Mitch Laurance - Part 6 (A Life Well-Lived: Gratitude, Golf Getaways, and the Legacy of Mitch Laurance)

Mitch Laurance 0:16

Before we leave the world of pool and billiards from my end of this story, I just I want to say sitting here looking at the two of you, Allison and Mark, Mark, we had and still have, but we had a great relationship doing what we did. And for all that you do and have done for the game, and for the people who play the game, people who love the game, the people you've taught the game, all of it, I wanted to say thanks because there are very few in it that have done what you have done for the game. So thanks.

Mark Wilson 0:55

That means the world to me.

Allison Fisher 0:57

Yeah.

Mitch Laurance 0:57

Really, really from the heart. And Allison, I don't I love that we have known each other so long. That's one thing. When I was a fresh-faced 45-year-old with a few strands more hair.

Allison Fisher 1:18

A few, as Nikki would say.

Mitch Laurance 1:20

Yeah. That's funny. When you were a fresh-faced whatever you were in 1995, I think one of the the biggest things for me, and and this is coming from someone who has lived with and watched one of the great players that has ever played the game, to be able to have watched, and this doesn't include your incredible career in Snooker, which was legendary and enough for a career for most people, but to be able to have watched you from the the day you first arrived to play and to sitting here talking to you now these many years later as the greatest player ever, period, to me. I am incredibly grateful to still have the memories and to still be able to talk to you about it today, and to be friends today and to be sharing a lot of our lives. So thank you for everything too.

Allison Fisher 2:30

Thank you, Mitch, because I've just recently been going through some photos and I I look back and I remember that one in 1995 when I won my first nationals. Yeah. And I've got the picture of you interviewing me straight straight after. And I remember do you remember me trying to get my dad down from the audience and he wouldn't come down? He did eventually.

Mitch Laurance 2:50

And I have to tell you, I watched that.

Allison Fisher 2:53

Yeah.

Mitch Laurance 2:54

I think that I I sent you, I don't know if it was the picture or the and you said you had you were familiar. I watched the because that was it might have been other than that Gord's event, it was one of the first things I did. The interview with you after you had won. Yeah. And when I watched it, I thought, how great to be able to have that with you at that point in your career here. And to be able to watch it now. I'm so grateful for YouTube and for all the places that we can watch it.

Allison Fisher 3:34

Yeah, it's crazy.

Mitch Laurance 3:35

Oh. And it was a great interview. It was just light and fun and obviously. At the beginning for me, it was a big thing. We were very happy, yeah.

Allison Fisher 3:44

Yeah, ecstatic. I was absolutely ecstatic. Yeah. After, you know, that was the first time actually I had performed on ESPN. So it was December 95, and I played Robin in the semi-final, and Laurie John in the final. Well, against Robin, my first appearance on national TV was I shot the balls the wrong way round. I shot the three before the two. And because in my mind I'd played the run out in my head. I'd sort of planned it all out, then I shot the wrong ball. Steve Tipton goes, Found. I'm like, what? What went down? I was a little humiliated. But I did laugh it off and carry on. But yeah, that was my memory of that event. Isn't that funny? Aside from I think was it the end of the beginning of the event? I'd won one event prior to that, and they were already giving me a dubious achievements award as a newcomer, and they offered me a one-way ticket back to England.

Mitch Laurance 4:41

Remember that. Well, I think people had an idea of what might be coming.

Allison Fisher 4:45

Oh, that was funny.

Mitch Laurance 4:47

That was a thing. Everybody had heard about you before you arrived here.

Allison Fisher 4:50

So I've met Ava before, hadn't I, a couple of times in other events that we talked about on another podcast. But I mean, I'm so grateful too, because you're such a wonderful person. I mean, you're sensitive, you know, you're great at your job. Lots of lovely conversations over 30 years, spanning 30 years. And uh and then we recently came out to your house to film some of the Q Queens project, and that was wonderful to see you all again. So I mean it's been a pleasure for me to know you, Mitch, too, and Ava, of course.

Mitch Laurance 5:24

Well, I'm gonna close this part with you, and these may make you knowing you won't make you terribly uncomfortable. As a competitor, it will. But the of all these things, Mike, and I know you know this, Mark, the two crowning achievements of my commentary life both involved you, one in 1998 and one in 2012, Alison. She knows exactly what you're talking about. I know, I know. But you know, in the in the con in the context of what we're talking about, yeah, to be able to, and I would be remiss if this wasn't the most grateful thing of all of it, to be able to do what I was doing. I mean, I loved doing commentary with Ava. Loved it. For a lot of different reasons, obviously. But to be able to do the commentary when she won both of those events was uh first of all, I I have to brag a little bit. I don't think there's ever been in any sport a com play-by-play commentator who has common done commentary for his wife or a female that's done commentary for her husband in the way that I was able to do. There have been couples that have done commentary together, but never where they've actually commentated on a match that their spouse was playing in for a championship. And uh Boston was great in '98 because Ava was with Brunswick Billiards. It was a Brunswick event. It was at Boston Billiards. I remember. It was it was a fantastic. You have to take this from where I was. I remember all the losses. Don't worry about that. This is only two. You had a, you know, a few more wins than losses, my dear. But that was great. But then to 14 years later at the Masters, on really one of the most incredible runs, and you have all had them, but the most incredible runs through a bunch of great players that my wife had that week to win that title 14 years after the one she had last won, was how I held it together through that, I don't know. I have no idea.

Allison Fisher 7:49

I remember the tears.

Mitch Laurance 7:50

Well, at the end, I remember when you entered the arena, of course. I mean, you closed the car. At the closed commentary. At the end, and I think I was allowed. I'm talking about during the entire that entire match, I because inside I was. Mark, you think I was Mr. Cool? If you could have been on the inside. And I don't know. And Jeanette was doing the commentary with me, and to her credit, she was kind of funny and kept it a little bit light. She would keep going, how you doing, husband, how you doing? Whatever. But when that last ball went down, I don't know that I've ever had a rush of everything, every emotion you can have. I don't think I've ever had one. Probably before or since that particular one. So I get that's that's a pretty good way to wrap up the pool commentary portion of this.

Allison Fisher 8:55

That makes it totally worth it.

Mike Gonzalez 8:56

Yeah, Mitch, the the painful part of this for Allison is she's now had to relive these two losses twice in the last 30 days. First with your wife and now with you.

Mitch Laurance 9:11

I give you my word, as your friend, I will never talk about it again. There we go. There we go.

Allison Fisher 9:22

Somehow I'm not so sure, but you never know. Are we done with that now? Are we done with that?

Mike Gonzalez 9:28

Well, you know, we are, but I gotta I gotta say, you know, with all the love fest going on, it was kind of a three-way love fest. I felt a little little out of it, quite frankly. And and so to bring it back in to Mike Gonzalez Land, let's talk about something you and I have in common, Mitch, and that's uh among other things, some of which we won't talk about. But you too are a golf podcaster. So tell us a little bit about that.

Mitch Laurance 9:54

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Trying to think, about now it's 15 years ago, as a golfer and somebody who'd been playing already for 30 years or so, I got into hickory golf. I was very frustrated playing the game. I was always chasing a lower handicap and longer drives. And I just I had a bad attitude. I was frustrated a lot. And I was playing in an event at Pinehurst and was paired with two guys from Louisville, one of whom ran Louisville golf, a guy named Mike Just, and another guy, Josh Fisher, who had been a friend of mine before, so I knew Josh. And we were playing, and Mike, one of the things that Louisville Golf did was they made replicas of Hickory Golf Clubs, the old clubs from 100, 125 years ago. And while we were playing, I hit some shots with Mike's clubs, and something about it just really hit me strongly. So I left there, and keeping it short, I just got a little more interested every little while, and I kept I went online, I bought a couple of hickory clubs, I would talk to them. He sent me a club, a couple of clubs. And over those next few years, I just started going, you know what? I think I like this more. I think I like the old clubs more. I think it takes me away from being frustrated. I'm just interested in hitting shots, and I love the history of these clubs. So I was sitting with a friend of mine here in Myrtle Beach named Jeff Gilder one day, and he had started to set up an online whole company of different golf shows, radio podcasts. They weren't really podcasts yet. They weren't called that. They were just flat-out live shows that he would produce. And one day we would go in, and whenever I'd see him, I'd go in and he had a bottle of whiskey in his office. And the two of us would have a dram together, just hello, we'd have a dram together. And he heard me talking about the hickory clubs, and one day he said, Why don't you do a show? I said, What do you mean? He said, Why don't you do a show about hickory clubs and history? So, and this was 2013, I believe. And so I said, You know, that sounds pretty cool. So, thanks to all these celebrity events I'd been playing in, I'd gotten to be friendly with some fairly well-known people in the world of golf. And I thought, who can I talk to in my first episode that would get people's interest and have a fun conversation? And I called the podcast Hooked on Hickories, and my first guest was Ben Wright, who Mark and Allison might not know, a very well-known golf commentator, British, been in the game for years, player, and then a commentator, and incredibly well respected in the world of golf. And so I called Ben and I said, Would you do me a favor? Would you be on my first show? Yes, yes, of course, match. Of course, Mitch. I'm on your show. And he and I were really close. We used to, we all played in all the same events together. I had stayed at his house. I mean, I knew Ben really well. And he was incredibly gracious. And so that was my first one. And I wound up doing, I had unbelievable, as I went along, the people that I had on at the beginning who were really well known helped me latch on to other people in the game because I just sent them the list of the last five people that did the show, and they went, oh, sure. And because of that, I I I look at it now and I go, I don't know how I even did this. You know, this guy who didn't play golf growing up in Long Island is now talking to these people from around the world that are legendary. And somehow I did about, I'm gonna say 75 hooked on hickories podcasts. And then I thought one day, you know, I want to widen this out. I don't just want it to be about hickories and history. I just want to talk to people, kind of like you guys are doing too, to get other sides of things. So I started another podcast with my friend Darren Bunch, who's out in California, who was a good friend of mine. I hosted it, he produced it, and I called that one Golf Connections. So it opened up the whole world to talk about anything in golf. And I did, I think about I'm gonna say 175 golf connection episodes. And then Darren and I decided, because we were traveling all the time, different destinations, golf trips for things we were doing. I was doing video and a lot of video hosting of golf things and all around the country and the world, from Scotland to Canada to all over. So we decided to do a podcast called Talking Golf Getaways and have it focus on a traveling golfer. And we're still going, not as frequently, but we're still we're doing one next week. And we did the one we do next week will be our 200th Talking Golf Getaways episode. So, all in all, it's been, I don't know, maybe 450 of them over the course of 12, 13 years. And it's been, yeah, it's been great for me. It's because it hasn't been, as you know, it hasn't been just about golf at all.

Mark Wilson 15:56

You've been a busy guy, though. Produced that many.

Mitch Laurance 16:00

It's not, you know, I have never ever ever looked at it that way, Mark. And even I talk about, and all of you know this too. If you it's a cliche, but when you're doing things you love, uh you can be as busy as you can be. And yeah, it never I I've always and still always think of people with lives that don't include the things we've been able to do. And just get up and go to work every morning, really. So I've been busy, yes. Luckily, right? I need something to keep me moving around besides, you know, just going to the post office and the bank.

Mark Wilson 16:38

So I'm afraid to slow down for fear that something might fall off.

Mitch Laurance 16:43

Yeah, well, that's you you're right to feel that way, Pat. Well, you got people to repair that.

Mike Gonzalez 16:52

Yeah. Is there still a lot of life left in talking golf getaways, or have you done pretty much what you wanted to do?

Mitch Laurance 16:59

Well, uh my my part, Darren and I had talked about it, and maybe about six or eight months ago we came to the decision that we were going to end it. I decided that after 440 episodes, I'd pretty much talk to everybody that you could talk to. Yes, there's new people every, but I pretty much felt talked out, if you would. And you guys know me, it's not just a behavior would go crazy because I'd be doing the podcast last. We usually tell guests it's 45 minutes and then an hour and a half later you're done. But the research that I would do before the podcast usually took me a good two full days, probably. And I always wanted to have much more than I ever needed. So I did that. And that was, I think, starting to wear on me a little bit. I think I just started getting to a point where it was it was still exciting, but not as exciting. And Darren got busier. He's doing marketing and PR for four unbelievable golf destinations. So he's been busy. And but we both love doing it. We love each other. We have a great time. Our friend Chris McEwen produces it out. He's in Chicago. Darren is in Bakersfield, California, and I'm in Myrtle Beach. We all travel together, we love talking to each other, and we have fun. So it's not completely gone. Next week, we're doing a guy named David McClay Kidd, who's an architect who's designed some of the great, great golf destinations. And then after David McClay Kidd, I'm gonna have the chance to interview Michael Eaves, who's a sports center anchor, about golf, because he's a huge golfer and he does a lot of the masters telecast stuff. I bumped into him in the airport in Lexington, Kentucky on the way home from visiting my brother. And I said, Hey, you're a big golfer. Would you do our podcast? And he said, sure. So to answer your question, it's an ongoing thing, it's not as frequent. We might do maybe one a month now, but it's fine. I still love doing it.

Mark Wilson 19:09

Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 19:10

That's what's nice when you get to a point where you don't feel the weekly pressure to release episodes on a certain day. You know, you've got enough in the can, or you just say, you know what, they'll get it when we do it. If we have a guest that that's compelling and we're gonna do something, we'll do it. That's kind of the way uh, you know, we operate our golf podcast now. You know, we've gotten through most of our list, but if somebody's, you know, Ernie Else calls and says, Yeah, I can do it next Tuesday, okay. We'll make room for you. Yeah.

Mitch Laurance 19:38

We'll do Ernie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a wonderful feeling.

Mike Gonzalez 19:43

Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about uh something that uh you're involved in, probably more as a helper. You may have another term for it, but I know Ava runs an APA league uh uh in the area where you guys live. Tell us a little bit about what's involved with that.

Mitch Laurance 19:57

I it's truly unbelievable. It really is. I think it's 16 or 17 years ago. We'd always known about APA. Allison, you know this. We were always around them. They sponsored AWPBA events, we knew the people. Ava had never really done exhibitions and things for the APA. She was under contract with Brunswick, so most of her exhibitions and different things were in that world. And we had a very good friend, have a very good friend, Bruce Bartholet, who's one of the great people and great pool guys and trick shot artists. And we had been friendly with Bruce for a while. And he used to occasionally say, You guys should have an APA franchise. And we'd go, What are you even talking about? And eventually he called one day, and the franchise in Myrtle Beach was being run by two people who had not, to put it mildly, not done a good job. The national office was going to take away the Myrtle Beach franchise. And Bruce said, I think you guys should just get it. You can get it at kind of a fire sale because they're trying to get rid of it to somebody else. So we kind of looked at each other, long story short, and went okay after some deliberation, having no idea what it was going to involve. And the first year was intensely difficult. And I said to you before, people just look at you and go, it's a pool league. How difficult can it be? Until you start running it and dealing with players and schedules and bars and all the things that go into it. We started with 83 teams that we bought, a few hundred players. And now, I don't want to give an exact number because if I'm wrong, my wife will kill me. But it's in the 400 teams. Oh, smokes.

Allison Fisher 21:52

That's a lot.

Mitch Laurance 21:52

You know, 1,500 players, uh somewhere around there. And that geography covers how much? It's about 60 miles or so from the southern part of the Myrtle Beach area all the way up to Wilmington, North Carolina. And the only way I can put it is we get to do it. We share it with my daughter Nikki and her husband Toby. Toby's the workhorse in terms of being out in bars, getting new players, putting teams together, dealing with problems, which is daily, nonstop, you know, effort. He's unbelievable at it. Ava is the true brains behind the whole thing, and she every day is dealing with it, is dealing with schedules a year in advance and setting up events, which we do a lot of on weekends, and dealing with the day-to-day issues that come up, creating all kinds of things now on the computer and talking people down off the ledge on the phone, which she's a complete queen of. And just overall, for the four of us, it's I can't even imagine our life without it. And what it's given us, not just monetarily, but in terms of being able to work together and create, really create something that is lasting and that 99.5% of the players love, it's just it's a really amazing thing. So and I'm glad to just you know go to the post office and the bank and Kinkos and Office Macs and whatever they need. I'm here to help.

Mike Gonzalez 23:34

Mitch, uh, it's been an absolute delight. And as you may know, having perhaps listened to part one, and no, no, maybe not, but I know you have access to part four of Ava's interview, so you may know what's coming, but we like to ask three identical questions of each of our guests. We've we've done this uh with Mark, with Allison, with Nick Varner, who you mentioned, who was our first outside guest. And so I'm gonna let the Duchess of Doom ask you the first of our three final questions.

Allison Fisher 24:06

Well, Mitch, thanks for being here. These are tricky questions, require some thought, but I think I know the answer to this one. If you knew when you were twenty what you know now, what would you have done differently?

Mitch Laurance 24:24

Well, that's a good one. I think in a w uh surprisingly, my first instinctive answer was nothing. But I think in reality, the only thing that really I had mentioned in an earlier in talking to you guys, I think I would have I think I would have been a little more kind of into speaking to my parents and my grandparents about history, family history. Because I think that as you get older, that's something that means more and more and more and more, and you can't get back. You can't get that chance back. So I think I would that would be a big one, I think. As far as my own life. I think I maybe in a way would have slowed down a little. I think I might have taken more time to try to find my own center, if that's a way to put it, and operate from a place, from that place, as opposed to what I now think of myself as, and this was early on, I've gotten a lot better at it, as dealing with outside things moving me. It would have been something inside moving me. Uh, it has obviously turned out wonderfully well, but I think I might like to have been a little calmer growing up.

Allison Fisher 25:59

That's a great answer. Thank you.

Mitch Laurance 26:01

That works.

Mike Gonzalez 26:02

Now you can phone a friend.

Allison Fisher 26:04

I don't think he needs to on that one.

Mike Gonzalez 26:07

All right, question number two. Now, we may get a different answer here because it may not necessarily be an athletic or a sports-related answer, because typically we'll ask these legends of the queue, we'll give you one mulligan, as you would appreciate as a golfer, one shot to do over, where would it be? So perhaps for you, it's it's not necessarily a pool shot or a golf shot, but is there something in the history of Mitch Lawrence that you'd say, boy, I'd like another crack at that one?

Mitch Laurance 26:39

Wow. I mean, wow. It's amazing how the Rolodex of things in your mind is just going, and wouldn't we love to hear what's spinning through that brain? Yeah, but I don't, uh I'd be really tough, I think, to nail down one kind of thing. I really, I mean, I I've messed up at things. I've, you know, I might say, yeah, I'd like another crack at that audition. Or but I I think again, I said this before, and I don't mean it to sound trite. I think everything has led to the next thing. And I don't know that if I had nailed something that I didn't do before, I I don't know that I could imagine what that would have led to because I have no idea. So sorry if that's that's kind of nebulous, but I I really can't think of anything that's so if I had missed my chance with my wife, that would have been a can I get a do-over? Luckily I didn't. So Yeah, yeah, good, good.

Mike Gonzalez 27:46

Fair enough. Final question, Mark Wilson.

Mark Wilson 27:49

How would Mitch Lawrence like to be remembered?

Mitch Laurance 28:07

I think it's I think it's pretty simple. Somebody who was kind, somebody who made people feel better about themselves when they were around them. Somebody that took deep care of the people he loved. Someone who squeezed the most out of life.

Mark Wilson 28:39

Yeah, very cool.

Mitch Laurance 28:40

End of story.

Allison Fisher 28:43

That's a another great answer.

Mike Gonzalez 28:45

Yeah, a great way to put a bow on this, Mitch. But I I hope you can now appreciate why Alison and Mark and I love doing this so much.

Mitch Laurance 28:57

Well, I I'm really glad that you three do this. It's a it's highly unusual. I love the fact that you ask the questions you ask and probe the things you probe. I love the format of it and the way you give people a chance to digest different parts of it. So as much as you guys thank me, I thank you more. Neener, neener, neener.

Mark Wilson 29:29

You know, as for for me, Mitch, I completely respect and love you. And I can't even tell you how much you meant to my life. And it's way more than you think.

Mitch Laurance 29:41

That makes me smile.

Allison Fisher 29:43

Yeah, it's wonderful. And thank you for sharing all that stuff that you shared about your life. And and it's lovely that it's almost come full circle, Nikki, isn't it? You know, that you're working together and seeing each other all the time. So that's a another lovely part of the story. So thank you, and thanks, thank Ava in the background if she's there. Tell her I'll see you. Oh, look, there's my mum walking in.

Mike Gonzalez 30:04

Hello, Mum. We've not had her on the show yet, have we?

Allison Fisher 30:08

I knew she was gonna get in it somewhere along the line.

Mitch Laurance 30:11

I haven't seen her in so long.

Allison Fisher 30:12

Hi, Mum. Funny. She now she's on the floor. I think she's coming to do some exercise.

Mike Gonzalez 30:18

Excellent.

Allison Fisher 30:19

I like it.

Mike Gonzalez 30:20

Well, Mitch, thank you so much for sharing your story with us on Legends of the Cue.

Allison Fisher 30:26

Thanks again. Thank you, Mitch. Thank you for listening to another episode of Legends of the Cue. If you like what you hear, wherever you listen to your podcast, including Apple and Spotify, please follow, subscribe, and spread the word. Give our podcast a five-star rating and share your thoughts. Visit our website and support our Paul History project. Until our next Golden Break with more Legends of the Cube. So long, everybody.