Tag: Eddie Merrins

Remembering those we lost in the world of golf in 2023

The world of golf indeed lost some true legends in 2023.

A caddie who expertly worked the grill on the back of his truck.

An Augusta National Golf Club caddie who became the unofficial historian for Masters loopers.

The longtime starter at the British Open who famously never took a bathroom break between the first tee time and the last.

The winner of the first-ever PGA Tour Champions event.

A four-time U.S. Women’s Open champion.

The world of golf indeed lost some true legends in 2023. From players to caddies, course designers to teachers, to many others who contributed their life’s work to the game.

Here’s a closer look at those the world of golf goodbye to this year.

Schupak: Remembering Eddie Merrins, The Little Pro

The Little Pro, by way of Merion, always had a cure for the common swing.

Word that Eddie Merrins had died on Thanksgiving Eve hit me like a cold bucket of water as I gathered in the kitchen with family and monitored the making of the next day’s feast.

Merrins, who died at 91 in Los Angeles, was one of golf’s most respected professionals, a championship-winning coach at UCLA, a beloved figure and an institution at Bel-Air Country Club. In recent years, as pro emeritus, he could still be found there impeccably dressed in a coat and tie and white-knit tam o’shanter, ready to impart his wisdom to another golfer desperate for help.

I had the privilege of writing a story for the 2013 U.S. Open preview issue on the 5-foot-7 Merrins, affectionately known as The Little Pro, and it was the start of a beautiful friendship. Without fail, he’d seek me out at every Masters, U.S. Open and PGA Championship he attended – add me to the list who received an impromptu lesson from Merrins, who advised me to start my swing in New York, flow through Chicago on the way to Los Angeles. I’d be called to the front desk of the media center at the Masters or come back to my desk and find a note that I could come to find him setting up shop on the range. One year, I dressed to the nines in a tuxedo for the Ben Hogan Award as his guest at the ceremony held annually on the Monday of the PGA Tour stop at Colonial. He’d often welcome me to Bel-Air for a get-together when I was in town for Riviera, including one time when he walked all 18 as I played.

We last spoke on June 9 and I could tell his health had deteriorated and his son, Michael, who was often by his side during his travels, complained that he wasn’t getting the care he needed. We made plans to meet up at the U.S. Open but it never came to be. Little Pro kept his word and made it to the course for the final round but I was out on the sixth tee watching Rory McIlroy play. Ten minutes later, I texted him and his son that I’d be back at the media center shortly but we never connected. Regrets, I have a few.

After getting home from the holidays, I dug up my copy from that Merion story and I’m borrowing liberally from it here because it tells the story about how for more than five decades, Merrins gave lessons to everyone from Bing Crosby to Arnold Palmer to Celine Dion and Rickie Fowler to a fellow groomsman at a wedding as the bride walked down the aisle.

“He said he was having a problem with his balance,” Merrins recalled. “What was I supposed to do?”

The man was born to teach, or so he discovered at Merion Golf Club, where he competed in the 1971 Open, and more importantly, the place his life as a teaching pro took shape.

“The discoveries I made there are still the bedrock of my teaching philosophy today,” he said in 2013.

How he arrived at Merion is a story in itself. At 24, Merrins turned pro on the eve of the Lake Charles (Louisiana) Invitational in April 1957, and cashed a check for $250. Next he qualified for the U.S. Open at Inverness Golf Club. Off Merrins went to Ohio to pursue the life of a touring pro. Or so he thought, until one night, prior to the U.S. Open, when he bellied up to the hotel bar and the direction of his life was altered.

Tommy Bolt and Walter Hagen delivered a rookie indoctrination he’d never forget, but it was another conversation with Ed Carter, who ran the PGA Tour at the time, that would shape his future. Carter informed the diminutive Merrins that Merion was seeking an assistant pro whose primary responsibility would be to play with the members. As Merrins put it, “I was looking for a job to support my habit, which was golf.”

Intrigued by the opportunity, Merrins dashed off to Philadelphia for an interview after missing the cut. There he met Francis Sullivan, the former state district attorney and personal attorney for Ben Hogan, who became a surrogate father to Merrins and later godfather to his son, Michael. Sullivan served on the board that hired Merrins on the spot.

So did Jacques Houdry, who coined Merrins’s nickname, “The Little Pro.” Houdry served as best man when Merrins wed Lisa, his bride of more than 50 years in a 1961 ceremony held in New York City. Need more evidence that the Merion members adopted him as one of their own? Consider this: “We had our wedding reception at the old Park Lane Hotel and a whole train carload of people from Merion came along,” Merrins remembered.

From 1957 until 1960, he played regularly with Guy Bates, the club champion, Andrew Davis, who once recorded 10 threes in a row at Merion, and A. Ross Crane, a Philadelphia dentist who told Merrins he might not be the best in town but he was the most expensive. He never charged Merrins a cent.

Architecturally, Merrins called Merion the finest golf course he’d ever seen.

“It’s a masterpiece,” he said. “I remember the two reigning architects of the day were Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Dick Wilson and both of them would walk around Merion all the time just to get ideas, to get visions to use in their design work.”

Merion shaped Merrins into the pro he would become. He had a passion for the game but not a love and respect for it until he spent time there, he said.

Merrins had turned pro to play the game. But at Merion, Merrins was required to teach and discovered he was a teacher at heart. His exploration of the swing happened on Merion’s lesson tee. It’s where he formed the basis for his instructional book and (later video) titled, “Swing the Handle.”

Merrins spent the winter of 1959 under the guidance of Claude Harmon at Thunderbird Golf Club, then left Merion in 1960 to become the head professional at Rockaway Hunt Club in Cedarhurst, New York, where he replaced Dave Marr.

Merrins was living the life of “an itinerant preacher.” He quit the Tour in 1962 to take the head pro job at Bel-Air, and so began a life of service.

“Being a pro golfer means caring about yourself,” Merrins said. “It seemed like a selfish existence to me. I wanted to do more.”

So Merrins spent a lifetime spreading the gospel of golf, even when it meant demonstrating the top of the backswing with an umbrella in an airport, adjusting a grip during an earthquake, or fixing a groomsman’s balance at the altar. The Little Pro, by way of Merion, always had a cure for the common swing.

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Eddie Merrins, affectionately known as ‘The Li’l Pro,’ has died at 91

Merrins once told Golfweek that the beauty of his life in golf was that he had spanned so many generations.

Eddie Merrins, who was affectionately known as “The Li’l Pro” and one of the most accomplished and decorated PGA professionals, died on Nov.22. CBS Sports’s Jim Nantz, a longtime close personal friend, confirmed his passing on Wednesday morning in Los Angeles after a long illness at age 91.

“The famed ‘Li’l Pro’ was a giant in the game,” Nantz said.

Merrins devoted his professional career to teaching the game as the longtime head professional at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles (and eventually pro emeritus). In his spare time, he coached the UCLA men’s golf team to the 1988 NCAA title. During his 14-year tenure, Merrins coached 16 All-Americans, including Corey Pavin, Steve Pate, Tom Pernice Jr., Duffy Waldorf, Scott McCarron, Bob May and Brandt Jobe. At one time, eight of his former players represented the school on the PGA Tour, more than any other program.

“He taught me that if you want something you have to go get it yourself,” McCarron said via text. “No one is going to hand it to you.”

After starting his career at Merion Golf Club, Merrins moved to New York where he was elected to PGA membership and spent a year as a teaching professional at Westchester Country Club and two years as the head professional at Rockaway Hunting Club on Long Island.

During that tenure, he won both the 1961 Metropolitan PGA Championship and the 1961 Long Island Open. An outstanding collegiate golfer at LSU, Merrins won the SEC title twice (in 1953 and ’54) and was the NCAA runner-up in 1952.

As a professional, he competed in over 200 PGA Tour events, including eight USGA Open Championships, six PGA Championships, two British Opens and six PGA Club Professional Championships. He fell one victory shy at the 1954 U.S. Amateur of earning an invite to the Masters.

Back in those days, quarterfinalists were invited (now just the finalists receive that distinction). Merrins lost to Bob Sweeney, who reached the final before some young upstart named Arnold Palmer bested him on the 36th hole.

Merrins once told Golfweek that the beauty of his life in golf was that he had spanned so many generations. He knew Walter Hagen and played against Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, and, at age 17, in an exhibition with Byron Nelson. When he lost in the 1951 Southern Amateur final, Bobby Jones wrote Merrins a letter, congratulating him on his fine play.

“I lost to Arnold Bloom of Macon, Ga.,” Merrins said. “Had I won, I would’ve been the youngest winner since Jones, and I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to have him recognize a young boy on the threshold of doing something special in the game.”

In 1962, Merrins was named the head professional at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles and became one of the most distinguished teachers of the game during a tenure that stretched to 2003. The famous swinging bridge on Bel-Air’s 10th hole was dedicated in Merrins’ honor in 2015. He wrote a popular instruction book entitled, “Swing the Handle, not the Clubhead,” and was inducted into the PGA Hall of Fame in 2009.

Merrins coached the men’s golf team at UCLA from 1975 to 1989, including two NCAA Players of the Year, Corey Pavin and Duffy Waldorf. Merrins guided the team to a No. 1 ranking, an NCAA National Championship, three PAC-10 Championships and earned PAC-10 Coach of the Year honors three times as well.

His 1981-82 team featured Corey Pavin, who was college Player of the Year; Jay Delsing, a first-team All-American; Jeff Johnson, who finished 10th individually and later became a club pro at Ojai (Calif.) Valley Inn & Spa; and Louis Bartoletti, who enjoyed a successful career in the golf business too.

“How good was that team? Well, our starting five for the NCAAs was so deep that year that we left Steve Pate and Duffy Waldorf at home.”

Eddie Merrins, left, with Arnold Palmer.

But it was the 1988 team that won the title.

“We had no expectations. Brandt Jobe was our star, and we had finished eighth in the conference tournament, out of 10 teams. By all rights, we shouldn’t have been in the national championships,” Merrins told Golfweek. “We were 13 strokes behind Florida entering the last day, but we got it going. The golf gods smiled nicely on us that year.”

It was memorable for another reason, too. It marked the first time a West Coast team had won the title in 35 years, since Stanford in 1953. In 1979, Merrins pioneered the “Friends of Collegiate Golf” non-profit organization, now known as “Friends of Golf,” to support junior golf in Southern California. It has raised more than $10 million for the game.

Merrins was born on August 4, 1932, in Meridian, Mississippi. He won three state amateur titles in 1950, 1953 and 1955, and was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 2000.

Merrins is survived by his wife Lisa, two sons, Mason and Michael, and daughter Randy.