Defending Champion Lang Searching For Answers In Allegheny Mountains

By Andrew Blair

Hot Springs, Va. – If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear that Diane Lang was just another resort-goer on a sleepy Saturday morning as she brushed breakfast crumbs off her sweater, surveyed the local newspaper and exchanged small talk with guests in The Homestead’s main dining.

The first round of stroke-play qualifying at the 2009 USGA Senior Women’s Amateur was about to commence on the Cascades Course and Lang knows the day will soon gain momentum; she hopes her game follows.

As the native Jamaican took a moment to reflect and relax on her recent successes, which includes winning this three of the past four years – she posted a 6-and-5 decision over the recently deceased Toni Wiesner of Fort Worth, Texas, last year at Tulsa (Okla.) Country Club – Lang questioned whether or not her winning form will return.

One can almost hear her silently wonder: Whatever happened to that player?   

Diane Lang has won three of the last four USGA Senior Women's Amateur Championships, including last year at Tulsa (Okla.) Country Club. (Steven Gibbons/USGA)

While her recent championship-tested pedigree is an ally that few can claim, Lang knows her play must improve this week on the mountainous Cascades Course, which places a premium on placement and the ability to negotiate its undulating Poa annua putting surfaces. It’s going to require an ample amount of patience.    

“This is the first time that I am very, very relaxed because I’ve decided that I’m just going to enjoy it this time and let winning not be the overriding factor,” said Lang, a reinstated amateur who was the first golfer from her country to play on the LPGA Tour.

“I haven’t had a good year. I’ve played the worst golf of my entire golfing career this year. I’m coming here with no expectations, but I’ve decided not to get down on myself. I’m just going to try and enjoy the week.”

In visiting with Lang, there’s something of a “yeah, right” element to her supposed newfound level of comfort. There’s no such thing as recreational golf to the Weston, Fla., resident, who also says she’s always playing for something tangible, be it a national championship or otherwise.

“Whenever I’m playing, [it’s] for a purpose. That’s, I think, what’s gotten me into trouble – trying too hard,” said Lang. “There has to be a time when you stop and smell the roses, enjoy and go with the swing that you have. I’ve always tried to tweak it and fix it and change it. It can get you in trouble, but hopefully it will be better this week.”

One senses she’d rather peel a golf ball and eat it than play just for fun. What’s the benefit in that, she likely wonders. Lang says that one of the few points of agonizing consternation between she and her husband, Jeff, himself an athlete, is that he could care less what he shoots.

You see, the love of competition has sustained and fueled Lang’s drive – and likely always will.

Taking a sip of coffee, it may as well be truth serum. In her first trip to Virginia, Lang finally admits that she isn’t here as a tourist.

“Playing golf just to go around the golf course is of no interest to me,” she says. “I practice and play toward the goal of competing in the next tournament. That’s what drives me.”

She arrived early in the week and played two practice rounds. She hit balls for hours upon hours on Wednesday, trying to master a new swing thought before she had to leave to attend the pre-championship players’ reception.

“Those things get in the way,” she smiles. “You could be out there practicing 24 hours a day and never finish working on all the shots. That’s what I love about golf. People ask me, ‘How can you practice that long?’ I say, ‘I’m not here long enough.’ Sometimes, I wish I didn’t have to do the errands and go home. I’d stay there until it gets dark, because I never get tired.”

She admits her recent struggles have had as much to do with her mindset as mechanics.

“It’s kind of become a mental thing and I am trying to unblock that mental part.”

Fatherly Guidance

Lang says that she gets her voracious work ethic from her father, who brought her to the game at age 13.

A terrific tennis player in his own right, Edward Aris turned to golf in his mid-30s. Guided by Ben Hogan’s classic instruction book Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, he taught himself, and later his daughter, how to play the game and develop an on-plane swing by visualizing the now-famous Hogan-stamped image of a tilted pane of glass.  

“I can see the book in my mind,” said Lang. “I can see the pane of glass. That’s how I learned – through my dad. The two of us were golf nuts.”

	Diane Lang (left) teamed up with caddie Barry Smith at the 2005 Senior Women's Amateur at The Apawamis Club and the two have been partners at the SWA ever since. (USGA Museum)

They played nearly every day. During the week, they played a public course, Constant Spring Golf Course, near the family home in Kingston, Jamaica, and on the weekends, she honed her game at the demanding Caymana Golf Club, where her parents were members.  

Truth be told, during the first two decades of her life, Lang has witnessed and overcame enough adversity to make an occasionally bothersome out-of-rhythm swing look insignificant.

In search of a better life, Lang left home for college at Florida Atlantic University in the mid-1970s. At a time when Jamaica was fraught with political strife, the time turned out to be a defining moment for the Lang family. Conflicts in her native land boiled over and the swell of constant violence reached her parents. When she was 23, her dad was robbed at gunpoint near his home and beaten. Soon thereafter, the elder Langs found a safe haven by moving to western Florida, near their daughter.

“In one week, they just packed up and pretty much left everything,” Lang recalls.

It’s the kind of occurrence that makes golf seem insignificant.

“Oh, yes, but he was sooooo happy to be here,” Lang says.

She pauses for a moment to reflect on those sometimes tenuous moments.

“Better to be alive with nothing than to have something and not be safe. It’s sad, but it’s happened to millions of people.”

For the Langs, the United States became the definition of the land of opportunity. Edward Lang died four years ago from a heart attack, but she still hears his voice echoing, the one that would always call right after every round, riveted by the details of her daughter’s play that day.

“I used to give him a blow by blow – every stroke at every tournament,” said Lang. “And he’d give his advice – or not. He was my mentor and now he is not there for me to talk to.”

Today, Lang knows that she and her family have been the beneficiaries of her parents’ courage and guidance.

“I figure I live in the greatest place in the world and am thrilled for all the opportunities,” said Lang.

Finding Her Niche

After earning her LPGA Tour card, Lang became the first Jamaican to play on the LPGA Tour in 1984, though her stay was short-lived.

Her last event was a new tournament that the LPGA had at a three-course rotation in White Plains, N.Y. Lang remembers that competitors were guaranteed a paycheck by virtue of just being on site; at the time, Lang says she was about $500 shy of gaining her status for the following year. One problem: Lang got lost on the way to the course and missed her starting time, resulting in an automatic disqualification when she eventually arrived.

The mishap would later be a boon for amateur golf.

She played the mini-tours and made the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open in 1985 and a year later started competed overseas with the likes of Laura Davies (1987 U.S. Women’s Open champion) and Allison Nicholas (1997 U.S. Women’s Open champion). Later, she regained her amateur status and in 1989 quit playing golf for 18 years to raise her two children, a son, Stephen, and a daughter, Amy.

When she returned to competitive golf, she won her first national amateur competition, the 2005 USGA Senior Women’s Amateur, ironically not far from where her final LPGA event was at The Apawamis Club in Rye, N.Y. She successfully defended her title a year later at Sea Island Golf Club and after losing in the semifinals in 2007, took the championship again in 2008, becoming the sixth woman to win the Senior Women’s Amateur three of more times.

“I just hate to lose,” said Lang. “That’s my one overriding thing. I hate that second place.”

It’s a trait she undeniably gets from her father.

“It didn’t matter what game we were playing or how old I was, we both wanted to win,” she says “We didn’t care if we were playing tiddlywinks. It can be a positive and a negative.”

No one will question Lang’s level of competitiveness nor her inescapable and admittedly quirky level of superstition.

“I come up with all of these very weird things,” she laughs. “I was going to wear on outfit this morning and I remembered that the last time I wore it, I played badly. I left it right there in the room and put something else on. I spent the whole time thinking, ‘You’re being so ridiculous. Clothes have nothing to do with it.’ I just couldn’t get over it. Then, I said, ‘No, that’s it, you’re not wearing that.’ ”

Her good luck charms extend all the way to her golf bag.

“I don’t play a golf ball that has anything higher than a ‘4.’ No fives, sixes or sevens. Eights,” she shrieks, “oh, my goodness, no, who would want that?”

Loyal Looper

In addition to her trademark intensity and her family’s unwavering support, the one constant for Lang has been her caddie, Barry Smith, whom she met prior to the 2005 Senior Women’s Amateur. As the unknown in the field at the time, Lang remembers Smith being the only caddie who would take her bag.

The fortuitous connection proved to be a winning combination. A caddie at Westchester (N.Y.) Country Club, he’s looped for her at every USGA Senior Women’s Amateur since her initial win at Apawamis and he does it all at his own expense often driving to sites well away from New York, including Sunriver Resort in Oregon two years ago.  

“He was the last man standing and said, ‘Sure, I’ll take your bag,’ ” Lang recalls. “Ever since then, he’s stuck with me. He’s one in a million.”

National Pursuit

Whether her game is in tune or not, Lang craves the opportunity to capture her fourth USGA title this week.

“Would I love that – would I love that,” she repeats, seemingly filled with anticipation for her first-round afternoon starting time. “I’m trying to mentally imagine the possibility. I want to win. You can’t be half committed to this thing. You have to really put yourself there – picture it, imagine it, see it, feel it. I’m not quite there yet, but maybe by the time I get to the first tee, I’ll be ready.”

After breakfast, Lang gets up from the table to leave, smiling from ear to ear but knowing the next challenge and opportunity await.

Moments later, a visitor inquires to a fellow guest: “Who was that? She looks familiar.”

By Thursday’s championship final, Lang hopes everyone will know.