Text: Martin Pashley. Photographs: James Cheadle. Article from the April 2012 issue of Compleat Golfer Magazine.
Golf comes with more than its fair share of hard-luck stories. But not many come much harder than the story of 53-year-old American pro Mark Burk, former Sunshine Tour player and star of The Golf Channel’s reality show Pipe Dream.
Mark Burk, who placed in amateur California championships in his youth and played on the Sunshine Tour here in South Africa, once had it all – a supermodel girlfriend, a wealthy mother who funded his game and gigs teaching Hollywood stars like Halle Berry how to swing for the silver screen. Now, despite fame from a reality TV show, he has less than nothing, and his home is a set of metal construction tubes next to railroad tracks in the Californian desert – where he spends his days practising for a shot at the Champions Tour. That is, when he hasn’t had to pawn his clubs for food.
Mark was born in 1957 in Los Angeles, California. His mother was wealthy, having built up a chain of liquor stores and cheque-cashing outlets across the poorer parts of the city. His father, whom Mark didn’t know the identity of until he was 40, was a professional burglar and jewel thief who achieved minor notoriety after robbing a Danish opera singer of a quarter of a million dollars worth of jewels. Mark’s mum, who wanted her son to have nothing to do with the family business, sent him to boarding school and pushed him towards golf, paying for lessons with the likes of David Leadbetter and Bob Toski. It was, as Mark explains, an intensely privileged existence, a ‘country club life.’
Things rolled nicely on for Mark for years. After some amateur success in California tournaments, he played on the Sunshine Tour in South Africa and made a little money; he also tried qualifying for various US tours, but never quite made it.
But it was never a problem financially. He says, “I wanted for nothing. All I had to do was go and shake the money tree that was my mother.” He finally quit competitive golf in 1995 and got into teaching, making a little extra cash by giving lessons out of his mum’s garage that he’d converted into a studio.
Swordfish, teaching Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry. Mark still speaks of Halle with admiration. He says, “They were going to use a double as she had zero experience. But she was talented enough to get a 4-wood to 150 metres off the tee after a couple of sessions. Great spirit, great attitude.” And he adds with a smile,”When we’d finished, she straddled me wearing a red mini skirt and said I was the best teacher she’d ever had.”
And then the money tree began to wither. Mark’s mother’s cheque-cashing business went south after a cousin embezzled a million dollars from a traveller’s cheque company. The government forced the closure of the chain and his mother had to pay the stolen money back, leaving her virtually penniless. But, as happens so often to those who glide through life without any visible means of funding, another support mechanism arrived as if on cue: Mark met and fell in love with former supermodel Beverley Johnson.
At first, Mark explains, life with Beverley was great. She’d made a fortune as the first black supermodel and had her own TV show and wig-making business. A keen golfer, she and Mark lived in her Palm Springs mansion while she funded two unsuccessful attempts to qualify for the Champions Tour. For a while he was happy, but life turned sour and in events that later ended up in court (and Mark being described in the media as a ‘male escort’), she had the police throw him out of her home with just his clubs and a bag of clothes. For the first time in his life, at the age of 50, he was homeless and this time there was no-one to cling to.
“Pipe Dream was a massive hit for the Golf Channel, Garnering some of the highest ratings the Channel had ever seen.”
Mark describes his first two years on the street as hell. He was beaten up, bitten by poisonous spiders, had his clothes stolen and the only reason he kept his clubs was because he left them as collateral for cash with a sympathetic local pro. Having never had a job in his adult life, finding employment in a recession was next to impossible and he eventually ended up living in the pipes on the outskirts of Indio, California.
Despite this, he never let go of his dream of making it onto the tour, he says. “It was the only thing that was keeping me going. I’d sit in the pipes at night and dream about it. I’d practise during the day, using a sledgehammer I’d found or a piece of copper pipe for drills.
I never gave up. I always believed.”
And then, what would be a happy ending in a movie, his luck turned and he found himself the star of his own golf reality TV- show, the synergistically named Pipe Dream.
I first met Mark and his manager Dr Tim Nelson at the Power Ranch golf course in Gilbert, Arizona, 500 km from the desert pipes. It’s been nearly six months since Pipe Dream, which documented his failed attempt to qualify for the US Seniors, was transmitted. Mark, who is six feet, four inches tall and has the lean look that athletes or those who don’t know where their next meal is coming from possess, is still angry at the show’s producers over what he claims are broken promises. “The wheel has turned full circle. During filming, I lived in an RV – they took that away from me,” he claims. “They’ve put me back on the street.”
He spends 20 minutes of our interview outlining his grievances and legal strategies against them. It’s tedious stuff, an exercise in self-taught Barnes & Noble law, but he brightens up when we mention that we’re heading to California after the interview. “I’ll come with you. We should leave now,” he says and adds, “This is meant to be. It’s organic. I’m going back to where it all began. “Dr Tim looks on at this turn of events with dismay. In the car park as Mark squeezes his sponsored custom-made TaylorMade clubs and the two sports bags that contain his whole life onto the back seat of our convertible, Dr Tim is unhappy. “I’ve only known Mark a couple of weeks. I met him on the practice ground. He’s a hugely talented player and I’d prefer it if he didn’t go. He has things he should be doing here. “He shrugs, “What am I going to do? He’s a grown man, I can’t keep him here.” His packing finished, Mark says his goodbyes to Dr Tim, takes the front seat of the car and waits for the off. “We just have to stop at the pharmacy on the way,” he says. “I need to pick up my medication.”
Pipe Dream was a massive hit for The Golf Channel, garnering some of the highest ratings the station had ever seen. It divided opinion among viewers, some claiming the channel was taking the first steps into exploitative reality channel hell while others commentating on message boards (one dedicated to the show racked up nearly 73 000 posts) pegged Mark as the worst kind of mooching golf hustler to ever exist. And watching the show, it’s not hard to see their point of view – Mark frequently comes across as selfish and manipulative, relying on the charity of others for his chance to get on the tour. And on nearly getting there, falling out with them and flunking it. It was, as one commentator put it, “watching a man destroyed by his greatest enemy: himself”
Despite being unhappy with his portrayal on the show, Mark is canny enough to realise that he can use it to further his goal of getting on the Champions Tour. As we speed down the 1-10 towards California, top down with his club covers flapping in the wind, he outlines plans to go course-to-course across America, playing in qualifiers and helping the homeless along the way.
He’s been in touch with a couple of wealthy philanthropists for sponsorship and is confident that something will come of his plans. It’s only then it occurs to me that by driving him away from Dr Tim, we are taking him away from his only shelter. “Don’t worry about that” he smiles, “I’m homeless, I’ll figure it out.” But where are you going to stay tonight I ask. He answers casually,” I have a friend who might be able to put me up. If he’s at home.”
The next few hours of the journey are spent listening to Mark opine on everything from Tiger Woods’ problems, “He went fitness first. Golf second. The wrong way,” to how if players studied the movement of fish through water it would improve their swing. “It’s all about being in harmony with contrary movements.Once you understand that, the rest will come.” He’s funny, intelligent and you can see how he has got through life on little more than his charm.The only time he darkens is on the subjects of Beverley or the independent producers behind Pipe Dream.
“They get the finger, but I love The Golf Channel – they’ve been great with me. Nothing but respect for them,” he says.
As we park opposite the pipes in Indio that could be Mark’s home for the night, I put it to him that maybe golf has been the ruin of him, that he’s become so fixated that he sees it as his only way out, the only way he can lead his life. He’s surprisingly philosophical: “I talked to a psychiatrist about the game and I said I wasn’t sure it was healthy for me,” he says. “It’s like depression cycling. You go birdie. Double. Birdie. Triple. You walk in happy, you walk out sad. Seven out of 10 times you’re miserable. But it hasn’t ruined me. It gives me motivation to get up in the morning. Some might say I’m delusional, but they’re wrong.”
We wait for a mile-long cargo train to pass, the relentless sun sucking the day dry, before we can cross the tracks. Mark looks distant and for once falls silent, away in thought. Finally he says, “My problem was when I was young, I had too much too soon. My water line would never let me sink. Now there is no water line, there is literally only desert. Now I either sink or swim. I think I’m going to swim.”
Mark Burk’s case is not unusual and there are many cases, both here and abroad, of former sports stars falling on hard times. Locally, the Sport Legends Trust was established to help look after former provincial and national sportspeople and their families in times of need.
For more information, log onto www.sportlegendstrust.co.za.
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