Wednesday, December 1, 2010

How I got started in golf.


Well this is my first ever blog so I guess a good place to start is to tell you a little about myself. My name is William Pappaconstantinou. As you would imagine I don’t use my real name much, people call me Bill Pappas.  I’m a PGA Golf Professional and owner of Pappas Golf & Baseball Center in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts.  I have been teaching golf for over 20 years.  Before I started teaching golf, I was a piano teacher and played piano professionally for several years.

Bill Pappas teaching golf
I started playing golf as an adult by accident more than anything.  Growing up I loved to play all sports.  I played baseball, football, hockey, tennis and bowling.  Bowling was my favorite sport although some would argue that it’s not a sport.  I worked at a bowling alley from the age of 14 through high school.  After going through trade school to be a chef, I got my first job in a restaurant and decided that wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life.  My brother, Kenny, helped get me a  job with an electronics company called Wang Labs.  I worked there for a couple of years and was 19 years old when Dr Wang who was the owner purchased a golf course.  My friends and I were playing baseball at one of our games and the center fielder said to me,  Bill let’s go golfing tomorrow.  I thought to myself,  golf who would want to play that stupid game.  He then told me that we could show our work ID and we could golf all day for two dollars.  I said, ” two bucks, why not,  I’ll give it a try”.  I went to the golf course and used some of my friend’s clubs, ( which you can’t do any more),  and proceeded to miss the ball completely about 5 times in a row.  I remember laughing and finally I hit one right into the woods on the right side of the fairway.  Well to make a long story short, on the fourth hole, a par 3, I hit one on the green and was hooked.  Like most people that start playing golf, I was terrible.  I shot well over 100 and to show you how bad I was, I played a golf course in Tewksbury Ma, called Trull Brook a couple of weeks after I started golf and shot 142. Lucky for me, back then the courses weren’t that full so you could shoot that high and no one would bother you to move along or throw you off the course.  I played a couple of days later and meet a golfer who was very young and he played great.  I couldn’t believe how good he was, he hit the ball so far and straight, I had to know how to do that. I asked him how he got so good and he said I took golf lessons at Billy Max Indoor Golf School and I wrote the phone number down on a book of matches.