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Ironman of the Irons

Marsha James

   Mark Brooks is no stranger to golf. In fact, he says, "I chose golf, I
   certainly had designs on maybe doing something else if golf didn't work
   out, but it has worked out for me and it is an interesting game."

   Mark Brooks plays on the Champions Tour of the Professional Golfers
   Association. Brooks has seven wins on the PGA Tour, including one major
   win, the 1996 PGA Championship. He [DEL: turned :DEL] became a
   professional in 1983, and he holds the record for most career starts on
   tour: over 800 and counting.

   "I went straight to the PGA Tour. I never played any other tours around
   the world. I did not have to play the 'mini tours,' you know, where
   you're scraping by. I went straight to 'the show.' You have to qualify.
   It's a big qualifier. A six-round golf tournament, played in the fall,
   and it's been that way for quite a few years," he says. "I was
   fortunate enough to get my first shot right of college."

   Brooks says playing with professional golf players right out of college
   helped him to realize his own shortcomings and the need for learning
   how to improve his play.

   "Once I got on tour, I basically saw that everything about my game
   needed to be improved. I had a pretty good swing but I needed these
   things to change. I made some changes after about five years of
   struggling, trying to stay on tour, you know, pretty much just kind of
   gutting it out, playing on instinct. And within probably four or five
   months, I saw some dramatic improvement in my ball striking, which, you
   know, it's how close you hit it to the hole and hit fairways and all
   that. And after about five years on tour, things kind of clicked."

   Brooks says although physical abilities matter when playing, the game
   of golf tests a player's mental stamina, but he says the game has
   changed.

   "One of the things we're seeing, the equipment gotten so much better,
   the golf ball itself, which is integral to playing the game, the ball
   has changed quite a bit in the last 20 or 30 years. It goes straighter.
   It goes further. It fights the elements better as far as the wind.
   Technologies kind of entered the game in a strong way in the last 15 or
   20 years, so it's allowed a different style of athlete, I'm going to
   say, to do really well in golf," he says. "So, we're seeing a little
   bit of a change, unfortunately, in my opinion, with golf and the
   characteristics of a person that make you probably be a good player,
   not a great player. And so, I think a little bit of the mental part has
   been taken out. They have to figure out how to make golf become more of
   testing a player's mental ability other than just a few weeks of the
   year when you turn on the Masters or U.S. Open. Golf is supposed to be
   a game of, you know, testing oneself against oneself. The golf course
   is just an element that's there to bring those things out."

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