"My name is Tom. I was born into a baseball family. My father talked about stick ball, tried out for the Yankees and got signed to the farm system for the Saint Louis Cardinals. In his generation there was still no money to be made playing baseball so he went back to work delivering ice in NYC. Living through his eyes, baseball became a force in my youth. I was a very good player making 3 All Star teams. As a coach, working with kids for whom baseball was their only avenue of escape, we took a bunch of kids of mixed starting skill level and turned it into a top notch team. The city took notice and requested us to go for the All Stars.. We had to collect money for uniforms. It was the first time in many, many years that this inner city fielded an All Star Team. My kids knew they were good enough to compete with anybody.

I got into golf because it was an individual game. Either I could do it or I couldn't. My father gave me a couple of books to read. My philosophy is reading the first principle of learning. There are good and there are bad, but by far, the ones that have played well and done well are well read. The bottom line in any sport that you do is dedication. Golf requires hours of practice, but you must have an instructor that understands your capabilities and you must have determination. The first thing I teach are the principles of stance, posture and alignment. 90 percent of the game is mental 10 percent is physical. Good golfers have the ability to repeat the same thing over and over. If you think you are going to hit it into the woods, you will. If you want to hit the fairway, you'll end up right in the middle if you believe. I was told 90 percent of trees are air and that's what I teach.

Aside from sports, I love to read. When I was 6 my parents purchased a Time Life series of the Presidents the United States. I was thoroughly enthralled and read every book. At age 8, I loved the story of Robin Hood, which I was introduced to in the form of A set of two very old books written in Old English." less...