Bobby Clampett – Author

Bobby Clampett played on the PGA Tour from 1980 to 1995. Clampett began playing on the Champions Tour in April 2010.

A PGA Tour Life Member and popular television golf broadcaster, Bobby Clampett is well-known within golf’s inner circles as both an avid student of the game and an exceptional teacher.

Clampett’s varied interests have led him from playing golf courses to helping design them, as well as from the TV booth to the bookstores, as the successful author of The Impact Zone. An avid snow skier and life-long pilot with over 5,000 hours (his father was a two-time National Air Race Champion), Clampett has discovered another new passion a bit more down to earth: as a winemaker.

Clampett established his golf resume as a champion competitor, winning at the amateur, collegiate and tour professional levels – actually notching his first victory against tour professionals as a 19-year-old. And while he continues to thrive in his 50s on the Champions Tour, Clampett believes his true contribution to the game will be through instruction.

Clampett’s insights from personal experience, as well as from studying and competing against the world’s best players for four decades, has resulted in a philosophy that completely changes the way golfers and instructors perceive and interpret each golfer’s swing. With his “Impact Zone Training System” Clampett challenges the widely accepted theory of golf instruction that is too concerned with a golfer’s swing style, while overlooking its results and effectiveness. His early golf training was based on the groundbreaking book “The Golfing Machine” by Homer Kelley, and working closely with Kelley disciple Ben Doyle, at nearby Quail Lodge Golf Club in Carmel Valley.

Clampett became one of the most celebrated young amateur golfers in the world, earning honors as the low amateur at the 1978 U.S. Open and 1979 Masters, while still a teenager. And he was still only 19 when he won a professional tournament for the first time, beating a field that included many PGA Tour veterans in the 1980 Spalding Invitational, held on the Monterey Peninsula.

Among his national amateur titles, Clampett posted prestigious victories at the Porter Cup, the Sunnehanna Amateur and the Western Amateur. He also won the 1978 World Amateur medal in team competition for the Eisenhower Trophy. Closer to home Clampett twice captured the California State Amateur virtually in his own backyard, at the Pebble Beach Golf Links, first as an 18-year-old in 1978 and then again two summers later in 1980.

Not to be overlooked was Clampett’s remarkable collegiate career at Brigham Young University, where from 1978 through 1980 he was a three-time All-American, set the all-time career Collegiate Victory Title with 12 wins and is the only two-time Fred Haskins Award winner (The Heisman Trophy of Golf) as the Collegiate Golfer of the Year.

Turning pro in 1980, Clampett earned more than $1.4 million during 15 years as regular on the PGA Tour, tapering off is playing schedule following the 1994 season to focus on his second golf career, as a broadcaster. Clampett has enjoyed working for CBS and TNT the past three decades, but since he has returned to competition on the Champions Tour in 2010, his obligations to CBS have been limited to the network’s two major championships broadcasts, at the Masters and PGA Championship. After five seasons and in only 87 events on the Champion’s Tour, Clampett more than doubled his life-time earnings that took him 396 events to accumulate.

Clampett remains active in donating his time and support to numerous non-profit organizations throughout the year.