Eddie Merrins, Bel-Air Golf Pro Who Taught the Game to Hollywood, Dies at 91

Eddie Merrins, the affable golf professional at Bel-Air Country Club who taught the game to the likes of Bing Crosby, Ringo Starr, George C. Scott, Dean Martin, Celine Dion and Jack Nicholson, has died. He was 91.

Merrins died Wednesday after a long illness, according to UCLA, where he coached for 14 years. His son Michael had launched one GoFundMe campaign this year to help the family with costs.

Nicknamed “The Little Pro,” the 6-foot-4 Mississippi native played on the PGA Tour before serving as Bel-Air’s head pro from 1962 until he was asked to step aside in 2003. However, he remained a popular fixture at the legendary club as pro emeritus in jacket/sweater, tie and white floating cap.

Remarkably, Bel Air, which opened in 1925, has only had three main professionals: Joe Novak, Merrins and now Dave Podas.

Merrins was inducted into the PGA Hall of Fame in 2009 and arranged for Jack Nicklaus to meet then-15-year-old Tiger Woods for the first time; coached UCLA to the 1988 NCAA men’s championship; and wrote a groundbreaking instruction book, Swing with the handle, not the club headfirst published in 1973.

Merrins’ students over the years also included Robert Wagner, Glenn Frey, Jerry West, Dennis Quaid, James Woods, Jimmy Connors, Craig T. Nelson, Marcus Allen, Jerry Rice, Robert Goulet and Pete Sampras.

“As golfers, actors and entertainers are an interesting bunch. They are never satisfied with their matches and after a round they tend to talk about all the shots they missed on the course,” he says. told Golf overview in 2010.

“Fred Astaire was almost manic in his search for more distance. Sean Connery is constantly checking his position in the mirror, which I’ve never found useful – I call it a ‘vanity check’. Jack Nicholson gives the impression that he doesn’t care how he plays, but he does. Hugh Grant became immersed in the concept that the swing is three-dimensional. Celine Dion wanted a full speech on my ‘Swing the Handle’ philosophy – in ten minutes. Mikhail Baryshnikov fought vigorously to improve his grip. Entertainers are perfectionists by nature. They have to be, I think.”

Martin Edward Merrins, the eldest of two children, was born on August 4, 1932 in Meridian, Mississippi. His father, Edward, was a New Yorker who came south to work as a lumber broker. His mother, Carrie, wanted her son to take piano and dance lessons, which he “avoided like the plague,” he wrote in his 2006 book: Playing a round with the little pro: a life in the game.

Merrins started playing golf at age 11, when a polio scare forced him to miss summer camp. He played almost every day at Northwood Country Club, where in 1949 he made two holes-in-one in the same round. He also defeated Sam Snead as a teenager.

Merrins won back-to-back high school championships while representing Meridian High School and earned a scholarship to play at LSU, where he finished runner-up for the 1952 individual NCAA title and took Southeastern Conference crowns in ’53 and ’54. He subsequently served as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force during the Korean War.

He turned pro in 1957, taking his nickname from fellow player Jerry Pittman, and played in about 200 PGA Tour events, plus five US Opens, six PGA Championships and two British Opens. However, he never finished better than fourth.

Like most Tour members at the time, Merrins needed a job as a club pro to play the Bills. During his 1957-59 stint as a student at Merion Golf Club Philadelphia, he concluded that a good golf swing is similar to a two-handed swing in tennis and must be controlled by the forearms. Thus his ‘swing the handle’ philosophy was born.

After teaching at Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, and Thunderbird Country Club in Palm Springs – working at the latter for legendary club professional Claude Harmon, father of current guru instructor Butch Harmon – Merrins got his first professional job at Rockaway Hunting Club (replacing Dave Marr) on Long Island in 1960.

He retired from full-time play on the PGA Tour to join Bel-Air.

While working for the club, Merrins also coached future pros Corey Pavin, Steve Pate and Duffy Waldorf at UCLA from 1975-89. Notable players such as Rickie Fowler, Amy Alcott, Ben Crenshaw, Raymond Floyd, Vijay Singh, Bob May, Tom Kite, Rocco Mediate, Gay Brewer and Scott McCarron also sought him out over the years.

Famous Los Angeles Times sportswriter Jim Murray once described him as “6 feet tall (in peaks), weighing 150 (after lunch).”

In the late 1970s, Merrins co-founded the annual Friends of Golf tournament in Bel-Air, which started as a fundraiser for the UCLA golf team but has now raised millions of dollars for high school teams and junior golf programs.

The iconic Swinging Bridge at Bel-Air, which leads golfers over a ravine on the way to green No. 10, was dedicated to him in 2015.

Survivors include his wife Lisa; sons Michael and Mason; and daughter Randy.

“It has been a great joy and honor to teach so many people this game and help them learn to love it,” says Merrins told Alan Shipnuck in 2019. “Students often say thank you at the end of a lesson, but I’m really the one who is grateful because all those golfers – with their curiosity and enthusiasm and their love of the game – have enriched my life so deeply.”