SYNOPSIS FOR RAISE, COMING SPRING 2011
Sometimes inspiration comes from an unlikely place. Such is the case with Dusty Schmidt’s new memoir, Raise, a “Rocky” for the 21st century; a “Cinderella Man” for the Digital Age.
Schmidt’s father sold toys. Never has a profession so ill fit a man, as he presided over his children with a thundering tongue and blistering fists. “From an early age,” Schmidt writes, “one thought reverberated through my mind: I must get free of that man. Just the sound of his key in our front lock struck the notion in me like a tuning fork.”
Despite a deficit of anything resembling discernable talent, Schmidt determined at the age of 8 that golf would free him from the tyranny of his upbringing. “I decided golf was my best bet because I could work alone,” he writes. “Nobody was going to hold me back, and nobody was going to outwork me.”
He took to the driving range with a swing unhinged as though he was falling from a tree. Still he blasted 10 buckets a day without exception, cursing when darkness overtook the wilting Southern California sun. His hands bled, his eyes teared and his mind ached. When other kids frolicked, he was grinding. By the time he was a teenager, Schmidt had assumed Tiger Woods’ mantle as the region’s “Next Big Thing,” breaking two of Woods’ records in the process.
Schmidt was drawing closer to reaching the PGA Tour when, at the age of 23, disaster struck in the form of a heart attack. Just as suddenly, a dream built on the foundation of 10,000 thankless hours was dashed. Medical bills mounted, and his bank account dwindled. Unable to do so much as a pushup, a future shrouded by his family’s willful neglect seemed all but certain.
Faced with the prospect of crawling from his sickbed to a soul-devouring job at his father’s business, an angel showed up at Schmidt’s doorstep on Christmas night. Fittingly, his name was Amen — Matt Amen, a close friend from their junior golf days. “I will give you this shirt,” Matt said, proffering a gift given by his grandmother an hour before, “if you give me $50. You can return it tomorrow for twice that.”
Within minutes, Amen was bent over Schmidt’s laptop, and the $50 was out there in the ether, wagered on online poker. Schmidt looked on as more cash was won or lost on a single hand than he could make in a month working under his dad.
“And that,” Schmidt writes, “was my introduction to the game. I literally had no idea how to play. We had the tables open on one screen, and The Rules of Poker open on the other.”
In just three years, Schmidt would go on to earn a seven-figure annual income and redraw poker’s natural boundaries.
But to get to that point, he’d have to reapply the entrepreneurial drive that carried him to golfing glory. Handicapped once again by a lack of native talent, he studied poker manuals and memorized math tables, while grinding on hand after hand after bloody hand. He built up to playing 20 hands at once, 1,200 high-stakes hands an hour, 7,000-plus hands a day, and nearly 2 million hands a year. He played over 6 million hands in three years — maybe more poker than anyone has ever played.
His workmanlike approach to the game earned the Schmidt the call sign for which he is now famous: Leatherass. But his success earned him something far more precious — his freedom.
Along the way, Schmidt literally and figuratively healed his broken heart. And as he’d done with golf and poker, he built a family where before there’d been nothing but air. He’d also revive his golf career — a pursuit that ended up in federal court with Schmidt defending himself against golf’s Goliath, the USGA, which took offense to his day job.
From a poker world famous for its bravado emerges the soft-spoken Schmidt, who — despite the nickname — proves to be as unhardened as they come. Today he’s focused his sights on philanthropy, with the goal of making “a global impact.” He recently started the House of Cards Project, in which he and other poker players devote a week’s earnings to buying homes for needy families in Detroit and New Orleans.
In Raise, Schmidt has written a deeply felt, emotionally gripping and darkly funny memoir. It is as sad, true and funny a book as one will find this season.
Raise is a roller-coaster ride through the devastating lows and unparalleled highs of Schmidt’s incomparable life. The book transcends the golf and poker genres, and stands to win meaning with individuals and businesses worldwide. It should be on the reading list of anyone who cares about the human condition.
Raise is set to be released in Spring 2010
