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 Golf trick-shot artist Joey "O" Photo by GM Pinkston |
For Joey O, golf trick-shot artist extraodinair, the dream seed of bringing joy to audiences as a specialty performer was planted on the day the circus set up tent in a corn field just outside the then four-year-old boy's small Iowa home town.
"My dad took me," says Joey. "I had never seen anything like it. I was amazed at the joy and wonder all the unusual performers brought to the audience. I knew right then and there what I wanted to do with my life. Bring that sense of joy and amazement to others."
Joey O has succeeded in achieving his dream and his act of golf trick-shot artistry is a truly amazing performance. Joey hits golf balls in the most incredible ways. Off of a unicycle, while balanced on a beach-ball sitting high atop a table, from a rolling teeter-totter, even from a one-armed hand-stand. And through it all, Joey talks. He engages his audience fully, bringing as many of its members as possible down out of the stands to assist him with his stunts. He jokes, he teases and he laughs at himself right along with everyone else. But mostly he talks about the dream seed. And about how, at age thirteen, the dream seed planted in him in that Iowa corn field a decade before blossomed into a desire to appear on the Tonight Show.
"The Tonight Show is where I knew I could bring my form of joy to the largest possible audience," says Joey, "and where, if I could get there, I would find proof that I had really accomplished the dream."
It took almost twenty years for that dream to be realized but it did eventually happen. It is the story of this twenty-year journey that Joey weaves in and out of his show. A story about how the magic of believing in the dream, and yourself, and persistence in both, overcomes all obstacles.
There have been obstacles for Joey, serious ones. Not being diagnosed as dyslexic until he was thirty-five, he struggled first through high school and, ultimately, through college, unable to read even five pages out of a text book. Without ever understanding why some things were so difficult for him or why he was somehow "different." Only his persistent maintenance of the dream allowed the long hours of hard work required to overcome that difference.
He maintained his dream through all the "Nos" and "You can't do thats" of his youth and early adulthood. Through the long nights on the graveyard shift stuffing K-mart and Target flyers into an Iowa newspaper along with the other handicapped people so he could practice his golf fourteen hours a day. And he kept to the dream all through school as he played on both his high school and college golf teams while struggling to pass his classes.
The dream seed has lead Joey O to where he is today. Over the last few years he has performed his internationally famed act in Japan, in Europe, at PGA, LPGA and Senior PGA tournaments from the Caribbean to California, on national TV, and even at the valley's own Bob Hope and Diana Shore Classics. His belief in the power of pursuing your dreams has also brought him an entirely new career as a motivational speaker spreading the word about that power.
"The dream seed is a mighty thing," says Joey, "If you can make perfect use of your mind and believe in yourself through the years when nobody else does you can accomplish greatness. The secret is to stay focused on what you want. When people say 'No, you can't do that. No, we won't hire you,' to stay focused on what you are trying to accomplish. That's what I've always done, stay true to the dream. Today, corporations send me all over the world to deliver that message."
SIDEBAR:
A Circus of Golf
The hour long Joey O trick shot exhibition opens with Joey hitting five consecutive 270 yard drives. The trick? His driver is five feet long and the balls are teed three feet in the air. This is only the beginning. By show's end he will be doing the same while riding a unicycle.
This internationally renowned performer has been booked into The Golf Center at Palm Desert for the entire season. Joey's unique and truly amazing act can be seen four times each week, Wednesday through Saturday at 2:30 PM, from now through Easter.
Joey's act does amaze. He hits balls off the bottoms of peoples feet, he hits balls while their moving, he hits them backwards and forwards, right-handed and left, and he hits them from his knees with a seven-foot-long driver. He hits them with the tow of an iron, not the face. He hits them while performing a one-armed hand-stand. He even hits them with a club head on the end of a rubber hose, and he hits them all perfectly. There is also a bit where he stands with one foot on each end of a skate-board sized teeter-totter, rocking and rolling back and forth on its round fulcrum as he swats more perfect shots down the driving range.
Joey keeps his audience engaged throughout the show. Joking constantly and calling people out of the stands to assist him with his stunts, he adds both a comedic performance and a strong message for kids about the power of persistence and of following your dreams to his shot-making artistry.
Near the end of his show Joey places a very large beach-ball on top of a very small three-foot high table. Then, climbing up and balancing precariously, he skips rope atop the ball like a boxer in training--only blindfolded. Removing the blindfold, he begins hitting drives from atop the freely rolling ball, all off the three-foot high tees, of course.
For the climax of the show Joey rolls out the unicycle. But this I won't even try to describe because you wouldn't believe me. You'll just have to see it for yourself.
© Gary M. Pinkston, 1998.
