Alex Beach Heads to the 2022 PGA Championship
The Golf Leif
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...
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Bill Smittle, Elite Putting Coach
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...
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Cory Crelan and the Retro Golf Club
The Golf Leif
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...
info_outlineThe 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.