Arizona golf can be very entertaining - Travelife - Unique Destination Features, Travel News, City Guides, Hotel and Golf Course Review, Networking and Travel Tips

Arizona golf can be very entertaining

By Marc Atchison

Unmasking Alice Cooper, the golfer, while playing in the desert

When they told me I’d be teeing off with someone named Alice, I just presumed we’d be playing from the forward tees. But Alice Cooper, aging rock star and celebrity golfer extraordinaire, would have none of that.

In fact, Alice wanted to play from the golds the day I met him at the Legacy Golf Resort, one of those fabulous desert courses just outside Phoenix, the Arizona city Cooper calls home. Cooper is a big promoter of Arizona tourism and was invited to play with a number of visiting international golf journalists that day. He was the perfect host!

Alice Cooper, the golfer, doesn’t look anything like Alice Cooper, the rock star, by the way. The gaunt-looking man with the skate-sized ruts carved in his thin face I met that day looked nothing like the ageless leather-clad rocker who hides behind a war paint mask when he’s on stage.

But once we reached the first tee, Alice Cooper looked like a golfer – a very good golfer. His drives were short but always straight. His short game was laser accurate. His putts seemed to make their way to the hole in a trench. But what else would you expect from a man who, when he’s not performing, plays golf – lots of golf.

“I play well over 300 rounds a year,” Cooper told me. “I try to play once a day and some days I try to squeeze in 36 holes.”
Talk about an addiction!

“That’s exactly what golf is to me – an addiction,” said Alice, a man who knows the full meaning of the word.

Alice readily admits to being addicted to drugs and alcohol at the height of his career. There were days when “I would have drunk everything in my hotel mini bar before noon,” he told me after securing a birdie on the first hole. Then someone introduced him to golf and he was hooked.

“My wife often tells people I just exchanged one addiction for another,” he laughed.

Now Alice is a regular on the celebrity golf circuit and is rated one of Hollywood’s best duffers. He even has two tournaments named in his honour – Alice Cooper's Rock Foundation Celebrity golf tournament and the MTX Alice Cooper Celebrity AM golf tournament.

Cooper laughed when he remembered how he was introduced to the game.

“An Irish technician in my band suggested I take up golf. I told him where I come from (Detroit) we beat up guys who play golf. There were only three sports in Detroit when I was growing up – baseball, football and grand theft auto,” smiled Cooper, who was born Vincent Damon Furnier in the Motor City in 1948.

“It was love at first sight so I played every chance I got and within a year I went from some incredibly high handicap to a 9.”

Along the way, he’s had a lot of help improving his game. And some of his teachers rank among the best in golf – “John Daly helped me with my short game,” said Alice as he delivered another near perfect iron shot to within a few feet of the hole.

Contrary to popular belief, Cooper tells a listener that it was he, and not Tiger Woods, who was responsible for the growth of golf among young people.

“Hell, no one with long hair ever played the game before I came along,” claimed Cooper, as we reached an elevated tee where the beauty of Arizona’s naked red-rock landscape came into full view. It was in the hills surrounding Phoenix where Cooper grew up. His missionary father worked with the local Apaches and Alice became fascinated with the tribe’s way of life. So much so that he included the Apache war paint in his act. Even when he’s touring the world, Cooper makes time for golf.

“One time in Moscow, I played at a nice nine-hole course. Just to let you know how new the game was to Russians back then, I beat the pro that day. I took 50 rubles off the guy.”

Cooper has become an ambassador of sorts for Arizona golf and a few years ago was recognized by the state’s tourist officials for his contributions.

When you play golf in Arizona, you really do feel like your in Alice’s Wonderland!

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