Tiger Woods was in the stump, and he decided that because his father was
a Green Beret, he signed up for military training. Green Bereys don't accept
that kind of stuff, no civilians. So he went for three days to
seal training. Okay, because he's a celebrity, sorry, went through the
Playboy course of seal training. You know, give me great and came out
with his steely gaze and evidently was really intimidating for several years with that military
background. Three days of seal training. First of all, there's nothing like
green Berets. Green Berays at the top. I went through that. I've
got wounds to show for it, but you don't go through that three days.
It's a mental attitude that I convey to people, and I do it
through stuff like adversity training. If it's ran out, go play three balls
in a fairway, kick it into the left and get tough. This is
William Murkhark from Puna Gorda, Florida, and I say out at Twin Aisles
golfin Country Club. Also on put of go to Florida. This is golf
Smarter number ninety nine. The best players in the world also make unforced metal
mistakes if doctor Don Green. 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 to the Golf Smarter
podcast, Doctor Green. Hello Fred, it is I've had other friends on
the show, but this is the first time with a Green with three e's
kindred spirits. But okay, now that we've we've put in doctor Green,
we'll call you Don from here on out. But we want everyone to know
that you came highly recommended. I was so flattered that Rick Cessinghouse wrote to
me and said, you've got to have Don Green on your show. I
have great respect for Rick, so that's nice to hear, as do we.
He is a very great guy and a great teacher. Yes. So
my research shows that you didn't really start with sports on this it was a
lot of performers. Am I going in the right direction here? Oh?
Actually I did start with sports, and then you did start. Then I
got into working with performing artists after that. Oh yeah. And the similarities
Where did you find the similarities between the two? There are mets Because I
come out of a competitive background. I was a springboard diver. Wow.
And then I was with the Olympic diving team and then an Olympic swimming team.
The of the Olympic teams is how I got into golf, because I
didn't start out in golf. But after that I started working with performing artists
who auditioning for big, big roles in orchestras or opera roles, and I
found out that they were very talented musicians. They were loving, kind people,
but they didn't have a competitive background. So when they got into a
competitive situation, namely an audition of going against a number of other talented train
musicians, they tended to fold choked like big dogs. And when I started
teaching them competitive skills, they started winning everything. Wow. The first example
was when I was working with a lot of athletes in Northern California, track
and field, football, swimming, diving, all the competitive sports. Contacted
by a music teacher in New York who wanted to work with four or her
students. There was a big audition coming up for french horn and it was
one position with the Metropolitan Opera, which is the top paid orchestra world,
and they had one position opening and two hundred and fifty people sending recordings to
the Met. Wow, very established recordings, laid down with the repertoire and
all the challenging songs. And of those people, the Met accepted fifty nine
people to come to New York to play for the audition. This teacher contacted
me about working with four or her students. I knew nothing about the French
one. I didn't know the diff in the French one in a trumpet other
than it's a very challenging instrument that I came to know. Well. I
worked with these four women. I met with them. I gave them one
of my assessments that I used with competitive athletes about how they perform under pressure,
and they made it work for them. I met with them and I
designed a program for each of them, separate program preparing for this, like
was the Olympics. Oh, they had the audition and those four women of
the fifty nine came in first, second, fourth, and fifth. And
that's when the president Julliard wanted to meet with me to see if his students
had to be competitive. Sure, and that's when I switched over and started
teaking at Juliod, but teaching the same strategies that I touch to competitive athletes,
but since very few musicians came out of the competitive background, my people
won everything. And that's that's what I did for many years. Oh,
that's so fascinating. So I'm okay, I'll admit it. My wife and
I are junkies for American Idol and we have been for a number of years.
Okay, I've admitted it. It's out in public now. But what's
fascinating to me is these kids come in an audition for this and it's doing
what they've always done, which is they sing their song. Now, granted,
they're singing it in front of three very prominent profile musicians who you know
who they they shudder at when they see when they walk in the room.
But when it gets to the next level, then they're actually competing against other
singers, right, and they're not prepared for that. It's clear that they're
like, oh, no, I'm a singer, I'm not a competitor,
and they keep saying no, no, yes, this is a competition,
right, This is a competition. So you've got to be prepared to bring
your best game at all times, and they haven't been trained to do that
at all, and a lot of them haven't been trained to sing. I
mean it's as well, ayright, But when you're getting to Julia and you
can't get away with anything, I mean, that's that's a different game.
That's totally different. And that's why why I love opera. I can't do
that. Oh wow, it's hanging it out on the line. I mean,
it's it's going for a home run every time, and that's stuff.
So what's interesting about golf is that mostly, even at the highest levels,
you're just competing against yourself exactly. It's not it's not a one on one
mono and mono type of situation. You just got to play your best game,
that's it, and and let everything else just go where it goes.
Which is the difference between boxing and golf. Okay, the other guy and
let you want to get hurt. But yeah, golf in the bubble and
and that's something players but a lot of players, even golf, their approach
to competition is not idea. Yeah, I bounce all over the place,
and I just want to know. You were a competitive diver, yes,
springboard, springboard platform too. Yeah, I was division one. Yeah.
Oh so you were at three meter right, yeah? Yeah, ten meter
boards? Yeah, and at what level did you get to my My brother
did that in high school, so we were always I was in the top
five nationally all four years high school. Well where was that where Brooklyn I
went? I grew up in Brooklyn. Yeah, oh, well, there's
not a lot of swimming going on at diving school. All four years in
the city Catholic high schools. And then I and then I got an athletic
appointment to West Point based on my diving. That's how Yeah, and I
deal with West Point? And how did you get involved with the PGA.
Yeah, that's a good question. I had. I had played some golf
with my uncles in college, but nothing to talk of. I enjoyed it.
I was with the Olympic diving team in Southern California, and after our
team won the Olympics, a real estate developer in Florida, Southern Florida said,
bring the team out here. I want to court to our America team
swimming that what year was this? This is eighty four, eighty five,
the eighty four Olympics in Los Angeles exactly. I went to the diving competition
there, saw Greg Lugana. That was my team. That was what I
was with. Okay, I thought we would look familiar, but I mean
we we dominated. But but he was inspired by that and contacted Ron O'Brien,
the diving coach, and the swimming coach said if you come here,
I'll build the pool for you. I'll build the pool. Okay, wow,
And he did ditch. So we moved to Southern Florida. Folk returned
Florida okay, and we had nothing to do, et cetera. And somebody
said, uh, you need to meet Peter Costas. He's he's a big
fan of the Olympics. So Peter came out to the pool and watched the
divers flatform and he basically said, you teach me sports psychology. I'll teach
you though. Wow, that's quite an exchange. Yeah, And I didn't
realize who he was at the time, but he would, you're like,
you teach you got okay, And I was a bachelor. I knew nobody
in South Florida. So he would give me a lesson one on Monday.
Our two lessons. Oh as soon as I met him, soon as she
said I'll teach you, go you teach me sports psychology. He measured me
that day for pink irons. He gave me a fairway with, gave me
a wedge, gave me a cutter, started giving me lessons. He give
me a lesson on Monday, Monday night, I'd go to the driving range
Tuesday night, go to Wednesday, I go back from I say, ready
for the next lesson, and then my ping clubs came in. And that's
all I did. That's all I did. And plus I started working with
some of his players. Okay, So, so I'm a big fan of
assessments. I come up with my own questionnaires, assessments I had for athletes,
I converted them performing artists, converted them for golfers. Okay, assessments.
So I had him take one of my assessments, which measure focus,
distractability, energy levels, concentration, confidence, mental toughness. He was fascinated
by Peter's an engineer. Peter's a left brain, very analytical, so he
was fascinated by the science behind it. So I gave him in a profile
comes out like this comes out as a graph anyway, So he's fascinated by
it, and he says, you know, I want my players to take
this. Okay, Well it was a week before draft. Okay, and
always come always players go to Saint Andrews for lesson with Peter tune up.
Okay, so all of these top players he's working with, and he says,
these guys sit down and take the fucking test. Okay, otherwise some
new guy, you know, Olympic sports psychologists young knew nothing about golf.
They would have given me the time of day. Peter says, sit down
and take the damn test. The guys are Freddy Couples, Tom Kite,
Bernhard Langer, Davis love Lannie Watkins, Tom Pertzer, twelve one. And
then he has me sit down over the next three days with each guy and
go over their profile. Oh my gosh, that was my introduction into golf.
Okay, oh my gosh. All right, we're going to pick up
on that right after this. We need to take a break. We'll be
right back. Well, what was it that got you hooked on golf?
Was it going to the driving range those first couple of days, or was
it meeting this like some of the biggest names in the sport a week later
that week? Here, I was working with the last several years with amateur
athletes, and there's a lot of volunteer work and I realized that there was
only one guy in golf at the time, Bob Rutella, and he was
having a lot of success. And I saw all these guys a millionaires and
yeah, yeah. So Peter says to me, okay, I want you
to work with some of my women, okay. And they were struggling.
They had both been an All American at University of Florida. One had been
on tour for nine years and never won, another one had only won once
in nine years. He asked me to work with and I worked intensely with
them. I didn't work intensely with the twelve guys they were they were off
to do owt. But Peter gave me these two women and they both won.
Laurie Garbacy won Tucson Open, first tournament ever. Lori Rinker won the
Corning Open. And then Peter started giving me more guys and then introduced me
to Golf Bija schools and I started teaching at Golf Digest schools and writing for
the magazine. And that's that's what I did for six years. That's all
I did. Incredible. Yeah, So I'm curious that when you're working and
you were new to the sport, but it was performance. It was it
was competitive element of it. Where where did you find the common thread between
all these high level players when you're just being introduced to the sungar. It's
all the same. To me, It's all about focus and mental toughness and
staying in the moment and all that. Not many people teach focus. I've
got my own approach to it with an athletic background, a martial arts background,
and my whole approach to mental toughness because to me, golf, this
game of mental toughness is not easy. You know, wins howling, you
know you're three over, you're in a bunker. Yeah, and I'm a
former Green Beret. I apply that to golf. There's no training in the
Green Berets is a game of golf toughness. So here's the thing. Tiger
Woods years ago was in the stump and he decided that because his father was
a Green Beret, he sign up for military training. Well, green Berets
don't accept that kind of stuff, no civilians. So he went into seal
training. He got accepted for three days of seal training. Okay, because
he's a celebrity, Okay, sorry, We went through the Playboy course of
seal training, you know, give me great and came out with the steely
gaze and evidently was really intimidating for several years with that military background. Okay,
with the seal three days of sealed training, give me right seal,
say, first of all the seals, there's nothing like green Berets, green
Brays at the top. You ask anybody in the world who's the top Special
Forces Green brey. I went through that. I've got wounds to show for
it. Okay, but you don't go through that three days. It's a
it's a it's a mental attitude that I convey to people, and I do
it through stuff like adversity training. Namely, if it's right out, go
play people. Also a fairway kick it into the rouff. Yeah, and
get tough because it's a game of mental toughness. And on Monday, on
Sunday, on the Final nine, it's gonna show. Every Sunday it's shows.
I call it the Sunday Shadow Show because their shadows shows up and it's
like they're an alien playing the last nine holes. No, they've been you
know they're eight over eight under all of a sudden, you know they're five
over in the last nine holes, and it's mental weakness because they're not trained
to be mentally tough. They're not They're not military, dude. They went
to college at regular college. It came out had a good life, not
me. Well, green Beret is life and death on golf is a game,
and some people like it, but it comes down to it, it's
it's I created like it is their life and death. You lose enough cuts,
you're off the tour. Maybe selling real estate, yeah, as their
wife, but as their wife from its life and death. I could see
that point. And do we as golfers take ourselves far too seriously. Yes,
it's a game, yeah, and it is serious, but nobody's bleeding,
I mean hopefully. Yeah, Yeah it is. It can be too
serious of trying too hard forcing it and you lose flow. And that's where
Rick comes in say, you gotta be slow, right and now I'm in
the flow is perstrictive of seeing the big picture. Namely, it is just
again, I just can imagine you dealing with these athletes and they're talking about
how tough and blah blah blah it is, and they you know, they're
getting in the way and your roll. I could just hear your eyes rolling
going. You don't know tough, you don't know challenge. You're just in
a little ball here. You're just jumping off of a plank into the water.
You're I was in Fort Lauderdale with the Olympic timing team and we were
at a practice with a ten me to practice one day, and you know,
there's nothing like standing on a pool deck and looking up. It's right
away until you're up there, and then he looked down, it's oh my
god. So so an opera coach from the Miami Opera asked me if he
could bring out two of his studio singers because they were having performance anxiety.
Okay, and I'd never been I'd never been to an opera in my life,
okay before I started with opera singer. In fact, there's a green
bray. You don't catch green bree they don't drive together, so okay,
bring them out. So it brings out these two opera singers in the middle
of this practice, and both of them are overweight, and both of them
looked like they're afraid of their own shadows. And he introduces them to me.
They were afraid of me and everything else, and they say they're afraid
of singing these arias, these pieces. I'm thinking, these women are up
there with just bathing suitsan and you could kill yourself on the next dive.
Don't talk to you, you know. So he says, well, you
got to come to a practice session with them, okay. And I'd never
been to an opera, never been, And here I am in a studio
with these two singers and he's playing the piano and I'm standing next to them,
and that intent power who that came out of it like an explosion without
no amplifier. It's like that I'm next to a big guitar amp. And
I got fascinated with the power of that and how to do that. And
then I saw that there on this edge of fear that they can crack if
they push it a little bit, crack. If it cracks, it's like
dropping the football. It's black white. And I saw that they had reason
to have fear and anxiety just as much as they were diving off a platform.
And once I understood that and how scary it was, that's when I
really started clicking yet fascinated and enjoyed working with them as much as I worked
with I worked with Alympic shot put it the number two guy in the world.
When you stand next to him shot, it's like talk about an explosion,
and it was just like opera and I got fascinated by it. Wow,
and started working with the LA Young Artist Program at the MET Young Artists
Program because they're struggling with the same thing that athletes struggled with it, which
is no injury involved. It's all about ego, loss, embarrassment. Nobody
likes to crack an oat you for you're up there basically naked. But so
how are you on the first team? You're naked there, you shank this
ball into the you can't hide from that. The sun didn't get your eyes,
not where you tripped you. You did that to yourself. Oh we're
going to pick that up right after this. You did that to yourself.
I mean, you know, you talk about the first t you're exposed,
you're naked, but you just got to go play that shot and you just
go to the next one, and you got to get over yourself. As
we've already said, you just get over yourself. Well, but the question
is what couse that were the barriers? Okay, yeah, well twenty years
ago I stopped doing what I was doing. I kept on, but I
wanted. I wrote a couple of books about this, but I still had
a question I couldn't solve. Why did talented, trained, experienced individuals us
the range of music, sports, you name it, make unforced errors that
they can't explain? And that's the question I went looking for, and it
took me twenty years to figure out, but I figured it out. And
please don't make us read the book, which is called Train. You're right
here, doctor don Green the threes absolutely, So what did you figure out?
How do they make unforced airror is at that level? Well, it
comes what causes the unforced airors? Okay? Well I'm a psychologist and i'm
training and I apply that, okay, but most of it's Freudian psychology,
freud it, egos, super ego, okay, and that doesn't that doesn't
explain unforced carreras. Okay. You've got ego, which is sensitive in reputation,
that's concerned about that, and you've got the it, but it doesn't
explain on forced James. Okay. So I went looking out side of that
to call young j U Nji, a Swiss psychotherapist round a time of Freud,
and he was agreed with Freud for a while until he realized that Freud
was upseessed with sex and over the top and some of the ego defense mechanisms.
Yeah, to block out reality and rationalization and denial all, but it
really doesn't help me with golfers missing shots, okay, missing fairways. You
know, you just hit one hundred balls on the range before you went out.
Everyone is pure. You shy? You pull the left foot left into
the woods. What happened? I was distracted? Yeah, but yeah I
choke? Yeah, but what caused it? And Carl Young came up with
the answer? Okay, and yeah, and people don't necessarily want to hear
it, so I had to swallow. But it has to do with his
concept of the personality. Okay. Now, Carl Young was brilliant. He
predicted World War One at World War two. He's the man who came up
with the term synchronicity. Namely, things are connected beyond the level of that
world. Okay, So his model of the personality has a persona. Now,
persona is our outward mask that we show to the world, our happy
face. How are you doing? Everything's fine? Okay, Beyond that the
deeper part of our personality or dark side. Okay, that's not as pleasant
to look at, not as happy kind of okay, Shakespeare said this darkness
in me, I must acknowledge as mine. Billy Joel As Singer wrote a
song called The Stranger, same concept, the shadow on a dark side of
a personality that comes out of early childhood trauma, unresolved things. Nobody perfectly,
No, we're all grow up with this. So so we keep this
shadow veried because it's not pleasant, but it's but it's there. And I
give the example to musicians. Okay, they go into a job where they're
playing with an orchestra and the new conductor comes in. Now, conductors could
be tricky things, they could be brilliant. We're idiots, okay. The
musicians know, okay, but they have they have to be nice to keep
their job, you know, because conductors have power. So you go into
the orchestra and you need to conduct. Hey, how you doing. It's
nice to see you, good to have you back. Fucking moron? When
to learn how to conduct that shadow? That shadow? Okay, and the
shadow is not necessarily happy because it's got a lot of unresolved trauma, things
that happened to it. It's unresolved and causes conflict, and it isn't necessary.
It wants attention, It wants people to pay attention to it, but
most of us just go await and den I ignore it. So like a
kid that wants to be sane, it wants your attention and to meet me
pe like me peel, but people don't. So it waits for opportunities to
get your attention, like the first team, like what the hell was that?
Me? Me? Me, go ahead, go it. With musicians,
it happens that the finals had auditions, that they make mistakes. Pay
attention. Let's resolve this. Confidence take some effort, takes some time.
Once you do stop making unforced air. It's not perc nobody's broke, and
god, there's too many variables to win. But but hitting the hitting the
ball this much up the center of the club face on a drive is not
the wind. It's the shadows you causing a mistake making. And that to
me is what I watch every Sunday on golf. Two channels may live in
PGA, and all I see is unforced hairs on Sunday that they are shaking
their head like they go to the teacher who says, what was that I
do right in this spot? There's no other explanation than that they actually meant
mistake that. It's a mind blowing but nobody else addresses it. I've read
all the books on choke and you name it. Nobody else is really solid
for golf. Is it solvable? Yeah, that's what I do. You
solve it? Yeah? Do you get resistance? Do you get people like
your pointing this out, You're showing them where it is and what's going on.
Take some coaxing, yes, and they have to do just to use
your green beret coaxing. No, No, they've had enough for that.
I've I've been basically in a closet for the last nine years. First I
wrote the book, and I thought I could do it in a year.
It took me five years. It's hard, it's complicated and hard to convince
people. Okay. Then people said, you know, you need a journal
to go with the book, because it's work. You've got to write this
stuff out. So I took six months and wrote a journal. Okay.
Then people said, you know, people don't read books anymore. You got
to do it audiobook. Okay, so I converted my dining room into a
sound studio, professional sound studio, and I became a recording artist nine months.
The hardest thing I've ever done. I couldn't use my lecture voice.
It blows out the speakers. So I had to convert my voice to my
bedroom voice. Okay, folks, take a nice deep breath. And I
finished it. And then I took me two months to recover from it because
I blew out my voice. I couldn't talk for two months. And then
I started teaching more musicians and they were winning everything, and then I thought,
you know, I got to get back into golf. I left golf
on good terms. I had great relationships with a lot of good teachers,
so many wonderful teachers, and some of the teachers that I taught with early
that were junior teachers at golf I, just like Todd Anderson, is now
a senior teacher in Florida at a learning center. One of the writers I
wrote with was a young writer at Golf. I is now editor in chief
of Golf Digest, and I don't want to get in touch with him again.
And basically and hiding working only with performing artists and nothing has changed in
golf. In most every other sports, the records are falling, like the
world's shot put record just fell over the weekend. Okay. Track records are
being broken all the time, swimming records, divers are diving doing new dives.
People are not shooting in the fifty five wage. The equipment is better,
golfers are stronger, doing better shape, golf courses are better, greens
are better, caddies are better. Everything's better. Nothing's changing. The scorees
stay the same. Why unforced errors people are making more eagles because they're hitting
it landing on part five is because the distance and all that. But they're
probably three putting, probably more than ever. I'm writing a series now.
I've got I've got four articles right here that I'm writing first time for Golf
Digester whoever, some wit'st not, and one's on free putting. Okay,
the world's top player greens and regulation fairways hit every stat other than putting two
years in a row is one hundred and forty first in putting. I'm writing
an article on it. I'm writing it. I'm writing an article on I
call Caddy Talk. Caddy Talk. We have time to explain us. You
want to take a break. That's what we're gonna do. We'll take a
break and then let's explore it. We'll be right back, all right,
let's continue, all right. So caddy caddy plays a very important role,
and caddies are more sophisticated, tend to be better players. There are some
tend to be famous, you know, they common on TV, and they
play an important role with club selection when all of that, okay, However,
some of them tend to overdo it. Okay, maybe to keep their
jobs, okay, But to me, the job of a caddies is to
give the right information before that player steps into the ball. And I think
of it as like a nine foot circle around the ball. That's the zone
for the player, okay, and the job of the caddy is to enable
the player to step in there with a clear idea, the right club,
the right information, and then people blunt. Okay. So we have two
parts of our brain, a left brain and a right brain. Okay.
The left brain is analytical, making well numbers and words okay, like one
hundred and sixty three yards to the pin, but it's back five yars,
but the wind's going left to right. The words, but the practice found
the dead need you need all these words, which are really important words,
right, okay. So and then the player is filled with these words,
but he's got convert these from left brain to right in other words, to
picture of the shot, the image of the shot, the feel of the
shot. Does it feel like one hundred and thirty three hundred and thirty five?
The feel? How does it feel in his hands? All the right
brain stuff, no words, mental quiet because in there they need one idea
and mental quiet and no words, no numbers. So they're ready at the
shot. Okay, got it? Say hey, the wind just picked up.
You know, it's playing more like one hundred and fifty six and one
hundred and fifty eight, so maybe it's not. Maybe it's a sectory.
Now he got back again, so okay, okay. Oh, and don't
pull it left in the water like you didn't practice, because the mind does
not understand the word don't, only what comes after the words don't. So
don't pull in the left and waterer. The image is there. That's it.
And then easton order Cady says, I told you not to hit in
the water, but you said put it in the water. So I'm going
to write this artuple. I'm gonna fend some caddies, and I don't I
love talking to caddies. Well, I love having them on the show.
I'd write, and I've said this before, I loved I'd rather talk to
caddies than than tour players because tour players are a little bit protected. I
mean, professional athletes. They've been burned, so they know how and what
to say. Caddies don't get it. They'll tell stories. They love telling
stories. And I have caddy. I'm caddy at Q School. I've caddied
at the Open. Yeah, yeah, and I know the game. Uh.
And again, I've been away from it doing this other stuff, professional
performers, and nothing's changed in golf, and nobody's approaching it from my point
of view. And I'm just so glad to be delighted with Rick, who
understands it. Rick understands this. He's the only brow I know in golf
that understands now my approach to it. And he's totally on board. That's
why I was sinking up so well. Yeah, and that's why I wrote
to us. He wanted to get you on golf smarter. So you have
three books? Is that correct? Train your own hero fight your fear and
win. And performance success and audition success an audition success, right, are
those two different? Performance success and audition success are two different ones. Okay,
But again the one for golfers is trained your ound here, and it's
got an example in there of Parker McLaughlin, who when I first worked with
him, had never won in college at U c l A. He had
this surgery. When I first met him, couldn't hit a ball, and
he wanted to rent out Tahoe Open and now he's a short game teacher in
Phoenix. Awesome. So what about us the amateur golfer. We're not at
that level. We'll never get at that level. Even the best of us,
you know, guy who wins a club championship still could not compete at
that level on the PGA tour. So let's just talk about the middle handicappers.
You know, some guys single digit most everybody else is you know,
hovering around the rest of that. And it's as we talked about earlier,
we're competing against ourselves, our own worst enemy, especially on the golf course,
and we give ourselves a whole lot more blame than we do credit.
I love how you're nodding with things that I'm saying here. Help us,
please give us some give us some advice, give us some tips of what
it is that we can do to remove not just fear, but doubt or
do those go hand in hand? They do, but they're different quantities.
Fear is more an emotional, doubt is more a thought. Oh oh like
it, yeah, explain that? Please? Well again, the left brain
thought is can I hit the shot? You know? I need more collaborate
all of the thoughts, questioning yourself, distrusting yourself. That's different than the
emotion of fear of fear of embarrassment, fear of loss, fear of losing
this two dollar esso. It's a different emotion. People tiy to lump them
together, and that's the problem. So it's discriminating those two and putting that
into your preshot routine, namely, switching from left brain noise or words or
doubt into right brain see the shot, feel the shot, hit the shots.
It's as simple as that. But simple, it's good. That's the
beauty of golf. There's no time limit on it, which can be a
problem, you know, standing over the ball too long or taking too many
looks at the whole or the target, which is no good. Uh.
And it's getting this routine and flow. And that's again where Rick comes in.
A routine that keeps you in flow, which is movement. See the
problem with golf is you get stuck over the ball forever. But it's a
movement activity. So I believe you know something moving, then slight pause and
go because if you're stuck too long, your brains can engage it again to
start thinking. That's why I see it, feel it, hit it and
getting a float. And are you a big advocate of a preshot routine?
Oh? Yes, I spend massive amount of time on pre shot tea.
Yes. Absolutely. Oh and what about post shot routine? Is there a
value in that? Yeah, there's a value in that, in getting value
out of the shot, hit it right or wrong, not judgment, just
discriminating, you know, slightly off the faces likeness okay, and then the
club goes in the bag and so does your thought about it. Okay.
And you do not carry any emotional forward. I hate to see a head
go down now. No, do not manifest your emotions. Nobody should be
able to feel what you're experiencing. I'm a believer, green brain, absolutely
cold, stone cold facial expression. You're not going to see unless you see
a smile or smile or appreciate it out of me. You may think that
I'm fuming with anger, but you'll never see me slammer club. That's that's
right, that's a mistake, especially fat, it's not. Come on,
it's not. Yeah. The beauty of golf is once you step in that
circle, okay, it's your show, and whether you hit a good shot
or a bad shot, that's up to you. And at the end of
the day, you need to take value in that, in yourself, in
winning over yourself. And that three is an example that golf can do,
whether you're playing a PGA or just with a bunch of buddies with your reputation
or online. When I started working on Wall Street years ago, because I
started working with senior traders at Merrill Lynch this is in my book, and
the senior trader, the highest paid trader in the world. His only question
to me was can you help me break eat? And when I said but,
he kept you a look, I said yeah. And he has since
shot and shot in programs A seventy three and a seventy five. Nice.
Yeah, but how's his work ethic? I mean, did you help him
anywhere at all? That he just wanted to talk about golf? But was
he vulnerable enough to He gave me his senior traders to work with before nine
to eleven, they were in a slow Okay, I knew nothing about Wall
Street. I know nothing about trading. I know nothing. I worked with
his twelve senior traders, teaching the same stuff. Their P and L went
up twenty one. Wow. That's when he invited me to work with another
group of people and another group of people, which is what I did until
nine to eleven. And I would have been there my last day off after
the summer. I would have been there. But I spent the next two
months repairing the damage, getting people back on track. And then I moved
to Hawaii and I started playing golf again, and that's when somebody introduced me.
They had pro at Wylin, who introduced me to Parker mcglocka and who
the kid I worked with. Okay, tell us how to find you online
and how to work with you. Sure, it's train Yourround hero dot com
and you can contact me through that. I have an assessment that people can
take and feedback and sign up the sessions that they want. It works for
everything. In my book are examples of people I work with, like people
that never passed the bar exam, passed the bar exam, competitive dancers.
It works across the board. I just loved golf. It works really well
with golfers. You got hooked, huh. Yeah, Coss has got you
in. Yeah he sucked you all right, you just got suck. I
was such good. I traveled on the road with Bob Cosky and Jim Flick
Chuck Cook. They took me in. Yea, and but that would be
in Tim, I'm a dating for a beginner, wouldn't it. I'm not
in. You're green beret. Yeah, you're a green Berett. What do
you care? Fascinating stories, easily relatable. Thank you so much, Don,
I really enjoyed having this conversation with you today. My pleasure. Thank
you. This is fun. Okay, I've held off long enough. It's
time to bring back the best of Golf Smarter from our archives of episodes that
are just no longer available on any podcast app. We started doing this in
April of twenty nineteen, when I discovered that a huge number of our episodes
have disappeared from the cloud, but what has been a parent from the earliest
days is that because these conversations are ever green in nature, meaning that they're
just as valuable, helpful, andsightful and interesting, today is when they our
first release. You've been digging in to listen once again. Since twenty nineteen,
you've known Golf Smarter Mulligans as a separate podcast. But here's what we're
going to do differently this time, and I'm sorry I didn't do it earlier.
We're still going to dig into the vault every Friday, but from now
on it's right here in your Golf Smarter subscription. There's nothing more you have
to do. But as long as you follow Golf Smarter on your favorite podcast
app, you'll get two episodes every week, Tuesday and Friday as always,
with Tuesday being a new episode and Fridays will be a new old episode.
And as we've done for the last couple of years, to get you ready
for a new golf season, we're bringing back every interview I did with the
late Tony Manzoni, and this year we're releasing an additional episode that we discovered
a few months ago. That's never been replayed. You've heard me talk about
Tony's video, The Loss Fundamental, that you can get for free when you
become a Golf Smarter Ambassador. But the reason I do this is because,
without fail, every time we play these episodes with Tony, I get more
emails about how his instruction has changed the lives of golfers around the world.
So here we go, two episodes every week right here on your subscription to
Golf Smarter. And speaking of ambassadors, thanks go out to William Urkhart of
Punta Gorda, Florida. And like so many of our ambassadors who participated,
William chose to receive a free link to Tony Manzoni's video of The Loss Fundamental,
just for telling us where he's from, where he plays, and what
episode number this is. If you'd like to choose from three great gifts,
right directly to me and I'll send you simple instructions on how to record.
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