Hey, Fred, this is David from New Bruns with Canada and my favorite
course is mac kleck Provincial Parts and this is episode nine fifty one. I
feel like I taught so much like him and didn't know exist. But Tony
talks about what matters, and what really matters. He boils it down to
is how do you strike this ball? Well? Everything is built around hitting
the ball first and having a good strike point. His whole process of building
up of being more over the ball, a little more centered over it instead
of feeling this big shift off of it and then big shift back. Let's
separate differencetween mass and pressure movements. The pros are moving more pressure, not
a lot of mass, and the amateurs move a lot of mass and not
much pressure. So they're moving their mass way over their right foot than trying
to get it back over left. They never get it back front. So
most golfers are going to be way better off by figuring out how do I
rotate much more right over the ball, and I'm going to figure out how
to hit in front of this ball and strike the ball much better. Everything
Tony did was based on that golf is hard, but it doesn't have to
be if you know what you're looking to improve. With Eric Sholberg, this
is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to
help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host,
Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Eric right, thank
you for having me on. It's a pleasure to be back in an honor
once again. Oh dude, you know you were my go to guy.
It's like, oh, I need I haven't talked to Eric in four months.
It's time to get him back on the show. We've got to get
him back because you always have some really great insights about teaching and about methods
and about simple mistakes that people make that they don't realize they're doing. So
I always learned so much to when I have you on the show. So
thank you, thank you. I feel like I get a lot of that
with golf. I do teach a lot of people that are like in my
year lone programs where I'm seeing weekly, but a lot of people are like,
hey, Eric, what I got this going on? You know tomorrow?
What am I going to do? And I've been doing this and so
I feel like I do it for a lot of golfers to what you're a
golfer to give me an example that's really interesting, Like what was the most
recent one that you heard. Hey, Eric, I need help because well,
so I really feel like it's something usually around how they're striking the ball.
You know, it's just it's not and usually how they analyze it is
typically wrong. So Eric, I've been recently doing this or doing this,
but and I think my hips are doing this, my shoulder is doing this.
And I get down to talking to more about it, and you find
out their strike points are really bad. They're hitting it behind it or they're
topping it or something, and we talk about really like a lot of times,
I'll just give them a good routine, a good free shot routine.
So I usually obviously had notes people first, So we talked about, hey,
do you remember that drill we did do this drill before you hit and
then change your focus when you're hitting the ball to just hitting in front and
pick that spot in front of the ball. And it's very rare. They
don't call me back and let me know they had a great round, and
you know it wasn't because probably maybe the advice was so great it's just that
they changed their mental thought too. Instead of like, oh, I'm gonna
go out tomorrow and focus on turning my hips more or doing this on my
shoulder, they're going to change their whole thought process to hey, I'm going
to hit four inches in front of this ball with my irons, and they
have a great round. But it was just their mindset had changed off hitting
two more swinging, you know. Yeah. So I think we've learned many
times from a lot of different people, from coaches to doctors to psychologists,
that when you focus on your physical space, when you focus on what you're
doing, you're not going to have success. Oh you're done. It's just
our body does a really good job, which I'm sure a lot of your
listeners have already heard of organizing the self and we just screw it up.
Now. I do tell everybody on your practice wing you can think about fifty
two things if you want, yeah, and go through that process because that's
your To me, I really believe this. Our body gets a chance to
move the way we want it to, and our practice swing it says,
hey, I want to do this. Then when we get up to hit,
hopefully it kind of repeats that body movement if we're giving it a good
one to do, and then we can focus on that strike point. Or
I usually say you think of one backswing movement if you have a little backswing,
or a takeaway thought. But after that takeaway thought or something, you
better focus on something ahead of the ball. Yeah, And I feel that
way myself. It's I'm always wondering, you know. I can go through
all these different thought processes when I'm setting up and I'm taking my practice swings.
But once I step up to the ball, you know, and we've
heard this so many times, it's just focus on something external, whether it
be the mark in front of the ball, of centering myself over the front
edge of the ball. Right, Yeah, But once I start thinking about
my swing mechanics, everything goes to hell in a handbasket. And what I
I've had this thought in my head twice now and it's disappeared both times that
I don't know. Well, you know you've had You've had Gabriel wolf On.
That's okay, Well you've had Gabriel wolf On and with the external thoughts
and I can't remember who our partners that, but they've It's funny since that
there has been a paper that came out and I think it was in the
last year that disputed that somewhat. And it's kind of funny because, yeah,
because it's it's funny because I think I don't. I think there's so
much validity to the external thoughts for people having them. But I think what
people take away from it where it can go wrong is I can just be
external. You have to have some form and function right, And I think
that's where some of that gets thrown off as someone goes, oh, I
can just think external about this and think external about that. Yes you want
to, but there still has to be Golf is such a game. There
has to be pretty, there has to be some good sequencing at certain times
in your golf swing, right, there has to be a good impact to
hit it well. There just are some certain things that we have to and
maybe that can be part of our external focus, but there's quite a few
things in golf that we have to do and I think it has to be
done right. But there's still some form and function that has to be done
and how do we get that in and then add in the external thoughts and
how it was worded I think was a little weird in the in the study.
But I just feel like I still think there's huge I think a lot
of pe coaches like going, oh hey, this proves it now, you
know, external is not the only answer. It's like, no, it's
like life really, and it's all it's usually about balance. There's something in
there that it's not all one way. It's usually some of both. But
we all everybody knows that thinking about too much in your swing never help.
Has never helped anybody. No, it doesn't help. And I remember what
I was going to say, and I wrote it down. So like when
I you play with people and they're like tweaky and making adjustments all through the
round. Oh I can't hit this today. I'm gonna start doing this now.
And I'm gonna start doing this now. No, it's like I just
remind myself, you just because you had a bad may bad contact this time,
not even say a bad shot, because once the ball leaves the club
face, you have no control whatsoever. So all you really can control is
what you can do. And yeah, so often if I have bad contact,
instead of trying to like what I do what I do, I just
try to remind myself, you know, you've hit this club properly before.
You know, you've had success with this before. Yeah, just let it
go in. It'll happen again. It's not gonna happen every single time.
It doesn't. You watch it on TV. It doesn't for them either.
No, it's right, But that's golf. That's why we get sucked in.
We do get sucked in. I do think we need to have a
priority on striking the ball well, and I think I think pretty much anybody
can do that. And by what I mean striking ball well is hitting in
front of it with anything that's on the ground, not a driver, but
I think anybody can get to that point. Now you have the balls going
right and left a little bit and may have too much curvature because of pathing
that. But I think it should be everybody's goal to strike the ball first,
and that's my goal. If anybody come and sees me, I think
anybody should walk around the course and the fat and then topping it. That's
all low point issues, and I don't I think that's just you have low
point issues. You shouldn't be working on something with your shoulders or your hips
or thing about that you should be thinking about what do I have to do
to get in front of the ball? Now? Could the shoulder and hips
be part of it with what you're doing, Sure, but your first thing
should be to find a really good coach who understands how to get you hitting
the ball better that day and doesn't tell you something like, hey, you
got to get worse to get better. You should get better right away when
you go see somebody, and that should be learning to hit the ball better,
like better strikes. So yeah, I have friend like it, and
people that I know is like they'll take a lesson and they won't necessarily work
on it, right, They'll take the lessons like, oh great, how
was your lesson? Oh my lesson was really good? So what are you
doing to work on that? Yeah, I went out and played golf when
about a couple weeks later, So you didn't practice anything that you learned for
those couple of weeks, and then you thought it was just going to come
back when you walked into the golf course and to play around, like,
yeah, it doesn't work that way, man, It usually doesn't work that
way, doesn't it. You got to practice it, and I know it's
hard to practice. I know, life gets in the way of practice.
So don't take lessons and no, I stay away from YouTube sick. Well
there's a bigger one. I think YouTube is a bigger problem. Like you
said earlier, how they analyze themselves And it's like I wanted to ask you,
I wrote it down, how do they analyze it? Well, they
saw a video on YouTube? Right, Yeah. Well the fundamental problem is
is you're analyzing if I even if I were to analyze my swing and if
I didn't have it on video, and I don't know, I'm going off
some feel I have and say, okay, I'm going to change my swing
based on this, Like how do I know? And then the other thing,
you're taking a lot of amateurs who don't understand the golf sum well,
and they're saying, oh, I'm doing this with my shoulder, hips or
legs or whatever, and it's like, well, first of all, you
don't even see that you're really doing that. You're going off some feel that
you're feeling or somebody. Guy, somebody told you that you're you're playing with.
I gave a lesson to a guy recently. His buddy told him that
the club was going like this all over the place when he's getting ready to
hit it. Within the last foot, the guy was moving the club fase
up and like just it was moving all over the place right before he's getting
hit it, and he's just stop that. I was going, Well,
that guy's got some really good eyes and there. It would be impossible for
the club to have any kind of movement like that before it hit the ball,
But he was hitting some of them toes on the heel. It's because
he was not He didn't have the club coming through straight. He was moving
his hands all up and down right before impact, and it's making the club
go up and down like this way. So he couldn't hit a square that
was going and that's what he thought he was doing wrong. So it's a
lot of perception. And the problem is you go to YouTube and you're trying
to fix a that you may not even have, or you're going about something's
built for somebody else and like me, and you shouldn't fix problems the same
way. We're different age, we move different, we're physical, we're different
as far as athletically. You know, my shoulder hurts, your neck may
hurt your elbow, so we all we move different. So there's not this
one swing for anybody that there's a lot of good coaches on YouTube. I
do some stuff on YouTube, but you have to know what you're going there
for. And I tell people the best stuff on YouTube is if you go
to a coach and let's say he says you're working on takeaway whatever, right,
maybe even that first part just to P two, just to club parallel.
Well, let's say he gave you three or four drills and you're like,
man, I just can't figure it out from this. Well, then
go look up maybe some more drills for the takeaway just from that part,
and maybe that will go oh okay, because I mean there's so many drills
out there, you know, like there's hundreds for stuff like that. So
maybe something somebody else clicks with you more than what that guy said. But
at least you know something and exactly specific to what you know you have a
problem with. Right, And a lot of times just getting on that really
quick, we're talking about striking is. I hear a lot of times,
well why are you hitting a bet? And I asked them they go,
oh, they go, oh, my takeaway is killing me, Like,
oh, that's why you're not here. So it's really interesting so with stuff
I hear, I love it. How you know? It all starts PGA
right position, grip and alignment. How often is it that maybe they're not
aligned properly, or they're not holding the club properly, or even if their
shoulders are offline right, maybe their hips are are parallel and I don't know
what like, And they do it at address of the ball. They try
to line themselves up while they're addressing the ball as opposed to standing behind the
ball and looking down the fairway. This one I really really don't understand.
It's like you got to line that up from behind the ball and see where
you're going on, because when you're twisting your head and looking over to the
side, you're out of alignment already. Huge, I would say at close
to is a huge number. But I really believe about eighty percent of faults
I think, well, they start for sure from address, but you can
fix most people. Most people from address can be fixed for whatever issues,
especially when you get to the better player. And i'm talking better from maybe
fifteen under I mean a new golfer. Obviously they just they don't have any
swing motion. But yeah, but most golfers, it's what they do at
impact that or at address it causes most of their issues and how wrong they're
so many could be. Their grip is just brutal, in which most people
are. You know, they don't have it in you know, they don't
have that called a meeting part on top of their hand is not on top
of the grip. They have it more just running up the palm, so
at a very weak grip right, and they wonder why they can't close the
club face. That's one issue. But also, like you said, alignment
is horrible. They're the way they're staying ball position maybe horrible, too far
away from it to you know, their posture maybe se foster S posture.
There's so many things that go wrong, and even how we set up our
forearms and our arms to it, like how we when we set up to
the ball, Like if I have my arm rotated externally internally, I can
set it the right way if I have a problem rotating the clip based so
if I'm not supinating enough, and I call it like if you think of
supernating with your left arms and cup of soup, if you like, rotate
it over cup of souper, send it. That means I supinated it.
If you're not doing that, then you're you're most likely have a litatrol rotating
the cloud based through an impact. Right, we have to have a little
bit of supernation in our forearm to hit it. And depending on how we
set up, if we set up with it already turned over like this way,
then how am I turn it over anymore? I can't, but you
and I are the only one. If I set it in more internally.
If I just rotated in more internally and rotate my wrist over when I'm taking
the grip, then I have a lot of room to rotate my arm over
to supinate. So a lot of stuff can be fixed right at address.
And it's hugely important, but not many people want to work on that part.
That's not a sexy part. But in my lessons, we do work
on it because it's just it's you're just making up for problems that are right
there for the and the rest of swings, so you might as well take
care at the very beginning. And I want to talk more about low point
issues because you know a lot of people who are new to the game or
just can't get past can't even break ninety or struggling with that, and I
totally understand that and the frustration that goes with that. But when you quiz
them on where should be if if you consider the golf swing a circle,
yeah, there's going to be a low point. Where is the low point
in relationship to the ball. And a lot of time they'll tell you at
the ball or behind the ball, and it's like, wrong, Yeah,
you got to get in front at low point has to be in front.
I heard. I don't get to watch golf much. I heard this on
broadcasts the other day. The guy chipped the ball and he said that was
great. He really got under the ball nicely. On that one. I
was like, oh my gosh, you're killing golfers out there. We're not
trying to slide the club underneath. Like if we come down with the descending
an angle of attack, even in chipping, which we should, we're not
sliding the club underneath. We can't by the nature of it. You're getting
in front. So low point, like you said, for you describe it,
well, we all have a low point to our swing in the circle.
Most peoples are behind him, anybody behind the golf ball, people who
topped the ball. It's most likely the reason you're doing it over ninety percent
is because your low point is behind, which means your angled attack will start
coming up right after a low point, and then you're going to top it
because your club's coming upwards at that point. It's not that you aren't keeping.
It's not that you peeked or lifted your head up right. Well,
we're going to say it's been late and they you'll hear him screaming, oh
I lifted my head. I peaked you You didn't, you know? Did
your back not your head? And you have to lift your head? Yeah?
Eventually, yeah. I mean, I don't show it to Spike people,
but I love it when when they say that in lessons so I can
show them on video and that way they and I always tell them, I
go, you're I joke with him, and I laughed. I said,
you'll be my first person in thirty years that I've seen do it. Come
on watch, I want to see this together, so we can watch this
famous moment together and you picking your headup because I haven't seen it yet.
And they watched like, oh whoa, that's what my husband tells me.
He won't, he yells us at me. The whole time. That's what
every partner tells me, every friend, They all tell me to keep my
head down. My dad told me that for years, they say, and
I'm like, going, well, they just they did their best from what
they knew. And it's one of those things got somehow got really big in
golf. And it just as it's spread like wildfire. And and we haven't
killed it yet, Fred, it's still is still out there a lot.
And while we're at it, if if you play golf with the spouse,
don't give lessons on the course, no, I see, I teach women
and my wife and I run out golf leave for women together. And yeah,
and the biggest can play ab all of women is the men. Men
don't leave them alone. Like they're at the range, try and hit balls,
and some man everything to them, and they it really bothers them.
It's one of the reasons they'll play. And it's just they're always getting advice
from other men. Husbands do it to them to the point where the wise
don't want to go play with their husbands anymore. And here's the thing and
the kids and at the core, oh huge, I think at the core
of it is we're trying. Men are trying to be helpful, right,
and so it's not coming from a bad place. I understand that. But
I saw this poor girl the other day and my wife and I were driving.
She came to the course to see me and help me grab some stuff
leaving, and we were driving the cart out of there, we saw somebody
teen off. It was a guy sitting in his cart and his wife or
girlfriend teen off, and he said, honey, watch that ball. I
promise I'll watch it for you. Don't take your head off the ball.
Okay, So she's she's off, she has an iron or something and she
hits it, tops it. He goes, yeah, you picked up,
and we watched like this poor girl looks like she she didn't even shouldn't even
move her body. She was so stuck over that ball, staring at it,
and she still did it because she's not moving it. How are you
going to get your low point if you're not moving forward at all? We
got to move a lot forward. So you telling somebody who tops keep your
head down is making it worse. But I would say, if you to
a survey of your listener's fred very high percent of the jum if not all
of them already know that or or are well aware of that, and they're
helps spreading the news. You have a lot of I think a lot of
listeners that are very keen on a lot of this stuff because they hear it
weekly. Yeah, through a lot of good guests. So yeah, I
mean Josh Xander recently we were talking about bunker play and he talked about how
people think that you have to hit behind the ball, you know. He
said, no, you don't hit behind the ball. You got your low
point should still be in front of the ball. You just enter the sand
behind the ball. Yeah. It's like, oh wow, that's a revelation
because we always hear the wrong advice on that always. It makes it hard.
It makes it really hard to do well when you're get bad advice,
real bad. What is golf but not a lot of bad advice? Oh
I feel. I grew up playing and this is you know, I'm old
enough to where we had any science or knew anything. And I was always
told that the chipping is just a short version of full swing. And I
was always a terrible chipper because I was always catching the ground first, I
was catching it heavy, and if I was in rough I'd catch it really
heavy, and I wasn't intuitive enough to know, hey, bring it out
a little more outside and maybe like come a little bit outside, and I
had to get the low point up front. I wasn't intuitive enough to know
that, and so my chipping was awful growing up because nobody told me that.
And once I once I was told it how you're actually supposed to do
it, you know, I excelled at it, and you know, it's
just getting the word out of a lot of these things. Golf. I
think golf is a hard sport. I think it's a very hard sport.
But there's things that golfers do to make it much much harder on themselves,
and a lot of this misperception. I mean, most people don't take lessons.
I think the numbers around three percent that they say that take lessons.
And I get it too, because if you go to a coach and they
tell you that you're gonna get worse before you get better, I wouldn't go
either, you know, I wouldn't go get lessons. To me, that
makes no sense, like where would you? What if you want to your
go take piano lessons and then the piano teacher goes you know what, bread,
You're gonna get worse where you get better. Or you go take cooking
lessons and the cook goes, well, Fred, you got you gotta get
much worse where you get better? At this? You'd go what. But
in golf coaches get away with saying it. Yeah, I mean it's crazy
and that it should never happen. You should get better immediately. Now the
thing is like there's a big charge of how do you do it? And
I think that's the big differentiator. How do you get better immediately? And
how do you not get worse while improving? And that is the key.
And there has to be a big separation between practice and play and a big
understand of how do we perform on the golf course. And I always tell
people it's this. You you have to look at practice and play as two
different things. And then you have to look as when you're playing golf as
as big as an art as it is of striking the ball well. And
I know they come together. But when you're working on your game, you
shouldn't get worse. You should still get better. And maybe you are working
in your irons that let's say, it makes it a little struggle because of
something, but it still shouldn't if you're thinking properly. If you're not letting
that stuff get into your thoughts while you're playing, you should still be getting
better. But if something's going on, well, then you're chipping should get
better if you're focused on that, like, don't give in, don't give
into it, like your working get better all the time, and it can,
it can be done if you're not. It's always a mental issue.
And that's what I find out from my golfers and in my year long program
that it's like six months we focus on swing, six months on playing,
and anybody is struggling playing, it's always boils down to you know, what
they're thinking about this move or this move and I'm like, well, are
you thinking about that anymore? They're like, oh no, I completely forgot
about that part. It's like, well, you're not focused on the swing,
you're just hitting it now. So there's always there's always something that are
mentally and that's what's so good about golf. It's so beautiful I think about
it is the mental part of just checking yourself, learning about it and how
we can grow every day from it and be like, man, I knew
that and I just did it, and yeah, I gotta get better at
that. We all can get better. I frequently will remind myself and anybody
who will listen to me that, you know, playing golf and hitting golf
balls are really two different things. Yeah right, I mean you're hitting,
you going to the range, you're hitting golf balls, you're hitting golf balls,
you're hitting one hundred. You can did two buckets, three buckets,
spend hours doing this. That's not going to improve playing golf. There's so
much more, you know, and like the whole the little concept of I
just want to be consistent, Well, you never have the same shot twice.
How in the heck are you going to be consistent if you never have
the same shot two times in a row, And if you go and play
the same course four times a week, you're never gonna have except off the
t box, maybe you're never gonna have the same shot. No, I
think the consistency is Yeah, well it's what is consistency. I think it
is consistency. I think the problem is is there's drive. I think it's
really the definition of consistency is wrong by most in golf of what it is
and what they it depends on who they are for what it means. But
I think most golfers, unless they're an elite golfer, consistency means to hit
the ball better. I really think that's all it means for them. Yeah,
Now when you come higher level, consistency is what it truly is.
I think it's you know, we have dispersion. You know how far right
or left or short or long you are based on your shots. If you
look at it. Let's just say you take an iron shot to par three
and amateur, it's not good. It's gonna have some short, some long,
some left, some right. The better you get, you don't have
short and long anymore. You get really because you're striking the ball well,
but you're have right and left always right our face angle, we're never gonna
be perfect on the face angle. It's moving too fast, especially the longer
we hit it. It's harder to control. So you're always gonna have dispersion.
But you want to learn to get your dispersion left and right, not
short and long. And then after that you're trying to just make it closer.
If you're fifteen feet left and right on a one hundred and twenty yard
shot. Well, then you're trying to get to thirteen feet left and right,
you know, twenty six feet, that's total twenty sixth it's a lot.
And that's also a testimonial and an argument for getting fitted for clubs.
If your dispersion is way off, maybe it's also the clubs. But then
people are like, no, no, I'm gonna I want to get better
before I get fitted. Yeah, oh yeah, that's putting the cart before
the horse, before the cart, the cart before the horse the horse.
Yeah, it's definitely, yeah, you gotta it'll help you getting fitted.
I've been playing ping irons for over a decade and I just got fitted a
couple of weeks ago, and we I tested a lot of the ping clubs
and found one that worked okay, and I said, no, let's keep
going, Let's keep trying this, and ended up with these tailor made QI
irons, And so I went to pick up the irons. I took a
couple of weeks to get them back, and they're putting. You know,
my buddy neck is that the club fitter at this local retailer. And that's
why I like to go to retailer as opposed to going to a guy who's
a fitter for a brand. It's like, I want to try a lot
of different brands, right. So, hey going, he's putting, he's
putting the grips on. I said, can I go hit a couple?
He goes, yeah, yeah, I get here. So I take the
five iron and I'm hitting, and I'm like, is not I had one
good shot and it's my low point and I'm definitely no. I've always struggled
with the five iron as it is. And then I hit seven iron a
couple and then I said, now that I've hit the five iron and the
seven iron, I'm really curious on the distance difference. Does the six iron
fit right in between that? So I pull out the six iron and I
hit you know, one, two three. On the fourth swing, the
head flew off the club. We looked at each other. We looked at
each other like and it's like, person had happen. I've never had that
happen before. It's so strange. And then I went up and I went
home and I looked up these these irons online because I wanted to see what
the difference in each of the lofts was for each club. You know,
with the difference you know is a four degree five degree? What and where
does it work down to the the wedges and do my wedges fit in that?
Yeah? And the second review on the Tailor Made website is a guy
going, I've always loved Tailor Made the right his clubs. I got these
and they're great, except the first time I played, I hit my five
iron and the head flew down the way, Like, oh my gosh,
this is something that's happened cutting back on glue there or something. Yeah,
I don't know, No, it's like snapped right, So that not the
shaft, the little plastic piece between the shaft and the oh, so it
could be an issue with the actual head. Yeah, So what did you
do? You are you stay? Did you stay with them though? Or
do you say yeah, no, No. They gave me another one and
they said go play with these for a couple of weeks because they have this
nice ninety day return policy, but you know, for store credit, and
and so I like, okay, let me go play these, and they
gave they pulled another six iron from a different set of the same club.
And then I played the other day and it's like, how come I can't
hit Oh, it's not the club that I ordered. I mean, like
I'm supposed to make two degrees up right, and so it's like I couldn't
hit the six iron, so just don't touch it, don't. But I'm
excited about these irons. I'm really It's interesting because after taking almost six months
off, you know, for to heal, I come back to play and
I've got a new set of irons. I've got a new driver, I've
got my new putter, I've swapped out one of my wedges, and I'm
like, okay, so I'm starting from brown zero here and I'm really excited
to do this. So I don't have any preconceived notions of what I'm doing,
yeah, right or not. But I want to go back to when
you talked about getting better, and I wanted to find that when you talk
about you know, you should get better. You take a lesson, you
should get better. You should be always get That's not by looking at the
scorecard though, are not going to go down every single round. No,
I think there's to find getting better by striking. Your striking the ball gets
better. You should strike the ball better. Yeah, and depending what your
issue is when you go see somebody, but you know striking the ball should
be better. If you bait it you should or slice it. You should
be slicing it less. You know, everything is it comes in. I
always say this, and I've heard this quite a bit, but just recently
a guy told me, I think that's time was Saturday, and he said,
Eric, he goes. I always tell people you work on this and
it leaks into your swing, is what I say. Okay, so you
practice this, meaning let's just say you slice it. Okay, You're not
going to start being a drawer of the ball hitting these perfect draws the next
time you go play. What's going to happen is you're going to have it
leak into your system where you're going to get a little bit more of each
time. Now, so if you're a big favor of the ball, you
probably have to learn to move it more right to left, kind of like
almost a hook. So you're kind of learning just to do a little bit
of that. But leaking into your game, meaning all these little parts leak
in. So if I am horrendous at hitting behind the ball always, well,
I'm going to give you more more forward each time. Okay, So
maybe I hit behind it twenty five times in a round next by working on
it, maybe then I only hit behind it fifteen or or if my low
points four inches behind it moves to two inches to one inch, and then
it starts getting forward whatever it is. You know. So that is leaking
in a game. By practicing these things, you get better at all these
Usually there are instant fixes where you go, oh, boom, and here
we do this. It instantly fixes this issue, right, I mean that
happens all the time. But most big changes, when you're really changing a
golfer, that's where I say it leaks into your game. You'll start seeing
these effects by practicing it little by little. So this guy's talking to he
said, Eric, I thought you were nuts when you told me that.
He goes, I had no idea what you're talking about. But he goes,
six months after we were together, he goes, I was playing golf,
and I go, oh, I get it. And he started looking
back at his other rounds and you know, the prior four or five six
months. He's like, oh, now I can see what he was talking
about. How I started doing doing this a little bit more each time he
goes, well, now I have it completely. He had a major major
swing change he had to make. So it's just those like when you're making
big swing changes. That's why I mean leaking into your game. Those things
I now strike point. I feel like when you're striking front of the ball,
we're hoping to get in front of it immediately, right. But there's
a lot of things that you know, go into it. And I just
think scoring is another thing that's hard. You know, It's like I sucking
Julie Buss today, my wife that it takes a long time for people to
understand that you have to like, you know, someone shooting that told me
the other day they shot there. They were one under after twelve holes,
right, and then shooting eighty two. And I talked to him one under
after twelve holes and then went ten over on the next six and I got
into why and I started finding out why they were thinking about scores, right,
Yeah, and that takes Oh I'm one under, this can be a
pass round in my life. Oh you're doomed. You are doomed. The
part of the friends started for saying something. Guy right in the car was
like, hey, you only got a double bugget Oh you're still only one
over. Okay, you can still do what it all became about what you're
doing here with the score. Shooting your best round of your life is what
it came about. And he told me. At first it was oh,
I did this, I did this. This is what happened. And when
I started talking to him, it was it was so score related, right,
and his whole mindset had changed. Outcome right, bas you lost.
You lost the idea of process and when to outcome, and when you do
that, you're going to lose. Yeah, and that takes like I mean,
I always say, look thankfully, I'm a golfer too, and I
played at high level I was younger. That process takes a whole long time
to get through to learn under. You don't learn that and understand it.
Yeah, I can tell you today, go don't don't do that. This
is what we want to think about. But you have to experience it one
time of having your lowest round at one under at twelve holes and and fail
and go oh, that's what Eric said or that's what somebody else said,
and go okay, I'm going to work on this. And that's why you
need to be working with a good coach, because they are going to help
you get through those things and understanding. You know, most people think,
and I guess in my year long program, I do. They're hitting the
ball really well after six months, and a lot of them say, Eric,
I think we don't need to do the next six months. I'm okay,
And I say okay, and they they'll go play a couple rounds.
They come back to me and I'm like, oh, well, I'm sorry,
yeah, please take me back the break up with you. Yeah,
they find out the battle is much different right out there, and it's it's
mental, but it's also I mean it's mental and it's also physical. It's
hitting the ball in different lies, you know, like that's it's a total
different it's a different ballgame. But if you can strike the ball well off
a flat lie, you can learn to make adjustments elsewhere. So a lot
of people say, oh, it doesn't transfer at all from the range to
that. It's like there are things that transfer. It depends how you do
it. No, I've been playing golf now for like twenty five years ish
right, doing the podcast in the nineteenth year of doing this, so I've
learned a tremendous amount and probably more than most average golfers learn. You know,
when they're just out there playing for twenty eight years or something, and
I'm still getting to places that the nuance of golf, I'm starting to go,
oh, now I understand what that means. I mean, I've I've
heard it so many times, I've repeated it many times, but it's still
it has to click in you in a way that it's like now it's starting
to make sense. And that's not always easy to do. No, it's
the right mindset. And then, like you said, playing the game a
lot, wanting to learn it, want to understand it. I always say,
golf is like life, you know, we have to go through those
downs to get the ups we don't and golf is the same thing. We
don't learn anything from great rounds. We learn a lot. Well, we
can learn a lot from poor rounds. A lot of people don't because they
just they just throw it away as oh, just a bad day or whatever.
So like, well, let's learn from it. You know, I
always say, I'm a doctor. I don't care about your bad shots or
good shots when you come see me. I want to know about your bad
ones. Let's fix those, right. So, but like you said,
the dances, they're so huge, and it's like yeah, you know,
if you don't play often, you forget about maybe, Okay, if I
have the ball up on my feet, I'm probably going to maybe hit this
a little bit left, or you don't know how much further to start that
to the right if you're right hander. It's just those little things you forget
about or don't think about. Oh man, that ball moves quite a bit
more on me when it's above my feet, or you know, it's like
all those little nunces are great. And I think that's the fun thing about
golf is that is that weekly or how off you play, But remembering those
and doing them, it's just it's a great learning experience. I love it.
A line that I've probably repeated multiple times that I keep it right here
on my desk about golf is like life. Golf is an endless series of
tragedies obscured by an occasional miracle. Oh it's beautiful, beautiful. That's life,
man, that's life. That's exactly life, isn't it. Yeah,
it's exactly life. It's a life isn't easy. And if you make plans,
yeah it's not going to work out, right. And if you're looking
for your scorecard, right, if you're looking at your scorecard and you're thinking
about what you need to do to finish, Yeah, it's not going to
work out. I think the other big one freend is driving range before you
play. So I hear us all the time, like people go and play
and they have their worst rounds when they have good range sessions. What happened?
Oh? All the time? Expectations right, yeah? Oh, And
to me, it's like when I'm having a bad round on a bad practice
warm up session, not practice, but a warm up session before a round,
it's not good like, oh, I'm going to do really well today
because actually you really got to bear down, how you got to really focus,
how you got to stay you know, in it. Where if you're
feeling like, oh, that was a great session for my warm up,
I'm nice and loose and easy, and it's like I'm not focused at all.
You're not focused, and your expectations go through the roof. And then
what happens when you throw that double bogie out there in the first Then you're
just you're you're so upset because it's going to have this great round. I
hit the ball great, What happened? I don't you know what happened between
now and then. You have to change your You go to the range before
you play to loosen up and warm up, and I like to see good
striking, that's it. But do you know, don't any full swings.
But you aren't there to set the basis of how you're going to play that
day. But how you hit the ball there no how it's going to feel.
Are you loose? You know, loose? You got to get loose,
man, because you don't want to get loose by the ninth hole,
you know, because that's what's going to happen. If you don't warm up,
You're going to get loose by the ninth hole, and then you'll maybe
start hitting well, but you're probably beating yourself up so much by that point
that it's that's like you're being painful. So just last last week, we
concluded our annual Tony Manzoni yeah, replaying his episodes, and in the past
we've only done like, not eight or nine episodes, and this year we
played every single one that Tony did with us. And if I remember correctly,
that's how you and I met. You. You reached out to me
because you heard Tony Manzoni on the podcast, and you're like, I love
listening to other teachers and I've never heard of this guy and he's so good.
Yeah, I wanted his book in the video from you. Yeah,
can people still get that from writing you? Absolutely? Absolutely, the book
is. The book is available on Amazon in a kindle format or paperback,
and the video that he created, which was a DVD at the time,
we have that available to listeners if they want, they can write to me
and I'll let them know how they can get it and get it for free.
You can buy it whatever it is, but yeah, you can write
to me directly and always give the the email address at the end. But
OK, yeah, I mean he's been gone since twenty eighteen, and yet
every year, like this year more than ever, because I've played so many
more episodes that I've never played replayed before, people are like, oh my
god, this guy is so good. I wish I would have known about
him. Nobody knew about him. Yeah, I did. I did meet
a teacher last week that knew him, So I'm going to try to get
him on the show. I knew him. I wish I wish I would
have, you know, like when I heard him, like, oh my
gosh, what this is? This is my guy? Like this? I
feel like I taught so much like him and didn't know exists. I love
going around to me other coaches. I'll go watch them talk to him.
That's why I'll be out in San Francisco to see you there. Next week
he is meeting with a bunch of other coaches to you know, just learn
from each other and go over some stuff. But Tony, I think,
really, I think what people like listening him because he talks about what matters
and what really matters. He boils it down to is how do you strike
this ball well? Like everything is built around hitting the ball first and having
a good strike point. It's not like that is secondary. Third, his
whole process of building up of being more over the ball, a little more
centered over it, like instead of feeling this big shift off of it and
then big shift back to where if you don't play a lot or if it's
not your job. It's very hard. And first off, it's not a
separate differencetween mass and pressure movements, Like the pros are moving more pressure,
not a lot of mass, and the amateurs move a lot of mass and
not much pressure, so they're moving their pressure, their mass way over over
their right foot, then trying to get it back over left. They never
get it back front. So most golfers are going to be way better off
by figuring out how do I rotate much more right over the ball, And
I'm going to figure out how to hit in front of this ball and strike
the ball much better. And that's everything Tony did was based on that,
and it's a lot of what I do in my coaching. It was that.
So hearing him, I was like man, and and well, plus
hear out well he did with his college students and just an unbelievable record,
And then you find out the personality and you hear about the people he hung
out with with Sinatra and some of his stories back in the day, And
like man, I love listening to his stories. I got to meet one
of another guy I knows all through you too, and that helped write the
book. And yeah, yeah, yeah, Faulso he's told me some stories
you have too of him. Neat guy, really neat guy. Great coach,
so great coach, great coach, great communicator, a lovely person.
We miss him so much, but I'm so glad that we're able to bring
him back every year. That is incredible that you have this library of them
to listen to. I encourage everybody to listen to it. I think for
most golfers it's a great way to play, which talks about we just rotating
more of the ball so we can get more in front of it. Single
single pivot swings a little bit more balanced, more weight on your left side,
and keep keeping the elbows in, keeping the arms attached to your body.
Most golfers they are stuck on their back foot when they start their downswing
and you're they're dead from there. Most you're just dead. So if you
pivot more right over the ball, you're going to be loaded up to start
your down swing right there, you're ready to go. It's a simpler swing.
People are like, oh, it's going to lose power. Most people
don't have power anyways. By striking the ball and getting a good strike point,
you're going to get a lot more power and hit a lot further.
So it's a great technique I've been doing forever. I love it and great
coach, so thank you for having it on My pleasure. Absolutely is an
honor. So you mentioned briefly that in the week or so you and are
going to get together and play some golf. You're coming to the San Francisco
area, And again I always encourage listeners, if you're in the San Francisco
area visiting or you live here, rechat to me. I love to play
golf with you. I would love to play so you and are going to.
I've seen you at you know, I was in Arizona and you were
there, you were working HI. You know, we waved. But I've
never been on the golf course with you, and I'm a little bit intimidated.
My friend. Oh, we'll have a lot of fun. No,
it's not fun. Again, well probably you know what. I'll bring a
couple of microphones. We'll wear them and we'll just chat and and we'll and
you'll be able to comment. You know, I don't want you to give
me a lesson while we're playing. We just talked about never do that.
Don't man explain that to me. But I would love to have your insights
to playing golf with me and what you see and just you know, just
get your take on. And we're gonna be playing a very very special course.
We're gonna be playing at the Olympic Club in San Francis Way course.
I'm looking I'm looking forward to I haven't played there. I love I love
your area where you live in. I'm excited it's going to be we're leaving
here, it's gonna be one hundred and I think ten is getting up to
So the heat's finally What is it going to be there Friday or Saturday?
Okay, so at my house it could easily be ninety five degrees, right,
I live twenty two miles from San Francisco. I drive south, I
cross the Golden Gate Bridge, I go to the area where the Olympic Club
is. Yeah, and I can almost assure you, yeah, it's going
to be sixty two degrees, overcast, moist, fog blowing through through.
Can't wait if it's just going to be it's it is micro climates is this
area so we don't breathe, don't be wearing shorts, don't be one shortly,
bring warm clothes, bring options. That's how you have to live in
layers, layers. I can't wait, difference, it will beautiful, great,
see great to play with your wife, right, yeah, she'll be
there too. I can't meet I can't wait to meet Torulie. Dude,
it's uh, tell everyone how to find you online, Oh, e j
S golf dot com, e j S golf dot com. And I just
started, i think on the school app s k o o L, which
you can find e JS Golf Academy going there. I have a ton of
cool free stuff there. I'm putting together a bunch of programs for how to
stop slicing shaft lean, a bunch of really stool confidents, cool stuff,
and they'll allow me to reach a lot more people around the world. So
really, social media, you're you're e j S Golf. Yeah, Instagram,
e j S Academy. You can find all of that on my web
page, the links to a ejskult dot com bottle that we'll have all those
links, dude. So much fun, always lesson, always get to learn
something new. Uh and really excited to see you in a couple weeks me
too, Thanks Bred. Well, hopefully we'll feature Eric again soon, maybe
even next week, because as he mentioned, he's in San Francisco this week
and he's invited me to join him and his wife tomorrow to play eighteen at
the Historic and I might add intimidating Championship lake Course at the Olympic Club,
host of five US opens. I'll bring my gear and if it works out,
we'll record a conversation during the round about the strategy of making it through
a course that has six sets of tees, including four sets of combo teas,
with the men's slope rating from a one to twenty one from the green
teas to a one forty three from the championship tees. Hopefully I won't embarrass
myself by playing the whites, which are still a one p thirty slope rating,
and that is significantly higher than what I'm accustomed to. So please stay
tuned and wish me luck. If you're in or coming to San Francisco this
summer's like Eric is doing. Let me know so that we can set up
time to play together. Or why don't you and your partner join me and
my non golfing wife for an incredible adventure to Portugal this coming September fifth through
the thirteenth, twenty twenty four. We'll be playing golf while there, with
three round scheduled, and if you'd prefer, you can play golf every day
while we're on the coast at Villemora. There's lots of flexibility in our schedule,
non golfers will experience optional spa visits, sight seeing and time to relax
on the beach, and you'll have time to yourselves to make this probably one
of the most memorable and romantic trips of your life. So clear your calendar
and join me. To get all the information pricing and download a detailed pdf,
please visit tmi goolf dot com slash golf Smarter. You can write to
me directly if you have any other questions, or just check the show notes
and click on the link to tmi goolf dot com slash golf Smarter. I
want to thank this week's Golf Smarter Ambassador, David from New Brunswick, Canada.
David clearly wants more from Tonymansoni instruction, so he requested a free copy
of the Loss Fundamental video. If you'd like to get Tony's video for free,
then all you have to do is create an intro for an upcoming Golf
Smarter episode. But we also have a couple of other gifts that I want
you to try out too. There's a glove and glove storage compartment from redroostergolf
dot com. The online glove subscription service that has high quality gloves delivered to
your door as often as you'd like, or get a box of premium Flightpath
golf teas, my favorite tea of all time. So I just saw a
video talking I think it was Jim Venettos talked about tilting the tee forward so
you don't have a lot of resistance or friction when the ball comes off the
tea. Well, that's how the flight Path golf teys were designed, so
there is no friction on the front end and it does impact the ballflight.
I'm telling you from my own testimonial anyway. Uh So, please become a
Golf Smarter Ambassador, get your free gift, and all you need to do
is write to golf Smarter podcast at gmail dot com and I'll get back to
you with some simple instructions on what to do and what to say. And
let me give you an update about this week's Golf Smarter mulligans, which will
be released this Friday on this very golf Smarter feed. But we're still going
back into the archives. Now that we finished our Tony Manzoni series for twenty
twenty four, we pick right back up where we left before, and this
time We've got two episodes with Jim Waller talking about if a swing change can
really lower your score. It's really good. I'm really excited about getting back
into the archives. This will be going back to twenty twelve. So if
you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for upcoming episodes, or you
want more information and want to discuss our September Portugal adventure, please write to
Golf Smarter Podcast at gmail dot com or click on the Heyfred button when you
visit golfsmarter dot com