A LITTLE HISTORY so that you can get to know my background,,, Nowadays everyone seems to be an expert in golf, you truly don't want to trust just anyone with your game you love so much...​ I'll try to keep it as short as possible!

​

I was born in 1964, the son of a tour player, stage name "Sal Monte" (Salvatore Mangiaracina). At that time, he was already a student  under the wings of the legendary "Wild" Bill Mehlhorn, (Winner of over 21 PGA Tour events and named by the great Ben Hogan as the "finest ball striker I've ever seen")..  Fate had it that I inherited Mr. Mehlhorn as my teacher as well until his passing in 1989..

​

Dad left the tour in 1967 due to his sponsor suddenly passing away.  So, he loaded up the Oldsmobile station wagon with my mother and two siblings and moved us down to Miami Beach, Florida from New York in 1969.  With no sponsor and no job, he supported my mom and my two siblings teaching and gambling at the local courses; Normandy Shores CC, Bayshore CC, La Gorce CC, Doral CC, Kings Bay CC, Country Club of Miami, and a few more of the then famous money game circuit of south Florida. With the likes of Joe Izzart, Marty "The Fat Man" Stanovich, Bobby Riggs, Jim King, Evil Knievel and many more colorful characters, there was plenty of "action" to partake in...

​

It was in these days of adolescence I was unknowingly being groomed and exposed to the exciting world of competitive golf... Always with dad, watching him drain 6 footers to save the day and get the rent paid. There came a time when he could not get any action because he was "cleaning up" and had to resort to offering to play someone on one knee to get a bet down! 

 

I remember "The Fat Man" coming in the pro-shop at Bayshore Golf Course on Alton Rd. Miami Beach one morning and throwing down $10,000.00 down on the table, "I'm betting on 66,67,68,69"  Someone was dumb enough to take the action, he shot 65 and won a lot of money.

​

Well, this was my "pool hall" and "misspent youth"!

​

When ever the tour came down for the "Florida Swing",  (The Doral Eastern Open, The Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic, and The Citrus Open), dad would take me to the events.  I would get to be next to him inside the ropes coaching some of his old tour buddies.  He spent a lot of time coaching his dear friend Chi Chi Rodriguez, where the two of them talked about "launch angle" decades before all the technology and begin teeing the ball  3 to 4 inches high to catch it on the upswing, as I do till this day...

 

Those days came with many benefits if you loved the game as I got to watch dad work with Jim Thorpe, John Mahaffey, J.C. Snead, Chip Beck and the legendary Seve Ballesterous, and other tour players.  I once got to play a practice round (9 holes anyway) at Doral CC with Seve as a teenager! The foursome was Chi Chi, Seve and David Graham and ME! Great days! 

 

Then there were countless days and nights in a trailer in Miami Beach watching dad and long time friend and great player Chico Miartuz design clubs and work on their own equipment. Chico went on to design equipment for Northwestern Golf Company. He was known for designing the "Tomahawk" putter, and the "Rake" sand wedge.

​

I was learning the game and was being "baby sat" by "Wild" Bill Mehlhorn... Lucky me, the old guy was a stern Dutchman, son of a bricklayer who was all business and played no games.  When he was a teenager, he was working for Harry Vardon at Skokie Country Club in Illinois.  It was there he also learned to design and build golf clubs, all by hand, hickory shafts and hand forged blades.  Later in his career he would be the one who started numbering the equipment, previous to that they were given nick names, such as mashie, mashie niblick, spoon, etc..

 

If Bill spoke and you talked back, or did not follow his instruction, he would simply turn and start walking away. You had to wait for the next day to talk to him again. Happened more than a few times unfortunately.  Being a man of principal, if he asked you "what did you shoot?" and you answered, "well I had 3 bogeys and..."  He would cut you off and say, "I did not ask you how many dam bogeys you had, I said what did you shoot!", Yikes.

​

However, besides being decades ahead of the world in regard to using the big muscles of a natural pivot to swing the arms, he was especially brilliant at knowing how to play the percentages when it came to club selection and choice of shot making.  Being a champion himself, along with a world champion bridge player, master handicapper at the racetrack, when Mr. Mehlhorn said "play this kind of shot", you could bet he knew it was the highest percentage play to make.  When I got older and was competing as a professional I always felt I had a 2 or 3 shot advantage over the field because of the knowledge he passed to me.

​

Dad was no slouch as a player.  He was a long hitter, (he won the national long drive contest in 1967, beating the famous long hitter George Bayer... This was with a ball and driver he borrowed from his then roommate on tour Chi Chi Rodriguez.  Dad was only a fair putter on tour, but when he was in survival mode hustling money games, there was no one better.. 

​

Dad ended up being asked by the Fountainebleau Hotel owner Ben Novak to be the director of golf at the newly built Fountainebleau CC in Miami. in 1971.  It ended up being 36 holes, each over 7,000 yards long, boasting a huge grass driving range and tremendous chipping and putting green.  If you loved golf, and I did, it was pure heaven.  All the practice balls you could hit, a legend pioneer of the game watching over me, and permission to drive golf carts, go fishing and play 2 or 3 balls as a single on both courses!   Golf brat for sure.

​

By the time I was 16 I was breaking 70, playing money games with adults, but I had no idea how I was doing it. (Laughing Out Loud)  I was just playing golf as mindless as could be, doing what I was taught to do by drills that AMAZINGLY manifested a repeating action that I didn't have to think much about.  That, along with playing the percentages, had me suddenly winning junior championships.

 

At 14 Years old I won the South Florida Junior Championship, and at sixteen years old, I won the Lake Worth Open (In Palm Beach Florida). I did this putting completely unconscious! I remember looking at the hole and making a stroke and taking it out of the hole... that's it.!  I beat all the pro's and college players that day.  I remember running to the telephone booth to call dad at the club. "dad, I won, I shot 69 and beat everyone!"  he replied "69? Give me a call when you shoot 62, I know a dozen guys who can shoot 69" and hung up on me.  Did that hurt?  Sure it did, but years later I knew he was only trying to get me ready for the big show and wanted me to remain humble and teachable.

 

A great player of the 60's Bobby Shave, who was on the leader board for a US Open at one time, was head golf coach at Florida International University.  He wanted me to play there when I graduated high school. but I was trying to get out of town.  I told my dad about a man walking up to me after following me around the Orange Bowl Junior Golf classic after I posted two consecutive 71's after a rough start of 79 and said to me, "son, you can do what ever you want to a golf ball can't you..."  I said, "yes sir I can..." That man was the head coach from Northwestern University in Chicago Il., but dad was not having it.  I was to stay with him in Miami and attend FIU.  I did not fair well on the college circuit but I managed to win the Dade County Amateur at age twenty in 1984.

 

At the age of twenty-two Dr. Lou Casset and Mr. Mehlhorn sponsored my first of 3 failed attempts at qualifying for the PGA Tour.  As much as my game was physically ready, mentally I was unable to nail it for the 4 days in a row of competition at that time.  Learning in my adult years I have severe A.D.D.  and that was not diagnosed in the 80's. Competitive rounds at the level of the tour are SEVERELY slow and my brain had a hard time with it. Now days, a large percentage of tour players are taking Beta Blockers, and other substances to help their nerves to focus.

​

I enjoyed some  success on the mini tour,  missed Monday qualifying, another alternative way of entry on to the tour, by one or 2 shots a dozen or so times over the years.

​

I became very respected as a very accurate ball striker, hardly ever missing a fairway. However, in this world of professional golf today of short rough and lightning fast greens, the premium is on putting.  Back in the 60's and 70's you could of had a big edge on the field with accuracy, and earn a living being a good putter. From the 1990's forward, the big drive and greatest putters is what is required, as you see these guys hit it all over the lot and win. 

​

At any rate, the years passed by, I found my self in 1992 relocated in New York by Hurricane Andrew that struck Miami.  New York was new terrain, elevated greens, with bent grass and putts that broke magically up hill toward some hill or mountain!  I couldn't really get a grasp of this new architecture with the exception of few glimpses of greatness here and there. This was extremely different from the flats of Florida, the Caribbean and South America, where I spent most of my time competing as a professional, and as a junior golfer.

​

Now even though dad said, "if you want to compete and play golf, stay out of the golf business..."  I went ahead, needing to make money, and started teaching.  I ended up with a tremendous following in Long Island, New York, having had The Mike Mangiaracina Academy of Golf at various locations. In 2014 I retired from full time teaching and left my PGA membership.

 

I still love golf and sharing what was taught to me. I am now inviting golfers from all over the world to get access to everything I know.

 

I enjoyed a lot of success teaching by sticking to a few simple rules:

• Make your teaching easy to understand

• Invent nothing in the way of theories and opinions

• Stick to the laws of physics and how the body behaves in most all athletic actions.

• The most important thing, No quick fixes or band-aids. 

• Tell the student what they are doing wrong, teach them the cause of it, then give them a drill that will fix it without having to mentally direct it. 

• Teach them to understand cause and effect so they don't need you.

​

There are 50 plus years of experiences and stories I could share, and as you can see, I absolutely love to talk about them.  I hope to some day meet each of you either by phone or in person. I want to help your game and pass the information I was so fortunate to receive on to you.

 

​