Florida Golf Monthly

Al Kaline- "I'm not a fisherman or a gardner, I'm a golf junkie."

If you're in either Detroit, Michigan or Lakeland, Florida and start talking about a Tiger, you'd better clarify which Tiger you're talking about. People in both of these locales tend to think of Al Kaline, the baseball Hall of Fame right fielder, before Eldrick Woods, golf's famous Tiger, comes to mind. To many, "Tiger" Kaline means much more as well.

In his playing days, which spanned 22 seasons from 1953 through 1974, Kaline had a reputation as one of the best all around ballplayers in the history of the game. Always the tough competitor and ever the gentleman, he personified the Detroit Tigers of his era and Tigers fans everywhere revere him.

As you might imagine, when Kaline's playing career ended, there was a void in his life. He was a warrior without a battlefield, but the fact that fastballs could sometimes make it past him and that 90 feet between bases now seemed like a hundred didn't mean Kaline's natural competitive instincts had disappeared. He just needed a new outlet for them, and he found one. Golf became Kaline's new game.

"I'm not a fisherman or a gardener," says Kaline, "I'm a golf junkie. This is my game now, and I love it. I love to play competitively, but I don't have the chance during the summer because of my TV schedule [he broadcasts 40 Detroit Tigers games]. I'd love to play the celebrity events, but I have the chance to play in the Senior Tour pro-ams here in Florida and in the Ford Senior Players Championship in Michigan. I love to play in competition. I get nervous, but it feels good to get nervous again, and I can handle it."

During his baseball career, Kaline met with immediate success. When he led the American League in 1955 at the age of 21, he was baseball's youngest batting champion ever. That year he hit 200 of his 3,007 career hits, and he rose meteorically from there. When he was 39, Kaline discovered golf , playing at the 15-handicap level almost immediately. Before long, Kaline's handicap dropped into the single digits, and it has remained there ever since. In Florida, he currently carries a handicap of three, and in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he's a member at the famed Oakland Hills Country Club, he carries a six.

Kaline learned how to play golf the same way he learned to hit a baseball. "I've never had a lesson in my life," says Kaline. "I read all the instruction articles I can get my hands on. That's how I've learned to play this game. In fact, that's how I learned to hit a baseball. I used to read articles where Ted Williams would say to do this or do that to hit a baseball, and I'd go out in the back yard and do it."

Judging from his current handicap, Kaline has read all the right instruction articles, just as he did as a youth learning to hit a baseball. His Hall of Fame numbers include the 3,007 base hits with 399 home runs while driving in 1,583 runs. His lifetime batting average was .297.

Kaline's description of his golf game sounds similar to his baseball game &emdash;mistake free. "I don't have a real strong part of my game," says Kaline. "I guess my strength is [that] I keep the ball in play. There's not one phase of the game that I'm really good at, but I'm always in play. When I have a really good round, it's because I've putted well. If I putt well, I can have a really good score, but I don't have a lot of really bad ones because I can keep the ball in play."

Kaline's simple strategy has produced many good rounds, but the one he's obviously proud of is his 68 at Oakland Hills, a course deemed one of the most difficult in the country.

"That was a good round," he says while quickly adding a qualifier, "but it was from the member tees. I've also had a few rounds at 70 there, but I'm usually between 74 and 78 because I seldom hit errant shots."

After digging deeper into this baseballer's golfing success, it's clear that although he's an amazing natural athlete, at least one of those instructional golf

articles stressed that practice is the key to improving and maintaining one's game, and Kaline took the advice to heart.