Ed Miller of Pine Ridge tells Nestor about all of the Classic Five Golf courses around Baltimore and the beauty of fall golf – and a beautiful opportunity to work on improving your game.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
golf, year, golfers, golf course, pine ridge, play, club, baltimore, absolutely, good, ogden, sports, oriole, neat, hitting, game, love, baseball player, baseball, norm
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Ed Miller
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Hey, welcome home. We are W N, S T, Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore, positive. We are positively getting the Maryland crabcake tour back out on the road. It is that time again we’ve had a little bit of a downtime. I was down in Ocean City at Mako doing a whole bunch of political stuff, business stuff, future Maryland stuff, all the brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery, at the Gold Rush, sevens, doublers. I’m wearing my fatley shirt. Gonna be a fates on the 23rd back again on the sixth of September, we are kicking off 26 years. I gotta get rid of this 25th cupcake. I’m getting a 26th oyster and crab of 26 years. Wnst We’re gonna do 26 oysters in 26 days, 26 ways all along the bay, and that starts on September 5, when we go to Kansas City to take on the chiefs, our friends at Liberty, pure solutions, keeping our water clean, making sure your water is clean, and supporting our our oyster tour, and our friends at the Oyster recovery partnership that are helping clean the bay up. So we’re talking about that as well as our friends at Jiffy food, multi care, getting Luke to Camden Yards and out to Owings Mills as we get ready for the kind of September and October we haven’t had around here, my man, Ed Miller from classic five golf, is about to join us here. He’s online Baltimore. You know, we’ll get to golf in a minute, right? We can get, we can get to FedEx and your leagues and all of that stuff, but you’re Oriole and Raven guy, right?
Ed Miller 01:26
Oh, absolutely, absolutely,
Nestor Aparicio 01:29
you golf with people all day, and there’s golf people in there every day. I’m sure. Five years ago, nobody’s got an Oriole hat on. Now, everybody looks like Rick Dempsey. Oh, we got the Lamar thing going on. The Ravens, ravens, I have never smelled sports, and I’ve been doing this 33 years, every day of my life as a bartender. For you know, you’re a golf pro, I was sort of a sports pro, you know, like helping people, you know, get through after losses and understand trades. And like all of that, I’ve never seen more enthusiasm, but also hope that, like one of these teams, might win a championship here in the next couple months. That’s a good feeling, and I think it probably brings people out on the golf course talking about it all day too, right? Oh,
Ed Miller 02:10
absolutely, definitely, you can definitely. It’s funny you say that about the wardrobe, but I have absolutely seen a ton of Oriole golf shirts this year, and starting to see some of the purple come out now, as everybody’s starting to get ready. And like you said, it’s a great time to be a Baltimorean. We got two teams that hopefully can make it through the promised land and maybe hoist the big trophy at the end of the year. Absolutely exciting. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 02:32
yeah, that’s one thing that I guess I caught on to this early on. I’ve never told this story, so this is a good one back when I was a young reporter. And I encourage you and everyone else to go watch the documentary I’ll be pimping the next couple of weeks that came out a few months ago. But I covered ice hockey early in my I was 16, 1718, covering the skip jacks and then the Capitals in the mid 80s. So the, you know, red, red, white and blue capitals. And I remember going down to their games, and all of those guys played golf like and, you know, I’d never really spent a whole lot of time around baseball players, or heard them so much talking more golf than fishing. In the case of baseball players, every hockey player golfed, and that was their thing. And then I got to be old enough that there was this golf tournament. And that golf tournament, because you see banquets back in the 70s, right? One golf tournaments as much. But then the golf tournaments catch on, and then you find out that, as a sports guy, I threw a lot of golf tournaments for charity for Ed block. We held them out out in Carroll County. 30 years ago, John burin would come out and do we put us on the news and like all that, but like the amount of athletes that connect through golf and someone like you, I would say to you, all right, come on, man, give me a list of Orioles colts, celebs blast players that you’ve golf with or been a part of a charity golf effort. And I could probably go on all day just with my own golf tournaments. As to how many John Ogden types and Rod Woodson types love golf.
Ed Miller 04:01
Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s definitely a neat list. And it’s not everybody. It’s funny, you mentioned Ogden, but I’ve actually met Ogden at the golf course. And, you know, he doesn’t actually fit the bill of a typical golfer at 6869, 300 some pounds, but it is pretty wild to see some of these athletes come out and play. And it’s a, you know, no offense to Mr. Ogden, but not necessarily the greatest golfer in the world, not the world, nothing he’s built for. But it is neat to see these guys be able to maybe channel some of their competitive spirit down another sport and little bit more relaxing than the sport that they’re used to. Absolutely
Nestor Aparicio 04:34
you’d flip if you saw me holding the golf club, right? You think it’s it? Would it be unusual? Would that mean
Ed Miller 04:41
there’s good possibility, you know, but like I said, it’s not worse than some of these other athletes that I’ve seen, but we would just be able to tell your experience level Nestor, that’s always say, okay, maybe he’s not playing as much golf as he should be.
Nestor Aparicio 04:51
Well, I would say to you that I once hit a tee shot on 17 down in Ponte Vedra, you know, up onto the green. About six feet from the cup. So I did that once in my life, and at that point, it was like when I beat Danny Wiseman bowling, I just dropped the club. You know? I said, That’s it, but you’ve been picking the clubs up. I mean, you’ve been a pro at several classic five. Look. What would you say about classic five this time of year for all the courses, not just yours, but the one thing I’ve noticed earlier in the week, and this might be last week, if you’re listening, but we saw that break in in weather, and somebody put a really funny meme up about the 10 seasons in Baltimore and called this fake fall.
Ed Miller 05:35
That’s very true. Yeah.
Nestor Aparicio 05:37
You know, I would think this is the time of year that if you you can’t bear the heat, you’re a little older or crankier or whatever, or if you’re trying to learn the game, and not out there just dying in the middle of trying to learn the game, soak that this is a great time of the year to pick up the club as you move into this and probably a little bit more space, and all of those things that you guys always talk about to Say, we say reengagement of people to fall in love with the game again.
Ed Miller 06:03
Yep, Yep, absolutely. Now this time of year is, ironically, this is usually the best time of year as far as, like you say, the weather, the golf courses start to get prettier as the trees will eventually start changing colors. But this is also a great time the course is usually because you’re coming off of a couple months of summer. The courses do some wear and tear, but as they start to finish the golf season, this is usually the best condition that the golf courses will be in come end of September becomes great time of year for that. And honestly, most of the golfers, it’s ironic, but this is about the time they start playing their best golf. You know, they’ve had all summer to practice play, and that’s the irony of Baltimore golf. We get into the fall here. We’re not quite there yet, but as we’re getting there, your golf games, as good as it’s been all year, everything is starting to to round into form, so to speak. And you know best time to go out and play so and then, like you said, you throw in the sports right now with the Orioles and the Ravens, it’s great to go out and play, hang out with your friends for four hours and be able to talk sports for two or three of them, and just hang out with the guys or the gals. Good time of year, for sure.
Nestor Aparicio 07:08
Now, where’s your favorite classic? Five? Course, this is not a trick question.
Ed Miller 07:11
My favorite one, pine red.
Nestor Aparicio 07:17
Well, I mean, they’re all great. I remember when Mount Pleasant was your fat. I just wanna make sure, you know, like, it’s, it’s kind of like saying old school, new school, right? Yeah, I would say for your course specifically. And it’s kind of, what I led into is that you have some, some extra things that could take a first time golfer and maybe make it more enjoyable, especially, you know, I live in a Towson area. I mean, you’re like, five minutes from downtown. Like, it’s really amazing how quickly you get there, and also how far away you feel when you’re at Pine Ridge. Yeah,
Ed Miller 07:50
absolutely. It’s neat you say that. But you know, we are close enough to everything. I can get to the stadium in less than 30 minutes. You know, come play some golf in the morning, go to the Oriole game or Raven game later. But yeah, convenience wise, we’re close enough to where you can reach every activity, but we’re still far enough in the country where it’s scenic, it’s beautiful. We got the wildlife, the nature, obviously a great place to come hang out. And like you said, we still got tons of golf lessons going at the Baltimore Golf Academy. Just because it’s starting to get toward the end of summer and in the fall does not mean it’s too late to start working on the game, and as as we get into winter, we will have some indoor places to practice and learn as well. So
Nestor Aparicio 08:28
I tell you, I went and took a lesson, and I’ve told you, maybe I’ve told you this story. I know I’ve told Richard this story. I took my first lesson from norm vakoski down in furnace Creek Golf. And it was in the 90s. It was right after Greg Norman blew the Masters eight, you know, 9696 Okay, yeah, so that’s what it was. And I went down. The first thing is, I held, I’m, see, I have these the old school Bic pen. So I’m going to use this. I probably could use my, yeah, I’m going to use my Raskin global crab claws, what I’m going to do. And I picked up the golf club like a baseball bat. It held it over my shoulder, kind of like Roberto Clemente would have. And, you know, I had to get the fingers right and get the thumb right, and get the grip right, and get the arms out right. So I learned all of this stuff. I learned all of this. I want to say he taught me parts of it, like, out, you know, actually somewhere where I could ship a ball, and then the rest of it kind of happened, like, beat the hell out of the ball in the range. And, you know, give me a one or three or five a wood, you know, like, but learning different clubs, what, you know, what I was going to do with woods and irons, the difference a putter like, you know, I didn’t know a lot for not knowing a lot. Being on the radio, nobody’s like, learn golf. It’ll improve your business life and like all that stuff. So I went to learn, when you take an adult or a child at this point, specifically at Pine Ridge, because I’ve been up there, I’ve seen a. She all that simulator outside. Where would you start somebody now? Because it would feel to me, and maybe I’m like, I think my wife left for work. She’s gone. I can talk bad about her here. Well, I met my wife 21 years ago. She told me she liked her previous boyfriend, engulfed a little bit, showed me she had golfed a little bit, and I took her to the range, and she just like she, she’s gonna, it would have been a really long day, like she would need the lessons, right? But, but, but, of the two of us, you would be way more apt to make her a golf aholic. She has that personality about competing, and once she goes all in, or whether it’s feeding birds or hiking, she really like gets into it, right? So she fell in love with it because you made her good at it. And she had the right girlfriend or the right she could be a candidate if she, if she got retired and bored. Oh, man, she she likes outside. She likes competition. She likes golf. She sits and watches golf. So she would need you. I mean, I’m just being honest, like she’s not any good at it. She hasn’t picked it up, but she would want to play it. She would be really interested, maybe even more so than tennis, right? So what would you do with my 52 year old, beautiful, put back together, strong on a yoga mat, buff, not the back problem that I have. She would not have any problem swinging a club full on. Where would you take her first
Ed Miller 11:28
Well, I personally like to make sure at the very beginning that a new golfer gets a little bit of a taste of the golf course. So we might start someplace on the golf course, but maybe in general, something easier, like from the green backwards, working on some putting and chipping. But I like my newer golfers to at least get out there and experience the golf course a little bit understand what they’re getting into. I don’t want them to think that golf is nothing but practice. Obviously, we would go over some of the fundamentals to make sure she can hold the club right, the basic form and stuff like that. But the goal would be get her on the golf course as soon as possible. Dude,
Nestor Aparicio 12:03
loving the club right for me, took three lessons because I wanted to bend my arm like a baseball player. I could not get my arms around after swinging a baseball bat and a tennis racket every day in my life. Dude, like I, you know, I was very good baseball, tennis play. I hand all of that. I would always say flippantly, the ball doesn’t move. I mean, so like, the ball doesn’t move. How hard can this be? I’ve been hitting the moving ball while I’ve been moving in tennis forever, trying to judge angles. The only angle is me, the club, my body the right, you know, hitting it flush, like you want to do with a baseball bat, like you want to do with a tennis racket, right? Like centering all of these things, they launch angle, this fancy schmancy baseball stuff and all that. But for me, um, I form was everything, where your hips are and where you’re not keeping your eyes down and where you want your head. But more than anything, dude, it took me forever to cure arms in, arms out, arms locked, like it took me months just to not shank balls because I was jamming my arm like, of like a baseball player, honestly, because I had that, that motion of a baseball so many times, I don’t know how you unlearn that.
Ed Miller 13:24
Yeah. Well, the neat thing is about modern technology and using some video, I don’t like to use a ton of it, depending on where the student is, but there’s actually much more similarities in a baseball swing and a golf swing, maybe a different plane, so to speak, on what’s the bat versus in a hockey slap shot? Yeah, in a hockey slap shot. Actually, I got me a retired Montreal Canadian who plays golf at the golf course on the weekends. And, hey, hockey girls, how about field hockey? Yeah, that too, absolutely, yeah. Any
Nestor Aparicio 13:51
girl ever played field hockey would love golf, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And
Ed Miller 13:55
I think, you know, honestly, like in, the goal is, normally, I remember being taught this myself when I was younger, but if I can get you to start hitting a couple of good shots the first time, the better that golf ball flies, and the further it flies, the easier it becomes for you to listen and go ahead and make a change. Another reason why I try to get you on the golf course as soon as possible to to get some success, whether it’s the putting the chipping, but once you start hitting one or two good shots, it gets easier to go ahead and make a change, and to listen and and plus, you know, I learned myself back in the day, and I would say that we have better, better teaching equipment, better things to help you along now than we did 30 years ago. You know, I got stuff that will help you grip the club right every single time
Nestor Aparicio 14:36
I took those clubs out, and I think I might have bought them at, like, a garage sale, like, literally, there were Wilson clubs the right, and I took them out. And they may have been from the 70s, you know what I mean, but I, but I, if I were being funny, I would say they were total Fred Flintstone. You know, they were like rocks. Yeah, no, I took him out there. And now, like in the modern era, I remember Hennessy did a trade here 30 years ago and got me, like, serious graphite BS, you know. You know to call a bang, you know. So, you know, I mean, you know, made me feel like I’m more led my pretzel. You know, Ed Miller’s here, classic five golf is all around the beltway, all the locations. Let me see off top my head, let’s go Carroll Park, Mount Pleasant. Clifton Park, Pine Ridge, and hold on, missing one. What am I missing? Forest
Ed Miller 15:35
Park, yeah. RJ
Nestor Aparicio 15:36
is gonna kill me now, no. But adds up at Pine Ridge. Let you know anything else, tell people about coming out and playing affordability, you know, daylight, I mean, just general things, because the weather really has been beautiful, and I know it’s gonna go to hell by the time people here this week from now, it’ll be 94 again, fake fall, but, but when the weather does get nice, there is something about like, if you think you like golf, or want to go back, or have ever played, it’s, it’s nice to be on a golf course when fall happens. Man, absolutely.
Ed Miller 16:07
And the fact is, you know, most people don’t appreciate the size of a golf course, but you’re talking 140 to 200 acres. Plus, you know, how many baseball stadiums and football stadiums you can actually fit on a golf course is, uh, mind blowing. So once you get out there, like I said, just escape from the world, escape from work, whatever it is, four hours with your friends, you can’t beat it.
Nestor Aparicio 16:28
My wife went out there. She would tell you to shove that cart. She’s like, I’m walking. I’m walking. You know what? I mean, caddy, give me, give me the clubs. Yeah. I mean, you know. So, you know, I guess for people to come out and have that kind of an experience, have a day out with y’all and learn a little bit, you got a lot of kids out there learning too, right? And they’re going back, oh,
Ed Miller 16:48
absolutely, you know, I guess that’s a love or hate relationship, but they’re all going to be gone soon. But yes, 30 kids at camp been running them all summer. Kids all day out there. It’s kind of a bummer for them. But yeah, next week, they’re going to school. I’ve seen a lot of kids, actually this past couple of weeks, I guess, getting to them before school starts back up. But, uh, you know, another one, another great sport for your kids to learn. Get them out. Hang
Nestor Aparicio 17:12
on. I want you to single out a kid. You can give me their real name, first name or fake name, and tell me about a kid that came earlier in the summer that couldn’t play, and now can play a little bit, because we all had that summer as kids where we, you know, I just told you to start with norm. I went from not being able to hold the club to being able to really swing well enough to really shock the hell out of drew Forrester and Casey Willett and Ray Bachmann when I was down in Jacksonville and I put the ball up on the green. They’re like, Oh, my God. I’m like, I’ve swung a lot of golf clubs. I mean, so like, you know, and I’ve played charity. I’ve done all that, um, but for, you know, for, I guess, anybody to get out there and be a part of this and hit it really good. Like you said that look in your eye you get when you hit it really good, right? There is something magical about that. You feel like, Gunner Henderson winning 500 bucks for a lottery winner.
Ed Miller 18:02
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, I say two things. Number one, first is neat. You bring up norm. I actually that was my first boss in the golf business back in the late 80s. I worked for norm, so I always think that’s pretty cool. And I saw norm about a month ago, so norm still doing pretty well. There
Nestor Aparicio 18:16
you go. Man, that makes me an OG, yeah, yeah,
Ed Miller 18:20
absolutely, yeah. And we got a handful of kids, I would say, like one is a kid named Briggs. I think he’s 1111, or 12 years old, first first time touching the club back in the end of June at one of the camps. And now here we are, just three and a half months later, and Briggs gets dropped off at the course with another friend. They play golf probably two days a week, but they’re hanging out practicing putting, chipping. It’s kind of neat. So it’s almost like their country club, you know, I get to see them come in after a couple hours of practice, and they’ll get their ice cream and their drinks and hang out. And it’s, uh, you know, brings me back to when I was that age. And it’s, uh, you know, worse things that you can be doing at 1213, years old than to hang out at the golf course, learn some golf. And now it’s funny, you know, like I said, new to golf in June, but I know they got a couple years away, but they’re already talking about trying to play competitive golf next year. Start getting ready for high school golf in a couple years. So that part is definitely, uh, you like to see that part so well, that’s
Nestor Aparicio 19:15
what you’re there for, right? I mean, that’s really at the end of it. You make a living, you have fun, but then your measurement is the measurement of your students, you know? Yeah, absolutely,
Ed Miller 19:23
absolutely. And I’ve always joked, that’s the neat thing about golf. I am technically in the business of fun. Well, I’m not out there trying to save a life. Might be trying to save you a couple golf balls by improving your your game, but I’m out there in the business of fun. There’s nothing, uh, you know, there’s nothing to over stress about. We’re out there to escape life. Have some fun, get better at golf and enjoy everybody’s company. So awesome business to be in, for sure. I
Nestor Aparicio 19:46
look, man, we only get together every couple you know months. This FedEx Cup give me the inside golf thing for everybody out there that loves and is watching, and there’s lots of people all summer long. This. Live, live thing I had John Feinstein on two weeks ago. We did a big thing about golf and blood money and journalism and all of that stuff. But the interest level above and beyond kids playing and people going out and having a good day or doing business playing golf, the actual part of being a fan of golf, it’s been so weirdly fractured. You know, it’s funny like that. I mean, say the same thing about college sports with the n, i L, right. Like, you know, when things pass, or boxing, horse racing, when people stop, but the golf thing, people are still into it, but it is a little fractured. It’s been weird, absolutely,
Ed Miller 20:35
absolutely been a little bit fractured. And, you know, I think they tried to streamline the FedEx Cup playoffs this year. They took it from four events down to three. You know, it’s still doing really well. Obviously, you know, I follow the tour all the time, and I think one of the answers they’ve had, and it’s brought, it’s brought back some of the attention from the bigger golfers, but they’ve made, they’ve made the playoffs for so much money. It’s one of the ways to compete against that blood money. You know, at the end of the playoffs, the winner is going to get an additional $25 million for winning the FedEx Cup playoffs. You throw that into with the extra perks of the what the PGA Tour is calling their eight signified events for next year, you actually have to qualify for the second part of the playoffs to be eligible for that for next year, and all those purses are increased, 20 million plus, you know, purses on it. And it’s a shame that you, like you said, Golf is a little fractured this year, and I think it’s taken away a little bit. But we’ve had a, you know, an American golfer, Scottie Scheffler, is having one of the better years. I mean, comparable to an early 2000s Tiger Woods year and, and I know, I watch it, and I follow it, and a lot of my regular golfers are talking about it, but there is still, you know, there’s some that will detach from that and say, Oh, well, there’s some golfers that aren’t playing in the field. So maybe Scotty here is not as good, and I find that a shame. You know, Scotty is playing pretty awesome. And, well,
Nestor Aparicio 21:57
the Olympics also, really, for a day or two, it brought golf. I mean, it brought everything. My wife was addicted to it, watching it all day, every day, from Paris that, you know, like so, whether it’s gymnastics, whatever it was, but golf had its peace in a way that it didn’t 30 years ago. And, you know, 40 years, 40 years ago for for Mary Lou Rhett, and that’s crazy, right? Yeah, but, but, you know, in those days that golf wasn’t a part of that, right? Yeah, yeah.
Ed Miller 22:27
And you’re right, the Olympics, that’s interesting. You said there were a couple live golfers playing in the Olympics, and you know, I think they did a good job on covers. They never mentioned whether they were on the tour or live golf. They just talked about the country they represented. And like you said, it was actually good for golf to see tour and live guys just kind of playing in the same field and not actually hearing about the controversy of the two separate tours. So I thought that was pretty good. Now, you mentioned it
Nestor Aparicio 22:51
always love having Ed Miller on he’s up at Pine Ridge classic five golf sponsoring us. You find them out at Baltimore positive. Hey, man, I hope to see you at an oral playoff game somewhere down the line and Well, nice. Enjoy your fall golf. I always love having you on I’ll come see you, visit you soon. And if my wife is going to hit the course, it’s going to be yours. Don’t listen. Don’t tell RJ. Don’t tell me. Know them. But if my wife is going to golf, it’s going to be Pine Ridge. Honestly,
Ed Miller 23:15
there you go. Bring her out there. We got some ladies leagues to keep her active as well. So
Nestor Aparicio 23:18
just get her hitting the ball straight, dude, I’m Nestor, he’s Ed. We’re wnsta of 1570 back for more Baltimore positive. Stay with us.
