Ex-LIer Lardon prepping for the PGA

JOHNS CREEK, Ga.

At 46, Brad Lardon cannot even conceive of playing golf and practicing every day, as he did when he was on the PGA Tour. "I'm already sore and beat up," he said on the practice range at the PGA Championship. On the other hand, though, part of him is still that 12-year-old kid, taking lessons at Huntington Country Club.

Lardon fell in love with the game back then, when he was growing up in Huntington and his mom dropped Brad and his brother Michael off with club pro Mike Joyce for lessons, just to give them something to do. "It was something the whole family could do. That's the beauty of the game," he said.

"When Mike taught us, he was extremely professional. He always looked professional, he acted professional and he really had a great way with me. I was very young and I just respected who he was and what he did. I thought, 'That's kind of cool,' but I never thought that's what I would end up doing," Lardon said, having finished a practice session next to Vijay Singh, moments before Tiger Woods started hitting balls nearby.

"Mike planted the seed, and I had a few good experiences with other professionals, and here we are," he said.

Lardon is director of golf at Miramont Country Club in Bryan, Texas -- giving lessons, running the pro shop, basically doing the job Joyce used to do (before he joined the Champions Tour and then retired to Florida, where he was playing in a tournament Wednesday). It is a great job, Lardon said, with an ownership group that supports a former tour player when he gets the itch for competition. He played the PGA Professional National Championship and tied for fifth, earning him a place in this major championship.

Joyce said on the phone from Florida: "He was a nice young man when I new him. He had the right attitude for golf. He questioned things, he wanted to learn. The key to golf is wanting to learn."

Whether he is playing, practicing or teaching, Lardon still is a product of his own training. Joyce's lessons are still clear in his memory. "He taught us really from scratch," Lardon said. "It was very fundamentally sound. It was much different than a lot of guys teach today. There was no system to it, it was just fundamentals. Really, in all the instruction I've had, whether it was Mike Joyce or one of my mentors later on, Jackie Burke, we never talked about positions in the golf swing. It was just fundamentals."

Tuesday was a fundamentally good day on the range. Rather than hitting ball after ball, he and his caddie simulated playing each hole at Atlanta Athletic Club. He would hit a driver, then an iron from wherever the drive would have landed and so on.

"I like to do it because when I get out there, I'm very committed in what I'm trying to do," he said. "I already have that commitment to that certain shot and I've already hit that shot successfully at some point."

So he always practices that way, right? Not really. "It's what I should do every time," he said. "It's what I do every time at Bethpage."

That was his finest week as a pro, a homecoming to Long Island for the 2002 U.S. Open. He made the cut and tied for 58th. The Black Course will be tugging at him when he watches the Barclays from there next year. "Isn't that incredible?" he said. "It's going to be really neat to see how the guys do at Bethpage when it's not set up like a monster."

Joyce follows him whenever he is in a tournament. "It makes you feel like you did something right," Joyce said.