The Back Nine, a documentary about a 40-year-old man's dream to make the pro golf tour that made its world premiere at April's Newport Beach Film Festival, returns to an Orange County screen for one night only, Thursday, at the Cinema City Stadium 12 in Anaheim Hills.
The 1 hour 40 minute film trails Jon Fitzgerald, who is credited with co-directing The Back Nine with another Los Angeles-based independent filmmaker, Ron Vignone. Now 42, Fitzgerald started working on the project a year before turning the big 4-0, when the above-average golfer was overcome with a burning desire to make himself good enough to play with the pros within one-year's time.
Fitzgerald assembled a team to work on his swing, fitness, nutrition and
mental approach. He conducted research, interviewed experts and developed a strategy to attain his goal. After shaving 11 strokes off his 15 handicap, he won
the first tournament he entered on the Golf Channel's Amateur Tour.
But as the film shows, Fitzgerald's success on the course is complicated by the needs of his wife and two young children, one of whom was born halfway through shooting The Back Nine. Balancing life and golf while still trying to pay the bills is part of the story. Also playing a role is the conflicting advice he received about pursuing golf full-time from his biological father and stepfather.
Crap, that's giving away too much. Go see it already. Show starts at 7 p.m.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.