Perhaps the most surprising thing about Jim McLean being inducted into the PGA of America Hall of Fame recently is how unsurprising it was. In fact, many people thought the 75-year-old native of the Pacific Northwest was already a member of that august shrine. And that makes sense when one considers all that McLean has accomplished in golf.
Start with a playing career in which he won multiple tournaments as a junior and then earned a full golf scholarship in 1968 to the University of Houston, where his teammates included Fuzzy Zoeller, John Mahaffey, Bruce Lietzke and Bill Rogers. Blonde and blue-eyed, McLean won three college tournaments as a Cougar and was an All-American in 1972. He also qualified for four U.S. Amateurs and a pair of U.S. Opens and competed in the 1972 Masters, making the cut and finishing tied for 43rd.
By the time he received his degree from Houston, having studied economics and business, McLean figured he would make his living on the PGA Tour. But after coming up short in two attempts to earn his card, he decided instead to concentrate on teaching.
“Up to that point, I had only been about playing for a living,” said McLean, who had grown up a pitch shot away from the Rainier Golf & Country Club in Seattle, Washington. “But after trying to get through Q-School in 1974, I realized I was kind of mentally fried. I had probably made competitive golf too important in my life and too much a part of my identity.”
So, he decided to pivot, taking a job as an assistant professional at the Westchester Country Club in New York.
“I had never taught before,” McLean said. “But I had picked up a lot about it just by being around the game so much. The club put me in charge of the junior program, and I liked it immediately. Westchester was a wonderful old place with 1,800 members, two 18-hole golf courses and a nine-hole course that was a great place to work with young players. It also hosted an annual PGA Tour event.
“Teaching was a big thing at Westchester, and in the Met [PGA] Section in general,” McLean added. “I taught non-stop at Westchester and found that I really liked it.”
Longtime Westchester member Gail Flanagan could see that when they started working together at her club.
“I was 12 years old when he arrived,” she said. “He was so passionate about the game and so energetic. He clearly loved kids, loved teaching, and loved seeing people get better.”
Flanagan certainly became a better golfer working with McLean and went on to play college golf at Arizona State, qualify for 28 USGA championships and win a pair of New York State Women’s Amateurs. And she recalls that the golf education he provided her extended beyond the simple science of the golf swing.
“Jim also showed me how to hot wire a golf cart, which is why I carried a paper clip in my golf bag for years,” she recalled.
McLean’s career took off from Westchester, where he spent four years, and he went on to assume director of golf gigs at several other New York-area clubs of note, among them Sunningdale, Quaker Ridge and Sleepy Hollow.
Then in 1991, McLean founded the Jim McLean Golf School at the Doral Resort in Miami, Florida, which soon became one of the most respected teaching academies in the game. Now headquartered at the Miami Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, it also operates two satellite facilities in the U.S., in Miami Beach and outside Park City, Utah, and outposts in South Korea, Spain and Mexico. According to McLean, who remains very active in his work, those schools have produced 420 certified teaching professionals over the years, with more than 250 of those individuals at one point holding director of golf or instruction positions. And he and his associates have taught thousands of players, dozens of tour professionals and several major championship winners, among them Tom Kite, Curtis Strange, Keegan Bradley, Gary Woodland, Cristie Kerr and Lexi Thompson.
In addition, McLean has been recognized many times for his work. The PGA named him its national teacher of the year in 1994, which came after the Met PGA had made McLean that section’s teacher of the year in 1986 and before the South Florida PGA had bestowed the same honor on him in 1996 and 1998. Then in 2020, the PGA of America presented McLean with its national player development award.
Oh, and the PGA master professional has written 15 books on golf.
No wonder jaws were not dropping when people heard that he was heading to the Hall of Fame.
The eldest of two boys and the son of a Boeing engineer who was a low single-digit handicapper, McLean was drawn quickly and easily into golf.
“I started playing when I was 11,” recalled McLean. “And I did well as a junior. I played in high school, and our team won states twice. I won the Washington State Junior Championship twice and the Pacific Northwest Amateur three times. I was 16 years old when I entered the Western Junior. It was played at Purdue University, and I had never been on a plane before. I made it to the semis, and that gave me a lot of confidence. Then the following year, I qualified for the U.S. Junior [Amateur].”
“I had played in big tournaments with some great players, so I had a pretty good idea of what it took to compete at that level and how the really good ones did it.” — Jim McLean
Eventually, it was on to Houston, which was regarded by most at the time as the premier school in college golf – and which the highly recruited McLean had chosen over Stanford and Arizona State.
“It was difficult in the beginning,” said McLean. “There were 40 guys on the team, but only five guys played. I played in just one tournament my sophomore year but still managed to letter. But I played a lot as a junior and a senior, mostly at No. 1 or No. 2.”
McLean competed frequently against the University of Texas during his days in Houston. “That is how I got to know Ben [Crenshaw] and Tom [Kite],” he said. “And years later, I ended up working with them both.”
McLean made the transition from competitive golfer to golf instructor with relative ease, finding perhaps even more joy in learning about the golf swing and the mental aspects of the game and imparting that knowledge to his pupils than he ever would have grinding week in and week out as a tour professional.
“I had played in big tournaments with some great players, so I had a pretty good idea of what it took to compete at that level and how the really good ones did it,” said McLean, who is the father of two sons, Matt and Jon, both of whom played college golf and then went on to make a living as instructors in the game. “I talked to those guys so I could learn as much about the game as possible. And remember, Westchester had a regular PGA Tour event. So did Doral. Sleepy [Hollow] had a Champions Tour event, too, and being around those places during those tournaments allowed me to spend even more time with top golfers. I would talk with Ken Venturi whenever he would come to Westchester or go over to Winged Foot to chat with Claude Harmon. Harry Cooper was the teaching professional at Westchester, and any time I spent with him was an education. I was so lucky to be at those places.”
McLean also spent time during his winters in the New York area visiting top golf instructors in Florida, Arizona and California to take lessons from them and see how they taught.
“I was always broke when I came home from those trips,” he said. “But I had always learned some new things.”
McLean also had a natural affinity for teaching and relating to people, whether they were tour professionals or weekend duffers. He was an innovator, too, and was one of the first to incorporate video in his lessons, as well as radar technology such as Trackman. McLean was also the one who came up with the concept of the X Factor to add distance by creating more torque and power in the golf swing.
Perhaps most importantly, his methods of teaching worked, and McLean’s lesson sheet was always full as a result. A personable fellow, McLean has always been able to communicate his ideas clearly. He is flexible, too, with his methods and solutions and does not employ a one-size-fits-all approach. His knowledge of the game and the golf swing is sky high, too.
Kite was among his more satisfied students, so much so that the first thing the Texan did after winning the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach was fly back East to spend some time at Sleepy Hollow with McLean.
“I thought Tom was kidding when he said he wanted to get together,” McLean recalled. “Who would want to fool with the swing that had just won a U.S. Open?”
The reigning champ, that’s who. And Kite had McLean join him on the range at his club for four hours of practice and then added another long meeting the following afternoon.
Clearly the sessions worked, and Kite went on a nice run that saw him play some of the best golf in his career, winning a pair of team events later that year at the Fred Meyer Challenge (with Billy Andrade) and the Franklin Funds Shark Shootout (with Davis Love III) and then the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic and Nissan Los Angeles Open the following February.
And after his win in L.A., Kite autographed a magazine cover for McLean that featured a story on that triumph. “Thanks for helping me get it,” he wrote.
Over the course of what is now officially a hall-of-fame career, McLean has been helping people get whatever it is they want from the game – and doing so as well as anyone who has ever worked a lesson tee.