Golf Smarter number three hundred and forty published on June twenty nine, twenty twelve.
Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain insight and advice
from the best instructors featured on the Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never
gets Old. Our interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations like
this that are no longer available in any podcast app. In our school,
we do all the drill for this called get ready, get set, go,
and you can do it with a ball or without a ball. But
basically you say the phrase get ready as you do your backswing. When you
do the transition the way I describe it, where you're finishing your shoulder turn
that last ten degrees or so on your table and shifting left, you say
get set, meaning get set, not get ready go, which is what
high handicappers do when they succumb to the hit impulse. It's get ready,
get set, and then when your hands get down below waist high or a
round waiste time with you lists fully cocked, then you say go and you
create the go by simply turning your box lettings a trip before snap open your
risk cock angle, So it's get ready, get set go, not get
ready to go. So when you pause, it becomes get ready to go.
More swing change analysis with Jim Waldrip. This is Golf Smarter, sharing
tips and insights from golfers and golf professionals to help lower your score. It's
worked for your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to Golf Smarter from members
only. Jim, Thanks Dred. Great to be here again. Well you
haven't left. Nope, this is continuation. So in cyberspace, I'm back,
but in real time and space, I'm still here. You're still together
after all these years. So we were getting into Tigers changes and you were
saying less arms better spine angle Part three was and I stopped you right in
mid thought. Here, let's just pick it right up. I'll tell you
his tempo. I mean, someone asked me on in one of these web
forums. I'm on a lot like golf works dot com or some other ones.
You know, if I had a chance to work with Tigers this a
few years ago, what would I change If I only had to pick one
thing? And because you know, there was a lot going on and that
he needed to work on. And that's that's again I respect that he knew
he didn't have that. He knew there were people, other people on tour,
you know, they had a better There were better ball strikers at him.
And that's another thing people think, because he's won all these time,
people think, oh, he's got the best swing out there. No,
now, he's got one of the best swings. But he did not have
by from a purely objective's point of view, and from his own point of
view, he knew he could not trust himself with the driver, which,
by the way, Haney does talk about it in The Big Mess his book,
yes accurately, which is that he missed a lot of it, even
though he still won majors by you know, fifteen shots like at the Opener
and twelve shots at the Matters in ninety seven. He won those majors because
of a lot of other things, not because of his ball striking, particularly
with the driver. It's his tree a lot of these terms as well.
Yeah, his creativity on his approach shots. And it just seems like he
and one of the in the process of the Handy Book that his ability to
correct his mistakes on his approach. Yeah, he was the greatest, probably
as good as maybe as controversial say this, but I think he was probably
as good as Sevy out of the trees, you know, recovering from bad
lives and in the rough, in the trees and fairway bunkers, hitting these
impossible recovery shots. He was, you know, probably tied with Schevy,
maybe better than seven. It's hard to tell, but you know, he's
the kind of guy. He could make birdie from inside the trees, kind
of like how Michelson can do occasionally. And he was the greatest putter by
far out there when he was in his heyday, you know, twelve years
ago. He had absolutely the best short game in the history of golf in
his heyday twelve years ago. But Haney talked about that he was not great
at lag putting. He didn't have to cut that often though, because he
was good enough with his irons, be as his iron swing was much better
than his driver's swing. Clearly, Uh, he didn't hit it that.
He didn't hit it more than you know, thirty feet for the hole very
often. So uh. But no, but back to my back to the
original question. So it was temple his tempo was too fast. I mean,
this is something Butch new and tried to get him a change when he
was in high school and college at Stanford, and Tiger refused to do it.
Because Tiger has this hain he also talks about in the book. He
has a long drive ego complex. He wants to be either the longest or
the top five guys on tour in driving distance, and he was willing to
lose tournaments because he wanted to be up there with the other guys in terms
of hitting the hitting the long ball. He even said to Haney, he's
a chicks taking the long ball. That was very important to Tiger. Yeah.
So, uh, as we all know, you know, when he
was a junior golfer, he was playing and winning against other junior golfers who
are four or five six years older than him. So he was like an
eight, you know, eight, nine, ten year old playing against teenagers,
high school kids, and he learned that the only way he could keep
up with their driver was to just simply unwind, particularly with his lower bodies.
So if you look at the old Tiger spling from twelve years ago,
the rate of rotation of his hips was blindingly fast, so fast that his
shoulders would move backwards and his arms would move backwards. So it's sort of
like when you accelerate your car. If you press, if you plunge on
the gas pedal right, the car starts to immediately accelerate. So the cars
moving forward, what do you do, You move backwards into the seat right.
That's called inertia in physics, or in the golf instruction of lingo,
we call that lag pressure. So now you've got your hips firing way too
early on transition to the downswinging, which makes your shoulders turn more the opposite
way, and it makes your arms go more towards your right or more around
your body right, and it puts pressure on your forms, on your wrists,
which makes it harder to release the club coming down because you've got this
countervailing force pushing back on your hands, on your wrists, on your arms
right. And so what he had to do was he had to literally sling
his arms across his chest to try to get the club more in front of
him. And because he was such a good athlete, he could do that
and still hit great shots, right. But he just couldn't hit great shots
more than about ninety percent of the time. There was a ten percent of
time he couldn't tie the arm slinging motion. And if again, if he
did it too slowly, he had to push lice. He did too fast,
he had a pull hook or even a snapbook. So that's all been
fixed now. And part of the reason it's fixed is because he's really if
you look at his tempo now, I'm guessing it looks to my eye to
be about fifteen to twenty percent slower than twelve years ago. But he's hitting
it further. And now some of that's the equipment, but I mean he's
hitting it more in the center, more in the sweet spot right on the
button. He's hitting it purer, and he doesn't have that violent transition,
you know, violent wrenching of the hips to start his transition to the downswing.
So it looks a lot smoother, and he's finishing in better balance as
a result of anytime you can finish in balance and hold, you hold your
position like a statue, that's a that's a sign that you were more likely
to be in balanced during the strike during impact, right, which really matters,
which is one of Hogan's big things he talked about, Yeah, well
of me too, right. Hogan talked about feeling like you're rooted to the
ground from your feet are pressing into the ground. He talked constantly to people
he mentored, like John Slee for example, Chris Cheddar. He talked about,
you need to feel like you're just rotating your body, not not shifting
your weight laterally during during release, during impact, and your feet are pressing
in the ground. You talked about being in rock solid balance during the strike.
That was his phrase he used to love because again, it proves your
odds of hitting a sweet spot, making solid contact. And if you look
at Tiger and his old Tiger, another flaw that fixes. He would come
way up on his right heel, so it's his right heel would come way
up in the air, so he's literally sort of standing up on the toe
of his right foot when he was striking the ball. I've noticed that.
Yeah, yeah, that's the other thing. They think. That's a lot
better. He's keeping his right heel, his connection of its soul of his
right foot to the ground much much better than he used to. In fact,
Moe Norman, who the famous Canadian tour pro and great ball striker,
right before he died, in some interview up there in Canada, he said
that he thought that the number one thing that was wrong in Tiger's swinging this
was, like you know, eight or nine, ten years ago, was
was just what I described, losing contact with the ground, losing ground pressure
on his right foot. Another Hogan secret, by the way, was they
had that contact with this, particularly in the right foot and right heel through
the strike, stay somewhat connected to the ground. Yeah, you know,
let me ask you about that. Because so many people, especially those who
just pick up a set of golf clubs and just go out and start swinging,
I frequently notice that they will on their back swing not only will their
left knee just point, you know, way behind them on the backswing,
but also they'll bring up the left heel, the left foot right. Your
theory on that is, where does an ego, where does the heel go
on your left leg? If you a right handed golfer. Again, if
I was, if I was a sling style or throw style teacher, I
would say, oh, obviously you got to lookt your left heel up in
here. Look at Nicholas, look at Johnny Young, Johnny Miller, look
at Tony Lima. From the sixties and seventies, they all had their heel
lay up in the air, or look at Bubba today, Bubba's Bubba watchings
heel. It's got to be five inches off the ground at the top of
the back swing. But again, why would you teach that to someone unless
they really a senior golfer maybe age sixty year older, who really lacked flexibility,
Then obviously that person's going to have to allow their left heel to come
off the ground at least someone or they won't be able to finish their they
won't be able to turn their shoulders enough to play good golf. Right,
Because the more you let your heel come up, the more you can turn
your hips. And the more you can turn your hips, the more you
can turn your shoulders. So if you lack flexibility as a senior or for
any reason, you got to let that left heel come up a little bit.
But modern swing, which is based on science, on biomechanics, which
is the main the main rule in sports biomechanics is don't move a body part
at all of ours. Don't don't contract a muscle to move a bone or
a joint unless it contributes to an overall effective motion. So the whole idea
is is to use as few moving body parts as possible. What we see
in the leverage spin swing or or even in the ultra spin swing, and
we don't see that in the slinging style. We see a lot of you
know, extraneous body motion. So so my theory is, if you have
to lift it, lift it the minimum necessary amount to complete close to a
ninety degree shoulder turn and know more than about a sixty degree hip turn.
Uh. And that's that's because it's being pulled up in the air by your
hips and your shoulders. So when you when you torque to the when you
coil to the right, you turn your belly, you turn your chest,
you turn your hips. Basically that the belly and the chest turn is turning
the hips and the hips are lifting the left heel one's pulling the other right.
But it's it's potential source of loss of contact with the ground. If
you have poor ground pressure, you tend to have poor balance. That's that's
the downside to it. So most people who do it don't don't need to
do it. They're just doing it because they're it's just natural to do it
that way, and you know, they maybe they think there's both those to
do it. It's a law of the golf swing. It's not. Have
you noticed that so many of those people don't even know they do it?
Sure? Wow, don't even get me started on that. Fred, Hey,
this is the members of the show get started. Not just my students.
Every teaching pro I know are unaware of ninety nine percent of their flaws.
Oh yeah, people, people do all kinds of stuff. Have no
clue. That's and that's one of the things we've talked about in prior podcasts
with you is how you know. One of the big things you have to
have to be good at this game is body awareness. You've got to be
able to start feeling your mistakes in real time in the moment or the micro
moment that they're happening, not aware that what they're doing is a mistake,
or not aware that the mistake they're doing that they even do it. Now
the second part that they're even doing it, they don't even know that they
even do that. And again, the reason people, the reason most golfers,
in fact, I would venture to guess that probably ninety five percent of
your listeners, unless they're already very good players. So let's say that the
ninety five percent of your listeners. Well, the longer listeners are much better
players than they were when they start. Yeah, yeah, exactly, of
course. But I'm saying I'm saying that people who are probably, oh,
I could give it, I could throw a ballpark figure out there. Probably
if you're about a fifteen handicap or higher, there's about a ninety five percent
chance that most of the time on the range and on the golf course,
you're not aware of anything happening in your body, and you're stuck in your
head thinking swing thoughts or telling body parts what they should or should not be
doing, or picturing body parts, and your body part that you're picturing or
talking to is doing exactly oppositely what you're telling it to do. Well,
that's ask any teaching pro who does what I do for a living, teaches
people the golf swing all day. You know, that's a full time job.
After the first month on the job, that's what you realize what people
intend to do. Again, fifty handicaps and higher almost never manifests in their
offswing because it doesn't matter what your conscious mind is doing. It's what your
subconscious mind believes to be true that creates your body motion good or bad.
Which is something else I have in my list here little outline, a little
cheat sheet for talking with you today in this podcast, which is you need
to understand. You put people out there, you average golfers. You guys
need to understand this principle. If you believe in your subconscious mind that the
only way to get the ball airborne is to make the club that make a
load to high motion as it contacts the ball, I e. Scooping right,
even if you know intellectually that that's dead wrong information that you're supposed to
make a downward blow in most clubs right for the ball, for the loft
of the club to be effective, make the ball get airborne, even if
you know that intellectually what the true information is. If your subconscious believes the
opposite, that's what your body will do. Yeah, because subconscious controls the
body, right, not the conscious right. I mean, even after doing
this podcast for so many years and learning so much, it wasn't until I
put the and I Don't Take Lessons that the Tour Tempo training Club in my
hand that I realized that I was not coming down on the ball at all.
So you were. You were too slow for you didn't get the timing
of the deep right you mean, well, I mean yeah, I mean
my hands were, you know, like I was trying to doctor Joe Parris.
I was trying to have the bottom of my swing of that circle at
when it made contact with the ball right, as opposed to making the bottom
of the swing being a couple inches in front of the ball correct. Correct.
Yeah, I mean this is tough, is me? Like? Oh,
I mean I had these revelations on this stuff, these epiphanies in these
conversations, and you know, and that's yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead,
No, I'm just saying. And what isn't until I actually had that
that tour Tempo training aid in my hands that I was like, oh,
that's what that means to hit down on the ball, right, and you
know, and that's one of the most fascinating and kind of cool things about
the touristriker Tempo tours striker, I mean a tour striker, right, Yeah,
yeah, sure, Tempo is something else I wanted to ask you about,
but we'll get there in a minute. Yeah. Yeah, but this
this issue again, I mean, I watched the Golf Channel a lot,
right, I mean, I do I do this like, you know,
when I'm not working on my days off, I do like a three hour
yoga pilates thing in the morning, right because I got this chronic glow back
thing. If I don't do that, I literally can't play, I can't
teach. So I have all this time to watch the Golf Channel. I
DVR episodes, and there's a lot it's gotten better over the years in some
ways. There's there's there's more fundamental or more laws of body and club motion
based instruction than there used to be. It used to all be swing corrective
on the Golf Channel. I like a lot of stuff Randall Chamblie have to
say as far as some of their even though he's on the polar opposite issue
of versus Tiger swing changes and I am, I still respect his opinion.
I think he's a real bright guy. But you never hear this talked about,
and it might because they don't have except for maybe Martin Hall and Michael
Bred who are both very good teachers. They have you know, they're on
there, they're regular shows. But even those two guys, they don't talk
much about the philosophy. I would even go so far as say the epistemology,
which is that branch of philosophy dealing with how we know what we know?
Right, It's sort of like the like the early version of neuropsychology,
Right, how do we know how to go about making a swing change?
Well, one of the things you run up against as a serious student who
is working with a teacher is that you're making bad body motions that you cannot
stop in the short term from making. And it can be very, very
very frustrating for the student, and so they need to know ahead of time
going in. You know, by the way, not everything you work on
is like this. Some things you can change relatively quickly and easily. Right,
Some aspects of the swing, and it's different for every individual will be
relatively easy to make the change, much faster than you might think, right.
Other things will sort of take a moderate amount of time, so they're
just a little bit frustrating. But there'll be some things you're going to work
on if you're especially if you're doing a fundamental based approach, not a swing
corrective approach. If you're working with a teacher on like Tiger did with Sean
on keeping on stopping his arms, sling across his chest, move, which,
by the way, ninety nine point nine percent of average golfers do.
That's a real common thing to do wrong, right, you explain it again,
give me more detail and know what you mean. Well, you know,
we always talk about midline. So your spine is midline of your body.
If you're facing the mirror, you look, you look at your torso
right, some mid lines longitudinally you cut your body in half. It is.
Draw your finger from your from your Adam's apple down to your belly button.
That's your midline, right. But the best ball strikers do, even
the ones who use the common Montgomery you know, the bubba of the sling
style, right, even though they are swinging their eyes across their chest,
they do most of that slinging across their chest after impact, after the ball's
gone. Other words, if you look at a tour pro his left arm,
measuring it where his left hand is as well, I'm talking about you
know, six eight, nine, ten twelve inches to the right of midline
at the moment he strikes the ball. And Joe average, who's like twenty
handicap or higher, his left arm is the opposite. It's ten twelve inches
to the left of midline of the impact, because that person is taking the
muscles in their upper arm where they connect to the shoulder girdle, and they're
using those muscles to sling or fling or throw the arms across midline, across
the chest. And I call that the number one flow on golf. It's
very pervasive, it's almost universal. Wait a minute, you've got to be
confused here. The left hand for a right handed golfer, the left hand
for the twenty handicapper. The left hand is right or left of the ball,
left left of the ball, the left of their bodi's midline. Other
words, what the player does they slow down their I'm sorry for go ahead.
Isn't that the front of the in front of the ball, ahead of
the ball. If it's the left of the well, it's better not to
use the If we use the ball as a reference, we'll lose everybody's It's
not about the ball, it's about where your hand is relative to your body
to this case, to midline right. In other words, the tour pros,
no matter what those four swing styles they use, to some extent,
their body is moving to an open position as they strike the ball right,
like in a sling style or on a thrust style, the shoulder girdles are
going to be just a little bit open and impact, maybe five or ten
degrees with an ultraspin style, like if you look at a hogan on a
driver, or today Jim Curic, who uses a kind of an ultra spin
forward swing and a swinging style backswing has got a very unusual swing obviously.
But those guys, you know, the guys who use the ultra spin,
especially their shoulder girdle on the driver's like thirty five degrees sometimes even forty five
degrees open to the argent line the moment of impact. But they don't hit
the ball forty five degrees to the left. They don't hit a big poll.
They hit it dead straight, basically right, because their arms are to
the right of their spine at impact. But the average person, when they
approach impact, they slow down their body speed, it's called pivot stall,
and they as their body slows down, they sling their arms across, kind
of like trying to line up their left arm with their left arm pit.
That's kind of what they're trying to do, almost going back to their starting
to their address or set up position. Whereas in reality address and impact are
very very very different in a good golf seling. Other words, your arms
are further to the right of your body at impact than they were when you
started on at a good golf seling, and the average person thinks just the
opposite. They think they're supposed to be further to the left than when you
started, and so that because they believe that, at least subconsciously, they
believe it, that's what they do. And good players don't do that to
varying degrees. Again, depending which of those four styles are using, their
arms are to their right, their arms are both arms are to the right
or midline of impact. Can I talk about tempo with you a little bit
more? Yeah, yeah, sure. Are you familiar with John Novasel's work,
Uh huh yep, and his his tour tempo and the three to one
and the on the swing and then on the short game the one to one,
which we spoke about recently. Yeah, it's really, it's really.
I was aware of it. I think I think we even talked in the
phone when it first came out, when I first heard about it, and
we discussed it, and it's one hundred percent accurate. The only thing I
think that's that's that's wrong with it. Is he based it on when the
club's clubhead starts to move back, you know, starts to move in the
forward swing down and forward. And even though that's that's one way you could
define it, and that turns out to be it does turn out to be
a three to one ratio. That's not when the forward swing begins. From
a subjective golfer standpoint, the forward swing begins way earlier than that. I
meaning, if you look at a good player, their tailbone is actually shifting
to the left while the club is still moving back finishing the backswing. Oh
interesting, So if you define it, which is how I define it,
then it's actually a two to one ratio, not a three to one.
But I guess on a visual I mean, because he was it seemed like
he was basing it all on frames per second on video. Yeah, it's
like easy to mark that club movement, right. But see, because he's
not a golf teacher, this is this is he's more of a more I
call it a golf researcher than it's someone who teaches, you know, like
I do every day in the trenches, so to speak. You learned real
quickly. If you get a student to focus too much on the club,
that I try to get my students not to focus on the club at at
all. And so if you define the swing, the forward swing is when
the club that starts to move forward, then he's right, it's a three
to one tempo. But one of the worst things you can do, especially
if you're an average golfer, is to wait too long at the top to
sense a pause, because again, what great players do is their lower body
is already starting the forward swing while their shoulders are still completing the back swing.
So if you look at the average tour pro, they have around ten
to fifteen degrees of shoulder turned to complete when you see their tailbones starting to
shift over to the left to start the forward swing with their lower body,
they don't wait till they sense the club that stopped moving for a freshment a
second, and then then start their tailbone shift to the left. This is
making any sense, They're moving their lower body first well before they finish their
back sling. I wish I had So that's how yeah, I'm saying,
I wish I had nine or ten hours a day to practice my golf swing.
Think of it, this way. If you look at a baseball pitcher
or a quarterback in the NFL, when they're extending their arm back and rotating
their chest and shoulders back, that last little bit of chest rotation in the
back move right. While they're doing that, their lower body is stepping into
the throw. It's called natural athletic throwing motion and biod mechanics. So their
lower body is moving toward the target, upperbodies moving away from the target at
the same time. Nobody stops the whole body motion all at once and then
starts the body motion all at once, the lower bodies moving towards the target
while the upper body moves away from the target. And that's an important what
we call law of the transition. Yeah. I've always struggled with this concept
of pausing at the top of the swing and people who like kind of hang
there for a moment. Yeah, it's it's a big flaw. Yeah.
The main reason why it doesn't work is when people pause, we're literally their
lower bodies not shifting. It's stopping. When their shoulders stop, and when
the club stops, everything kind of stops all together. It allows an opportunity
for the conscious mind and non athletic intellectual thinking mind to jump back on stage,
push the subconscious mind off stage, and take control of a golf swing
in three main areas. The hit impulse takes over, the scooping impulse takes
over, and the steering or manipulation impulse takes over. In fact, it
could be all free. And so what if people do who again, who
are fifty handicaps are higher? What's one of the big flaws they do?
They throw the club at from their wrists joint at the ball when they start
their forward swing. They don't maintain the wrist angle on the way down like
the pros do. Why don't they Because they see the ball, they sense
their body stopping the motion all at the same time, and it's a pause
that allows them to think, hit the ball. And so a voice in
your head literally said, I'm not making this up. Hit the damn ball,
exclamation point. And so they do with the wrong body part their wrists
or their arms or the right elbow, we're all three. Whereas what the
pros do is while they're finishing the back swing, they aren't thinking about hitting
the ball because all they're thinking about is the sort of reconnecting to the ground,
shifting their weight left with their lower body and kind of what like Nicholas
called it's settling into the shot. And you know we in our school we
do alot the drill for this called get ready, get set go, And
you can do it with a ball or without a ball. But basically you
say that you say the phrase get ready as you do your back swing.
When you do the transition the way I described it, where you're finishing your
shoulder turn that last ten degrees or so in your table and shifting left,
you say get set, meaning get set right, not get ready go,
which is what high handicappers do when they succumb to the hit impulse. It's
get ready, get set. And then when your hands get down below waist
tie or a round ways time with your wrists fully cocked, then you say
go, and you create the go by simply turning your body and letting s
a trifugal force snap open your wristcock angle. So it's get ready, get
set go, not get ready to go. So when you pause it becomes
get ready to go. But back to John Novosol, so, I think
if he would have presented it as a two to one rhythm. By the
way, and that's what I call rhythm, not tempo. Tempo to me
is the elapse time on the clock from start to finish of your swing,
which is roughly one and a half seconds duration. So if you saw it
as a two to one ratio, it would be when you feel you're in
the three quarterback swing position, not full backswing, you begin what we call
the transition trigger, which is your brain has to send an impulse to your
belly, to your oblique aps to shift to the left, followed by a
shifting of your tailbomb to the left. And so that's the trigger. That's
what creates your transition. Your initial transition trigger is that shifting of your belly
muscles to the left while your shoulder girdle is coiling to the right. And
then when you define it that way, if that's the beginning of the forward
swing, when you fire the belly to the left, it's exactly or nearly
exactly a two to one ratio, not a three to one. It just
works better that way. Otherwise, you're waiting to feel that everything that the
club is pausing for that fraction of a second, your shoulders are pausing for
that fraction of a second, and you've got time to beep that beap with
your with your impact beep. I want to get back to Tiger again because
this is so much fun. Yeah. If here we are a week and
a half in front of the Open being played at the Olympic Club in San
Francisco, which is you know, from all indications, it's going to be
a brutal course on these guys. I mean the US Opened. That's the
whole point of the US Open anyway, right, I mean you know,
one under par could win the whole thing, where you know other tournaments,
or even one over par. Yeah, exactly, And you know, following
what Tiger has been doing. No, And he even commented after the memorial
and the press conference that his book from and I found this fascinating, his
book from ninety eight. He had to throw it out. It's almost a
completely different golf course. Yeah, yeah, I'm curious. Here we are
a week and a half in front and when people are going to be listening
to this, it's going to be well afterwards, you want to make any
predictions, well, I think you got to make Tiger the favorite the way
he's playing, and I'm pretty sure on the sports betting sites he is the
favorite too. You know, you'd hope it'd be a Rory Tiger matchup,
but obviously Rory's in a little mini slam, but missing three cuts in a
row, which is kind of a shame because that's got to hurt a young
man's confidence too. Yeah, yeah, that, and what do you see
that. I'm sure he'll get it back at some point, but that's going
to be the big Nicholas Palmer rivalry of the modern airas Michael roy Woods at
least to the next I don't know. Tiger's what thirty six? Still thy
thirty seven? I think in December and January? And do you think he's
probably got eight more years left a really good golf at least I think he
stays healthy. Yeah, yeah, And do you think that You know,
there's two two benchmarks here that we're looking at. One is winning nine more
tournaments to have more wins than anybody else, and the tenth would be and
then there's the majors. There's Nicholas majors and reaching that. Do you think
both of those he'll be able to achieve in the direction that he's heading with
this swing change. You know, if you asked me that a year and
a half ago, I would have said I was saying no at the time
because I I really saw how badly his confidence was shattered by the scandal.
Yeah, and also by his injuries. You know, I'm someone who's I've
struggled a lot of my own injuries the last eight years at my back and
some other health issues. And it's you know, it's a hard game when
you're healthy, right, Yeah, but at the highest level. Imagine what
it's like playing golf within millions of people. You're being paid in millions of
dollars by your corporate sponsors to win and to do well and to draw viewers
and to watch the you know, the TV broadcast, and then this horrible
personal scandal erupts and you've got, uh, you know, a broken tibbia
in three spots and massive ACL damage and left a killes tendon tendonitis and occasionally
has a problem with his neck and with his lower back. I mean,
the guy is just I mean, what can you say. I mean,
it's hard. It's you know, it's hard to play golf if you for
whatever reason, if you have no confidence or very little confidence, it's almost
impossible to play well. But what appears to be the case is that in
his case it was more of the other way he did. He did it
to Bobby knightway. He so improved his technique. His swing is so much
better than it used to be. I can't tell you, I can't praise
Sean Folei and Tiger enough for what they've done is just remarkable. I mean,
this swing is almost as good as justin Roses. It's almost as good
as Sean o'harris. It's almost as good as Hunter Mayhons in terms of just
technically correct. You're hitting all the positions and the plane angle. It's a
lot simpler golf swing than it used to be. And uh, you know,
if he gets I guess he's still a little bit a little bit uh
not super confident in the short putts of around six feet to two feet in
that range. But if he gets some practice timing on that, which he
probably will do. Now that his golf swing is so much better, he's
not going to need to practice his his balls tricking so much. He'll be
able to go back to his you know, his former amount of time dedicated
to putting and short game. No, I think he's going to break Nicholas's
record by maybe five or six majors. I think, will oh wow,
make five more to he got fourteen. Nichol says eighteen. So yeah,
I think he could. I think he could easily win ten more majors if
he accept it. All depends on his health, if he stays healthy,
right, and which apparently he's dedicated to doing. I mean, he works
out all the time, and you know, I mean he could he could
certainly win a major. I mean I could see him if he stays healthy
with his new swing, which is, by the way, the new swing
is easier in his back than his old swing. Yeah, I can see
him winning a major even in his even maybe you know, early to mid
fifties. I mean, if he stays healthy. Oh wow, So he
could be. And you think he'll stay on He'll stay on this tour.
I won't go over to the Champions Tour even when he gets his Yeah,
I think, yeah, that's kind of I mean, he'll probably do both
there for for a few years and eventually, maybe in his mid fifties go
to the Champions Tour. Hen a quick golfer who knows, I mean,
he may just decide to He said enough and he'll do something else. But
man, I mean I think he's I really do think he's back. And
you know, if he starts winning a few more tournaments, his confidence is
going to store and once people don't realize. And I've said this before,
I think on your broadcast we'll say it again. The reason he was the
greatest player and he dominated back and that was in nineteen ninety six when he
came on tour. He really dominated between there in about what two thousand and
two, I guess that was a six year period where he really won everything
pretty much. He didn't have He was the best putter. Now I'm not
talking about mechanics. I'm just talking about getting the ball in the hole.
Althoughse mechanics were certainly good. He was the best short game wizard out there
by mile. But the reason he won and the reason he dominated was he
was he was orders of magnitude more confident than anybody else on the tour.
And he knew he was more confident than anybody else, and all the other
players knew he was more confident. There was an intimidation factor as well,
Yeah, exactly. I mean everybody on the course knew every play, everybody
who had clubs in their hands on the course, knew that if he was
making a move, they you know, they couldn't play defensively anymore. They
had to be more aggressive. And it's like, oh my gosh, what
are we going to do now? This is another one of my pet peas
and golf instruction. I mean, and I've in front of this. You
know something I've certainly learned more in the last few years. I've always known
this, but I've really known it because of my own struggles with my low
back issue and you're not playing well most of the time. In the last
five years, even after my back has been partially healed, which it has
been recently, I found something that works. I'm still getting some bad shots
compared to how I used to hit it, purely because I don't I don't
have the confidence and you know, and if you have, in my case,
it's fear of hurting my back. I'm just unwinding, turning my hips
and my body through the shot. When you have that fear that you're going
to hurt yourself, you'll flinch and then the french will create the bad shot,
and then then the next time you go to hit a golf ball,
you've got two things going on. You've got fear hurting yourself, the original
issue, and you've got the fear of hitting a bad shot, which is
another way of saying you lack confidence. So what I've been doing just recently
in my own game, which has really helped a lot, something I've taught
people for years, but really lately I'll expand on this here in a minute.
With average golfers I've been doing it, which is to teach confidence as
a fundamental of the golf swing, a fundamental of the putting stroke, a
fundamental of your short game strokes. It's like an essential piece of the pie
or piece of the puzzle that you must have. You could have the greatest
golf swing mechanics in the world, the greatest balance, the greatest timing,
and if you walk up to the golf ball and you lack confidence and your
ability hit it, well, guess what, You're not going to hit it.
Well. It's that important. In some ways, it's more important mechanics.
And so what I've done in the last couple of years in my teaching
is basically made this a very very important principle. And I tell people,
look, there's no point in walking on the golf course. If you're going
to have fear over a golf shot, or if you're gonna have anxiety over
a golf shot, I will talk about the beginning of they're sure even if
it's long part three over water you get two hundred and twenty yard carry and
when you get one or two club wind in your face, if you get
it really good with your three with you might make it over. You know,
it's normal in the beginning of the of your of your routine to have
fear. The point is you can't stay with that fear while you're striking at
the ball. At some point before you walk up to the ball and settle
into your set up, your starting position, you've got to banish that fear
and replace it with confidence. And there's there's a technique for that. There's
a technique for method acting. There's a technique from MLP for how to do
that. It's called changing your state. You can change your state consciously,
choose to change your state from one of fear to one of courage. And
to me, it's like, so it's so important to do that. And
I think again, that's what a tiger had that nobody else had. To
that extent, and he's starting to get it back. And because he's getting
it back, I really think he's going to start winning a lot. What
did you know about Sean Foley before Tiger announced that he was going to be
working with him? Had you heard about him? Well? Yeah, I
did. I mean it's you know, yeah, there's sort of an insight
based ball sort of gossip thing that happens with the in the golf community.
I'd heard good and bad things. I heard that he had. He's actually
admitted this to his credit. He had taken on Parkerbergloughlin from Hawaii as a
student and basically ruined his game. And Sean is, I mean, I
hate to be blunt, but that's as you know, that's my style.
Uh. He radically changed his Yeah, he radically changed his left hand grip
for one that from an ideal standpoint, probably was a little too strong,
too much turned to the right. Uh, and he tried to move it
over too quickly to the left. And you know, and I think with
Shawn has since learned. He said this is that you know, with a
with a really good player, you get a real talented tour pro. It's
like a thoroughbred racing horse. You don't want to do too many changes to
it. You don't want to change his diet too much. You don't want
to change his exercise routine because you might ruin it. Right, there's so
there's so much natural ability with an already gifted player, like a tour pro.
What you want to do, for the most part is unless unless,
unless the unless. If the pro wants a radical change, like Tiger did,
and Tiger basically said that, fully, throw the book at me.
This Haney stuff ain't working. I got to do something. I mean,
I'm dying here. I got to change my swing. Right. He knew
that there was some fundamental weaknesses in his Hani swing, that things were not
only not getting better, but they were getting worse, particularly with the driver.
So in that case, Fully said, okay, I'll throw the book
at you. So they embarked in a process of radical swing change as well.
I don't know. I don't know what happened with Parker and Sean in
terms of what they were what Parker expressed, but I mean, obviously Parker
wanted to get better at ball striking. Sean said we're going to change your
grip, and it made it worse. And that's always the problem when you
when you make a rip back in pros and cons with the two methods,
the cons of a radical swing change are, at least temporarily even for an
average player, let alone a tour pro, you can get worse. In
my experience, it tends to be the opposite, though, average players tend
to get really really good pretty quickly when you make radical change. Uh.
Again, as long as that too radical for you know, moderately radical uh
and really good players tend to get worse. So I tend I tend to
be very wary. I did. I tend to be very conservative. I
work with already gifted low handicap amateurs and prosu and I tend to be very
radical with the with the high handicappers who are willing to put the time in.
Obviously, if they tell me they're not willing to practice, then I
don't I don't do it. But if they were, if they're one to
put a year or two of training into making their swing more like a tour
pros uh, than I'm willing to work with with average players who will who
are commits to who are who at that level of commitment. So were you
surprised that Tiger from what you heard from inside Baseball did Were you surprised that
Tiger chose Sean Foley? Yeah, actually I was, but you know the
boss on Foley was and if this is still true, if you listen to
with Sean O'Hare, Shawn O'Hair was the first really good player to work with
Foley. He worked with Steven Ames, who was his first tour pro,
and that was because a buddy of Stephen Ames who was friends with Foley and
was impressed with Foley's short game instruction. Foley was mainly a He made his
reputation up in Canada working with juniors, not even working with average amateur adults,
although we obviously did both. But he made a niche for himself working
with juniors. And they formed the I forget the name of it, even
with the sea. The name escaped somebody escapes me at the moment. But
they formed a golf academy in Orlando, and he was actually an employee at
this golf academy that was mainly geared towards juniors. They had they had I
think they had a winter base in Orlando, in summer base up in somewhere
in camping outside Toronto. But anyhow he met Stephen Ames through a buddy and
then Aimes introduced into Shan O'Hare. But the buzz on Foley was he was
more like a mental game wizard, slash mentor to some of these younger guys,
actually guys who are basically around his own age or maybe a little bit
younger. But Foley's very well read. It was the core core golf tours,
Yeah, correct, core golficad right correct the internet. You know,
I mean he's he's not He's not in the traditional mold of a golf teacher.
He's left wing in his politics as I am. I like that aren't
too many left wing golf teachers out there. Uh. He reads, he
reads philosophy, he reads psychology. Uh. And he was applying some of
his you know, some of his some of some of his sort of life
wisdom to the younger pros like Sean O'Hare and then Justin Rose and then Hunter
Mayhon, and they're basically saying he made them better, not so much because
of the swing changes. Because he looked at vest and Rose's swing and Sean
O'Hair swing, Hunter Mayon swing, it didn't change radically at all from their
previous teachers. After they worked with Folio for like, you know, the
first year or two, especially the same swings, not that I mean they
both say the changes for sure, but their second they're they're minor changes.
But they liked working with because he was a great mentor on the mental side.
He kind of got them pumped up. He got them to believe in
themselves, to have more confidence, like we were talking about earlier. And
that's kind of what we heard more about. Not so much a swing change
guru, but more of a mental game guru. But now that's going to
change because he obviously he and Tiger did some, like I said, really
radical swing changes, much more radical than he worked with those other guys.
Hey listen, not that I that you and I couldn't go on for another
three and a half hours, but I have an appointment a couple of minutes.
Have you business call coming up, So let's before you go, please
promote your golf schools where when how to get in touch? Sure we have
I think our students, both of our graduates will tell you we have actually
happened so often in fewyears. We changed our slogan the best golf school in
the nation. Some people say the best golf school in the planet, but
I don't know if I go that far. But I haven't been everywhere in
the planet, so I guess qualified saying the planet. But uh, it's
very effective and it's web addresses, balancepoint golf dot com. And where are
the less Oh yeah, Portland, Oregon in the uh summer months and Hawaii
and Singapore in the winter months. So let me let me make one more
plug, which I probably don't do enough. You guarantee anybody I opened the
door for you, man, I let you do it. But this will
just take a second. This will go for it. One of the things
one of the positive feedbacks we get from almost every graduate, which is a
nice side of benefit besides the incredible level of improvement they get, is people
are also say funniest golf school. Uh. And I was talking. I
talked my number one assistant, Cliff Goldman, who is so funny. He's
sort of like a combination of Larry David and Woody Allen, and he has
people literally falling off their chairs, gasping for air, laughing so hard.
Regular basis, well, you're learning all this cool information about golf, you're
laughing a lot's awol. Yeah, and you know and listen. Uh.
And if you bring me along, then you'll have the corniest podcast host who
specializes in daddy humor, which means every time I tell a joke, people
roll their eyes. It's like, oh God, come on dad, Yeah
right, I mean every kid get that. Every you know, people think
you're funny, but your kids don't. What is it? What's up with
that? Right? That's exactly that. That's my that's my dilemment in life.
Yet it's like not funny dad, right, right? And you know
what, I am just going to be patient because I know that so many
of the jokes that I've been telling my kid's life, when they become dads,
they're going to use the same jokes and I get to look at them
and go, hah, yeah, I hope, I hope I get to
be there for that. Well, if you like politically incorrect humor, I
mean a little bit of Bill Hicks, a little bit of h uh Richard
pryor a little bit of Larry David, that kind of humor, you'll you'll
love, uh, you love me and cliffs our stuff. We got some
good good bits we'll use it in school. Well, best of luck with
your your schools coming up. Jim, it was great to speak with you
again and we will stay in touch and do it more often. Great thanks Bred