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Foreword by
Steve Elkington

"It is most worthy as an engaging and warm story of a simple but complex man obsessed with the simplicities and complexities of golf...Read the book and see for yourself. It is a tale that at least adds a charming piece  to the puzzle."

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"No Father’s Day roundup would be complete without a golf book...Gummer’s book will not only inform and entertain golf lovers, but may also just help them to improve their game."

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"Homer Kelley for years loomed as one of the games last great mysteries, an obscure but important man who reshaped our perceptions of the modern swing. In this substantive and stylish book, Gummer unravels Kelley's elusive personal history and sheds light on his considerable influence. It's a story that will enlighten teachers, enthrall serious players and entertain golfers at all levels."
Guy Yocum
Golf Digest

Scott Gummer has done a masterful job at a daunting task: solving the riddle of the man who solved (he thought) the riddle of the golf swing. Homer Kelley's Golfing Machine is a sad and funny story beautifully told.
Curt Sampson
author of Hogan

He is golf's most unlikely genius,
yet Homer Kelley's story has never been told--
until now.

In 1939, Homer Kelley played golf for the first time and scored 116. Frustrated, he did not play again for six months; when he did he carded a 77. After a parade of teaching professionals failed to satisfactorily explain to Kelley why he was able to shave nearly 40 strokes off his score, Kelley concluded that if he wanted answers he would have to find them himself.

Thus began Homer's odyssey. A billiard hall fry cook with a mind for science, Kelley studied tirelessly to recapture that one wonderful day when golf was easy and enjoyable. It would take him three decades of trial and error to unlock the answer. In 1969, Kelley self-published his findings in The Golfing Machine: The Computer Age Approach to Golfing Perfection.

Heavy on physics and geometry, the work was intimidating but revolutionary. The bestselling instruction books of the day required golfers to conform their swings to the author's ideals, but Homer Kelley configured swings to fit every golfer; by his math, there were 446 quadrillion unique permutations of a scientifically correct golf swing.

Lacking name recognition or credibility, Kelley might have languished in obscurity, but he found a enthusiastic disciple in a Seattle teaching pro named Ben Doyle, who in turn found an eager student in 13-year-old prodigy Bobby Clampett. Clampett's historic rise through the amateur ranks shined a bright spotlight on Homer Kelley and The Golfing Machine, but when the young star suffered a painfully public collapse and faltered as a pro, critics were quick to blast Kelley and his complex and controversial ideas. The Golfing Machine subsequently suffered a long, slow slide towards obsolescence--only to find the validation Kelley sought, and deserved, in the unexpected form of a teenage girl.

With exclusive access to Homer Kelley's archives, this book paints a fascinating picture of the man behind the machine, the ultimate outsider who changed the game once and for all of us.

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The Golfing Machine
by Homer Kelley

www.TheGolfingMachine.com
www.BenDoyleGolf.com www.BobbyClampett.com

FOREWORD
By Steve Elkington

Ever since I started playing golf as a boy, I have been fascinated by the nuts and bolts of the swing. Analytical by nature, I always sensed that the explanation for how to create a mechanically sound stroke could be found in math and science.

I have been fortunate to work with wonderful teachers, including Alex Mercer in Australia , the late Claude Harmon, and my mentor, Jackie Burke. Each shared with me their beliefs on what the golf swing should look and feel like, and I enjoyed great success as a result of their teachings, my professional career highlighted by winning a major, the 1995 PGA Championship, seventeen victories worldwide, and ten on the PGA TOUR.

A little over a decade ago, not long after I won the PLAYERS Championship for a second time, a friend who was well aware of my interest in the inner workings of the golf swing suggested I visit Ben Doyle. Ben had worked with a long list of tour players and top teachers, so I went to Carmel Valley and spent a few days at the Quail Lodge resort with Ben.

The first time I saw Ben hit a ball, I knew instantly that his swing possessed a mathematical advantage.
I have always had a keen eye for golf swings. I can instinctively pinpoint where golfers are correct and where they are compensating, and I knew Ben was onto something. All the answers, he said, were in "the book," and he handed me a copy of The Golfing Machine by Homer Kelley.

My reaction, like most, was initial intimidation, yet my desire to truly understand the golf swing fueled my commitment to devote the time and energy required to work through the book. In it, Homer Kelley cataloged all useable components and explained all available variations for swings that are considered orthodox, like Jackie Burke's, Tiger Woods', and mine, as well as unorthodox, like Arnold Palmer's, Lee Trevino's, and Jim Furyk's. Each can be mathematically correct--when understood.

The Golfing Machine is not a traditional instructional text that endeavors to teach a golf swing, but rather a manual that explains every possible combination of every possible golf swing. That fundamental difference, for me, makes The Golfing Machine the Holy Grail.

Like Ben says, either you're lawful or you're awful.

Over the course of the dozen years that I have been working with Ben, it has become something of a hobby of mine to test every assertion Homer Kelley makes in The Golfing Machine. At the highest level of competition and under the most demanding of conditions, I have found everything in the book to be true.
I traveled to Homer's studio in Seattle and visited with his widow, Sally. Those experiences only deepened my profound awe and respect for how any one man could have started this project and completed it to the depth that Homer did. I am amazed--by the book and the truths I continue to discover in it, but also by those who debunk it. Come show me where it's wrong. That's what Ben has always said, and Ben is correct. Just show me where it's wrong.  

In the 40 years since Homer Kelley first published The Golfing Machine, everything has become measurable. This is especially true in sport. I long to see one of those sports science television shows devote a program to analyzing a golf swing that possesses maximum mathematical efficiency because the dissected result would be twenty-four matched components and associated variations right out of The Golfing Machine.

The advances Homer Kelley foreshadowed in the book's subtitle, "The Computer Age Approach to Golfing Perfection," have cluttered lesson tees with all manner of high-tech gizmos and gadgets and turned golf instruction into a billion-dollar industry--while at the same time leaving more golfers more confused and discouraged. It need not be that way, for the book unlocks what every golfer wants and needs: a little definitive information.

Thanks to Homer Kelley, the golf swing is no longer an enigma. Thanks to The Golfing Machine, that is precisely what I have discovered.

EXCERPT

1.
How Hard Can It Be?

The ball sat motionless on a peg in the grass. Behind it rested a polished block of persimmon wood, significantly larger in size and harder in composition than the ball. Jutting from the wood was a long, shiny, silver shaft of steel. Wrapped tightly around the grip at the top of the shaft were the strong hands of a thirty-one-year-old man. He took a practice swing. Then another. Weapon at the ready, target open wide, the ball was his for the crushing. 

It would have been a different story had the ball been moving. It was not hurtling toward him at blinding speed. It was not camouflaged, made no evasive movements or attempts to elude. It was not curving or sinking or knuckling about. It just sat there, ready for takeoff. 

He had no reason to fear repercussion. What he was about to do was not illegal; in fact, it was encouraged. "Give it a ride," said one of the three men waiting and watching behind him. The ball was not fragile and would not shatter or explode. It bore no seams or stitches or other impediments to its trajectory. It was neither slippery nor spindly nor oblong nor heavy. It was, in fact, quite light and perfectly round. It did not teeter or totter. It just sat there on its perch, completely obediently. "What are you waiting for?" cracked another of the men.

He was not being timed. The others were not referees or umpires, nor were they there to judge him. His style would not be critiqued; his livelihood could not be jeopardized. They had no motivation or mandate to thwart him. He had nothing that they wanted, and they had nothing to defend. "Don't mind us," needled the man who had invited him.

Homer Kelley waggled the club back and forth to loosen up. Taking a deep breath, he raised his club like Paul Bunyan lifting his axe and took a violent lash at the defenseless object.

"If I pay for the lessons, will you take them?" Golfing buddies were hard to come by as America climbed out of the Depression, but the boss also aimed to shut Kelley up. "Silly game," Kelley would grouse. It was not that he disliked golf so much as he enjoyed pushing the boss's buttons. "How hard can it be to hit a ball in a hole with a stick?" Kelley's cocksure derision--despite never once having so much as picked up a golf club--spurred the boss to put his money where Kelley's mouth was. Offered free lessons, Kelley conceded he had nothing to lose. 

"That settles it," said the boss with a wry, knowing grin. "You will get just as bad as anybody." 

A teaching pro had opened up a little indoor driving range just down the street from the billiard hall where Kelley worked as a cook. A couple of times a week over the course of a couple of weeks, Kelley met with the man before working his shift behind the grill. The pro showed Kelley how to hold the club with an interlocking grip, how to take a stance with the ball between his feet, how to take the club away and turn his back to the target, how to swing through and turn his belly button toward the target, and how to finish with his hands high in the sky. Athletic if not an athlete, Kelley picked it up in short order, and after five lessons the boss arranged a weekend game with Kelley, the pro, and a friend. 

The round got off to an inauspicious start. Kelley had never set foot on a golf course, and upon arriving on the first tee he was invited to lead the way. Kelley looked to his left, then to his right, and then back to his left, as if he were about to cross a street. 

"Which way do I go?" Kelley inquired. 

"At the flag," said the boss. 

Homer instinctively spied the Stars and Stripes flapping atop the flagpole. 

"That flag!" said the boss, pointing up a long stretch of mowed lawn. 

Kelley squinted at a tiny speck on the end of a stick 453 yards in the distance. As he laid the persimmon wood behind the motionless ball, one thought rang in his head, Swing as hard as you can. 

Luckily the stand of fir trees lining the fairway to the right deflected Kelley's hosel rocket, otherwise he might well have taken out one of the golfers on the adjoining hole and been hauled off for manslaughter before ever getting to hit a second shot. 

"How can it be that hard?" Kelley grumbled under his breath as he trudged after his tee shot. Meadow Park Golf Course in Tacoma, Washington was a perfectly pleasant municipal track. Opened in the spring of 1938, it was less than a year old. A par-70 measuring just under 6,000 yards, it was intentionally designed to be friendly to even the rankest of amateurs, which Homer Kelley most assuredly was. 

The first three holes at Meadow Park carried the three highest handicaps on the course. Unfortunately, Kelley failed to capitalize on even that slight advantage. He made a hash of number one, carding a nine on the par five, however he did not shoot himself out of the match, as his pro, his boss, and the friend fared only slightly better, posting six, eight, and nine, respectively. Kelley got things moving in the right direction; he followed his quadruple-bogey at the first with a triple at the second. At the par-three third, he sniffed par but settled for bogey. 

Whatever hopes Kelley might have harbored for a decent score were dashed when he put up a ten-spot at the par-five sixth hole. And yet, when they made the turn Kelley's 58, while twenty-four strokes over par, placed him just two strokes behind the boss and his friend. When they finally put the flag back in the hole at eighteenth, the pro had run away from the others with matching 41s, while the friend limped in at 106 and the boss at 115. Kelley and the boss came to the eighteenth hole tied, but Kelley finished the day as disastrously as he'd started, with a quadruple-bogey nine, to finish the day with a score of 116. 

Kelley had no delusions that he would shoot lights out his first time out, but neither did he envision playing like a one-armed blind man in a straitjacket. He was embarrassed, but more than that he was vexed. Shuffling to the parking lot Kelley carped, "I hit the ball so well at the driving range--why couldn't I do it on the course?" The boss chuckled at Kelley with a wry, knowing grin. 

Kelley did not play golf again for six months. Then, one summer Sunday in July 1939, two friends coaxed him into batting it around Tacoma's Highland Golf Course. Highland was not a brute of a course by any stretch; at 6,147 yards and par 72 it was slightly tougher than Meadow Park. Like Meadow Park, Highland started out with a relatively easy par five measuring 448 yards. Kelley took his stance and addressed the ball, but instead of telling himself to swing as hard as he could Kelley cleared his mind and smoothed his tee shot into the fairway. His approach came up short of the green, but his pitch tucked up close, and his putt found the bottom of the cup for a birdie four. 

"How can that be?" Kelley mumbled to himself as they moved to the next tee. At the par-four second hole Kelley again hit the fairway, then the green, and then two-putted for a par. He bogeyed the third, the number-one handicap hole, then strung together a series of pars at the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth holes. Kelley was looking at making the turn in even par before a bogey at the par-five ninth.

Heading to the back nine, Kelley learned a new golfing term: sandbagger. He endured no shortage of good-natured ribbing from his friends, who had every reason to be leery of Kelley's woe-is-me tale from his ghastly first time out on the golf course. He gave them no more reason to believe him on the inward nine, carding par-bogey-par-double-par-bogey-par-par through seventeen holes. Like Meadow Park, Highland closed with a 520-yard par five that was rated as the third-hardest hole on the course. Unlike at Meadow Park, Kelley finished with a putt for a birdie four. The ball took a look at the bottom of the cup but stayed out, and Kelley wound up with a 77. 

Kelley asked to keep the scorecard, which he summarily presented to his teaching pro, Al Dunn. 

"How did I shoot a 77?" asked a dumbfounded Kelley. 

"You must have been more relaxed," was Dunn's only explanation. 

"No," Kelley countered sharply. "I wasn't relaxed. I was such a nervous wreck the night before I hardly slept at all." 

"What was different?" 

Kelley pondered the question. Maybe his defenses had been down. Or perhaps he had felt a subconscious relief about not playing with his boss and the pro. It might have been that he felt more at ease with the blue-collar crowd at Highlands, or the fact that almost everything is easier the second time around. The only tangible thing that stuck in Kelley's mind, however, was the slow, sweeping swing he had used. 

"Then stick with that," said the pro. "It obviously works for you." 

More befuddling to Homer Kelley than how he shot a 77 his second time playing golf was how he wound up flipping burgers in a Tacoma billiard hall in the first place. 

Kelley was born August 3, 1907 in Clayton, Kansas, the capital of the middle of nowhere. His father, John Kelley, is listed on Homer's birth certificate as a retail merchant, twenty-nine years old, originally from Saline County, Kansas. Kelley's mother, Ida, was a twenty-six-year-old housewife from Ottawa County. The family left Kansas when Homer was five and settled in suburban Minneapolis. 

Along with his brothers and sisters, Lawrence, Ward, Emma, and Elsie, Homer attended public schools and did all the things that average kids do. He played the clarinet and toyed with the piano. He liked to hike and bike and participated in almost every sport except golf; winter, spring, summer, and fall, indoors and out, he played football, basketball, and softball, did gymnastics, swam, bowled, ice skated, and skied. Tennis was his favorite, but Kelley's true talents and dexterity resided not in his body but in his mind.

Kelley's hyperactive imagination and insatiable curiosity were fostered in large measure by his having grown up with Minnehaha Falls State Park right in his own backyard. He spent hours upon hours and entire weekend days exploring the farthest corners of the two-hundred-acre wonderland, which felt like a world removed from his extraordinarily ordinary life next door. After graduating from South High School in 1924, Kelley gave college a try for two years, studying a mishmash of subjects from botany to civics to logic to public speaking. The jobs Kelley worked were as odd as they were mundane: 

Newspaper carrier 
Park pony-ride counter 
Busboy 
Office boy 
Mail-order house stock boy 
Department store delivery boy 
Machine-shop messenger 
Garage helper 
Farmhand 
Harvest hand 
Apple warehouseman 
Building painter 

All people think that New Zealand is close to Australia or Asia, or somewhere,
and that you cross to it on a bridge. But that is not so.
It is not close to anything, but lies by itself, out in the water.
Mark Twain 
Following the Equator: 
A Journey Around the World 

...a land of superb scenery, made up of snowy grandeurs,
mighty glaciers, beautiful lakes, and a waterfall of 1,900 feet

Perfect summer weather.
Large school of whales in the distance.
Nothing could be daintier than the puffs of vapor they spout up,
when seen against the pink glory of the sinking sun,
or against the dark mass of an island reposing in the
deep blue shadow of a storm cloud.

Auckland is commanding, and the sea-view is superb.
From the grassy crater-summit of Mount Eden one's eye
ranges over a grand sweep and variety of scenery--
forests clothed in luxuriant foliage, rolling green fields,
conflagrations of flowers, receding and dimming stretches of green plain,
broken by lofty and symmetrical old craters--
then the blue bays twinkling and sparkling away
into the dreamy distances where the mountains loom
spiritual in their veils of haze.

In Wanganui... 
many comely girls in cool and pretty summer gowns 

Before Kelley could figure out how to pronounce Wanganui he and a friend hit the road in a Model T Ford pointed due west toward Washington State.

Kelley was anything but impulsive. He did his due diligence and conceived a plan that would see the two friends head for the nearest port serving the Pacific, where they would hook jobs on a ship bound for Down Under. Tacoma offered just such a launching pad, as the town's bustling new port shipped lumber and wheat all over the globe. Getting jobs was the least of their worries; after all, these were the Roaring Twenties, an era of unprecedented prosperity. Anything was possible, especially for a couple of young, eager, able-bodied Yanks. How hard could it be? 

The journey across America was long, hot and boring. It would be another year before the introduction of the first car radio in 1930, automobile air-conditioning did not arrive until the 1940s, and the Federal-Aid Highway Act was not enacted until 1956. The top speed of a Model T was forty-five miles per hour, and it was seventeen hundred miles from Minneapolis to Tacoma as the crow flies. Despite it all, Kelley and his cohort were downright giddy when they rolled into Tacoma on October 29, 1929--Black Tuesday. 

The Crash of '29 rocked the country and wiped out millions of Americans, but Kelley was especially devastated. Everything he had was invested in his dream. What he lost was infinitely more valuable than money. He lost hope. 

Kelley swallowed his pride and headed home. Although no fault of his own, he felt himself a failure returning to Minneapolis having accomplished nothing more than sightseeing. As the Depression wore on he took what menial work he could find, adding to his list of truly odd jobs: 

Gun club trap operator 
Sand-pit loader 
Train track rail-laying crew member 
Elevator construction crew member 
Bridge construction crew member 
Railroad-grading contractor crew member 
Washing machine salesman 
Locksmith 
Chauffeur 
Postal telegraph company installer 
Hotel public address system and radio repair and rental employee 

According to the complaint Kelley filed in Pierce County, Washington on August 16, 1936, "one month after the marriage of plaintiff [Homer] and defendant [Mabel], the defendant without just cause, deserted said plaintiff and since said time refused to return and live with him. That this plaintiff moved to the State of Washington in July, 1935, and since the time plaintiff has again written to said defendant asking her to return and she again expressed her refusal to resume the marital relationship. 

"That as a result of defendant's conduct, plaintiff has lost all love and affection for her. 

"Wherefore: Plaintiff prays that the bonds of matrimony heretofore existing between him and the defendant be dissolved." 

The divorce decree was made final on April 10, 1937. There were no children, nor would there be any mention of Mabel by Kelley for the rest of his days. He was heartbroken, embarrassed, made to feel unworthy and doubly a failure, but above all else Homer Kelley was a gentleman, and even his closest friends knew nothing of the person or the existence of Mabel Johnson Kelley. 

Kelley sought a fresh start back in Tacoma, if for no other reason than it was the last place he had experienced a genuine glimmer of hope. Work was no easier to come by, and Kelley killed much of his free time at Peterson & Cooksie Billiard Parlor down by the waterfront, where the diversion and the food were cheap. The proprietor, James Cooksie, figured that if Kelley were going to hang around all the time he might as well put him to work. 

In the five-and-a-half years Kelley toiled at the pool hall there was nothing he didn't do. He worked his way up to assistant manager, though Kelley may have missed his true calling as a traveling salesman, for as inglorious as the work was he made it sound not only professional but also borderline desirable with the rosy picture he painted on a future resume: 

EXPERIENCE: 
High-speed, low-price service 
Leisure dining service 
Transient and repeating clientele 
Equipment and lay-out 
Personnel training and rating 
Cost analysis and records 
Levels of quality and service 
Cleanliness and décor 
Purchasing and menus 
Location analysis 
Public relations and rowdyism

Cooksie and Kelley hit it off. The career elevators for most of the help topped out at the billiard hall, but Kelley was different. He was smart and curious and knew a little about a lot of things. He engaged in conversation and enjoyed a spirited debate. Kelley could take it, but he could also dish it out, especially when it came to the boss's obsession with golf.

"How hard can it be," Kelley would belittle. 

"If I pay for the lessons, will you take them?" 

Kelley was thoroughly dissatisfied with the feeble, "You must have been more relaxed" explanation that his golf teacher, Al Dunn, gave for Kelley's having shot a 77 the second time he ever set foot on a course. He knew that to be patently false, and as to the suggestion that he stick with the slow, sweeping swing that Dunn proclaimed, "obviously works for you," Kelley could not reproduce the motion his next time out.

So he sought out a different pro. "I cannot remember what I did," Kelley said. "I want to know why I played well that day that I shot 77." 

That expert's advice was for Kelley to keep his head behind the ball. That was all fine and good, except it did not answer the question Kelley had asked. So he sought out another pro. His solution was for Kelley to hit each shot on the practice range with the same process and purpose as he did on the golf course. That made perfect sense, except it addressed how and not why. So Kelley went to another pro, then another, then another, making the rounds around Tacoma desperately seeking someone who would not simply provide a description but could offer an explanation. With each supposed harbinger of golf knowledge Kelley encountered, he became exponentially more frustrated. "I thought every pro was holding out on me," Kelley later said. "I did everything they told me to do, but I did not get results." 

Then one day it dawned on him. Kelley, whose lifework would be marked by a series of epiphanies, realized that it was not the pros' fault at all. The swing doctors were all sincere about wanting to help the struggling duffer. They did not lack desire or empathy. They lacked information.
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copyright (c) 2009 by Scott Gummer