Q&A With CPG, Author Of Club Pro Guy's Other Black Book
/
Club Pro Guy recently surprised the golf world with the publication announcement for his new book, Club Pro Guy’s Other Black Book.
Authored with Paul Koehorst, CPG’s already placing it in the pantheon of American golf literature with Scotland’s Gift-Golf and Hogan’s Five Fundamentals.
A Mexican Mini-Tour “legend” who is believed to have made 17 cuts, CPG is a former Lynx Ambassador and founder of the 7-4-7 Swing Thought System®. Despite an ugly losing streak in the Thursday Afternoon Men’s League and what appear to be labor shortage issues while building Three Jack National, CPG carved out a few minutes from his busy schedule to answer my questions. (Full disclosure: I bought a Yucatan National membership and am sorry to report they are not currently available.)
GS: The book cover looks suspiciously like Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book. Do you share any similarities with Mr. Penick in your life or teaching philosophies?
CPG: Mr. Penick was faithfully married to the same woman for 74 years and abstained from alcohol. I’ve been thrice divorced and can’t start my Miata without blowing into a court mandated breathalyzer, so our life philosophies couldn’t be more divergent. From a teaching perspective, I feel like Harvey was very one dimensional. Was he a great teacher? Yes. But he never played the game at an elite level and I think that limited his ability to get the most out of his students. It’s also probably the reason Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw only won 3 majors between them. As for me, I’m a classic dual-threat. Meaning I can teach the game at a high level as well as play the game at a high level. Which is extremely rare. Not only can I give players the knowledge to be great, but I can also tell them what to expect when they become great.
GS: What are some of the “Other Black Book” topics we can expect and are there any chapters that you’re particularly proud of?
CPG: The topics are all over the board and I think that’s what makes this book so unique and so valuable. In one chapter you might learn how to develop a rock solid pre-shot routine, and in the next you're getting valuable tips on how to avoid shitting your pants on the course. Instruction, travel, dating, technology, you name it. It’s all in there. The chapter I’m most proud of is probably the one where I list my complete cache of private swing thoughts.
GS: What topics ended up getting cut?
CPG: I had a 68-page chapter devoted exclusively to the Medicus Golf Club that my editor convinced me to scrub. It started out as an instructional piece, then it meandered into a product review of sorts and by the time the chapter ended, I had somehow delved deep into Mark O’Meara’s personal life. It got pretty dark.
There was also a "travel and destinations" chapter that focused on the Sioux City, IA that didn’t make the book, as well as a chapter detailing the 79 I fired in the 2nd round of the 1993 Yucatan Masters where I attempted to walk the reader through my round, shot by shot.
GS: Where do you actually do your writing and what kind of environment do you like to create when doing so and do you have any advice to aspiring writers?
CPG: Most of my writing is conducted on the back of cocktail napkins during shift changes at Bottoms Up. One of my big pet peeves about strip clubs is when random dancers just come and sit by me, totally uninvited. Don’t get me wrong, I understand they have a job to do and I appreciate the hustle, but I have a special type. I like brunettes with some meat on their bones. So when a super skinny blonde starts walking toward my table I have to look preoccupied and uninterested. That’s when I start jotting down random golf thoughts on a cocktail napkin. Not only does it help me finish such an ambitious project like this one, but it also keeps girls with tons of tats away from me. Did I mention I hate tattoos?
GS: Yes, thanks. Good to know. Now, I see you have a co-author, can you give us a sense of your writing process?
CPG: That's a perfect follow up to your last question. The ideas I jot down on cocktail napkins are sent to my co-author and he brings them to life. Sometimes it’s detailed notes, sometimes it’s unintelligible gibberish because the DJ (Alan) talked me into doing a line of coke, and sometimes it’s a graph or a formula with little to no meaning. I’ll never forget one night I drew a stick figure holding a golf club and wrote the words “custom shaft” under it. My co-author took that and turned it into a complete chapter on how big of a rip off Club Champion is.
GS: You are the publisher of The Other Black Book, why did you choose to go this route instead of going with a big New York house?
CPG: I tried, but I couldn’t get a meeting with anyone. I’m actually glad. Publishers like Simon & Schuster are dinosaurs anyway. Everything is digital nowadays. When is the last time you thumbed through a porno magazine? It’s been over a year for me. Truth be told, I would have put my book out as a Kindle version only if I hadn't known how good of a coffee table book it was gonna be.
GS: Do you have any favorite bookstores? Any plans to do a signing at one?
CPG: I’m not a huge reader, but if I had to pick a favorite bookstore it’s probably The "Lions Den”, which is a little place off I-70 just east of Kansas City. I used to stop by there a lot on my way to St. Louis to visit one of my step-dads. Last I heard the adult arcade is open but the video booths are still closed due to Covid. They have a huge truck driver clientele so I’m not sure an in-person signing for a book about golf would move a lot of units.
GS: Any other promotional plans? Mike Stone took out ads on Golf Channel for his latest album. Could that be an option?
CPG: Why did you have to mention Mike Stone! Now I’ll never get the tune “One Week in April” out of my head! It’s interesting, after the debut of Shotmakers I thought it would have been impossible for the Golf Channel to embarrass themselves further, but the emergence of Mike Stone proved me wrong. He kinda reminds me of a poor man's “My Pillow Guy”. I actually feel sorry for the people who work at that network.
My promotional plan for the book is two-pronged. The first is to tweet about it so much that I either sell 100,000 books or lose 100,000 followers, and the second is to pay Instagram models to post about the book as it rests on their tits.
GS: Sounds smart. If this is successful, might you consider publishing the other Black Book? And what’s in that book?
CPG: I won’t rule out anything, but my original Black Book probably wouldn’t be appropriate for public consumption. It’s a book I used to carry around Mexico in my Nickent Staff Bag that was filled with beeper numbers, course yardages and old soccer lines. At its apex my original black book coulda got you laid or high from Albuquerque to Zihuatanejo but sadly most of the numbers don’t work anymore or have blocked me.
GS: How many people did you approach about writing the Foreword before you landed on Scott McCarron?
CPG: I can honestly say zero. Scott McCarron was my first and only choice because he has been the only player on tour to fully embrace my teaching methods, he’s also one of those rare guys who truly understands what it means to “Live Under Net Par”. He’s got a hot wife, he loves to party, and no matter how many snarky comments you guys in the media make about it…..he DGAF that you think he’s anchoring.
Here is The Other Black Book’s ordering information and embedded below is CPG’s Tweet announcing this unique buying opportunity. Apologies to my pal John Feinstein:
