If I'm at the range all day, I don't seek anybody that practice as
well. I mean nobody. If you want to get better, you have
to have a good solid plan. Arrive with a good solid plan. Don't
just rake and rip. You're going to get exercise, but you're not going
to get better. You might even get worse. And there's so many books
out there and YouTube videos about how to practice well. I try to drive
it into my students, but got it come out there some days and there's
a guy that took a lesson a week ago and he's just beating ball after
ball with his driver and not doing anything else and not getting better. Hi,
this is Charles Palmer from Naples, Florida, and I play at the
History and at Golf and Country Club. This is Golf Smarter number nine hundred
and thirty five, The Myths and Misconceptions of keep your Head Down with John
Marshall. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great
golf minds to help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. There's
your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast. John.
Great to be here, Fred. I just discovered your podcast about a month
ago, and I am the president of the Atlanta Chapter fan Club. Thank
you very much. And you're friends with doctor Grenna Anderson, who we love
talking to. So you're both down there in Atlanta. And she told me
that she was just talking about you, said that you discovered the podcast,
and I'm like, well, let's get him on the show. Yeah.
We teach at the same place. We go to lunch a couple of times
a year. And she's an awesome lady and a great teacher too. Yeah,
she's a phenomenal human. Really really like her. That's great. So
you got your your whole thing going and go. I mean, you've been
playing golf a long time. But as a younger man, you started out
with long drive or is it as a senior you started out with long drive
competition, not even senior, super senior, what is super? I don't
even know it's super. It's like supersalid. Do you remember Remax World Long
Drive Championship. Yeah, So back in it was like Christmas Day of two
thousand and two, they announced that they were going to have a super Senior
division beginning in three and it was for fifty five and up. And I
was about ready to turn fifty five, so it just worked well. And
I'd always been pretty long, so I just got the juices flowing. I
got excited for the first time in many years. And uh, long drive
back in those days was like the US Open. There was local qualified and
then regional, and I went to eight local qualifiers and won them all and
figured I was going to waltz all the way to the World Championship. And
had a couple of episodes of, to put it, mildly choking, and
I realized rolling the club face open a little bit and then trying to roll
it closed, which I had been taught when I first started playing when I
was fourteen years old, did not work under the pressure of long drive.
So really I was hitting it a long way, but it would sometimes come
down in the same state that I was standing in, but not always.
So the worst thing that can happen in long drive you get six balls hit
him in two and a half minutes. If you don't get one in,
you know, you leave with the tail between your legs. And that happened
twice, and the second one was really bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And you know sometimes sometimes it can happen just because your swing is off
that day. But this was a legitimate joke. There's no kitting around it.
So I came home and imoked around for a month and then I decided,
well, I'm going to fix this. So I contacted Mike Austin,
whom you know his name from Jacob Bowden. We talked on the phone.
He had stopped teaching, he was like ninety five. He put me in
touch with his protege, Dan Schauger in La. I flew out to La
spent a couple of days working with Dan, and he kind of gave me.
It sounds weird, but he gave me permission to swing the golf club
like I did naturally in terms of the club face. So instead of rolling
it open, I kept at square throughout and I never had a six in
and out again. I won some stuff, had a good time, made
a lot of friends. And at what age were you doing this that you
started winning fifty five? And you know I was flying at three ten then
and it was just a quot with basically a standard link driver. I don't
know where the eighty yards have gone since then. They disappeared a little bit.
This aging process is cruel. There's no getting around there. Yeah,
but if all we have to do is complain about aging, we're well ahead
of the game. Absolutely, I totally concur so. I had a lot
of fun, and I really I had been teaching kind of informally before that,
but the range that I went where I went to practice, people would
watch me hit balls and they kind of come up to me and say,
how does a run like you do that? So I would give in formal
lessons and the guy that owned the rain said, you know, you ought
to be charging for this. So that's kind of where the teaching started.
And I often think back to those early days and if I could contact all
those people that took lessons the first couple of years and said I would say
to them, you deserve a refund, give me your address and I'll mail
you a check. But things have progressed over the years. I kind of
think I'm doing pretty well with that. There's I was thinking the other day
there was a point where golf was starting to go downhill a little bit,
teaching was going uphill a little bit. I was trying to think of maybe
what year they kind of crossed in the night. It is probably when you
say going down. When you say going down, does that mean your score
was going down? What do you what do you know? Distance was going
Oh, your distance was scores have kind of stayed the same because I just
keep I just keep moving forward, like you know, like I should be
doing. Yes, absolutely, yeah, So I shoot my age pretty much
every time I play, and uh and have fun with my buddies. So
you're shooting in the mid seventies regularly. Yeah, yeah, nice. Yeah,
you know that's kind of where I was when I played college golf and
high school golf, and he kind of reached your own level. I was
never good enough at golf to do anything professionally, and that's why long drive
was so much fun. I could do something on a you know, on
a bigger stage and be least marginally successful. My last, my last competition,
I was on the tee. This was Remax twenty ten. I was
on the tee with Rick Barry, whom I'm sure you remember because Area,
Yeah, Bay Area I and and a lot of people don't know this,
but he won two World long Drive Championships too in the older guys groups.
So yeah, it was fun. Fierce competitor, Oh absolutely absolutely, and
he you know, we less that that competition that was blowing about twenty five
in the face at eight o'clock in the morning, and he was ripping these
low draws that were probably getting twenty five or thirty of yards of roll.
But none of us old guys said at three hundred that day the wind was
so strong. So anyway, we had fun. Oh that's okay, then
you win again. You're having Yeah, you said you were a runt.
How tall? I know you're going to say, well, I'm shorter now
than I was then, but and that's that's the truth. How tall are
you? I'm five ten now. I think I was six feet when I
started. I weigh about one eighty five, and you know, the everything
is kind of sinking. You don't know what that's like because you're still young.
Oh no, I do. I'm having a lot of compression issues in
my back, so I get it. Yeah, I totally get it.
So you know, I work out a lot and I try to stay strong.
But boy, it's it's tough as you get older. But yes it
is. No complain, no complaints. But tell me about your workout.
What is it that you focus on. I do cardio, I do weights,
I do a lot of flexibility work and just try to maintain my range
of motion as much as I can. If you could only do one of
those three, which would it be probably flexibility, Probably range of motion flexibility.
I do that every single day. Try to do cardio most days,
and weights maybe three days a week. Okay, And what is your cardio
workout? Elliptical? Okay, I've had I've had. I ran marathons forty
years ago, and I've had seven knee surgeries, so even walking is not
particularly fun. Elliptical is perfect. You look like you're in shape. I'm
sure you do a lot of stuff too. I never do. I'm not
big on cardio. Yeah, and I've never really done weights at all.
I really focus a lot on my flexibility, my cardio. My cardio is
in the swimming pool. I swim. Yeah, that's fantastic, which is
all in existence, and you know you're not pouring sweat, which I love.
Yeah. Yeah. When I mentioned to you being in San Francisco three
years ago and I went down to the waterfront one day and there were people
out there swimming and got sixty degree water maybe less. Yeah, it's no.
I'm a swimming pool guy. I can't swim dark water unless I'm wearing
a mask and then I'm underneath the water. Yeah no, Alcatraz to the
orlane. Yeah no, No, I have friends, but not me,
not yeah, no way. Yeah. So you runt like you you're five
ten, You're still taller than I am. But you've always been a long
hitter. Yeah. I was a baseball player at like nine, ten,
eleven, twelve and then and I was a good hitter and all of a
sudden, somebody threw a curveball. I was going to be Mickey Manna was
in my wheelhouse. I was going to replace the MinC in center field.
And I saw that first curveball, and I thought, you know, maybe
we had to look into a different activity here. So moved over to golf.
And the ball wasn't moving at all. The ball wasn't moving, And
I don't want to say it was easy, but it was. You know,
I went from zero to break an eighty and thirteen months in upstate New
York. So something was working, right, I guess, I don't absolutely,
But then you know, I got to the seventy five range and kind
of found my level of achievement for golf. But I know a lot of
people would like to shoot seventy five. Oh yes, oh yes, yeah.
Well hopefully what's working here is our sponsorships, and we're going to I
encourage people not to fast forward through them, because this is part of how
I make this thing work. So please stick around because we'll be back in
a minute with more with John Marshall. John, you just mentioned to me,
and I want to bring it up that you've got some people that have
been featured on the podcast here that you really admire the work that they're doing
now, and i'd love to hear your thoughts about that. Who are we
talking about, Well, Scott Fosset with a decade golf and John Sherman with
four foundations of golf, who wrote a wonderful book and he has a podcast
too. Yeah, another book on the show, right, But I just
think what they're doing can help any level of golfer, certainly elite players,
but even fifteen twenty handicappers to make sound decisions based on Scott Fawcett puts it
based on math and not on intuition. And I don't know if he mentioned
this when he was on, but Stuart Sink, who was one of his
early disciples, said I finished rounds not fatigued because I don't have to think.
I just do everything from a math standpoint. Of course, he was
at Georgia Tech grad, so maybe that really fit in well with him.
But he said, I don't have to think. I I you know,
I look at the numbers, I realize what my dispersion is. I pick
out a target that works with that dispersion. But the greatest thing to me
about these two things is that we all beat ourselves up playing golf, and
we most people just have real expectations that are totally unrealistic. And I'll say
to my students sometimes sometimes what's the average PGA Tour dispersion with the driver over
the course of the year all players far right miss, far left mess except
typically they'll guess thirty yards and it's more than seventy five Sure, And you
know what's the average make rate in the PGA Tour from eight feet? People
will say seventy five percent because they're watching golf every weekend and they're all making
those But it's nine And people need to pat themselves on the back a little
bit and not be so hard on themselves, because, as Scott says,
I keep going back to Scott but I just love what he does. Golf
is a shotgun and it's not a sniper rifle, and we have to figure
out what our dispersion is and plan accordingly. So I'll get off my decade
golf soapbox here. But I just love this stuff. Yeah, yeah,
it makes total sense. It's definitely worth going back and hearing Scott. He
was on just recently episode nine hundred and thirty back in January. That's amazing.
He's great, he is, and he's passionate about it, and it
makes so much sense, exactly exactly, and he kind of came up with
this from according to what he says, from playing poker and just looking at
expectations and using math and figure out a way, figuring out a way to
maximize his chances of being successful. And you know you're not going to be
successful every day. But what's the one thing I hear from all new students,
typically the higher handicappers. I just want to be consistent? Can you
help me be consistent? And I say no, I can't. You're not
going to be Nobody is. And once you realize that, you've got a
chance of having fun playing the game. But God, who wants to you
know, you don't want to beat yourself up all the time. I saw
people when they tell me I want to be consistent, I'm like, well,
tell me, tell me what scores you shoot. I'm always between ninety
and ninety and ninety five. It's like, dude, you are You're consistent?
Yeah, what is it that you want? You know you are consistent.
It's probably your short game can use some work you're putting, you know,
but it's also your approach to how to approach a golf course. It's
not hitting golf balls is not going to make you consistent. It's how you
play golf. It's going to make consistency. That's you kind of led me
into another area here. If I'm at the range all day, every day
for weeks and weeks and weeks, I don't see anybody that practice as well.
I mean nobody. And if you want to get better, you have
to have a good solid plan. Arrive with a good solid plan. Don't
just rake and rip, as I call it. You're not. You're going
to get exercise, but you're not going to get better. You might even
get worse. And there's so many books out there and YouTube videos about how
to practice work well, and I try to drive it into my students,
but got it come out there some days and there's a guy that took a
lesson a week ago and he's just beating ball after ball with his driver and
not doing anything else and not getting better, and it's frustrating for me,
and I try to talk it into him, but not too many people want
to hear it. I do hit balls sometimes in between lessons, and I
try to set a good example if anybody's watching me, but I don't know
if it works. Do you teach golf full time? Yeah, you know.
I'm getting up in years, So I teach like fifteen hours a week
something like that, and takes me half an hour to get to the golf
course, half an hour back, and when I get home, I'll spend
twenty minutes per student and writing a lesson summary which i'll email to them.
I'll do voiceovers on their videos and I'll email that to them. So if
I do three or four lessons a day, between the drive and then the
follow up stuff, it's a six or seven hour day, which is all
I want basically. But it's a good situation. I love it. And
then it's nap time. So, I have you ever had any instances during
your playing career where you had to take some time off due to injury?
You know, other than that I mentioned, I've had seven knee surgeries,
so that's required some time off. But in terms of expected injuries with a
golfer, bat, you know, lower back, upper back, not really
lucky, man. I think I've been fortunately. I think I was decent
flexibility still, do you think that's more of the flexibility or that it's more
about the weight exercise, the maybe a little bit genetics and then you know,
yeah, and then you know, trying to stay in shape, and
well, I bring it up and I'm curious to get your advice. I
got an email from a listener this morning who in his early sixties he just
had back surgery, and he's like, I, you know, how long
do I need to take off? And do I need to change my swing
now? Should I go stack and tilt? I'm like, everything I've heard
about stack and tilt is not good for your back. I'd love to throw
this out to a golf instructor. It's like for somebody in their you know,
early sixties back surgery needs to make changes not swing as hard. As
he has been. What would you recommend? Well, I hate to disagree
with the affable host here, but I'm actually in the right circumstances, a
big stack and tilt fan. You are, And I think a lot of
people have back problems when they side bend a lot in both directions. And
you may or may not know this, but I was like everybody my age.
I was a big Nicholas and Palmer fan growing up. And when I
look at my swing on video, there's times when I kind of throw up.
But I do have a very steady head. And the only way you
can maintain a steady head in the golf swing, both back and down is
by side bending, side bending left in the backswing, side bending right in
the downswing. Not a lot, but a little bit, but that's the
only way you can stay centered and tilt your shoulders a little bit if you
look at Sometimes I say to students what do you think of the older guys?
I'll say, what do you think of Arnold Palmer's golf swing? And
they'll say, well, you know, he did this funny thing here at
the end, and of course he did, but everything he did before that
was just mechanically perfect. Basically in terms of tilting and staying centered. His
dad. His dad and Nicholas's teacher, Jack Grout, both of them said,
put your hands on the club properly, don't move your head, and
swing as hard as you can, and we'll figure out how to hit it
straight or later on, and then it's fine for a kid in their twenties
and thirties, yeah, or eight and ten like they yeah, exactly,
But fifty years later, the people at TPI Titleist Performance Institute documented that that's
absolutely the perfect approach. Whatever the swing speed that you start with is,
to a great extent, is what you're destined to have the rest of your
life. So I'm not going to tell a seventy year old to come out
of their shoes and try to get one hundred and twenty mile an hour club
that speed. But for a young kid who's got some athletic ability, God,
go after it. And you know, you stand on the rain sometimes
given a lesson, and you'll hear a well meaning dad in the spot behind
you saying stuff to his son or daughter, and I think, to myself,
you're setting this kid back, you know, twenty years. The worst
instructor in the world is apparent. Yeah, or keep your head down.
Keep your head down, worst piece of advice in the history of golf.
Oh all right, well hang on to that thought because we're going to discuss
why that is right after this break. All right, we hear it all
the time. I lifted my head. I lifted my head, or you
hear from down to the bay, you know, another bay in the in
the driving range, keep your head down, keep your head down. You're
saying bad advice. There's a difference between keeping your head down and allowing your
head to rotate. The two of the examples that I use with students who
you know, they finish their swaying and they're still staring at where the ball
is. First of all, you're completely stalling your rotation. Secondly, you'll
end up with a chiropractor on speed dial very quickly. But if you look
look at David Duval and on Akasare and Stamp, their heads were gone way
before impact. And I say gone. They weren't looking down at the golf
ball. They were rotating. And it's a wonderful thing to do because you
know where's power come from and the golfs rotation, and you just really kind
of unlock your unlock yourself in terms of being able to rotate more thoroughly and
create more power. So whenever whenever a student shows up, you know,
doing this, and they're still looking at the grounds and their hands are up
here, I'm thinking to myself, this is not working. We're going to
make some changes here. I mean, how many yards are we losing if
by having our hands up there and our heads still down? Hard to quantify,
but a decent amount, no question about that, right. But then
the other factor is hurting yourself too, which you will if you do that
long enough, physically hurt yourself. Physically hurt your back. Yeah, you're
really stressing the back when you do that. If you let, you know,
keep keep rotating, you're going to be kind to your body. I
think doing that, but not keeping the head down forever. What about tennis
elbow? Is this something that you know, there's golfer's elbow and there's tennis
elbow. I've been dealing with tennis elbow. What might and I'm not even
asked anybody what might have caused that other than being at my desk all day?
Is it? Is it the golf swing that has impacted that well?
You know, I'm not I'm not an orthopedic surgeon, but I would say
so many, but you act like going on TV. Yeah, so many,
so many ranges nowadays our mats only just because it's less expensive. And
you know, if you're trying to lean the shaft and compress the ball,
and maybe the MAT's been there for four years and it's getting worn and there's
no cushion. You start beating on those with irons after a while, and
that the elbows can start to hurt, and those are as, you know,
they it's tough to get rid of that. You really have to take
some time off. Yeah, I'm taking you three months off, and I'm
realizing I've got a ten year old mat back here I'm hitting off of.
Yeah, and that could be it right there. It's my own mat.
Yeah, but I think that it was on a driving range before it was
given to met it. Yeah, yeah, so it had some mileage on
it already. And I thought, oh boy, this matt must be getting
old because I'm seeing all the remnants of the mat on the bottom of my
clubs. It's like, yeah, now I'm like, oh wait a minute,
my arm's killing me. It's probably from hitting in this mat, I
think, so, I think, so time to get a new mat.
Maybe maybe get a new mat and see if that helps the elbows. Yeah,
yeah, there's great advice, thank you, you know, when you
stop, but think about maintaining a grass surface range with all the divots that
are being taken. It's a it's a pricey situation. Place I teach,
they used to use grass on the weekends and they stopped that five years ago,
so it's it's only matts now. Yeah. And plus when you're hitting
on a a driving range that's grass most of the time, it's very sandy.
It's what there's a lot of sand they're using to you know, and
so it's not really grass. So it's hard to get a good sense of
what you're doing when you're hitting the ball. That's what I've found. A
lot of people can hit the ground an inch and a half behind the ball
on a mat and still get a serviceable shot, and they think, well,
I'm really doing wow, and they get out on the golf course and
it doesn't work quite as well. I can't believe how many golfers that I've
come across that are lifetime golfs that when I say, okay, so if
the ball is here, where should the bottom of your swing be? Thinking
that the swing is a circle, so there's a bottom to that swing,
bottom of the circle. Where in relation to the ball should it be?
Should it be you know, three inches behind the ball, right at the
ball, in front of the ball. And I can't believe how many people
are shocked to hear that the bottom of the swing should be in front of
the ball, you know, past it as far as where your swing is.
They're like, what are you talking about. It's like, no,
no, you hit the ball first, then you hit the ground. That's
how you get a good divot. That's all. Also how you get your
compression on the ball at the risk of at the risk of antagonizing you further.
Oh, go for it. You're never coming back on the show again
anyway. This is what Steck and Tilda is all about, is bottom point
control. And when you're not when you're not moving laterally in either direction and
you're right on top of it, your bottom points going to be in the
same place all the time. And you know, every person that shows up
for a lesson, to me is totally different. And I have a bag
full of tools that I use, and I'll pull out, hopefully the right
tools for the individual's issue. And if somebody is swaying off the ball in
a big way and I can see they got ninety five percent of their weight
on the outside of their trail foot, I'm not going to say stack untilt.
I'm just going to say, let's kind of stay centered a little bit
more. I've got a video that I send to a lot of serial swayers
that's of two great LPGA Tour players and at four different places in the swinging
it shows weight distribution percentages fifty to fifty in the setup at the top of
the back swing, fifty to fifty, which shocks every wow, seventy thirty
lead footed impact, and then ninety eight two. But there's kind of a
buzz term in recent years in golf instruction where people talk about going into your
trail foot and not onto your trail foot, and there's a big difference there.
To understand what I mean, no, please explain. Yeah, you're
keeping your weight on the inner half of your trail foot in the back swing
rather than getting it totally on it. So if you look at if you
look at Hogan top of backswing, Nicholas top of backswing most all good players.
There's not a ton of weight over there. There really is not.
And that's why I think stack and tilt can be valuable for the right person,
for the right person, the right person, but not everybody, Not
everybody, No, everybody. I played golf out in Vegas a couple of
years ago and I met this guy who was the director of golf. I
won't mention the name of the club, but he'd been teaching Fred Couples for
forty years. And I'm thinking, I think, to myself, you know,
what, what are you telling Fred Couples. I actually I did say
that to him, and he said everybody has an issue. Everybody has an
issue. And I didn't ask him what Couple's issue was, but oh man,
yeah, I don't think he would have told me. Well that's different.
Yeah, I think we'd all like to have Fred Couple's issues, right,
I have the issue of the name Fred. So yeah, yeah,
all Fred's. All Fred's are good guys and talented. Yeah, better Fred
than dead. Oh all right, Well, let's take one quick time out
here, another sixty seconds and we'll continue on with John Marshall. John,
I'm really curious to see if you can help go through a long drive swing
on competition. Break it down of what you're feeling in your process, your
set up, your thought process, and what it feels like when you're competing
and going for as much distance as you possibly can. And accuracy. Well,
I certainly struggled with the accuracy part initially, and when I was I
did this for god what eight years. I basically didn't play golf at all,
maybe ten rounds a year, but I would practice, especially leading up
to a competition. I'd hit one hundred drivers a day in addition to working
out a lot, and you know, you just kind of train yourself to
get to maximize your speed as best you can. I I've always done the
doctor Shoul's foot spray on the on the club face to make sure I'm at
least somewhere near the center of the face, because that's a huge deal.
But yeah, it was. It was always. I don't want to say
it was easy, because nothing's easy related to golf for long drive, but
it was fun once I started figuring the club face out too. And we
you know, you and I joked a week or so ago about the manual
de latora guy who said toe up and towed down up here. No no,
And I'm not I'm never critical of other teachers, but I'd like I'd
like to have him find out someone who agrees with him nowadays on that Okay,
that doesn't work, doesn't work. No, no. And that's what
I love about doing this podcast is somebody's going to come on one week and
say this is the only way you're going to have consistency and distance, and
someone will come on next week going no, no, doesn't work that way
now. Well, so that's a warning to all listeners. Please, if
you don't like what you hear on this show, come back next week.
You come back next week because you hear something different. I mentioned starting at
fourteen. Are you ready to come back on now or are not out a
break? Oh? We we're in man, Oh you are? Oh yeah?
No? No, no, I love No, We're This is part
of the show. Surprised. So when I was starting at fourteen, I
took two lessons and the guy said, when the shaft's parallel to the ground
halfway back, toe up, I want ninety percent of your weight on your
right foot, and then I want you to shift your weight to the left
and roll the hand, roll your hands closed and squared a club face and
hit it a mile that's straight. And I tried that and realized it didn't
work, so I kind of worked things out on my own. I still
rolled the club face open a little bit, but not to that extent.
But so shaft parallel to the ground halfway back. Club face should be parallel
to the spine angle. Why is this a square club face because if you
think of the arc of the of the club going back. When I'm in
that position with that club head tipped forward, it's indicular to my path.
You with me, that's square And I'm loving hearing this. Keep going.
And then at the top of the back swing, I want a flat left
wrist. I'm going to have a flat left wrist that impact. If I've
got a flat left wrist up here, I don't have to do anything.
And this is a little harder to understand or visualize, but I want to
have the club face parallel to my left forearm at the top of the back
swing, I'm right into the golfer. That may be tough to visualize there,
but definition of square club face over the last ten, twelve, fifteen
years has changed dramatically for the better. For the better, Yeah, yeah,
totally. Yeah, what are you doing when you when you're in positions
like I talked about your Every golf swing requires timing, but you're chopping a
lot of that need for timing away. If I'm not rolling the club fase
open and closed. That's one one factor I don't have to worry about.
And I don't hit it as far as I used to by any means.
But I mean, I don't curve the ball two inches. Typically everything is
is pretty much dead straight because I zero out my path and zero out my
club face, so ball just goes straight and doesn't curve at all. I
can make it curve if I need to. But yeah, that was gonna
be my question. Are you do you have the ability to shape the shots
if you need to. You know, it's harder to do nowadays with the
technology of the golf ball, but yeah, I can. I can still
do it. Yeah, It's it's not going to curve as much as it
did with a blot of ball thirty years ago, but you can. You
can still curve it. I'm sure you can curve it. No, I
mean, like my drives, I either hit a small small fade or straight.
It's like, I haven't played month, so I'm like, what do
I do? But uh, I just in the last couple of months that
I was playing, I was just starting. I rolled, I brought my
right handed golfer. I brought my left hand a little bit rotate clockwise right,
yeah, on the on the grip, and I was starting to hit
a draw for the first time, and I'm like, okay, and then
my arm started hurtating And I'm like, is that when my arm was hurting
because I moved my my my hand on the club. No, because I'm
Matt. When you say you hit a draw, is it starting out right
of the target and then moving back to the target or starting out left?
No, It's it's starting where I'm like, I'm aiming and then and then
going a little bit to the left. It's not got your going guard left.
It's it's you can see the ballflight going up and then it's starting to
move a little bit to the left, which is like, Oh, I'm
hitting a draw yay after all these years, Like really do I want to
do that? Yeah? I hit a student last year who was a lifelog
slicer and not a real talented golfer, and we're working on grip and club
fase control and he's got this big out day in path and he hits this
pull hook that Marlon Perkins couldn't find, and he just lit up and said,
I mean the guy from time, Oh my god, I hit the
first draw in my life. And he was just so giddy, and I
didn't want to break it to him that you're never going to find that golf
ball. But uh, you know it's all about You probably know this from
talking to instructors, but the longer the club the greater the impact of the
clubface. With driver, it's eighty five percent of where the ball's going.
His clubpase with a wedge probably more like fifty percent of where it's going.
But controlling the club face is what golf is all about. I'm a huge
Victor Holin fan, and he talks about when people ask him about why he's
so successful, he says, I have a very very stable clubface, and
I don't open it, I don't close it. It's always square all the
way through here. Works pretty well for him, Yes, it does,
the problem is we go, Oh, I saw Victor Holin hit shots on
TV. I can do that, and you just go out to the golf
course, not even practice it. You just go to the golf course going,
I'm going to channel Victor Hovlin today. It's like, no, you're
not, probably not, probably not. Yeah, no, don't. I
saw this shot on TV. I can do this. Yeah, exactly.
I so frequently I say to students, you don't have any idea how hard
the golf courses are that they're playing, and you have no idea how good
they are, even if you watch them. You don't have any idea how
good they are. And you're talking to a guy who's a scratch golfer and
they still don't have the clue. No, no, exactly. Well,
you know, Larry Nelson is three time major champion. He's a local Atlantic
guy. He won two PGA's in the US Open. But I remember him
saying one time that the difference between and eighteen and scratch is smaller than the
difference between scratch and tour player. Wow. Yeah, I mean those guys
with the USGA index would be plus six, plus seven, plus eight.
I mean it's yeah, Tiger was a plus ten at one point. Yeah,
it's it's crazy. They're good. They're talented and they're they're good.
And but they also have a seventy five yard dispersion with their t shots from
one hundred and twenty yards they average roughly twenty three feet according to Scott Fawcett.
And but they they they picked the right targets, they understand their dispersion.
They're dialed in on how far they hit each club they have they have,
you know, from equipment standpoint, they have a lot of advantages over
us normal people. But they're really good. They're really good, and that's
why they make a lot of money. Yeah, well they try or they
go play for the Saudis and make a lot of money. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And that's a I decided to actually
at the first week of January, I decided I'm going to go on strike.
I mean, I'm a huge golf and I have been my whole life,
just like you. But I said, I'm going to go on strike
and I'm not going to watch. And I didn't watch the first two weeks,
and then last week I didn't watch. This is at Palm Springs.
I didn't watch Thursday, Friday, Saturday. But then Sunday I wake up
and I realize what's going on with Nick dun Lamp And my best friend and
I go to the NCAA's every year because we love ouch golf, and we
watched him playlist year, so you know, the guy's good. But I
had to watch that, and I mean, that was an amazing story,
so amazing story. Yeah. Yeah, And I'm sure I'm sure Live has
probably come after him. I know he's he's on the PGA tour now,
but I'm sure they've come after him. Didn't you love how he said the
next week He's like, yeah, I'm not going to plan the tour event
this week. I want to go home. Yeah. Yeah, good for
you kid. That's the That's kind of a mature decision right there. And
I think he wanted to go back and do the right thing with his coach
and his teammates and very admirable. Yeah. I'm a fan, absolutely,
absolutely. So you're teaching, now, do you teach online or do you
only teach in person? What do you I'm only only in person, But
I'm actually thinking about trying to do a little bit more than I have in
the past informally that I may try to set up some kind of a system
to do that. I've already proven to you that I'm a master of technology.
So we're here. You're doing it. You figured it out. How
do people get in touch with you if they'd like to get a lesson?
Our website is jmlong drive dot com, jmm yep, grive dot com.
Phone number and email addresser on there, and love working with everyone, Love
working with everyone. Well, I really enjoyed working with you today. This
has been awesome. Thank you very kind. Fred. It was fun for
me too, and hope our paths cross again. Maybe you said you're coming
to Atlanta, assume maybe we can break bread or I can give you a
golf lesson if you have a little time. That's great. Thanks so much
for being on today, John, I enjoyed it, Emncho, thank you
for having me. Well. I was wondering when AI was going to start
having an impact on this podcast, and it has arrived after recording this interview
with John. The platform I use called Riverside FM, and if you're a
podcaster, I'd seriously recommend it to you. They offer a new AI service
where it reviews the entire interview, then gives a summary of the conversation and
provides bullet pointed takeaways on the topics that we covered during the interview, so
beginning today that will be included in the show notes and at our blog post
for you to review before or after you listen. Would love your feedback on
whether or not this is at all helpful. This week's Golf Smarter Ambassador is
Charles Palmer of Naples, Florida, where he plays at the Esplanade Golf and
Country Club. Why don't you become one of our ambassadors then you can take
advantage of getting a free gift, unless you think having a free podcast is
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