Ex-PaliHi Golfer Promotes Book

Jimmy Nissen still remembers vividly playing golf for three seasons at Palisades High, leading the Dolphins to the City Section championship in 2005. Now, the accounting major at the University of Redlands is putting his creativity to use by launching a new golf community web site. “The way I am involved is that since the fall of 2008, I’ve worked with Mike Maves to promote his book online,” Nissen said. “[Golfer] Steve Elkington actually bought the book, fell in love with it, and the new secretinthedirt.com was created and it launched last week. Steve Elkington now spends a great deal of his day contributing to the website.” Major champions Steve Elkington and Jack Burke Jr. have joined with golf instructor Mike Maves to launch a new venture called “Secret In The Dirt.” Taking its name from the famous golf phrase and title of Maves’ popular e-book SecretInTheDirt.com is an instruction and social networking website for golfers. The free site uses video, audio and instruction articles collaboratively authored by Elkington, Burke and Maves, tapping into their 150 years of collective experience playing, teaching and learning about golf. The goal is simple: to help golfers improve their games. At the same time, the site provides tools for aspiring golfers, instructors and golf enthusiasts to network and communicate ideas with one another. Jackie Burke states that “The future of golf is the good amateur,” and the goal of “Secret In The Dirt” is simply to try to create more of them. Beyond the instruction and communication tools and, perhaps even more interestingly, “Secret In The Dirt” provides golfers with a platform to showcase themselves. Whether a golfer wants to just have some fun building their own little Internet golf shrine or they want to create a serious profile in the hopes of getting discovered, secretinthedirt.com provides the necessary social networking features to give golfers exposure to the wider world, to college coaches and the like. Remembering himself as an unknown junior golfer from a little place few people had heard of called Wagga, Elkington had a particular affinity for the project: “The idea that an Internet platform could be created to give global exposure to aspiring golfers has a special appeal to me.” Nissen carded a two-day total of 154 at City Finals as a junior and the following season he led the Dolphins to their 13th section title, shooting a 78 in the opening round at Griffith Park’s Harding Course. Nissen’s teammates on that squad included junior Ben Seelig and sophomores Ashton Roberts, Austin Curtis and Jason Weintraub. sports@palipost.com