With persimmons, Todd Demsey says he loses little distance and will get a lot larger really feel.
Courtesy of Todd Demsey
Two weeks in the past, earlier than the ultimate spherical of PGA Tour Champions Qualifying, in Scottsdale, Ariz., social media was abuzz over Todd Demsey, a journeyman pro who was one shot off the quantity he would wish to earn his standing on the senior circuit.
What made Demsey a narrative was not his scores — 67-67-68 — over the primary three days. It was how he’d shot them.
With persimmon golf equipment.
“I like to feel connected to my equipment,” Demsey stated by cellphone the opposite day from his Florida residence. “Which is something I’ve kind of struggled with throughout my life in pro golf. Just having to learn to like whatever the engineers like.”
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In an period of proposed rollbacks, Demsey, 51, is a throwback, an outdated soul in a middle-age physique, aiming to compete on the highest degree with gear from the previous. In that Scottsdale occasion, the place each different membership utilized by each different participant within the 78-man subject was normal from supplies suited to a spaceship, Demsey had two wooden-headed sticks in his bag, a fairway wooden and a putter, each of which he’d formed in his storage. He would have preferred to play his persimmon driver, too, however that membership, which he additionally constructed himself, hadn’t been permitted for competitors by USGA conformance testing — an ironic twist that Demsey has resisted getting straightened out.
“I think the test would only cost me a few hundred bucks,” he stated. (Two-hundred {dollars}, the truth is.) “But it’s not really the money. It’s more like the principle — the idea of having to pay to prove that my persimmon driver doesn’t have an illegal trampoline effect.”
Said Judd Nieman, Demsey’s shut pal and Q-School caddie, “Todd would have fit in well with Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and other guys from that era. I always think of him as having been born 30 or 40 years too late.”
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AS IT HAPPENS, DEMSEY WAS born in 1972, in San Diego, the place his father, a scratch participant who had walked on to the golf crew at Wake Forest, launched him to the sport at Loma Santa Fe, a low-key government course in Solana Beach. In these days, woods just about all got here in numerous flavors of persimmon. Demsey, at age 10, lower his tooth on Tony Pennas. He bought good, quick. In what counts as foreshadowing, he additionally took up a golf-related pastime: refinishing golf equipment.
At Torrey Pines High School, a mini-factory of future Tour professionals (Pat Perez and Michael Kim are among the many alumni), Demsey lettered all 4 years in golf, earlier than graduating on to Arizona State, the place he turned a four-time All-American. In 1992, the summer time earlier than his school sophomore season, Demsey received the California State Amateur, at Pebble Beach. The subsequent yr, he claimed the NCAA particular person title (David Duval and Justin Leonard completed second and third, at one and 10 strokes again, respectively) and represented the United States within the Walker Cup.
This was on the daybreak of a brand new age in gear. By the mid-Nineteen Nineties, steel woods began turning persimmons into relics. Demsey tried to stay with his wood arsenal, nevertheless it wasn’t lengthy earlier than the stress of the arm’s race compelled him to commerce in.
Even then, he was a gradual adopter.
“In college and later when I got on Tour, I never used the latest stuff,” he stated. “It was always the models that were three or four years old.”
Not that he was jaded to the perks of his job. He knew that he was privileged, preparing entry to superior gear, and, on high of that, getting paid to play it. But the breakneck tempo of change didn’t sit fairly proper.
“I get it. It’s capitalism. You’re always trying to expand the market,” Demsey stated. “But the whole technology thing became a turn off to me. It almost felt like cheating the game.”
The entire know-how factor turned a flip off to me. It virtually felt like dishonest.
Tour life introduced one other type of unease. Starting with his rookie yr, in 1997, Demsey made sufficient cuts to show a revenue. But whereas he liked the competitors, he disliked the trimmings. The journey was robust. So was the tunnel imaginative and prescient that the grind required. Demsey was extra of a big-picture man, a contemplative pro inclined to mull over the which means of all of it.
“On the one hand, I was happy to be able to pay my bills,” he stated. “But traveling around trying to make money wasn’t why I fell in love with golf.”
Health issues additional widened his perspective. First: again points. And then, terrifyingly, a mind tumor, recognized in 2002. Though the massive mass turned out to be benign, it required main surgical procedure and follow-up procedures. In complete, Demsey was sidelined for the nice a part of 5 seasons.
In 2008, he scrapped again to the Tour. By then he was married, with a younger a baby and one other on the way in which. The grind resumed, now with his household, roaming the nation in an RV. Physically, Demsey felt fantastic. Financially, he was staying afloat. But on the psychological aspect, the outdated misgivings lingered, intensifying as the children approached college age. “I realized I was starting to miss out on stuff,” Demsey stated.
In 2013, he referred to as it quits.
LEAVING TOURNAMENT GOLF BEHIND didn’t imply abandoning the sport. In Neptune Beach, Fla., the place he settled with his household, Demsey began educating juniors. He additionally reconnected with a childhood pastime. In 2016, he constructed himself his first persimmon driver. Then one other. And one other. Every from time to time, he did the identical for associates.
Time wore on. In gaps between educating, Demsey drove a van for his spouse, Melinda, in her work for a cellular medical unit. He watched his kids, Maggie and Tucker, develop up.
He bought older, too. As he neared his fiftieth birthday, a sense caught him abruptly: the urge to check himself once more in competitors.
During his tenure on the PGA and Korn Ferry excursions, Demsey made greater than 150 cuts, an achievement he describes as his biggest supply {of professional} delight. The feat additionally offers him lifetime Tour membership, and exemptions into qualifiers. Last yr, he took his first stab on the over-50 circuit, at PGA Tour Champions Q-school, with persimmons in his bag.
His selection of kit prompts an apparent query: Is this man nuts? Why decide to be John Henry in an period of steam shovels? One reply is that Demsey doesn’t really feel persimmons put him at a drawback.
“They’re not as forgiving as those big hollow metal heads,” he stated. “But as long as I hit it solid, I’m only losing maybe five yards. Ten yards, max.”
The different rationalization can’t be measured on a Trackman, and it’s tied to what first drew him to the sport.
“I think about being a kid, out there with my dad on that little executive course, and just the joy of trying to catch it pure,” Demsey stated.
Given his Zen-quest affection for the sport, it’s not a shock to study that Demsey is a big fan of “Golf in the Kingdom,” the well-known e-book by Michael Murphy a couple of traveler’s encounters with a mystical swing guru named Shivas Irons. “Let the nothingness into your shots,” is a pearl of Shivas knowledge that Demsey is keen on quoting, which he does with a touch of surf-dude Jeff Spicoli in his voice.
Unlike legions of Tour professionals, Demsey didn’t transfer to Florida to advance his golf profession. He and his household had been drawn principally by the waves. Neither of his youngsters has taken up golf. But Maggie, 17, and Tucker, 15, are each aggressive surfers. And Demsey himself is within the water most days, driving the swells after driving his bike a number of blocks from his home to the ocean.
He is much less regimented about his golf. As a Tour member, Demsey enjoys entry to TPC Sawgrass and its tricked-out follow grounds, not more than a 30-minute drive away. But he not often makes that journey. He hones his sport as an alternative by smacking photographs in a neighborhood schoolyard when courses aren’t in session, and by enjoying cross-country golf on the seashore.
“It’s actually a pretty good way to stay sharp,” Demsey stated. “If I pull it 10 yards, I could break a window. So I’ve got to be pretty precise.”
It helps, too, that he’s off the grind. In addition to his two makes an attempt at Q-school, Demsey has additionally tried to Monday-qualify into two Champions tour occasions (he fell shy in each), and he’s contemplating a run on the U.S. Senior Open. But he’s not beneath the gun or lacking out on household time.
When he isn’t competing, or educating, he works from residence, constructing persimmon golf equipment in his storage, in an operation that he says is just too casual to name a “company.” Last yr, he stated, he turned out 100 to 150 golf equipment, some at no cost for associates, the remaining customized orders, for which he asks roughly $350 to $450, relying on the specs. One of these customized jobs was for the United States Golf Association, which earlier this yr commissioned Demsey to construct commemorative persimmons for the U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills, close to Denver. (In a stunt that had Golf Twitter chirping, Bryson DeChambeau, who was in attendance as a fan, tried to drive the first green with certainly one of Demsey’s golf equipment.)
Otherwise, Demsey retains golf at a mid-distance. Though he follows the large headlines and kinds opinions (spoiler alert: he’s in favor of the rollback and amazed on the dimension of some contracts and purses), he doesn’t watch golf on TV or observe match outcomes.
The final rating he posted of his personal was earlier this month within the last spherical of Q-school, the place he bought off to a gradual begin and wound up with a 74 that dropped him right into a tie for twenty third; solely the highest 5 finishers earned their playing cards.
All good, Demsey stated. He can attempt once more subsequent yr, at the same time as he makes a go at extra Monday qualifiers. He’d like to make it again on the skilled circuit. But no matter occurs, occurs. Either means, issues really feel totally different this time round.
“The kids are older, there isn’t that extra pressure,” Demsey stated. “It would be a lot of fun — out there with Melinda, traveling the country in an RV.”
