Patri remembers old friends

Chances are, after having given 45,000 lessons in 30 years, Tom Patri has helped some people. Twenty of his former students attested to that, in fact, when they flew to the Dominican Republic early this year for a reunion that the Long Islander hosted to mark his professional anniversary.

"It's funny. After it was over, I had about twice as many e-mails saying, 'I couldn't make it. Are you going to have it again?' " Patri said the other day at Friar's Head in Riverhead, where he is the director of instruction from mid-May through mid-October.

It occurred to him after he got back to his winter headquarters in Naples, Fla., and again on the drive up to start the Long Island season this week: The one thing he can be sure of is how much other people have helped him.

For example, there was the time when he was playing in the Long Island Boys Championship at Southward Ho in Bay Shore. He was on the verge of winning his first big title and started feeling shaky.

"I remember Jimmy Dunne, as an older kid, putting his arm around me, saying, 'OK, calm down.' He steered me in," Patri said, referring to a golfer who would grow up to shoot a record 63 at Shinnecock Hills (and put the firm of Sandler, O'Neill back on its feet after 9/11).

Patri said, "I've had several Jimmy Dunnes in my life, someone who has been there at just the right time."

That's the way Patri, 52, is keeping score these days.

He counts the people who helped make him one of Golf magazine's Top 100 teachers in the United States, a mentor to LPGA Tour player Meaghan Francella, an adviser to the late Seve Ballesteros, a friend of Fred Couples and the top instructor at Friar's Head, one of the most exclusive and highly rated new courses anywhere.

Maybe the person who deserves most thanks is the anonymous golfer who left a broken Sam Snead Blue Ridge Wilson 5-iron in the lower parking lot at Spring Lake Golf Club in Middle Island. Patri was 11, his dad had started running the club's restaurant and the family had moved into the house between the 10th fairway and that lot. The youngster didn't know a thing about golf, but he sure liked that 5-iron.

He had it regripped and started flailing on the range.

"About the eighth or 10th ball, totally by accident, I hit a shot right in the middle of the face. The ball went up in the air. I was like, 'Oh my God, what was that?' I was hooked then," he said.

Golf became his best friend. "It did make me something of a loner," he said. Not totally, though. He kept running into folks such as Mike Wands, then the pro at Middle Island Country Club, who gave him a job in the shop. Patri won the Division II title for Florida Southern and qualified for the Division I tournament, where he met Couples, who has been a friend ever since.

After bouncing around mini-tours, Patri became an assistant at Cold Spring Country Club under head pro John Kennedy.

"John Kennedy had no business hiring me. I had no teaching experience to speak of," Patri said. But it worked out.

Patri moved on to the Bellport Country Club, then to the Westchester Country Club with Kennedy. There, he helped Ballesteros with his swing and turned Francella from an exuberant junior into an LPGA Tour winner.

He moved to Florida full-time, then was lured back to Long Island in 2006 by his old junior golf buddy, Ken Bakst, owner of Friar's Head.

"Ken has been very, very good to me," Patri said, sitting in a well-equipped office 3 miles from Mercy, his old high school.

"I remember the farm that was here," Patri said. "It's bizarre to me, almost eerie, that it's come full circle like this."