LI pro DeStefano featured on Golf Channel show

Bob DeStefano has been about as far from the public eye as you can get, having spent the past 49 years sequestered on Shelter Island as head pro at Gardiners Bay Country Club. He is no secret, however. His life and career will go national Tuesday night when he is profiled on Golf Channel's "Golf in America" show.

"They had guys here for 13 hours," he said on the phone from the pro shop, adding that his interviewer, author and commentator John Feinstein, said it would be boiled down to a six-minute segment on the program (it airs at 8 p.m.). DeStefano, a former school board president on the island, laughed, happy to be sharing his story.

He likes telling about how he fell in love with golf as a caddie at Hollywood Golf Club in Deal, N.J. Then he spent two years teaching the game in the Coast Guard, became an assistant pro at Southampton Golf Club and applied to be head pro next door at Shinnecock Hills in 1962. The job went to Don McDougall and DeStefano went to the resort club on Shelter Island, where his employees once included a teenaged Feinstein, a lifelong summer resident.

"The whole business has changed a lot," DeStefano said, reflecting on spending so much time now on the computer and having scrapped his traditional way of teaching the inside-out swing in favor of a swing-around-your-left-side method.

But his presence has been a constant, and will continue after he retires next year to be pro emeritus.

Competition

Joe Saladino of Hutington Country Club, low amateur at the New York State Open last month, qualified for the U.S. Amateur Championship to be held later this month at Chambers Bay in Tacoma, Wash.