Stylish: Elkington’s
rig (left) has some
flair, and his simple
and attractive swing
(shown at Hualalai
last month) has
aged very well.
far more read and retweet. Elkington
claims that by dress and swing alone
he can pick from a crowd any Dirters,
as they call themselves. “We always
try to get them to think a little deeper,”
Elkington says. “Take responsibility for
your own game.”
Among the converted is Ross Roark, a west Texas horse
trainer who met Elkington 15 years ago. Roark discovered
Secret as a mid-80s shooter with a looping, knee-dipping
swing many instructors might scrap. Roark grooved his ac-
tion by studying about 300 videos, one reason the new Secret
channel on You Tube has logged a million views. “If you want
to know anything about golf, about the swing or the way it’s
supposed to be done, it’s right there in The Vault,” he says.
Last summer Roark, now scratch, shot a 63.
The Vault’s other section is a bank of daily single-panel
cartoons from Elkington and Calder Chism, some of the most
pointed commentary on golf and sports in general. (Typical
of the biting tone was a Jan. 31 caricature of a big-biceped
Vijay Singh using deer-antler spray.) They connected five
or six years ago when Chism, a former newspaper editorial
cartoonist, met Elkington, who has drawn avidly since child-
hood, when Chism’s brother-in-law, Scott McCarron, hosted a
house party during the Reno-Tahoe Open. Chism recalls the
pair “just sat there and got drunk and drew stuff on paper
and immediately hit it off.”
Chism says Elkington could produce a daily panel himself
in his “very stylized, simple line-art” presentation. Instead
each morning they exchange texts, sketches and chat on the
phone to hash out an idea Chism posts before reporting for
work at a utility company. “Social media lets everybody put a
nice, shiny filter on what they’re really like and they only get
to show their best, especially on Facebook and Twitter,” he
says. “But Elk doesn’t do that. He completely gives you the
raw Elk flavor in everything he does.”
Shortly after Secret went live, the group created an iPhone
app. They shelved it on concerns Dirters would ignore others
in their foursome while playing. During the next two years
Elkington’s golf reputation got them in the door at the biggest
digital firms. But it was their pitches and products that kept
those audiences. Startups must answer three questions: What
do you have, what problems does it solve and how are you going to get in and out of this thing? Appearing before the Silicon
Valley Executive Network of CEOs and angel investors, Elkington handled the last with his usual bluntness: I’ll tell you what
my exit plan is going to be when we figure out our entry plan.
The app evolved during 2012 into CapZoo, available for
iPhone users and destined for other platforms. Say you
want to document a buddies golf trip. CapZoo aggregates
text, photos, video and sound into a quasi time capsule with
its own URL for emailing or posting to Twitter, Facebook
and other sites. The magic was centralizing social-media
technology more than inventing it. While the app was in
beta testing, Elkington had a small mole removed from his
side. The dermatologist made a CapZoo of the procedure:
photos, video with commentary, added audio notes and a
list of surgical instruments. “So now they have that as a
baseline teaching tool,” Elkington says.
This year Secret and CapZoo will gain wider visibility via
Elkington’s pitching them on the Champions Tour. The job
now is to scale each into big numbers, to multiply their reach.
The trailer will occasionally host Dirters, CapZoo users and
business partners, including digital companies Elkington
says are eager to sponsor golf. He likens releasing the app
to a rookie gaining a tour card in that “the hard work’s only
just begun.” In case there are not enough spinning plates, the
group has two more app ideas, the first of which they hope to
begin developing soon.
Amid this maelstrom stands Elkington the golfer. His
co-workers pronounce him ready to contend despite a 2012
more akin to a U.S. Mid-Amateur contender: hustling from
the office to squeeze in a little practice, customer golf in the
Valley, pickup games at the club where it takes birdies to
win. “People say they lay their clubs down for three months,”
Elkington says. “Well, I’ve never done that.”
Elkington was a little rusty teaming with Sam for a mid-
pack finish in the PNC Father-Son Challenge in December but
cracked the top 10 in his official debut, last month’s Mitsubishi
Electric Championship at Hualalai. Nearly 20 Australian and
U.S. relatives and friends gathered to mark his 50th birthday
and bid farewell to the sabbatical. The only absence was Alex
Mercer, his boyhood teacher, with whom he is working again.
Elkington has never been a goal-setter, but the ’92 and ’95
Tournament of Champions winner on the regular tour got a
whiff of the elder version and knows he wants back in 2014.
Elkington calls his new circuit “the coolest retirement plan
ever” and says the pressure is off. “I don’t wake up thinking
about my swing or worrying about how the week’s going,
watching the weather and my tee times,” says Elkington,
who was T- 47 in his second start, the Allianz Championship.
“When I see these Champions Tour players, I look at every
one of their faces, there’s a certain percentage of relaxment.”
That explains why, given the choice, he prefers a successful
digital career to a successful senior career. “I’d like to win,”
he says, “but winning a senior major doesn’t put you in the
Hall of Fame, right?” n
