By EVAN ROTHMAN
Senior Writer
YPSILANTI, Mich. – The accomplished Michigan PGA Section pros Dave Kendall and Lynn Janson (right) met as flat-bellies more than 30 years ago.
Kendall, 52, was in the inaugural Professional Golf Management class at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich., and to complete an assignment he created a pro-am invitational tournament featuring prominent in-state club professionals.
“Lynn was the best player in Michigan, a tough competitor and a fine gentleman,” Kendall says. “He was what a golf pro should be, someone whom a club could be proud of, and a decent, thoughtful person who cared about his members and his students. He made quite an impression on me.”
The two often crossed paths at state tournaments and PGA functions. Their bond was solidified when Kendall turned down a dream offer from Janson to become his assistant: Kendall had accepted another job the day before with someone he had recently met and chose to honor that pledge.
“It broke my heart to tell him, but I think Lynn respected me for keeping my commitment,” Kendall says. “Because of that, we became friends.”
Janson, 59, ultimately competed in 16 major championships (seven U.S. Opens, seven PGA Championships, one U.S. Senior Open and one Senior PGA Championship), while Kendall became a renowned regional instructor with an eponymous golf academy.
Eight years ago, Janson, who in his words had “let my game slip,” during his children’s teenage years, called Kendall for a lesson. “I wanted to see if I could get my game back on track a bit and enjoy the twilight of my career,” Janson says.
Kendall was apprehensive.
“I idolized Lynn as a kid,” he said, “even though he wasn’t that much older than me.”
The two focused on Janson’s inconsistent long game, as his short game had been well known locally. When the lesson was over, Janson asked Kendall what he owed him.
“I said, ‘Just tell me why you’re the best short-game player I know, and I’m not,” Kendall recalls. “He said, ‘That’s easy – you do it the way they teach.’ ”
So began a working relationship redolent of “The Odd Couple” – the small man with
the superior long game helping the big man with the killer short game, and vice versa. Kendall and Janson work together at sectional events. Five years ago, they started to run small golf schools out of PGA Village in Port St. Lucie, Fla., during January and February, providing more time to work on each other’s games – and learn from one another.
“Lynn wouldn’t brag about being a great teacher, but he’s a lot better than he gives himself credit for,” Kendall says. “I’ve just had to take his ideas and put them in words that a normal person understands. Through me doing that, I’ve learned so much from him.”
Says Janson: “There’s a lot of give-and-take between us. It’s not, ‘Lynn, you have to do this, you have to do that.’ You learn something every time you teach, no matter who it is, and you can always learn from other professionals.”
Do the ‘bump’: “Lynn’s nemesis is that his body gets ahead of his arm swing,” Kendall says. “He tends not to rotate back in the full swing, and his clubface is forced to catch up with his hands. If his hands are quick, he can hook it; if the clubface is late, he hits it out to the right. He can get it going both ways.”
Kendall believes that when players are told to “get behind the ball,” they tend to shift their lower body to the right, which sends their upper body left to compensate. Thus, he tells Janson to “bump” his left hip to the left on the backswing. “When Lynn tries to do that, his left hip doesn’t go left, it just doesn’t go right,” Kendall says. “His upper body is balanced, and when he does that he plays really well.”
Tight pathway: In a similar vein, to prevent Janson’s right hip from getting high on the backswing and in turn swinging over the top, Kendall uses two angled sticks to create a path for the player to swing within (pictured) – inside (beneath) the orange one in back, and outside (over) the yellow one in front.
“Lynn can’t slide and make that happen – he has to turn tighter,” Kendall says. “His hips need to feel ‘upper left’ and ‘lower right.’ When they do, he hits it higher and about 20 yards longer, with the little draw that he prefers.”
Going long and taking aim: “Lynn got me to use a long putter back in 1988,” Kendall says. “He said, ‘You’re a good candidate for a gimmick – you’re a terrible putter.’ ”
Kendall switched successfully to a long putter, for which he credits Janson. But he also owes a debt to well-known teaching pros Darrell Kestner and Craig Farnsworth, for convincing him that a poor putter can become a good putter and for focusing more on aim, respectively.
“The root of me being a bad putter was that I was always a bad aimer,” says Kendall, who now draws a line on his ball as an aid and focuses 90 percent of his pre-putt routine on alignment. “Once I started aiming properly, I was rewarded for making a good stroke.”
Technically, Kendall focuses on “swinging the putter at the pace of gravity,” which he demonstrates by pulling it back and letting it swing, holding on with two fingers.
“I tell Lynn I can putt conventional now, because I understand how the putter swings,” Kendall says. “Lynn says that if I switch, I’m an idiot.”
Janson nods with a sly smile, speaking without saying a word.
Fighting the cupped left wrist: Kendall believes Janson’s tendency to have a cupped left wrist at impact derives from his reliance on that position in his short game, where hinging his knuckles helps hit high, soft pitches. Since Janson is a feel player, Kendall encourages him to turn down his left knuckles at impact and practice hitting big hooks to “establish his feel mechanism.” Kendall says, “Lynn’s very sophisticated – all you have to do is explain a principle and he can apply it.”
Though admitting his practice time is “pretty minimal,” Janson sometimes works to eliminate the weak up-shooters resulting from the cupped left wrist position with a homemade training aid: A tongue depressor.
“You tape it to the back of your left hand and take a slow swing,” he says. “It’s not ideal in that the left wrist should cup at the top of the follow-through, but it helps you understand what’s happening at impact. A cupped left wrist isn’t the easiest thing to correct.”
Chipping against the grain: Janson is an iconoclast when it comes to the short game.
“There are far more important keys than the ones listed by most people – you know, ‘Ball back, shaft forward, weight on the left side,’ ” Janson says. “Weight on the left side might be one-tenth of one-hundredth percent of a good short game. Those kinds of things are way overemphasized.”
Kendall’s by-the-book short game was ripe for change.
“Lynn taught me that you have to be able to change loft by changing the angle of the shaft, and how to use the bounce of the club to increase the margin of error by hitting the ball with a straight shaft,” Kendall says. “There are times you need to lean the shaft forward and pinch the ball, but if you don’t have to and you need loft, don’t.”
Janson’s short-game insight has affected not only Kendall’s play but also his teaching. He realized that good ballstrikers like himself tend to struggle with their short games because the clubface is too strong and approaches the ball too much from the inside – the club gets stuck and hits the ground too much on small, partial swings. (They are often then counseled to move the ball even father back in their stance, leaning the shaft more forward, resulting in a fat shot if they flip the club.) The more vertical movement of an over-the-top swinger, conversely, tends to hit the ball first and make more solid contact.
“Now I feel like I can teach the long game through the short game,” Kendall says. “You use a lot of the same skills to be a good ballstriker in the short game, but they’re applied differently. A fade in a long shot is a high, soft shot in the short game; a draw is more of a driving, hit-skip-stop shot in the short game.”
Name: Lynn Janson
Age: 59
Height/weight: 6-foot-3, 215 pounds
Gear: Titleist 905R driver (9.5 degree), Callaway Big Bertha Steelhead Plus 3+ (14 degree), Cobra King Cobra Baffler Pro hybrid (18 degree), Titleist 695CB irons (4-PW), Titleist Vokey Design wedges (54, 58 degree), Titleist by Scotty Cameron Studio Style Newport putter, Titleist Pro V1 ball
Best results: Winner, 1968 Michigan Amateur; two-time winner, Michigan Open; four-time winner, Michigan PGA Championship.
Credentials: Director of golf, Egypt Valley Country Club, Ada, Mich.
Honors: Member, Michigan Golf Hall of Fame
Name: Dave Kendall
Age: 52
Height/weight: 5-foot-6, 180 pounds
Gear: Titleist 907 D2 driver (10.5 degree), Titleist 906F 3-wood (15 degree) and 5-wood (18 degree), Cobra hybrid (20 degree), Titleist 660 irons (4-PW), Titleist Vokey Design sand and lob wedges (52 and 58 degrees), Titleist by Scotty Cameron Pro Platinum Big Sur putter (46 inches), Titleist Pro V1 ball
Best results: Two Northern Michigan PGA Chapter championships; two Northern Michigan PGA Chapter Player of the Year awards; three Michigan PGA Pro-Pro championships.
Credentials: Director of instruction, the Kendall Academy at Miles of Golf, Ypsilanti, Mich.; PGA Class A member since 1981
Honors: 2000, 2004 Michigan PGA Teacher of the Year; 1990, 2006 Michigan PGA Golf Professional of the Year
• • •
Evan Rothman is a
Golfweek senior writer. To reach him e-mail
erothman@golfweek.com.
Posted: 4/21/2007
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