving range on the deck of Eastern Steamship Lines’ S.S. Ariadne, a cruise ship that tours the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Last week, feet spread to counteract the roll of the ship, he watched sadly as middle-aged duffers hooked and sliced into a net-and-canvas trap. “I’ve never seen so many different ways of hitting a golf ball,” he sighed. “Nobody seems to do it right any more. Why, just the other day I had a woman who complained that she loved the game but always got a headache after playing. Could I please help her? Sure I could. I told her the reason she got headaches was that she was hitting herself on the back of the neck every time she swung the club.”

* Last week Jack looked as though he coulduse instruction; in the American Golf Classic at Akron, he shot a ten-over-par 80—worst round of his pro career.