Meet Michael Block, the club pro beating the world’s best golfers

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. — PGA professional Michael Block is a 46-year-old local club pro at a public course in California. He hits less than a bucket of balls any given week. This isn’t any given week, it’s PGA Championship week, and Block began Saturday tied for 10th place.

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Oak Hill isn’t the burly, hoodie-wearing golf pro’s first go-round against the world’s best golfers, and if age and experience can build a certain attitude, Block has got it.

“I’m not afraid of them anymore, to be honest,” he said, after firing a second consecutive level-par 70 alongside Canadian Taylor Pendrith on Friday.

With good reason. Block is playing in his fifth PGA Championship as a PGA teaching professional, and over the years he has managed to find his way into two U.S. Opens as well. He has made a total of 25 PGA tour starts, making five cuts.

“I’m extremely comfortable, to be honest,” Block said. “A couple of my friends in Orange County are Beau Hossler and Patrick Cantlay. I’ve played a lot of golf with them now where they’ve become my friends. I understand where they’re ranked in the world. I understand how my game doesn’t quite get up to them, but I’m pretty darn close, and I can compete with them.”

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Block’s confidence shouldn’t to be misinterpreted as cockiness. On the second last hole of Friday’s round, he walked over and gave Pendrith a low-five after the Canadian made a tough up-and-down for par.

“He is a great dude,” Pendrith said. “We had a lot of fun out there, kept it light. He played unreal.”

In Thursday’s first round, Block made everything he looked at on the greens, rolling in more than 100-feet of putts. On Friday, the putter cooled off, but he drove the ball wonderfully, hitting 11 of 14 fairways, finishing the day ninth in strokes-gained-off-the-tee.

It wasn’t all roses for the surprise fan-favourite at Oak Hill in Rochester. During the second round, on the par-3 fifth hole, Block hit the most dreaded of all dreaded shots in golf: A hosel rocket that bounced off a tree and finished just 58 yards from where it started. He went on to make a double bogey at the hole.

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“He walked off the tee and he was just laughing,” Pendrith said. “I’m thinking, it’s the PGA Championship and he’s laughing that he shanked it. He was great, it was a really fun pairing.”

Block was happy the ball didn’t kill anyone and said he was fortunate to even make a double bogey. To top it off, as a teaching professional, he was nice enough to offer a quick lesson on how he helps students get over a bad case of the shanks.

“What I like to do is set up to the golf ball and swing and hit the ground on the inside of the golf ball, like not even hit the ball on practice swings,” Block said. “Just take it, hit inside the golf ball a couple of times to feel that space and to get the hands in tight. If you watch a lot of the best players in the world, their hands are extremely close to their body at the moment of impact. A lot of the worst players in the world, their hands are far away from their body at the moment of impact. That’s the difference.”

Block teaches at Arroyo Trabuco, a public course in Southern California, and if you’re ever in the area you can get a 45-minute lesson for a reasonable $125.

UPDATE: Block told CBS during a walk-and-talk interview that it’s $150/hour and he might not be taking new students. Oh well!