The small town of Stillwater, Minnesota, population 18,000 give or take several hundred, has a shorter golf season than places that typically develop elite players. 

The small town on the St. Croix River that separates Wisconsin from Minnesota has produced a number of notable athletes, among them are Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Phil Housley, Chris Engler, who played 195 NBA games over five seasons with five different teams, and relief pitcher Glen Perkins, who pitched for the Minnesota Twins from 2006 through 2017 and appeared in three All-Star games.

When Alex Beach, who grew up in Stillwater, heads to the first tee at Southern Hills for the PGA Championship next week, he’ll be playing in his fifth PGA Championship in six years, and certainly has a claim to the title of best golfer to come out of Stillwater, Minnesota. 

In addition to those PGA championship appearances, Beach won the 2019 PGA Professional Championship and the 2019 PGA Assistant Professional National Championship, and has worked as a golf professional at some of the Metropolitan New York Area’s finest private golf clubs, among them Baltusrol, Ridgewood, and his current home, Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York.

He got into this year’s PGA Championship in dramatic fashion, holing a chip for birdie on the first hole of a four-for-one playoff at the 2022 PGA Professional Championship at Omni Barton Creek resort & spa in Austin, Texas to punch his ticket to Tulsa.

He’s this week’s guest on The Golf Leif.

Putting accounts for 36 strokes of par on an 18 hole course - approximately half of the shots you attempt in a single round of golf… if you’re a scratch golfer. For good putters, it’s fewer than half, and for bad putters, well… you know what Seve Ballesteros meant when he answered “I miss, I miss, I miss, I make!” when a reporter asked him about a four putt.

If you’re solely a weekend golfer - a golfer who plays, say, 10-20 rounds a year - putting is probably not something you practice. And if it is, you maybe roll a few putts before heading to the first tee, and that’s the extent of the work you put in with the flatstick.

One of my goals with this podcast is to not just talk to good players - people who play in USGA Championships and majors and go out on tour and try to make a living playing golf - but to also talk to people who will make your game better.

Bill Smittle is one of those people. You can follow him on instagram @SmittlePutting. He was the long time head professional at Scarsdale Golf Club in Scarsdale, New York - one of five A.W. Tillinghast courses in a roughly 10 mile radius. (If you’re the first person to email leif@thegolfleif.com with the names of the other four, I’ll send you some Golf Leif swag!) 

He’s gone out on his own and built a business as a putting coach to elite players, turning the garage at his home in Valhalla, New York into an incredible putting studio, where he works with a lot of great players from the junior ranks to tour pros on their short stroke.

So let’s hear from the former Livonia, Michigan City Putt-Putt Champion on how you can improve your putting.

Hello, friends, and welcome to The Golf Leif.  

I’m your host, Leif Skodnick – a minimally talented golfer living in Rye, New York.

Golfers – and if you’re listening to this, you are one, or you’re listening to this to humor me – are nostalgic. We’re nostalgic for places – where we played our first 18 holes, where we first broke 100, 90, 80, and so on, favorite courses we’ve played or places we’ve dreamed about visiting, like Augusta, Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, or St. Andrews, and perhaps most of all, the clubs and balls we used to use.

A few months ago, while doomscrolling on instagram, I came across the Retro golf Club account run by former assistant pro Cory Crelan, who has amassed an astonishing collection of vintage iron sets, persimmon (and some vintage metal) woods and putters in a garage in Wilton, Connecticut.

There are brands and club lines from the past that jogged my memory - Ben Hogan and MacGregor irons, Orlimar woods, Zebra putters, to name a few.

I had to find out what exactly Cory was going to do with - literally - van loads of vintage clubs, so I figured I’d ask him myself.

You can find Cory online on instagram @retrogolfclub. Check it out for a walk down the fairways of your memory.