Don’t discount area pros based on short trend

The question was posed during last weekend’s Rosauers Open Invitational:

Why don’t our local golf pros fare better in Pacific Northwest PGA sectional events?

Actually, I was the one who posed it – to competitors from throughout the region, including two-time Rosauers champion Michael Combs, who finished second to Scott Johnson in this year’s event.

The answers were as varied as the swing techniques playing at a driving range near your home.

A couple of those questioned said the fact that no Spokane-area pro has won a major sectional event since 1992, when Chris Mitchell, a teaching pro at Coeur d’Alene Golf Course at the time, won the second of his two Rosauers titles, is just a “coincidence.”

Another pointed out that winning is often cyclical, and that back in the 1980s and early ‘90s, when local pros like Mitchell, Gary Lindeblad and Mark Gardner were in their prime, members of the Inland Empire Chapter of the PGA “seemed to win everything.”

It was also suggested that few professionals in our area use their precious off-hours to play golf or work on their games, opting, instead, to hit the ski slopes in the winter and early spring and the lakes in the summer.

“We just don’t have many pros around here who go out and play golf in their spare time,” said Manito Golf & Country Club’s Steve Prugh.

Deer Park Golf Club’s Craig Schuh noted there are simply “a lot of good, young players out there right now.

“Plus, most of us who are head professionals around here are too busy to work much on our games during the summer. Some guys, all they do is teach, so they can schedule golf around their lessons. But for most of us around here, it’s a seasonal job and you have to work during the peak season.

“Most everybody I know is working the counter, running the kitchen, this, that and everything else. And that makes it tough to compete, even though there are a lot good players in our section.”

Combs, who teaches out of Canyon Lakes Golf Course in Kennewick, agrees with Schuh’s reasoning, pointing out that many PNWPGA sectional events are won by teaching pros such as he and Jeff Coston, who runs his own golf academy at Semiahmoo Golf & Country Club in Blaine, Wash.

“It’s not because they’re not good players,” Combs said in reference to our local pros.

“But most of them spend a lot of time in the shop,” he added. “Me, I can kind of plan my teaching schedule around golf.”

Combs, who has won number of sectional events in the last five years, said he makes it a point to play – rather than practice – when he frees up his time.

“I don’t spend my time beating balls on the range anymore,” he said. “I just try to play a lot of golf. I’ve got some good friends who like to play, and they get me out. I’m not saying I do it strictly for social reasons, but when I get a chance to work on my game, I go play golf.”

Schuh said he got the rare opportunity to play several rounds at his course in the week leading up to this year’s Rosauers. He added that he felt as calm during Friday’s opening-round 68 as he has in a long time.

“I just told myself, ‘You can beat balls and beat balls, but you’ve got to get our and play to score,’ and that’s what I did,” said Schuh, who struggled during the final two rounds and finished in a tie for 78th. “When I first started playing at my place, I couldn’t break 70. But then I started hitting it better and scoring better.

“Normally, though, most of us just too busy to do that on a regular basis.”

Hoosiers hire Wallman

Clint Wallman, a former teaching pro at Indian Canyon Golf Course, where he operated his own golf school, has been hired as the head women’s golf coach at Indiana University.

Wallman replaces Sam Carmichael, an eight-time Big Ten Conference coach of the year honoree, who retired last May after 21 years as the Hoosiers head coach.

“It’s one of the premier jobs in the country,” said Wallman, who spent the last two years as an assistant coach at the University of New Mexico while maintaining a residence with his wife, Julie, in the Spokane area. “Opportunities like this don’t open very often, so I jumped at it.”

Wallman, a 1985 graduate of Washington State University and two-time captain for the Cougars, was named the Inland Empire PGA section’s teacher of the year four times.

He was twice honored at the Pacific Northwest PGA teacher of the year.

Golf Digest and Golf Magazine have twice ranked him among the top 10 instructors in Washington, and in 2003, Golf Digest named him one of the top 50 teachers in the United State.

“The hard part is leaving Spokane,” Wallman said. “We’ve always loved it here.”