Randy Puetz

MOSES LAKE — It turns out golf is in Randy Puetz’s blood.

“My father was a golf professional. Two of my uncles were golf professionals. And three cousins,” Puetz said. “I grew up where we lived at the pro shop. The pro shop was our house.”

His youth was spent within arms’ reach of a club.

“And my world was a golf course,” Puetz, 72, said. “School was someplace where you went, and then you left and came back to reality. Which was a golf course.”

Puetz’s father George — whom he describes as “an excellent player” — played in the U.S. Open Championship in 1955 at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, playing four rounds of 18 holes with 315 shots, far behind winner Jack Fleck — who beat legendary golfer Ben Hogan in a playoff — with 287, according to the Golf Compendium web site.

“I was a contender in the northwest. Didn’t win anything. I’ve got a couple of regrets, but I wasn’t able to pull it off,” Puetz said. “But I had a good career.”

Now retired, Puetz teaches golf techniques at The Links at Moses Point, where he focuses on Ben Hogan’s five fundamentals — grip, stance, backswing, downswing and the full swing process — and telling his students to keep it simple and practice as much as they can.

“I pretty much taught myself, and because of that I’ve learned how the swing works for me, and I try to impart that to others,” he said.

Puetz saids he was turned on to Hogan’s simple little book — a slim volume many golfers read and markup so much the paperback copies fall apart — by a friend of his father. Hogan’s book is a blueprint, Puetz said, a clean an uncomplicated dissection of how to hit a golf ball consistently well.

“People asked Ben Hogan what the secret was, and he said the secret’s in the dirt. Go out and start hitting golf balls,” Puetz said. “And that’s what he did. He was a ball hitter.”

Puetz said one of the first things he tells new or aspiring golfers, aside from practice, is that golf is a difficult sport to master, and takes a long time and a lot of work to understand, largely because a golfer has to use his or her entire body, and not just the dominant hand.

“It’s really hard,” he said. “If you’re a right handed, the left side is involved, and the left hand the right side. So you’re trying to do things with your weak, uncoordinated side. And that’s what makes the game more difficult.”

Puetz said the fact that each golf course is unique and each round of golf is in weather that can vary so widely also make the sport a challenge to learn to play well.

“In this game, it isn’t like football where the field is the same everywhere, or a baseball diamond that’s the same,” he said. “Every golf course you go to is completely different.”

“Because the playing field changes, and it changes from day to day, because yesterday it was gorgeous and today the wind is blowing 20 miles and hour. So now what do you do?” Puetz said. “You’ve got to make adjustments.”

This is why players need to practice, Puetz explained, because skill and talent are honed and developed over time. Almost nothing in golf is picked up quickly.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve had a guy tell me they played in a tournament on Saturday and they played lousy. And they don’t understand it because they went to the range Friday night and hit the ball really well,” Puetz said.

“Well, it doesn’t work like that. The work you did Friday night shows up two months from now,” he said. “So there’s a lag time and it takes time to percolate through your brain and through your body.”

Which is why golfers — both new and experienced — need to be patient and consistent in practicing, and get help with their fundamentals in person from actual pros, Puetz said. He offers instruction at Moses Pointe, primarily to individuals, but occasionally to groups of beginners looking to learn the basics.

“You need to develop a plan of practicing and then stick to it,” he said. “And you’ve got to get to the point where if you don’t practice, you have a guilt trip.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.