Artie McNickle

Age: 63.

Residence: Palm Springs.

Then: The Northern California Golf Association Player of the Year in 1971, the year he finished second to Pete Gutierrez in the California State Fair Amateur Championship. He was a PGA Tour member from 1972 to 1983, finishing second three times. A Roseville High School and Cal graduate, he lived in Sacramento from 1962 to 1983.

Now: The Premium Lead Master Instructor for Jim McLean Golf Schools at PGA West in La Quinta for the past four years. He directed the Jimmy Ballard Golf School at Doral in Florida for six years and was the director of golf at La Gorce Country Club in Miami Beach from 1992 to 2004.

Who are the players you remember most from your time in Sacramento?

Ray Arinno, Pete Gutierrez, Dennis Braden, Bob E. Smith, Ron Cerrudo. Eight or 10 of us would travel together and play courses all over Northern California. I still see a lot of them down here during the winter.

Any one guy you had a particularly tough time beating?

I really had very little fear of anybody ever. That's probably why I did OK for a guy they didn't expect to do much professionally.

Any other connections to Sacramento remain?

When I got back to California a few years ago, my oldest son figured that after I got divorced I probably needed help finding girls, so he put me into classmates.com. One day on my e-mail comes this inquiry from Kathy Donnell, who I knew as Kathy Condo. She lived down the street from me in high school and lives in Granite Bay now. She asked me what I was doing. I invited her down to have dinner with me, and we've been dating ever since.

I have a picture from our archive that shows you had some pretty big hair as a young man. What was that all about?

1968. Berkeley. What can I tell you? I had curly hair, and I just let it go. Nobody was going to tell me to cut my hair, that's for sure.

People who knew you describe you as a character. True?

I've had a little fun in my life, but I have three children now. My oldest is 20 at Clemson. My daughter is my youngest; she's 9. I tempered down a bit as I've gotten older.

How often and how well do you play these days?

I won my age division in my section this year and qualified for the national club pro tournament. I might have been the oldest guy in it and made the cut. It was the first 72-hole tournament I've played in in maybe 20 years. I didn't play too well on the weekend, but I could have. It's still there. I enjoyed that part.

You had career earnings of $127,393 – any regrets that you played before the money got so big?

If I had to do it over, I probably would have become a more disciplined athlete and maybe become more successful. … The money would have taken care of itself had I been a little more disciplined, but the fun that I had, I wouldn't trade that for anything.

What is it about teaching that you like in particular, and what is it that you think you're particularly good at?

The first lesson I ever had, I was already playing on tour. I went to see Jimmy Ballard. He was the first to use video. What an enlightenment that was. Nowadays, it gets a bit overused by kids trying to make the perfect golf swing, but because of video and what an insight it gave me into a golf swing, my curiosity got the best of me, and that's why I wanted to get involved with teaching. It certainly helps make people better, contrary to a lot of what was happening before the advent of video.