Quick note before we begin. There was a small glitch in our online recording
that makes it sound like my audio skips every so often. If you're old
enough like me to remember records, you know what I mean by skips.
Not sure what it was or why it happened, but it does resolve itself
as we get deeper into the episode. Generally, my online recording platform is
really reliable, so we'll cut them a little slack this time. Thanks for
you understanding. Now let's get to it. I was doing a putting lesson
with Bruce Ririck, so we do a lot of putting lessons together. My
students is just fantastic. And he goes, Josh, what was that he
said the other day? That was just like so insightful. I'm like,
God must have said something stifling with Bruce. It's like so much of it
is getting your setup correct, because if you get your setup correct, a
lot of good things happened during the emotions. I said my quote was be
careful in your setup and be care free in your slip. Woo ooh yeah,
I know you get an from you. I'm writing that one down,
write it down. If you can quote me on that one. I don't
think I've had too many quotes through the years that people will actually quote me.
I think what happens is we kind of get the opposite where people aren't
really precise enough with their setups, so now they're destined to failure, and
now they have to be super careful or restricted or compensate for a poor setup.
Hi, this is Steve Han from Honeyton Beach, California, and I
play at Metal Arc Golf Club. This is Golf Smarter number nine hundred and
seventeen. Be careful in your setup and be care free with your swing with
Josh Xander. 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.
Josh, thanks for having me back. F It's always a pleasure, always
a pleasure to talk to you. We always have so much fun just talking
random golf topics, which is the way I love to do it. It's
almost like we're walking down the fairway together, just getting into random conversation about
golf. So much fun. I love it. It's kind of a random
game anyway, So let's go random. Tell me how you online video lessons
are going and how accustomed people are getting to learning how to pay golf online
with somebody. Yeah, it's definitely happening. It's not the best way.
I still love to see the person in person, just because it's just it's
more intimate. You really get to know the person better and really can understand
how they're going to learn best, and you can try some things. But
if you can't get to see me in person, that online works great too.
And I have an assessment process where I understand how you're designed to swing
the club and I can really keep you on track. And so I have
students all over the world who you see me online, and it's a fun
part of my job to meet people that ordinarily get to meet. So it's
great. It was one of the things that I loved of going working in
radio to working with podcasting is that with radio you're always restricted by geography and
time, and with podcasting you're not restricted by either of those. There's a
special geography, and I would think for golf instruction it's kind of the same
way in the sense that you get to meet people that are not in your
regional area. You know. I guess with golf instruction, previously you had
a ten mile radis maybe that people would be willing to drop to take a
lesson and hopefully somebody with all somebody and they'd come in from twenty miles away.
But now you can do it with people all over the world. Yeah,
now anytime. Yeah, it's really it's pretty It's pretty cool when you
think about it that way. It's like the world is your you know,
you have you have the opportunity to are your knowledge with with anybody who's who's
interested, and I'm in if you're interested, let's go, let's go on
this journey together, and let's have some fun and let's learn on the way,
enjoy the process and and uh and get better. Yeah, which is
what we're all trying to do. It's what I'm still trying to do,
not just as a teacher, but as a player. I still I may
be I may be deluting myself, but I still think my best golf's in
front of me. And I've played some pretty good golf in the past.
So I'm still trying to get better, and I still have epiphanies and I
love sharing that information. And we're always learning more and it's all it's all
part of the fun. So the more people who can join in I'm in
that amazes me because I can you to talk. The longer I play,
more I learned, the more understanding of nuance that I get in the game.
What is your latest epiphany in your game? Well this may seem a
little trivial, but I was just working. And I I actually have a
coach I work. I work on my game with Terry Rowlds, just a
fantastic, you know, top one hundred coach, and I'm always bugging him
with questions and and h He's a really deep thinker about things, and and
he understands how I'm designed to swing. We both use Mike Adom system of
assessments, so we know bio mechanically how I'm designed and and I'll say,
what do you think about this? And and uh. And the other day
I was on the lesson unlesson to you in between lessons, and I just
hit a few balls and I was just trying to get a little bit more
depth with my right shoulder, which gets everything more around, allows me to
deliver the hit a little bit more from the inside and shallow me out a
little bit, and he goes for your for your style, which is somebody
who covers the ball a little bit more. I come down a little bit
steeper. It's a perfect match. So increase. Not only that, as
I started to get a little more depth, I started to look at my
clubbeds. Be my clubbeds be starting increase a little bit, which is always
fun. Now at age fifty five and I'm seeing some Yeah, so I
think, of course, because now you're making a bigger you're making a bigger
coil. And I have a lot of thoracic rotation, and it just wasn't
using it. But the key that unlocked it was the right shoulder back as
opposed to just trying to turn my core. I actually got the right shoulder
to be as far behind me as I could, and went from eighty nine
miles an hour on a sex sign to ninety three with that, which unlocked
speed and an unlocked a better angle club delivery into the golf ball. So
little, just a little light bulb went off, and you know, we'll
see how long that feel lasts. Feels are very fickle. I tell that
to my students who might have a feel that works, and you can run
with it for a few weeks, and then all of a sudden, that
same queue doesn't necessarily produce the results you want. We were talking about how
golf is. Golf is a random game and feels come and go, and
reminds me of a story years ago when I think it was Ian Poulter was
struggling with the game, but he said, I'm just going to be patient
because I know one or two things is going to come my way and I'm
going to go on a run here. And sure enough he did, and
because he was about to lose his card, and he ended up playing really
well for a few weeks. And it's one of those things as a golfer
you have to be patient because sometimes those fields are going to really click in
for you and other times you're going to be in a little bit of a
slump. And it's okay to be in a slump. You have to weather
those and that's a challenge mentally, which is another obviously huge skill in this
game, is to be able to weather the downs and the ups. We
just saw in the Ryder Cup. You know, how does a player react
to somebody else chipping in when they deserve they thought they deserve to win the
hole. I mean emotional roller coasters, and when it comes to fields,
feels after a while you work on them and they're not so fresh anymore.
They don't quite work that one more, and you have to find the next
field that gets the swing to look and perform the way you want. And
reminds me of my college golf coach, you know, as we're talking in
the mid to late eighties, he was one of the first ones to really
get into using a lot of video, and he used to say, well,
video doesn't lie. Well, Now with all the all the tools we
have, we can say, well, video actually does lie. If the
camerangles off, we're not getting all the great data we get from force plates
and pressure mats and things like that. So video quote unquote lie. But
in general video is a pretty good tool. Still, most great teachers are
out there with their with their iPhones shooting video. And what he would say
is like, what's the what's you know, what's the field that's creating the
right picture. And it might not be the same from week to week or
month to month, you know, so who knows when the next little light
bulb is going to go off for me. Another light bulb that's kind of
got off for me is really and I've known this all along, but it's
just the it's the transfer of energy into the golf ball into the club head,
and everybody, including me, likes to hit it longer. So I
used to do well. I still do this program called the Junior Competition Clinic,
and I would measure all my kids in the program, measure their clubhead
speed. When they started, and we had a ten week program, I'd
write their clubhead speed. Get my track man, o't get their clubhead speed,
and I write down, okay, it's seventy five miles an hour.
And then I put on a big index card with a sharpie, seventy five
miles an hour. I said, okay, on week ten, we're going
to retest you after you've done some speed training. And then I would give
a prize to the to the kid who had the biggest increase in their clubhet
speed. So motivated them to do it. And then they of course would
want the coach to hit balls too and see what my clubhead speed was.
And I would make some practice things before I would get on the track man,
and then they would be almost like a baseball player with a big step
first, like literally taking a ste up my lead foot, lowering myself into
the ground and exploding up. And I would do that without even thinking.
Is just like that's how my body learned how to or that's all my body.
That's how my body needed to move in order for me to generate the
most clubheit speat I could. So I could basically show off in front of
these kids and show them I still I can still hit the ball three hundred
yards right. And that was an epiphany because you don't necessarily think about that
when you're in a regular golf stance. But if you really wanted to hit
if you just if you just took a stick, like maybe one of those
super speed sticks that has a little weight at the end, or the stack
system that has a weight at the end. He said, Okay, all
I'm trying to do here, I'm not trying to hit the ball straight.
I'm just trying to make this stick go as fast as possible. What does
your body do to do that? Right? And when I was making my
step and bracing into the ground, what that bracing is is basically a breaking
mechanism that allows the next segment. In this case, the club had to
whip passity rather than dragging the handle pulling on the handle. It's like,
no, how do you get that club head to go the fastest. Well,
it's kind of like cracking a whip or snapping a towel. If I
snap a towel, I have to pull the lead end back for the trail
end to go flying by. So that is a breaking mechanism. Right.
If you watch Rory McElroy, he actually on his downswing has a stoppage or
even a reversal of his hips. That is an incredible breaking mechanism that lets
that club head go flying by really really fast. So it's one of those
things where your body already knows how to do it. Any athlete who's ever
hit a ball, the tennis, ball, at baseball, that's what they
do. I've got videos. I'm a huge baseball fan. I grew up
in Venezuela. Baseball was the biggest sport. I played little league baseball,
and I love watching great hitters hit. And if you watch it's the same
sequence. They step in with their lead foot and then that braces and actually
they push back off that lead foot and then the bath head comes whipping around,
and if you don't do it in that sequence, you're just simply not
going to be as powerful. So in order to be powerful and efficient,
you have to have a stopping or bracing or breaking mechanism. And I don't
know if enough people really work on that, So I would say getting more
into teaching that on a regular basis, especially since most people are looking for
more power. I'm like, how are we going to get as efficient as
possible? So I'll take my impact bag and I'll give my students an alignment
stick and I'll say, Okay, just make the loudest sound you can against
that impact bag. Just just make it like, whack it as hard as
you can, and they'll start to learn how to be efficient. Next thing,
you know, they're airborne and impact because they're using the ground so well.
It's like, yeah, look at that. You're looking like an athlete
now, not when you're swinging the club, but when you're actually trying to
generate speed. And then, if you think about it, this is one
of my pet peeves and I'm going down this. I know that we tend
to talk about stuff and I just go down these these rabbit holes. But
you got me going, I'm I'm gonna go at this right. But so,
if you think about it, the purest form of power is when you're
trying to swing it as fast as you can without worrying about where the ball
goes. Right, you're just swinging. Like I just said, you out,
just make the fastest swing you can, and then it's my job as
an instructor to be able to organize you in a way where when you do
swing that powerfully or that explosively, the ball goes where you want to go.
Because most of the time we're restricting ourselves in order to get the ball
to go from point A to point B. So, for example, if
your grip is too strong for your biomechanics, if you let it go and
totally release everything, you're going to hit a huge hook. So how many
of those are you going to hit before you start restricting your release? Right,
So it's my job to get your grip organized in a way where you
can swing it as fast as you can, as athletically as possible, and
the ball goes where you want to go. Now you're more willing to free
it up, let it go, trust it. All that stuff we hear
all the great players say they do. You just watch these top players hit
their drivers. Nobody's trying to finesse it into the fairway. They're all exploding
into these golf balls, extremely athletic motions, but they hit it straight.
And they really have to hit it straight because at three point forty you can't
hit it very far off line and keep it in the fairway. You can
if you hit it one forty. You don't have to be very good at
having a good club face at one forty, But if you hit a three
forty, you better have that club face pretty square impact, So you better
have your your grip, your posture, your ball position, all the little
details organized in order for that ball to go straight at that speed. Now,
if you think about stability and club hit, and this is another one
my pet peeves when people say, well, I got to slow down.
I'm not a big fan of slowing down because it's really hard to hit it
farther if you're slowing down. Now, Smooth is good, syrupy, relaxed,
all those kinds of words, but not slow, because slow is just
less speed. I think I've said this on the podcast before, but when
I went my first job in golf, instruction was with Hank Caney, and
he said, Josh, if you take a bad swing and slow it down,
it's just a slow bad swing. Let's fix it and then speed it
up. Right. So, if you think about stability, if you take
a string and you hold and you put a little weight at the end of
the string and you start to spin it, the faster you spin it,
the more stable it is in its orbit. Right, the slower you do
it, the more wobbly it is. So we need that inertia. We
need that momentum in order for that clubheit to be stable. That club face
in golf, we're trying to hit a ball straight in baseball, and you're
great if you hit it to everywhere right, it's like we can't predict where
to put the because he hits it to all fields, so good for you.
Well, in golf, we can't hit it to all fields. We
got to play our foul balls right. So we need a club face.
It's very stable and oriented towards our target. Reasonably does not be perfect,
but reasonably. I remember when I when I first got my track man got
bols. Maybe it's fifteen, eighteen years ago, whatever it is now,
I was talking to Matt Frielich, who's I think he's still involved with the
company and was selling track man's I said, I said, so, when
you test touring pros, what do their club faces look like relative to the
targeted impact? I mean I was looking at like, how, how what's
the what's the dispersion? How left or right? Can you have a club
face and still play at the highest level except most of them are within two
degrees of zero with their club face at impact, give or take. You
know, it can be a little open, little closed, but they're not
like five degrees open or seven degrees open or seven degrees because you can't just
can't play golf that way. If you have a club face that's that on
stable because your grip is incorrect for you, then you are in restriction mode.
And if you're in restriction mode, you are slow. And if you're
slow, you don't get one of the two things that everybody asks me when
I get to the lesson to you, I want more speed, I want
more distance, and I want more accuracy. Well, you get the accuracy
part, but you're not going to get the distance part. But if you
want both and to play to your potential, we need both. Then we
need to organize you, which is why I assess everybody with Mike Adam's system
of assessing golfers boto. Mechanically, she takes a total of I think I
do it if I do it really efficiently, two minutes. If I do
it inefficiently, it takes me three minutes. I get carried away with some
conversation or something. This is that quick. Now I know exactly how you're
supposed to do it. So even with people who do my online stuff that
I've never seen before, I get them on video and I do the measurements
with them. So I understand. I don't want to take anybody down the
wrong road. I want to know what your body can do and how you
deliver the club face consistently for your body type. But yeah, so that's
that's, uh, I guess that's my uh. That's I don't know if
that's an epiphany, but it's something that I'm putting more into my teaching.
I want I want my players to be to reach their potential. And I
work with everybody from you know, five year olds to ninety year olds,
and I want everybody to be as efficient as possible. Okay, I'm gonna
stop you. I'm sorry, I need to stop it. There's a dock
the door, and it's the sponsors who would love to have something say here,
So we're gonna be gotta pay a bill, so we'll be back right
after this. Must of times you mentioned as fast as possible and as hard
as you can. Yeah, I are those the same thing. When you
teach or can they be tea to part, I would say it as fast
as possible, but I'd like to amend the as hard as you can,
because when you're being very efficient, you're not really trying. You're more allowing,
You're more letting. I think one of my videos I did recently was
on the difference between trying and letting. You really want to allow these things
to happen, which is when I was talking about like just taking an alignment
stick an alignment stick and hitting against the impact bags and try to make a
loud sound. It's amazing how relaxed people are when they do it well and
fast and powerfully, and how slow they are when they're trying to do it
grinding and trying to do it hard. So you find yourself on the practice
team or the lesson te and you're super grinding and the effort level super high.
Something's not very efficient because most efficient things are not hard, they're easy.
You hear this in the in the words coming out of great players.
It was easy, it was fun, it was I was relaxed, you
know, I was. It was smooth. Right. You look at like
Freddie Couple's and bj Singh and and players like that, you just see it
just looks effort less rather than effort full. And I was doing a a
a putting lesson with with Bruce Rarick, who's I don't know if you've if
you've had them on your podcast, if you had so, we we do
a lot of putting lessons together my students is just fantastic. And he goes,
Josh, what was that you said the other day that was just like
so insightful. I'm like, oh, I must have said something stifully,
And I said, because with Bruce, it's like so much of it is
getting your setup correct, right, because if you get your setup correct,
a lot of good things happened during the emotions. I said, I said,
my quote was be careful in your setup and be carefree in your swing.
Right. Yeah, I know you'd get an I'd get a new I'm
writing that one down, Write it down, write it down. You can
quote me on that one. I don't think I've had too many quotes through
the years that people will actually quote me, But that one, I think
is a it's it's it might be the title of this episode be careful in
your set be care free in your swing. Yeah, And I think the
I think what happens is we kind of get the opposite where people aren't really
precise enough with their setups, so now they're destined to failure, and now
they have to be super careful or restricted or compensate for a poor setup.
So how nice would it be if you could set up for a golf ball
and know that more often than not it's going to go where you want to
go, and you can just let it go. Then there's no herd,
there's no try, there's just allow, there's let there's freedom, there's trust,
all this stuff that we always want more. We're playing our best golf.
The Vision fifty four, Pia and Lynn talk about this all the time.
It's like, what's your what's what's the best version of you? And
they have you write down a piece of paper. Chuck Cogan had me do
this when I was when I was working with him as a when I was
a touring professional. He said, take a piece of paper, put a
line down the middle, and on the left side, write down how you
are when you play great. On the right side, how you are when
you don't play great. Well, it's really it's the same for everybody.
Like on the left side of a piece of paper, when you're playing great,
it's easy, it's fun, it's smooth, it's soft, it's calm,
it's quiet. On the other side, my brain's busy, I'm trying
really hard, my grip pressure is too tight, I'm analytical. Yeah,
it's it's just it's distracted. It's almost the same for everybody. I'm not.
I mean, everybody's individual, and so you can have different things going
on. But I know that for almost every golfer, if they knew they
were going to be okay, they would let go. But they're not sure
they're okay. So if we can give them that sense of safety by saying,
hey, you know what, let's take a little bit of time and
make sure that club face is correct and that grip is correct and your ball
position is correct. I was yesterday I was given up a cent and I
was overhearing somebody working with one of the one of the guys on the men's
Stanford golf team, and and he said he was working on the kids driver
and the driver's going everywhere, and he goes and he goes. If you
change your setup every time it's different, how can you expect the thing to
go in the same place every time? And these aren't things that it doesn't
take a world class golfer to set up well. Amend that it doesn't take
a world class athlete to set up well. It just takes an organized person.
It might take a world class athlete to swing it like Roy Now,
okay, fair enough, he was born with quite a bit of talent,
more than most people who've ever swung off club. But if he's not organized
at that power level, his ball's going everywhere. So if you go to
a tour event and you're watching, I get to go to the AT and
T every year, so I actually caddy for one of my students there and
I love just hanging out on the range watching all the players practice. Well,
there's so much stuff down on the ground for their ball position, for
their for their alignment, you know, for the you know, they're taking
their time with their grip. They're very organized, right. I would say
that there being a really good player is somebody who it starts with being really
good at everything you do before you hit the shot, from the technical to
the mental to put yourself in the proper mental state to execute, and put
yourself in a proper technical position to be able to execute. And if not,
then the whole swing, you think about it is a compensation for a
poor setup, and it is disaster because you're mentally in the wrong place,
which is how too many people play golf. Oh hi, okay, I'm
here. I just I think I didn't know if you were taking your breath
or in your thought. So okay, so let me ask you about the
sound of a golf swing. Okay, what if you really pay attention,
you can hear the swish of the club going by going through its motion.
Where in the swing should I hear the strongest part of that sound. Should
that be at the top of the swing, from the bottom forward at the
Does that make any sense? Yeah? Yeah, yeah it for me,
it should happen just barely passed the ball, just barely passed the ball.
I wouldn't even mind saying it's at the ball the maximum speed. Would love
to have right around where the ball is, so you'll hear the beginning of
that sound and the fallow through of it from the time you make contact through.
Yeah, if you're doing it too early, you're not going to deliver
the most speed to the ball. It's all we're gathering all this stuff,
right. So somebody asked me the other day what is the release? This
is an interesting conversation. When I ask somebody what the release is, it's
amazing. I get this perplexed look. It's like this term we use all
the time in golf, and when I ask people say, well, what's
your what's your definition of release? It is like these kind of look at
me like I don't know. The club face turns over, my arms roll.
I'm like, what's the definition of release? To let go? Right?
What are we doing? What are we releasing? Well? In the
backswing, your trail arm folds, you got some elbow in, you got
some loading of the wrists, and then we release both of those. So
I just like to use a free throw, like you know, we love
the warriors here we live. Steph Curry so I say, okay, show
me your your imitation of Steph Curry's three point shotters free throw, and they
bend their arm and they bend their wrists and they let it go. They
release both those angles. So I'd say that's an arm release. Okay,
all right, What are you doing in your back coiling your body right and
then that's going to get released. What are you doing with the ground where
you're pushing into the ground and then you're exploding up, Well, you're releasing
your legs too. If you watch especially LPGA tour players or the long drive
guys, their legs are straightening through impact, right, so they have bend
in their knees and then they extend their knees and a lot of them are
airborne at that point. So the release, as far as I'm concerned,
is the loading and unloading up all those parts, and they all accumulate to
give you this explosion at the bottom. So if you're trying to make that
sound at the right place, you've got to be able to release it at
the right place, but you also have to be able to load it.
You have to load those joints. So earlier, when we were talking about
a bigger rotation for me. Well, if I want more rotation through the
ball and faster rotation, well I need to load it bigger. I can't
hit a punchhot as far as I can hit a full shot, Well why
not. One of the reasons is I haven't coiled as much. I use
a piece of technology called sports Box, which is a really cool three D
three D app. I recommend every instructor use it because it actually quantifies.
It's what we used to have to do with all the electrodes on you and
get into a lab. Now you can do with video. It's incredible and
it tells you the numbers. So I had this one student who was turning
about sixty sixty degrees with his torso, and he's a big, strong guy,
can still hit about two sixty. I'm like, man, this is
like a teacher's dream. I'm going to increase this person's torso rotation to eighty
to ninety and he's gonna love me because he's gonna get twenty five more yards.
And I told him, you don't get twenty five every week, That's
not how it works. He started turning bigger all of a sudden, whoe
He's twenty twenty five yards longer, and we can kind of quantify it,
which is one of the cool things. So give a little plug to that
app. I have no I'm not involved with them on any ownership basis.
I just love the product. So how is his accuracy though? Oh well,
well, what do you expect? Right? I gave him the grip
that works for him. His accuracy is great. I don't know if I
ever told you this story, so, but you're not going to right now.
We're gonna be telling that story. Will come back right after. Previously
on Golf Smarter, Josh Sander was saying, I don't think I've ever told
you this story. I haven't told you the story so when it was a
really maybe I have. I mean, we've done a few of these now,
we don't know how many of this is for us. Now it's I
have not looked. It's a lot grown old and that's getting better every time
too. I love it. So one of the things I did this my
thirtieth I think this is my thirtieth season teaching. When I first started teaching,
there really wasn't the infrastructure in place to learn how to be a good
coach. It's a lot better that PGA has done a better job. There's
better mentoring out there now, but in my in my era, you sort
of had to seek it out yourself. And one of the things we did
have was a PGA Coaching and Teaching Summit was happening at the time, and
they were very good at taping everything, and so you could order the videos
from all the presentations, and so I'm like, Okay, if I'm going
to learn how to really be the best teacher I can be, I am
going to go fly and sit on sit on a golf bag behind a great
teacher to watch. But I also would like to have more information. So
I ordered the entire set, like you got a deal if you ordered the
entire sets. A big investment for me at the time, but it was
a great one. And one of the videos I saw was just a panel
of like four or five of the top teachers at the time, and they
were asked a very simple question that was, what's the most important part of
the golf swing? And the first person said, it's the grip, And
I'm kind of rolling my eyes. I'm like, come on, the grip,
big deal, right, It's like, give me some torus. So
rotation. Give me some you know, give me some power stuff, give
me some fun stuff, you know, some sexier stuff. It's like.
And the more I teach, the more I realized that guy was right,
because if that grip is wrong, you can't hit it straight. And if
you can't hit it straight, you're going to restrict your power to try to
hit straight right. We can't ignore the fact that we're trying to hit the
ball from point A to point B right. You can have all the power
in the world, and if you can't direct it at your target, so
understand. And when I say the grip, and he didn't go into this.
He just said, my answer is the grip, And somebody else said
my answer is, you know the difference between hips and torso rotation. But
whatever it was, I can't remember at this point. The one that really
hit me was the grip, just because I thought it wasn't that important.
And then here I am, thirty years later saying that guy was right.
The grip is not just the grip. It's the grip that's correct for you,
which is different for everybody. Like I, I'm a little old school.
I have a sheet of paper where I do my assessments, and I
got these big binders that I carry around me. I have to somehow put
them online. But every sheet in there is a different person. When I
go through the assessments, it's very rare that any of those people. There
are two thick binders and hundreds of sheets in there, and it's very unusual
to see two people exactly the same right, So that gives me the blueprint.
I'm going to teach this person differently. They need different things, right.
But going back to the grip, the grip is not just how you're
designed to put your hands on the club, but also understanding what a square
club face is. I can't tell you how many people set up. They
might have a grip that's quote unquote correct for them, but the club face
isn't is a little closer, it's a little open. And by the way,
very few people have an open club face that address when I measure them.
And I have a cool device that David Adl made. It's called the
grip Analyzer where you can put your club in there and you can see where
your club face really is relative to the target. And I'll say it's five
incus open, fiors close, whatever it is rarely do I see somebody with
a with an open face. Here's a here's a tip for the manufacturers out
there, or a thought for the manufacturers. Design a club that makes it
easy for people to have the club face look square and be square because there
their eyes tend to gravitate to the top edge versus the leading edge, and
they want to get the top quhere, and the face is then basically fifteen
degrees closed. Well, what are you gonna have to do to not hit
a dead left? You're gonna have to hold off right now, you're shorter,
thank you very much. Right, So the grip is a relationship between
how you're designed to hold the club and the proper club face. And I'm
going to stop my thought there. Why I'll just want to say that that
and if that's wrong, you're making golf super hard. I'm concerned about your
notebooks. Do you back them up? Do you make copies of them?
Do you If I lose a sheet, it takes me two minutes to get
the information back with the person in person, So that's not a big deal.
But yeah, they're getting They're getting so heavy that I'm like, I
got to figure out a better way to do this, and the people I
do my online stuff with, they're like, we're gonna give you that.
Oh man, I know you're an Apple person like I am. Ever since
I was able to get an Apple pencil on my iPad every interview, I
mean, I had thirteen or fourteen notebooks from all the interviews that I was
doing. Well, now they're all in the same app and I just take
notes and I can use like highlighters of different colors and pens and different stroke
lengths, and I can make all these notes and they're all in one place
and it's backed up every night. Oh my god, I got just thinking
about your notebooks makes me cringe. Yeah, okay, okay, well we'll
talk about that offline. You mentioned Terry Rolls earlier and I reacted. I
heard so many different instructors talk about Terry. I did do an interview with
him earlierly on. He had an in door uh set up teaching setup in
San Francis and in financial district of San Francisco, and I went and did
it. Yeah. I did a session with him and recorded an interview and
have not been able to get him to respond. I would love to have
him back on the show. Because he is such an incredible wealth of information,
as are you. I'm not discounting what you have to say because you
blow my mind every time. He's fantastic. He'd be you would do a
great job on your show. He's a he's an innovative thinker, he's a
researcher, he's a great communicator, he's he's a gem, and we're lucky
to have him in our in our business for sure. Absolutely absolutely. So
now i'm talking, I'm thinking about I'm just curious about your bag. How
far do you hit a nine iron? Nine? So if you're you got
a one thirty five shot, you're going, I can just hit my nine
R and I'll be okay with that. Yeah, and I might grip down
like an eighth of an inch and hit it. Just kind of account that's
subtle. An eighth in the inach will make that much difference on your yardage?
Yeah, it makes it. It'll make three or four yards out.
Wow, And you can do that. I'm not like Phil where I know
the exact calculations. You know. He's got that great interview with David Ferdy
that I have people people look at from time to time where he says Hey,
David, do you want to know it really goes onto my head.
Everybody should watch that. It's fascinating what goes through his head. He talks
about different kinds of grasses. He talks about barometric pressure. He talks about
having two stock swings that go to different distances. If it's with the grain,
if it's down the grain, if it's teed up, versus when it's
on the grass. Whether you know it's early in the morning, it's it's
later in the afternoon. He takes in account all that stuff, and obviously
that's happening for him at a split second. And if I was playing professionally,
I would definitely go out because distance control. Here's another I know you
always get me going it. Controlling your distance is an underappreciated form of accuracy.
Most people say, well, you know, they're like, so,
I'll tell you a story. So I'm taking a lesson from one of my
mentors, Jim Hardy, at one of his seminars, and he and I'm
hitting four irons and I and he points out, okay, go hit it
at that palm tree at the end of the range. And I hit a
solid four iron that's about fifteen yards left, and I kind of roll my
eyes like that man' gonna scrape over another ball and goes, hang on,
Josh, what was wrong with that one? I said, well, it's
left. It's it's like twelve to fifteen yards left. He goes, okay,
so you're forty feet left of the hole. You hit it solidly,
so you're pin high. Can you get down in two from forty feet?
Like? Of course, I cannot say they're going to be an easy lag
putter or just a simple chip and run shot. He goes, what are
you trying to do from two hundred and ten yards? He said? I
said, what do you mean? He is, well, aren't you just
trying to make a three? And then I love showing this to my students.
I get Scott Faucet's little you know Scott Faucet, Yeah, from a
decade golf. He's got these little cards he hands out at all his seminars
and it tells the scoring average from every distance. And I don't know,
two hundred and ten yards it's like three point three or something to get into
the hole for a touring pro. Now I'm not a touring pro. So
if I can make a three from two hundred and ten yards, I'm gaining
a third of a shot on the best players on the planet. So why
was Jim saying that to me? Because he's like, dude, you just
got to hit it solidly, so you can hit it pin high. You
don't have to be so precise with your accuracy after all, trying to get
a club face to point out I think two hundred and ten yards away is
really hard not to mention the fact that there's atmospheric conditions too that might kick
your ball offline. Right, even if you're perfect, then there might be
like a little piece of dirt that the ball collected from, you know,
when it bounced on the drive. I mean, what you need to do
is you need to hit the ball solid. And Tiger's talking about this forever.
It's like, I try to hit the ball pin high to a reasonable
place, and if you can make a three from two hundred and ten yards,
you're doing great. So that really hit me hard because I'm like,
huh, and by the way, what are you trying to do when you
have a seven iro in your hand. You're trying to make a three also,
not just a four. I'm just make a three with your seven ear.
If you make a two, then then that's a bonus. But when
touring pros and obviously refer to them a lot because because we get so much
information from everything gets tracked on tour right and again, Tiger talks about this
a lot. What are you trying to do. You're trying to burny the
par fives. That's four opportunities right there, because you're going to be around
the green in two if you hit two good shots, get those up and
down. There's a sixty eight. If you can average sixty eight, you're
going to be the leading scoring average on tour. Okay, you're gonna win
the garden. If you average sixty eight. You have four opportunities right there
if you can par the rest of them. Birdie the par fives. And
I know that's not how golf goes, but you're gonna have some random shots
that you're aiming at the middle of the green and the seven arm of a
sudden goes two feet from the hole, and you're gonna make a few birdies
that way too, because you're gonna hit some of your dispersion is gonna end
up around the hole. As long as you're smart about where you where you're
aiming, and that's a that's a Scott Faucet conversation. He's expert in matter.
Mark Brody, Yeah yeah, put on both money. Yeah great,
so so. But the thing is you've got to hit it solidly, because
if I'm trying to hit one hundred and fifty yard shot and I hit it
one hundred and thirty dead online, that's a twenty yard miss. If I'm
trying to hit one hundred and fifty yard shot and I hit it one hundred
and fifty but I missed ten yards left, that's only a ten yard air.
That's much better than a twenty yard era. I might rather be thirty
feet than sixty feet right, So online, hitting it dead straight not as
important. We went reasonably straight, and remember I'm going to help you with
your grip to make sure it's going to go reasonably straight. But hit it
solid right, So that's what we're That's what really really after. If you
can make solid contact and have a predictable flight, you can play some great
golf. It's the mishits more than the offline that really messes people up.
By skull that I chunked it, you know, it's like or I think
my seven ron goes one fifty, but it actually goes one thirty three when
I hit it solidly. But I didn't know that because I have too much
ego to do that. You know, I can't tell you how many people
think their seven ron goes one fifty. Oh so on track man, and
they're actually going one thirty five. Buddy. Sorry, we can work on
your distance maybe to get it to one fifty, but don't pull a seven
arn at one fifty. You're gonna end up in the front bunker. Yeah,
even get it online. It's in the front, Yes it is.
I just I love when you name drop and I can go, oh,
they've been on the show. Oh, they've been on the show. Makes
me feel either that I'm doing something right or that we know the same people.
And the reason I bring that up because we're going to hear what's happening
this week on Golf Smarter Mulligans. And I know that Jim Hardy's episode is
coming up soon and I'm not sure if it's this week or not, so
let's take a listen and we'll be back after this. Well, Jim Hardy's
episode will be published in about a month, but this week on golf Smarter
Mulligans. It's the first of a two part conversation with a columnist from The
Wall Street Journal on a piece he wrote called Golf's Biggest Delusions Nine things that
people say about golf that isn't true. But a big part of this episode
follows this line of questioning, are there specific golfers that you enjoy covering?
You? Know? Some of my favorite golfers are Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker,
Jim Furick, Rory McElroy. Because Still is the guy that will give
you an interesting, responsive answer to questions, unlike a lot of them.
He thinks of himself as an intellect and a wit, and he is.
He's not afraid to try to say something new or thoughtful. He's thinking it
over. Some people say he's a little full of himself, and maybe he
is, but I like him. He's famous for standing there for hours giving
autographs. Generally a very personable guy. He sometimes we'll talk about economics and
deliver ultimatums on what should be done, as if his opinion is more valuable
than everybody else. Is a little bit Tiger is the opposite of that.
Tiger is actually pretty forthcoming on explaining his golf game and technique, and he
actually reveals a lot of stuff in that respect, but you get him off
subject and he's just a chess grand master about five moves ahead of you in
not revealing things. That's episode two hundred and thirty three of Golf Smarter Mulligans,
the first of two episodes featuring golf columnist who covered the four majors each
year for The Wall Street Journal, John Paul Newport, being featured on our
podcast Offspring Golf Smarter Mulligans being released this Friday morning. Originally published in March
of twenty twelve. So if becoming a better smarter golfer only once per week
isn't enough, then don't miss the chance to get two episodes every week with
Golf Smarter, the golf podcast that proudly focuses on how to improve your game
and Golf Smarter Mulligans, episodes from our archives that revisit the best of Golf
Smarter. They're both available for free from wherever you're listening right now. How
much of those Phil Mickelson details he goes through that you talked about a moment
ago are relevant to recreational golfers now? I play. I try to play
twice a week, and that's a lot of golf for most people. I
mean, if they get out once a week, they're pretty happy. It's
once a month, twice a month maybe, you know, and you know,
with some practice, hopefully that goes with that. But a lot of
those details that you talked about that Phil thinks about with every shot, I
wouldn't know what to do with and how much do I need to know?
I'm talking about playing at the highest level. Of course, the difference between
you know, gaining a third of a stroke here and a third stroke there
might be the difference between several hundred thousand dollars in your in your pocket at
the end of the week with the amount of money that they're playing for these
days, the amount of money he's gambling for each round. Stick to my
lane, which is more about just I would say that you don't have to
be that specific, but let's just say, like I love to do playing
lesson and it's amazing how many strokes I can save somebody when I'm actually on
the golf course with them. So assessing a loe, for example, a
ball that's sitting a little bit up in the rough and the grass is growing
with you. Alert, this ball is going to go far down green,
out of the rough, super super long distance into the green out of the
rough. Ball just does not go anywhere. So I tell us a lot
of people, especially the kids who are trying to play high level junior college
golf, professional golf, over the green is the worst place to be.
You airmail the green. You never hear an announcer say, oh, airmail
the green. He'll be fine. Oh boy, it's in somebody's backyard.
It's hit a cart path, it's in a flower bed. At best,
you're hitting a short game shot down a hill where the green's growing, going
away from you. Right. So I'll share a story. I was playing
in a member pro at Olympic Club, and I don't really play in tournaments
anymore, but one of my students like, hey, come and play with
this with me. I sure. So we get on the second the second
not the second hole Olympic, but our second hop is was a shotgun and
I hit the ball just barely into the right rough. I've got like one
hundred and seventy yards. That's a that's a comfortable seven rons for me.
And the ball was sitting up and it was down green and I took my
seven iron and instead of hitting one hundred and seventy, I hit about two
o five. The ball took off on me into a into some chunk behind
the green. That my next shot was. I was on my knees with
a five wood with a shaft literally resting on the ground, the entire shaft,
trying to scrape it out from under there. That was my next shot.
Needless to say, I made a set him and he was just it
was the best ball. So he was on the fringe and two and he
four putted because he was cavalier about his little tapping. So we ended up
two over par after two holes. Right away, You're you're not You're already
way too far behind to you know, you can't make a double as your
best ball anyway, just because of lack of playing time. Because I'm like
a lot of the people you're saying, play once a month or twice a
month, and I just didn't remember that one little detail. Now, if
I was a touring probably to look at them and said, okay, I'm
okay. If I leave it short of the green, I'm going to take
like a nine iron here, and if I end up in the front bunker
or chipping from the front of the green. I'm a good enough short game
player. I could get that down to make a four, but the worst
thing I can do is airmail this green, right, So you really have
to be careful about those those kinds of things. So it's you don't have
to be as detail this, but you have to have some some ability to
to understand what's in front of you, because it's not about just making good
swings. It's about making good decisions, and a lot of those decisions are
based on, Hey, what's the situationuation here? Where should I aim this
ball? What is the la going to do to my ball? It's eight
like we're in a heat wave right now. It's ninety degrees at Stanford today.
The ball goes farther than when it's sixty degrees. There's just no doubt
about it. You can't expect the ball to carry as far when it's cold.
And I remember watching the President's Cup when it was at a harding park
and they were on the I guess it was the second hole during the tournament.
Was actually the eleventh hold the little par three. It's one hundred and
sixty yards and some of these guys were hitting seven irons. These are tour
players. Well, it was soupy, foggy, dense. The ball wasn't
going anywhere, right, That's usually a wedge for those guys. They were
hitting seven irons how much? Oh, finally they're hitting numbers that regular people
hit us because they're in San Francisco. Ye weather, right, So you've
got it. I mean, if you don't have that as part of your
skill set, then yeah, you're going to be your ten, fifteen to
twenty handicapper, even if you have the skills of being a single digit golfer,
because you just you don't know the game. You know how to swing
the club, but you don't really know how to play golf. There was
this one student of mind who came to UH. I had Mike Adams and
Terry Rolls come in and do a clinic with me. And this kid who's
now playing college golf, just explosive player, and uh he was hitting the
ball grade and with a little bit of help, he was hitting it fantastic,
and Mike just kind of pulled me aside. He goes, all you
got to do with this guy is just teach him how to play the game.
He knows how to hit it all right, just like you need to
get out there on the golf course. And and so we did a playing
lesson and and I'm understanding, what are you thinking? You? What do
you what do you what do you try to do with this shot? What
you know? That kind of stuff is what's going to take him to a
level where he'll play high level Division one golf and maybe professional golf. It's
not hitting any better. He hits at three point thirty and on a with
a two yard fade. I mean, kid kills it any shot he wants.
He's he's very creative. So he's got all the talent in the world,
but he's got to learn how to apply it. And so that's the
player that really needs to have a conversation with Phil Nicholson or with me to
start to understand how to play the game, rather than just like, Okay,
I'm just going to work on my You know, it's interesting because you
said about the decisions that are made. Too many decisions are made based on
wherever, you know, all all the various elements involved. It looks to
me in playing recreational golf that most decisions are made based on the numbers that
come off your rangefinder. Everyone pulls out their rangefinder and me they stand next
to the ball. They pull out the rangefinder, they look for the pin,
they get a number, they go grab a club. They don't look
at where the ball is sitting. They don't look at which way the wind.
Well, yeah, okay, the wind will be something though. Oh
let me just toss a little grass here and see what that means. Does
do you really know what that means? I don't think you really know what
that means if it's blowing hard or not. Are we doing to say,
again, how react with How is the ball going to react when it lands?
You may want at one eight because this because the greens are really firm
and you're coming out of the rough with no spin. Right. It's just
those kind of subtleties. That's that's playing the game. I had two golf
coaches in college, and one liked us to practice a lot and the other
guy liked us to play a lot. And there comes a point where when
you have the skills, it's a matter of like how do I apply the
skills? So if you if you're a if you're a reasonable, reasonable ball
striker, and you have a couple hours on your hand, Go play nine
holes instead of just going to the range on a mat that's aligning you to
the same place and beaten seven irons and five irons and drivers for two hours.
Go learn how to play the game. Go throw balls if you can.
You know, you got to keep up the pace of play. But
go throw balls in random places and an experiment. What do I have to
do? Obviously I can't when I'm doing playing lessons. I'm like, you
now have the benefit of my forty seven years of playing, in thirty years
of teaching experience to look at a shot and help you go through my mental
processes of what needs to happen, assessing the lie's the what's the win,
how's it going to react? All those things? Is the grain growing with
you? Is it? Is it away from you? What you know?
All the little subtleties that you'll hear in that Michelson conversation that are going to
help you make a good decision. So now you have a chance, because
one of the worst things is you hit a great shot and you have a
poor result. That's kind of a bummer. I just hit that, I
hit that seven are an Olympic beautifully man that was flushed two hundred and five.
Look at me, big muscles, two hundred and five. Welcome to
making a seven on a part four early on and your partner's like, oh,
I brought this, probably made a truth. I'm gonna we'll talk about
this afterwards, but I want to get the link to that Michelson interview.
Will put it in the show notes and on the blog post for today's episode.
Also there, I would like to include some amazing offers that you'd like
to make to the Golf Smarter community. Yeah. So I've got a couple
of different offers. One is I've got a private video library that you can
subscribe to and there's a fifty percent offer on that for yearly subscription. And
then also if you want to join my online program, there's one hundred dollars
off my online program where I can shepherd you through your golf and we can
go on this journey together. I can assess you, make sure that you're
holding the club, you're in the right posture, doing all the things that
are the way you're designed to play your best golf. So we have that
assessment, and then I basically coach you along the way and keep you on
the proper pass. So there's an offer there as well, So looking forward
to it. I want to throw some flowers your way. I always really
enjoy our conversations. You're a great question asker, interviewer, and I know
we talked about some things that we were going to talk about on the show
and we never got to any of those. It means it means you just
get to do this again, hopefully sooner rather than later. But you have
great guests on your show. I really I'm I'm a fan. I'm a
little well, thank you, and I enjoy I enjoy just hanging out and
talking to you. Oh it's all too kind. I really appreciate it because
I really love spending the time with you too. So there's going to be
two links that I'm going to put in the show notes and in the blog
posts at golf smarter dot com. One is for let's see, it's the
video consultation and one hundred dollars Yeah, yep, one hundred dollars off the
program if you decide you want to join and go on the journey with me
or the other one or and you can sign up and just have access to
my video library, which talks about all different parts of the game, So
constructural library. Yeah, okay, and that's is there a cost to that
part? Yeah, so it's it's one hundred dollars subscription per year, and
there's a fifty percent off if you use the Golf Smarter coupon perfect. Thank
you, Josh, thank you for all this information, and maybe someday we'll
actually talk about Hopefully someday soon we'll talk about all the things that we discussed
before we started recording. There you go, there's so much to talk about
and so little time. Well, I found the YouTube video of flahertyan Mickelson
that discusses everything that goes on through Phil's mind with each shot. The link
to that and to Josh's generous offers are in today's show notes and in the
blog post when you visit today's episode at golfsmorter dot com. It's time to
thank this week's newest Golf Ambassador, Steve Hahn from Huntington Beach, California,
one of my favorite beaches ever. Because I spent so much time there is
a little kid anyway. For his efforts, Steve chose to receive the glove
and Glove Storage Compartment from our friends at redroostergolf dot com. The unique subscription
service with a tremendous amount of styles and sizes to fit everyone's needs. And
now they have much more than just glove, so please check them out at
redroostergolf dot com. All Steve did to receive this gift was take less than
one minute to call our toll free Golf Smarter listener line and record this week's
show open. You're invited to be one of our ambassadors too, and when
you do, you'll have a choice of a free gift. Check out today's
show notes to see more and the links about each gift you have to choose
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