Hi, This is Fred Green of Golf Smarter with the ninth appearance that Tony
Manzoni made on Golf Smarter number four hundred and fifty seven that was recorded back
in October twenty fourteen, one week after last week's episode. This one was
a lot of fun because at this time in history, Tiger Woods was struggling
with his game and his life. So I put it out there to Tony,
and I asked him what he would say to Tiger if he had gotten
a call from his camp asking for advice from a community college golf coach that
had an incredible record. After this week, there are two more episodes with
Tony as we approached the end of our annual series. As we spring back
into golf season with Tony Manzoni, I hope you've been enjoying it. Tony's
book, The Lost Fundamental is available on Amazon, and his DVD, which
we converted to a private link online, is also available when you write to
me. For the most comprehensive information ever collected on Tony, please go to
Golfsmarter dot com slash Tony Tony's all in lowercase. If you'd like access to
the video, just writ to me directly Golf Smarter podcast at gmail dot com,
or click on the Heyfred button when you visit Golfsmarter dot com. Part
two of our conversation that picks up right where last week's episode ended for members
only Golf Smarter number four hundred and fifty seven, published on October seven,
twenty fourteen. If Tiger asked Tony Manzoni for help, what would he say?
This is Golf Smarter. If just so happens, Tiger Woods was listening
to this podcast, it's it's I know it's not happening, but he's like,
you know what, I'm going to give Tony Manzoni a call. Tiger
Woods calls you and says I could really use your help. I listened to
it that you had to say, it makes a lot of sense. What
would you do for me if Tiger called you and asked for your help?
What would you do? Well? After I got up off the floor,
No, I mean, I mean what I have to say. The Tiger
would take fifteen minutes. I just think I just you better charge a lot
of money. Man. You know I would. I would. I would
if I did it, I would do it anonymously, and I wouldn't want
anything for it, because Tiger is really important for the game. You know,
we're losing a lot of players, and Tigers is like the Beatles.
He's like he's an icon and whether you like what he did socially really doesn't
matter. He's got a huge following. And if he gets back to playing,
which I predict, he's going to come back stronger than ever. Do
you really? I do I really really, because I think he's on the
right track. Look, physically, the guy's eighteen years old. I don't
care what his number is. He's in unbelievable shape, and he's a kind
of guy that will always be in good shape. And if he just figures
out his golf swing, and if he figures out how to stay connected through
impact and keep that left arm high on the chest as he rotates his body,
which he does on his irons, that's what blows my mind. It's
like he's got two different swings. If he does that with the driver and
he gets the ball in play, what is that? What is he going
to shoot? Because he's a great putter, he's a great wedge player,
and he's a great iron player. But the thing that has always killed him
is that getting that first shot in play. And I think part of it
is that, you know, he lost distance, but he lost distance because
he bulked up so much. Do you remember when he was first on the
tour, he had a forty three and a half inch titlest driver with a
steel shaft, and he was literally killing it. But as he got bigger
and bigger and bigger, I think that it affected his flexibility and speed and
then and then, you know, when you start losing a little distance,
then you try to start picking it up, so now you get fast from
the top and all, you know, because everybody's human and respect. I
mean, I used to be considered a long hitter, and now you know
I have I can't see well, but I can see my ball stop,
which is a nightmare because I'm not hitting it very far. I can hit
it square. But listen, when you get to a certain age, that's
going to happen, So work on your short game. But I think that's
what happened with Tiger. Everybody started blowing him past it past him, so
he felt like he was doing something wrong. I think it's just this physicality
change so much said you know, he kind of got in the way of
his speed. He's leaned down a little bit more and he looks like he's
fast again. When I watched him a few terms, he came back before
he got back off because of his injury, started bothering him again. He
looked his swing looked really really aggressive, but not out of control. He
used to look like he was a little out of control with the driver.
And if he were to bulk after bulking up the way he did, would
you suggest that he go to a shorter shaft driver or are a longer one,
or stay with the forty three? No, I wouldn't listen. Tiger
has experts telling them what to do physically. I think that what I have
my guys doing, we're doing. We're doing weights, but we're doing low
weights and high intensive exercises with very little time between the exercises, where we
try to do one hundred one hundred bicep at ten at a time, but
with only thirty seconds between each each rep or each each grouping, and we're
trying to get it down at thirty. We're get it down to nothing so
that you can do one hundred in a row. Now, will we reach
that goal? I don't think so. But we're going to get close.
But as we progress each week, I can see that everyone is getting faster
and we're taking less time, so the fatigue factor is high, and I
think that's the new trend in working out. If you're an athlete, you're
not trying to get big popeye muscles, is trying to get lean and mean,
and this this kind of exercise really shreds you, gets the fat off
you, and it keeps and you keep your flexibility. And I know the
Tiger knows all about this stuff. This guy is, he knows a lot
about a lot of things when it comes to sports. He did go to
Stanford. So this is interesting to me because you've you've seen the eras of
athletes, not just golfers, but a lot of athletes who didn't pay that
much attention to physical fitness. And now we're in an era where it's you
know, even if you're only playing six to eight months a year, you're
working out all year long because of competition so stiff and it's a long season
for everybody, no matter what sport you're playing, so you have to be
in top physical shape. For golfers today, what would you recommend be the
workout regimen and what areas of focus would you put on the body? Would
you focus on the lower part of the body, the legs, the arms,
would you work on stamina, would you work on you know, muscle
building or core strength? And where would you go with this? Well,
I think I think the trend today and I agree with it, is that
they're working more on the core. They're working on on arms and chest and
back along with the legs. You know, because we don't we don't drive
the legs through the ball like we used to because we're because we're our body's
in a little different position. When when you were tilted way back, your
head was way behind the ball. Yeah, you had to drive your legs
to get to the left side and then you had to rotate, but you
had to make a little sliding move. Well, no one, no one's,
no one is doing that. You don't see any sliders like like in
days gone by. So so the top part is just as important as the
bottom part. But you have to be careful. You have to know what
you're doing or you have to have someone help you in that regard so that
you don't use the wrong type of exercises. Again, golf is not a
game where you need to be bulked up. It's a game where you need
to be with what we call cut, where you're shredded. That's the kind
of body type you want. No, so there are some people that are
bulky and they have to swing the club a different way. But you know,
Tiger was a very thin kid. I had him in a tournament years
and years ago called Kids were Kids, and he was sixteen years old and
he was on the thin side. But he hit it out there two miles.
He hit it out there. I remember that day. He was sixteen
years old. He hit as far as he already did on tour. Now
he had a longer swing. But he his thing was speed. Tire runs
fast. He's a speed person. Okay, He's not a guy that he's
not structurally built to be lifting heavy weight. He's structurally built to be like
a cat. And I think he got away from that. I think maybe
being around guys like Michael Jordan everything or workout freaks. I think he got
into body building and I think he I think a mistake is made there.
And I've seen he looks a little bit more. He's a little bit more
cut looking now as you should be. And you know, everyone needs to
get into things like yoga, anything stretching. If you're really interested in golf,
it's range of motion that's really important. What do you do. I've
been doing a lot of stretching. I've been doing the high intensive exercises,
interval exercises. I go on the net and look for anything that is related
to golf and getting more flexibility so I can get the club back a little
bit farther, which gives me more time to build momentum. You know,
I used to run a lot of ten k's. I used to run the
golf course every night. I used to go at the football field here at
the college and I'd run twenty thirty laps around the thing. You know,
so it's four or five miles. So I was running probably every day a
good ten miles. I don't have the inclination, the time and the stamina
to do it, but I'm still I still try to move. I'm always
I'm always active. I think I think you've got to do that, just
forget golf, just for your overall health. Yeah, I'm not a runner,
never have been. If you run on grass, it's not too bad.
But yeah, you know, you know, I'm a swimmer. You
know what swimmer, I go swimming fantastic because you have resistance in every action
you make, and and it's zero and zero impact. Yeah. The only
problem is is that a lot of swimming pools have a lot of chemicals in
it, so you're absorbing those chemicals. So that's you know, if you
if you're going to do optimum things, then you'd be swimming in a salt
water pool and not a typical pool. Yeah. Es, Actually the public
pool that I swim in is is half salt water half chlorine. Okay,
Yeah, I love and I just love a I love the zero eral impact
and and I love the complete resistance. But I also love just getting lost
in my head, which I do. I'm sure you do with any kind
of endurance thing. Well, sure, and I think I think every man
uh and well for that matter, woman, but I can only speak from
the man's point of view. I think every man should stay strong. There's
no reason to be weak. There's no reason, there's no reason to get
feeble. You can use light weights, but you can keep your muscle tone
and you can keep your strength factor. I think a lot of people die
too early because they get weak and consequently, so does their immune system.
And I think there is a correlation to that. I know people that you
know, they were good athletes, worked hard, worked out all the time,
and then they got to a certain point in time and then they turned
into a seal. They just blow up and all of a sudden they die.
Cholesterol evolves up, everything, everything malfunctions. Well that's because everything's stopped,
you know. So I really I you know, I'm an old guy,
but I don't feel old, and I'm still strong. And when I
go out and work on with in the gym with the boys, I can
still keep up with them. But that's because I've always done that. And
I highly recommend to anyone that's listening that get into a stretching program and get
into some form of weight training, because even at one hundred years old,
if you can last that long, you can get stronger by resistance, by
lifting weights. You know, all the rubber band stuff. Yeah, yeah,
okay, that's a little bit, but you got to put a weight
in your hand and move it up and down. You're gonna get your you're
gonna get your muscle tone back, and you're gonna feel a hell of a
lot better. One of the comments you made earlier on you said, take
the compensations out of the game. Well, a compensation would be if I
moved to the right from my original starting position, and I've got to move
back to the left. If I if I overwork my hands going back where
I cock the club back to where it shaft in my left arm, don't
don't create an L, but they create a V because because my wrist is
cocked so far that the club is kind of hanging down past parallel, then
I have to I have to make a compensation to get it back into that
position where I can just turn and just hang on. I don't have to
do anything with my hands, so any anything like that, any any timing
element that you're putting in or you're trying to you know, I hear these
teachers say you got to roll your hands through to hit the ball. Well,
you know, if you're slicing the ball, that's a quick fix.
But that's not the way to play golf, and that's hard to do.
Yeah, It's amazing to me how people these compensations that they try to make,
they do it during the round. I mean, how many times have
I heard someone say, oh, I lifted my head. Oh, I
know exactly what I'm doing wrong, and they really think that they're changing something.
But then lifting the head is the most common one. Oh I lifted
my head. Yeah, you lifted your head. Or I didn't get under
it. That's another beauty. You don't get under a ball. You head
down on it to make it go up, and in most cases your head
went up or you lost your spine angle. Because it's called body propulsion.
You're trying to propel an object up, so the body kind of lifts to
do it again. That goes right back to trying to do something to the
golf ball instead of letting that golf club and the loft and the lie angle
dictate what that ball is going to do. And all you've got to do
is swing that club from station one to station two and that all that's going
to happen. Certainly, you have to have some kind of coordination. I'm
not saying that you just do that and you're going to play perfect golf.
But the more compensation is that you put in your golf swing fanning the club
open, then you got to fan it that close. The more you do
that, you're just making the game harder. Yep, yep, it's so
true. It's so sad, it's so true. Tell me, I mean
the last one on the on the gulf side. Before we wrap this up.
How can we eliminate that dreaded forty yard shot? Why are we coming
up forty yard short of a hole when we don't want to have a forty
yard shot in our game and we don't have one in our bag. Well,
the only place that that should happen would be in my estimations on a
part five unless you just don't have the strength to get to the green in
two, and a lot of people are in that position. Then they're playing
the wrong tea box. Then they're playing the wrong tea box. Correct,
And even though I say that, there's a lot of people that are not
going to move up, they're going to stay where they are because that's just
what they want. That's the ego party of golf. And then in that
case, get your wedge and be like Lee Trevino, you know, hit
five hundred wedges a day, and then you'll hit that forty yard shot.
Okay, you know, the fourty yard shots not a hard shot, it's
just it's one of those in between shots where it's you're not taking it back
really far, So you have to you know, I've got a couple of
juniors that I teach and we work on those shots a lot. Yeah.
Yeah, you know, I have a friend every time, whether you're hitting
from thirty forty to fifty or eighty or one hundred and twenty, if you
land the ball on the green, he's going to go, nice shot.
And it's like to me, that's like, no, if I'm inside one
hundred yards or one hundred and twenty yards anywhere there and I I A,
I expect to be on the green on the next shot, But if I'm
going to be that close, I want to be within ten fifteen feet of
the hole. If not closer, I don't want to just be on the
green and have a sixty foot putt. Yeah, and you have to determine.
I mean, good players know how far they hit a ball, and
you know how to If they have one hundred and fifty yard shot, they're
not going to hit it one hundred and ninety unless they catch a fly or
maybe they're maybe they're a little excited because they made two or three birdies in
a or something, but generally they can control distance. And if you can
control distance, and first of all, you have to know how far you
hit your club. So when you go through, especially your irons, when
you go through your irons, you have to know, well, how far
do I hit a seven iron? And then you have to determine, Okay,
if I can max out a seven iron, let's say one hundred and
fifty yards and I have one hundred and fifty yard shot, certainly would be
smart to hit a six iron because I'm not going to max out every shot
and I'm going to mishit it a little bit. So you know, Ken
Venturrey told me that long time ago when I work with him, and he
said, you're better served to take one more club than you think. It
is almost every single time. And he said, I think in terms of
all the wrongs you played, how many times will you pass the pin?
And it's so true, it's so true. So those are those are little
elements that we have to deal with when we play. But distance control is
very important. So you have to establish where you hit a ball. But
when getting back to that forty yard shot, look the forty yard shot,
you're connected. You rotate your body in such a fashion that you hit it
forty yards, you rotate a little bit more. You hit it sixty or
seventy, you rotate a little less. You hit a thirty. But if
you're trying to do that with hand action, now you got a problem.
Now you got a real problem, because, especially when you had that forty
yard shot, there's a little voice in your head, don't thin it,
you know, don't scull it, don't do this. So you need you
need a fail safe action in your swing that is going to give you that
shot or somewhere near that without any fear. When we start working those hands,
especially if you get a tight lie or maybe a funky lie, that's
when all hell breaks loose and you end up you're near the green in regulation
and you end up with a triple bogie because because you're trying to do it
a harder way than you need to, and that's when the metal game gets
really large because you start freaking out about that shot. Well, yeah,
but if you're a rotary player and you rotate from driver to wed, it's
not going to be so hard because you're not basing the result on your timing.
And look, when you're playing for a few bucks or it's a tournament
or club championship, and you get a little nervous, and everybody does,
and you get a little scared, and everybody does. The first thing that
runs down your leg is your eye hand coordination. So you better have something
that you're doing with those big dumb muscles instead of those little you know,
when you get nervous, what happens your handshake, you know, or your
adrenaline gets up. So adrenaline is always going to get up unless you're taking
beta blockers, and that's not good. So we've got to play through our
adrenaline, and we have to have a process that allows us to do that.
I want to give you one last chance to explain to us what the
Loss Fundamental is, what the book is, and why we should own it
and the DVD. I think the Lost Fundamental Book, I think it's the
result of all the years that I've studied this game, and I came up
with the thought that you know, who played the game for a long time,
who played the game when they were really horrible in the beginning, and
who became one of the greatest players, shot makers anyway, of all time.
That was Ben Hogan. I started studying Ben Hogan, and I saw
the subtle changes, especially after his accident, and I saw that he stayed
more centered to the ball. So he played off of one axis. Or
in the old days they say we played off the left side, nothing to
do with stack until that's what they called it. We played off the left
side, So they played off of one axis. So that's really important not
to go to the right leg axis and then back to the left leg axis.
That's what the book talks about. The second part it talks about is
the connection of the left arm to the pectoral muscle and how that left arm
works as a lever that is being moved back and forth by the turning of
the body, turning to the right, turning to the left, and that
lever stays consistent in its form so that the club face stay square a long
time. That's another part of the action. The rest of it is set
up. I believe you have to set up sixty, forty and so forth.
So those three elements, so I can get you to set up properly,
and you have a decent grip, a comfortable grip, and I can
get you to rotate, turn your right side behind you, and then turn
the right side through the ball so that the left side goes level left and
your left arm states connected. If those elements happen in the swing, you're
going to hit the ball pretty darn good. I've got two juniors. One
gal I've been working with three years, and she is crazy good. She
just played in a high school match she shot thirty because they only played nine
hole matches. She shot thirty. And then she played in a two day
invitation. Broke the record in that. I've got an eight year old Chinese
boy. Wait a minute, the thirty was with a couple parts fives or
a part five and couple part threes. She played, yeah for yeah,
a regular eighteen hole course. But yeah, that was the lowess in Arcachella
Valley of anybody who's ever played male or female. Okay, and then the
next day she played in a two day event. Broke the record in that.
So, why is all of a sudden she can do these things?
And that's because she's learned to play this game without a lot of competitions,
compensations, because she gets scared as heck. She calls in because his coach,
this is really a big tournament, blah blah blah, And I say
look, you've prepared yourself, you work hard. Now just go play the
game. You can't be thinking about how to do it when you're out there
playing. You got to play the game. You got to you got to
react to the target, not to the ball. And she's she's proving my
point. And this little eight year old. I'll tell you what, Fred,
if you've ever seen them hit a ball, you want to sell your
clubs. It's just crazy how pure he hits it. Now, a lot
of it he got, believe it or not. He learned to play by
watching golf and the Golf channel, and then I just I've taken it from
there, improved his grip, but I haven't messed too much with that swing
because it's just a fabulous swing. And he chipped so good that I literally
said to him, what do you think about when you chip? Because I
was trying. I was trying to get a tip because he's so solid through
impact. So when I see when I see that kind of stuff, I
can part of it. And I mean, that's you know, it's the
greatest. And their their minds are real clear. You know, the more
we know about golf, the hearter the game gets because we complicated with a
lot of facts and figures. If you learn those three little things I told
you about good setup and connection and rotation, and if you can just focus
on that and get the feel of that man, you can go out and
play and enjoy yourself. Lots of times I'll receive emails from Golf Smarter listeners
who are saying, Okay, I'm really intrigued by what Tony Manzoni says,
and I don't know should I get the book or should I get the DVD?
And I always tell them just get both. But if they had to
make a choice, what are the differences that they're going to notice between the
book and the DVD. Truthfully, I think I would get the book.
There's some nice little stories in the back of the book that I think kind
of give you a sense of who I am. But also in the book
you can under it, you can line some areas yellow mark some areas that
are very pertinent, and you can keep going back to the book. The
DVD, you know, it's it's a good DVD. I'm not going to
say it's but there's a lot of music and you know, fall to roll.
I did that because everyone said you need to make a DVD with the
book, but the book is for me. The book is a little bit
better. The optimum would be too, because then you can see my stupid
face and some of the things I do. But you see my girl that
I that is in there. That's when I was starting, and you can
see how good she swings, and it's an interesting it's an interesting video.
But if I could only have one, it would be the book for sure.
Okay, well, I appreciate your honesty since you just lost ten bucks,
Well, you know what, most people can afford another ten bucks.
Yeah, So if I was buying, you know, I mean, I'm
not a super wealthy guy, but i'd buy both. Or if I bought
the book, I would certainly go get the tape because I want to see
if there's something there that because sometimes we learn more visually than exactly looking at
something. So you know, no one has ever written back to me say,
you know what, it was a waste of my money. And you've
had golf Smider listeners travel across the country to come take lessons with you,
right, I've given quite a few lessons, Fred, And I know I
haven't sent you a check, but I'm thinking about it. But I've had
a lot of people and you know what I also get. I get a
lot of letters from someone saying, Okay, you know I'm really hitting the
driver good, but I'm doing this with the iron or I'm doing that.
And I welcome that because I can give you the answer. I don't need
to see your golf swing. You just tell me what the ball is doing.
I'll tell you what you're doing. Wow. So I love doing that.
And again, I got three areas to hit. How are you setting
up? You know, levels of the ball, center to the ball?
Are you sixty forty? Is your left arm drop in first move or is
it staying up high on that chest as you rotate your chest? Those things,
they are easily said. If someone tells me, I'm pulling everything that
I know their arms are going first. You see what I'm saying, I'm
hooking everything. I know their arms are going first. Their arms. The
clubheads should be last coming through. It shouldn't be first. It shouldn't be
going ahead of your body. Your body should be pulling through. So these
are real simple fixes. And if golf prone knows this stuff, you know,
I'm I don't have a you know, I don't have I'm the only
one that doesn't have a handle on this, or I should say, yeah,
I'm not the only one that knows this. There's a lot of good
off pros out there that are good teachers. But I'll tell you what,
this is a never ending school. I tell my students, once you start
getting into researching golf, you will never graduate because there's always a move.
There's always a little tightening up with the bulls. That's beneficial. Yep,
yep, Well, listen. I am scheduled to come down to the Palm
Desert area just after Thanksgiving. I'll be there for a week, and if
it all goes well and it's not like my last trip of you know where
things got disrupted, let's get together. I'll bring some video, I'll bring
my recording gear. We'll sit down, we'll have another conversation with golf smarter,
and maybe we we'll do we'll go out and play golf together and we
can do like a playing lesson and we can grab some video of that.
What do you think that would be great? I would enjoy doing that.
I want to see your action and find out how many strokes I get.
Yeah, right, well, no, I really seriously, I would really
like to do that. Great we can talk and talk about strategies on the
golf course. I love that that kind of thing because there's a lot to
that part of it too, well Tony, It's always my joy. I
love talking to you about golf. I'm always entertained, but I always walk
away with a handful of nuggets that make my game better. Thank you so
much. Listen, I'm going to tell you, Fred, I really thank
you. You know, as I've said in the past and I will repeat
that your site is the best site I think in golf. Really, it's
very informative. There's a lot of great product on there. I'm glad.
I'm glad and honored to be part of it, and I do feel like
I'm part of the family. I love that