The Scratch DJ

By Jon Rizzi

Dropping 105 pounds and 30 strokes has brought radio personality Doc Jarnagin closer to par. 

As another Northern Colorado morning slowly comes to consciousness, the voice on the radio is forecasting “sunny golf with a high of 78.” After airing some useful information that’s supposed to fire my imagination, the owner of that voice, “Doc in the Morning,” returns to confirm what I thought I’d heard.

Doc chirps about a round he had played at City Park in Fort Collins the day before, and his plans to hit Southridge this afternoon. A plug for GolfTEC-Fort Collins and his instructor, Brad Thorberg, follows. “Doc” is 44-year-old Dave Jarnagin, whose employer, the classic-rock station The Bear, lives on the far-right edge of the FM dial at 107.9, its 100,000-watt ClearChannel pawprint extending from Loveland to Cheyenne and down to Denver.

In addition to being the morning drive voice, he serves as the show’s program and music director, also handling promotions, Web content, imaging, concerts in the natural amphitheater adjacent to the studio and “anything else affecting the station.”

That would include representing it as a “celebrity” at local charity golf tournaments during the summer and functioning as the unofficial ringleader of regular golf outings among colleagues such as fellow ClearChannel DJ and program director Chris Kelly of 96.1 KISS FM, with whom he teed off at least 20 times between September and Thanksgiving.

“His enthusiasm got me to cave,” says Kelly, who hadn’t played since his teens. “Now I’m hooked. He’s always excited to be there and wants people around him to enjoy playing as much as he does.”

I experience this firsthand during a “sunny golf ” September day at Timnath’s Harmony Club, an aptly named spot for a man who makes his living by playing music. Neither Doc nor I is a member at the flawless facility, but the solicitous staff indulges our twosome as if we were. As the afternoon light limns the Jim Engh-designed holes on which only a few golfers appear, it’s clear why Harmony’s owner, Byron Collins, refers to this as “paradise golf.”

On our way to the first tee, Doc shares his journey to the paradise of Colorado. Like that of most radio personalities, it’s circuitous— with stops in Tennessee, Florida, Nebraska, New Mexico and Utah before arriving in Fort Collins in 2006. His radio aspirations began in Memphis, where his family relocated from Southern California when he was seven.

“I remember watching the Los Angeles horizon disappear through the car’s rear window,” he reflects, admitting to an enduring love for the USC Trojans and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Memphis may not have yet had major league sports, but it had majorly talented radio personality, Rick Dees, along with some other disc jockeys who made an indelible imprint on young Dave. He listened constantly, even on weekends, when he and his father or friends would drive a half-hour or so to play golf in Olive Branch, Mississippi. “I was thirteen or fourteen, and mostly just looking at the pin and shooting at it,” he says.

He got his shot at radio while at the University of Tennessee-Martin, but by the time he graduated, odious hair-metal and boy bands were dominating the airwaves. He went to work at FedEx, where one listen to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” rekindled his passion.

“It was a total game-changer,” he says.

He got a radio job on the Florida panhandle,
where he adopted the on-air sobriquet “Doc” and would meet the woman he’d eventually marry and start a family with.

“So you were stuck outside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again?” I ask on the fifth tee and get a quizzical response.

Curiously, Doc’s classic rock catalog doesn’t extend to Bob Dylan. “I never was much of a fan.” Besides, he adds, Dylan doesn’t really test well with his target demo, which includes “persons between 25 and 54 or anybody who loves to rock.”

That means plenty of Bowie, Petty, Aerosmith, Zeppelin, Pat Benatar, Supertramp, Nirvana, AC/DC. It doesn’t mean pre-Sgt. Pepper Beatles or post-American Idiot Green Day. “Enter Sandman” makes the rotation; Raising Sand doesn’t.

Just as his solid ratings indicate Doc plays hits the masses want to hear, his solidly struck drives and crisp approaches suggest his GolfTEC lessons are paying off. He started taking them a little more than a year ago, right after he’d dropped from 300 to 195 pounds with the help of a station sponsor.

“I was thinking of quitting the game. I was swinging like a fat guy and having all kinds of back issues,” he remembers. “A good round was when I only threw my club once.”
“Going through a major change with his body greatly affected his swing,” says Thorberg, who worked on keeping his student’s back a little flatter and quieting his lower body. “He was creating a reverse C, which was pinching his back and limiting his power. Now he’s doing a power V. His progress has come really fast.”

Under Thorberg’s guidance, Doc’s average scores have dropped as dramatically as his waistline has—from 115 to 85. The nuances of the short game remain his biggest problem. “He hated chipping and pitching when he first came,” says Thorberg. “I’d make him finish every lesson with 15 minutes of chipping into a net and all I heard was cussing. But it’s much better now.” During our round, wasted chips, pitches and putts—especially on Harmony’s quick, rippling greens and aprons—add up to a 94. “I’m very anal, a perfectionist,” Doc admits as he sizes up the breaks on another Jim Engh green. Doc doesn’t allow the myriad shots he wastes around the putting surface to affect his demeanor— or his courtesy towards his playing partner.

“He’s extremely competitive with himself, but he’s always helpful,” says Kelly. “He always keeps an eye on other players’ shots and never offers advice without asking first. We rarely bet and never talk about work on the course.” The work Doc likes discussing involves taking the steps to improve at golf. “I’m going to remain an optimistic par golfer,” he says. “There’s always one shot per hole that just sinks me.”

His card’s fives and sixes bear him out. Still, he says, “It’s just a joy to be out there. I enjoy the experience. It’s like the art of a great broadcaster isn’t avoiding mistakes on air; it’s how you respond to those mistakes. The art of golf is how you respond to a bad shot without pain. Like Phil Mickelson hitting backwards from a bunker, you have to try to get yourself out of things creatively, passionately. Once I get off script, I have to trust myself to recover. Just like I have to trust my swing.”

Doc’s dedication prompts Thorberg to predict him shooting “in the 70s this year. When you work long hours, it’s hard to improve, but his progress has come so fast. At this point, it’s just a matter of tightening up the bolts on the short game when the grass turns green.”

Or when the forecast calls for sunny golf.

Read more about Doc Jarnagin and GolfTEC at ColoradoAvidGolfer.com and become a follower of CAG on Facebook and Twitter.