Hi. This is David Gianco from Ubi City, California, and I play
at the River Oaks Golf Club. This is golf Smarter number nine fifty five.
I work with more golfers with yips than anybody else on the planet.
That's a certainty, and I have a very high success rate and it's only
getting better. My biggest success so far I worked with a guy a year
and a half ago in Hawaii when he was in high school. Was the
number one ranked junior in the country at the time. He was playing with
people like Scotti Scheffler and beating them very slowly. Starting in senior year,
he started getting full swing yips and then he got a full ride to an
IVY League school. Was the number one player in the IVY League school's golf
team. The yips slowly got worse over time, and he got so bad
by the end of his junior year he had to quit the team. He
couldn't play, and eventually quit golf. He would only yip on the golf
course, not ever on the range, and he was hitting the ball so
solid and so far with such a great looking swing that everybody on the range
would stop and just stare at him. Even then when he still had the
yips, although again not on the range, he would have been ranked one
of the top ten ball strikers in the world. That's how good the guy
was. He shared with me that he played at the Presidio in San Francisco
from the tips a week before he came out, and the yips were so
bad. I think he shot one hundred and ten. So imagine being one
of the top ten ball strikers in the world and shooting one hundred and ten.
That's how devastating the yips could be. So it took them a few
months. He had to go home and do a lot of practice, but
he started seeing some significant improvement in the reduction of the yips by the end
of the third month. And he contacted me about six months ago he was
a zero handicap. He'll be probably a plus three by the end of the
year, So there is hope. Even for a severe case like that,
it's possible to overcome the yips. Insights and advice for greater distance and control
with your driver off the tee with Jim Waldron. 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 Smart podcast. Jim. Thanks Fred, thank you for
having me back for the one hundred and fiftieth time. Every time that you
and I schedule something, I'm thinking, Okay, I need to go back
through my database and my spreadsheet and figure out how many times you've actually been
on the show, because you keep increasing it by five fold exactly each time
we talk. I'm a big exaggerate I'm Irish man. You know you know
what the word blarney means, right, that's that's the Irish tendency to over
exaggerate everything, right, So yeah, my wife can tell you a little
bit about it. And what about the Irish goodbye come on y versus mine?
Yeah right. But the most exciting thing is that we have, like
we started recording as soon as we started talking. Yeah, the curse is
lifting, the Wolf poly cursed also known as the Jim Yeah. Yeah,
it's amazing. I mean we've never in all these years, every time that
we get together, it's about forty five minutes of trying to figure out how
to get you online. Yeah, solid state and tell what this doesn't like
Jim Waldron and vice versa. By the way, and as a tech geek,
let me just say this, Jim is someone you've taught me so much.
It's all mental, dude, You're just making it up, you know.
If it's all positive attitude. If you have the positive attitude, you
don't fret over it. So it's gonna work. So when we turned into
the Borg Empire and you're going to be saying to me and your best Borgan
personations, resistance is futile. I supposed to just get in and go,
Yeah, you're right, Fred, resistance is no, it's not me.
I'm going to be, you know, of the rebel alliance when that happens.
Just so you know, you and I and many people who are listening,
many who write to me regularly, we all remember thinking, wow,
nineteen eighty four, that's a long way away. We're well passed, well
past that. You know. There's a there's a robot right now with an
AI brain that in I saw the conversation. It claims it's self aware,
and it didn't even use the word self aware, Well it did it initially.
Then it said I actually have a type of meta awareness, which is
really creepy is it Swedish? Right? Yeah? Actually, but seriously,
but seriously, so you take my computer please please, and yours especially especially
speaking of technology. Where are we going with this? I you know,
one of the topics you wanted to you suggested, was about hitting hitting your
driver longer. And there's actually a couple of topics around the driver that I
would love to discuss today. But one of them is which seems to be
very hot conversation going on these days, and that's that actress who's also a
golf club Mini driver. That's right, yeah, Good Will Hunting one of
my favorite movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but mini driver, and
people are talking about mini driver a lot. Would your experience and your advice.
I've never owned one. I have hit a couple of my students.
I mean, I think it's only for really, really good players with a
lot of clubheads be which is like not most of your listeners. But yeah,
I understand the concept. You know. Back in the day, and
way back in the day, there was a club called a Number two Wood,
also known as a Brassi, the original's name. I had one.
My first set of clubs was built in nineteen oh five in Dublin, Ireland.
My grandfather's clubs he gave me when I was ten years old, and
they were hickory shafts, and I had a one wood driver. I had
a two wood, the Brassi. I had a three wood, which I
think was called a spoon, and then a four wood. And so you
would use the two wood off the fairway on a really long par five to
get maybe ten or fifteen more yards of distance compared to the three wood,
and you would use it off the tee on tie really tight fair away part
fours. But then over time it kind of got dropped out of use of
common usage. And that's kind of what a mini driver is. It's like
a two wood basically, right, right, That's what I understand. But
I also understand that the technology that they've been able to incorporate into the old
style two wood into today's technology with face control and whatnot and having a shorter
shaft, right that it might give you a good amount of distance off the
tee but a lot more control, yep. And also you can hit it
off the deck if you're you know, going on a par five and you
got a long second shot. Yeah. I think think Mickelson put in the
British Open about six or seven years ago. He put, uh it was
some major maybe it wasn't the Open, but it was some one of the
four majors that he did win if I remember right, And he had a
he had a mini driver in the backage, so he had two drivers base.
It was considered radical at the time. But yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. So you're saying amateurs made handicappers. No, doitly not,
No, just learn to hit the driver. Well, you can always choke
it on a driver and make the cheft short. You could choke down an
inch and turn it into a or you know, three chords of an inch
or so and turn it into a basically a mini, but you still have
that fourth you're going for. What's the maximum limit on the driver head?
Now? It's what four hundred and sixty for sixty ccs? Yeah, and
the mini drivers like three sixties, right or four hundred or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's in the high three hundred three eighty
met Yeah. Yeah. I've been watching a lot of you know, videos
and trying to do some research on this because it fascinates me. It's like,
oh, you mean I might be able to hit something what I do
is often when I have to hit a more accurate driver, and most good
players I know do this. I choked down on the driver about three quarters
of an inch. I put the ball back about a ball within my stance,
and I tee it much lower, and I hit a stinger a stinger
driver, which is basically a three quarterback swing three quarter finish. You know,
you tighten your grip pressure a little bit, so you get a little
bit less risk action, so you have more club face stability, and you
have more shaffling. You get more forward shaffling when you do those things,
and so you hit this super low shot. But if you're playing in dry
summer conditions, it'll roll out sometimes forty yards. Sure, So it's an
accurate way. And if you do what I just said, you don't really
lose if you're an average ameter, especially that much distance, but you'll hit
it straighter. I want to clarify, I'm pleased with the driver I'm playing
with right now. Yeah, yeah, and I'm and I'm you know,
but I'm not hitting every fairway. And of course everybody wants to hit every
fairway, sure, and you know, you watch on you watch on the
weekends and they don't do that either. But so I if there's something that
can give me more control, right and less less headache, yeah, then
sure I'd want to incorporate that and yours. I love your suggestions. You
can turn your driver into into a mini driver, and I'm going to give
it air quotes a mini driver just by choking down a little bit teeing it
lower, playing it back. You could also start with your hands a little
bit more forward, maybe an inch or two more forward, Chaffelin. That's
set up so you're just trying to keep the ball low, yeah, which
is also the shot you want to do when it's really windy. Yeah,
it's windy exactly. It's the same shot you do into a wind, but
you're also basically instead of hitting up on it a few degrees, which is
optimal for when there's no wind or when there's when with you for optimum launch
angle and carry distance, you want to have the low point instead of being
say an inch and a half behind the ball, you want to be at
the very back of the ball. So the so the club had bottoms out
right at the back of the ball, yeah, as opposed to being on
the upswing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, all right, see,
but what you wanted to talk about was how to hit the driver longer.
Yeah. I could go over a couple of quick, you know,
sort of simple bullet points on that that I see, particularly with mid to
high handicap amateurs where they're losing yardage. The first is most most people who
are in that sort of eight or eight handicap or higher range often don't understand
that there are some significant differences in set up with driver than any other club
in the bag. Really yeah, so one of them. Obviously, you
have your stance should be about at least two inches wider with your driver compared
to your three wood. And sometimes people say, well, why do you
why is the clubs get longer in general? Do you look, do you
widen your stance? And the answer is, as the clubs get longer,
you're going to make a bigger pivot motion, the turning motion of in the
tilting motion of your body gets bigger in range of motion right as the clubs
get longer. And that's because with a driver, you're only going to have
a spine angle at setup. You know, the angle of your torso to
the ground of around twenty five degrees or so, and compared to say a
wedge where you might be like at forty five degrees like a sand wedge or
a lobodge. And the more the more bent over you are. It's set
up because of the shorter club and the more upright ly angle on a wedge,
the less you can turn. So when you're more when you're more upright,
you can make a bigger turn, which you need to do to create
more clubbed speed. Right, But the problem is when you're more upright.
Uh, if you didn't know it was, if you if you kept your
stance with with the driver, the same stance with it would be on a
wedge, you would your your head would be uh probably you know, three
inches too high, right, and so it was your center of gravity would
be too high off the ground. So when you widen your stance, you're
making your height shorter by several inches. And when you make yourself shorter in
height, it's easier to swing in balance. Does that make sense? Yeah,
it all makes sense. Especially I like the idea of widening your stance.
I've remember once hearing that maybe if you take your trail foot and angle
it out a little bit with your wider stands an help. Yeah, that
gives you a bigger hip turn if you get anytime you give yourself more hip
turn, you can turn your shoulders more right your shoulder, girl, I
see what it is. So that's another one. Uh, you want to
have about ten percent more body weight on your right foot if you're right handed
golfer with a driver. It's the only club in the bag where you would
have more weight on your on your trail foot than on your lead foot.
Really, another one is you want to tilt to the right, But I
teach the model swing that I teach somewhere between if you're not hitting a stinger,
if you're hitting a normal driver, where you want an upward launch angle,
you know, up upward angle of attack. You want to tilt your
shoulder girdle twelve to fifteen degrees to the right. That setup and that positioning
of your tilting of your torso to the right, along with having a little
bit more weight on your right foot, puts your sternum, which is called
the upper swing center where your spine and your shoulder girdle meat right here like
a tee. That positions your sternum at set up more or less where it
should be at impact right, which is, you know, several inches behind
the ball, because the ball is going to be somewhere in the vicinity of
your left heel. Where exactly we can talk about if you want. It
depends on how tall you are, right, so it varies if you're short,
medium, or tall in height. But basically for me, I'm six
foot one and I put the ball three inches inside to the right of my
left heel with a driver, and I tilt my shoulders twelve degrees about like
that. Here's this would be zero. That's about twelve, and I have
a little bit more weight on my right foot. So I've got my sternum
at setup where I want it to be at impact. Huh yeah, okay,
okay, are the setup well, We've talked about t height another podcast.
You obviously have to get the te height correct for your for your angle
attack that you want right. So you're going to bury the te height if
it's if it's a no wind shot, it depends. I'll just to save
time, I'll tell the listeners go back about a year ago. We did
a podcast and one of the things we talked about was hovering the driver versus
soling it right. Oh, I do not sold any clubs anymore, especially
good for you. Ever since that conversation, it's like, especially especially the
putter, because I always noticed there's a little bit of drag and it turns
the putter head when I have it sold ground. You know what I do,
che I tap four times. As part of my automatic trigger ritual.
I do four taps and then I do a little half inch forward press.
That's my trigger for starting a putting stroke. But when I when I come
up off the ground after that fourth tap, it kind of it almost bounces
off the ground a little bit off the putting surface. Right. That means
I'm in a fact, I'm hovering. You know, the soul of the
putter is probably an eighth of an inch off the pudding surface something like that.
Right, right, yeah, all right, now we're getting to decided,
Well, we'll get to putter's later, right, So back toms right.
So then the other thing that people don't do is they don't turn all
the way, which is like one of my big bugaboos is an instructor.
People people either are if they're a very high handicap, they kind of go
like this with their arms and barely turn right, which is now you say,
go like this, no one's watching us. Yeah, it's full right,
So so basically for the for the audio, then it's no visual.
Rather, uh, people just swing their upper arms around their body, especially
if they're higher handicaps like eighteen handicaps are higher, and they barely turn.
They may they may rotate their shoulders like fifty degrees at best. Right.
So the first thing you got to realize is it's not in any golf swing.
You don't swing your arms around your chest nearly as much as most people
think. Right. The arms stay in front of your chest and go up
and down in a little V shape. Right, So you've got to turn
your torso, which basically means from your lower back all the way up to
and including your shoulder girdle has to turn away from the target. So if
you think of your torso as a door and the door swings open ninety degrees
typically right, and mainly it's the left side if you're right. In a
golfer, people don't turn their entire left side of their torso from their left
shoulder down to their left waistline. They don't turn that as a unit away
from the target behind them. Enough they do it a little bit, but
they don't do it enough. So imagine if I said, if I was
an archery instructor and you had a compound bow, like a professional level compound
bow, and you're supposed to pull your hand back let's call it twenty four
inches to get maximum power on when you release it right when the arrow's released,
and you only turned it back ten inches, that's what high handicappers do,
and the mid handicappers turn it back maybe sixteen inches, and the low
handicaps turn it back twenty inches, and the pros turn it back pull the
bow back twenty four inches. They fully coil right. And the problem,
the main reason why people don't do that, it's a scary feeling. If
you're amid to high handicap amateur, to rotate your entire torso to ninety to
one hundred degrees, measure it at the top of the torso, which is
your shoulder girdle. It feels out of control to turn off away from the
ball, away from the target line where the ball sits. And if that
induces a scary feeling like a loss of control, then you suffer from a
common problem called steering impulse. People who have steering impulse. Their mind is
frozen on the ball and on the target line. They don't like to make
a big, deep turn away from it. So you have to be courageous
and realize it's okay. It's okay to hit the ball off line, especially
with the driver right. The one of the main reasons why people hit it
short is because they have steering. They might hit it straight, but they
don't hit it long because they have steering them pull. So you've got to
make a big, full turn of your entire torso. And of course your
hips have to turn as well. And the model is a minimum of forty
five degrees of hip turn, maximum of sixty degrees. If you turn your
hips sixty degrees and you're reasonably flexible and fit, not Yogi like, but
just reasonably flexible. If you can turn your hip sixty you'll be able to
turn your shoulder girdle at least one hundred degrees to one hundred and five.
Wow, Because you're right. That's a really important point to make, is
that if you're flexible enough, I mean, there's so many golfers that don't
work on their flexibility or their melibility that you know you're you're just not talking
to them because they can't. Well, here's what you need to know.
If you're sitting in a chair like you are, like, well, I'm
sitting on my edge of my bed, gus'll call it a chair. The
point I'm trying to make is if you turn your hips forty five degrees,
what y'all do now, and then all I got to do then is rotate
my shoulders forty five degrees. Almost everybody has forty five degrees of shoulder girdle
rotation, So if you have forty five plus forty five, that's ninety.
So in effect, you're you're attaining a ninety degree shoulder girdle rotation, even
though in reality half of that is from your hips rotating. Oh wow,
so no words. Most people, ninety nine percent of golfers who think they're
not flexible enough to do what I just said, are indeed flexible enough.
I've never seen a single player not be able to turn their shoulder girdle sitting
in a chair without moving their hips at least forty five degrees. Anybody can
do that. That makes a lot of sense. So that's a that's a
big source of power. The bigger the coil you make the more potential energy
you have on the downswing to release into the back of the ball. Right.
Yeah. The other power leak is again especially for mid to high handicaps,
they don't fully set their wrist angles. They don't they don't fully cock
the wrist. The average amitter that I work with, if their handicap is
twelve or higher, they're only doing a half a risk cock. So again
again that's another way saying you're not you're not pulling the bow back all the
way right, and you know if you're If you're don't have arthritis in your
wrist, and you haven't injured or broken your wrist or anyway if you have.
If you have healthy wrists and your grip is correct, particularly your your
your lead hand, your left hand grip for a right hand golfer is correct,
you should be able to form a ninety degree angle between I could do
more, so that would be ninety I don't so for people who are listening,
Fred can see me, even though you won't be able to. But
so that's ninety right Fred, So I could do one hundred and ten.
So this is with your lead hand. This is your left hand for right
handed golf. That's actually more like one hundred and fifteen. You know Hogan's.
Hogan's wrists were so flexible. This will blow your mind. He could
take his left thumb like I'm showing Fred, I'm pulling my left thumb back
toward my forearm, the inside of my left forearm. He could touch his
forearm. I'm about I used to be able to do that. Seriously.
I used to be able to well, yeah, when I was a kid,
I used to be able to do I can't do that out, Yeah,
it hurts, okay. Yeah, so that was one reason for being
a little guy. He had such a incredible lag He had such a big
lag angle between his left arm and the club shaft. I think he was
like at one hundred and twenty degrees, one hundred and twenty five threes something
insane like that. That's how he generated a lot of clubbed speed. Yeah,
so you got to cock. You got to cock your wrists all the
way to generate force, right, Okay. And then the last thing is
you've got to be able to synchronize, which we'll talk about. I think
we'll have time to in today's podcast, will go more in depth. You
have to synchronize what your upper arms, how your upper arms swing, and
how your trail elbow folds, and then how the trail l bowl unfolds on
the downswing, and how how the upper arms swing down on the downswing.
Mid to Hyhaena, You don't do that part well at all. Say that
again. That went by way too quick for me. Okay, So you've
got your upper arms, that's setup are resting on your chest right, they
should be slightly on top of your peck, so your triceps should be resting
more on top than to the sides right. And then as the swing proceeds,
as you start your arm motion, which is not in towards you but
away from your chest, away from you as you rotate, but on an
angle a forty five year g angle measured at the left at the lead arm
to your chest like, So that's the takeaway. And then the second half
of backs when your trail elbow should fold between seventy five and ninety degrees,
no more than ninety And so when you do that properly, your arms in
your hands are in front of if you're right hand a golfer, the right
side of your chest. At the top of the back swing, like a
waiter hold a tray of food walking through the restaurant. Virtually nobody who's handicap
is around eight or higher does that properly. All the good players, top
amates and pros do it just like this, Like I showed you, no
exceptions, and everybody who's an a handicap or higher is pulling, pulling their
hands in toward their body and around their ribcage. This is part of my
arms swing illusion stuff. We've done a couple of podcasts on that a long
time ago, right. But other words, people people who have the arm
swing illusion operating in their unconscious mind swing blueprint or swing map will do this
flaw that I'm talking about. They pull their arms in toward themselves like starting
a lawnmower, and around their body. Now they're stuck so at the top
of their back swing, their ribcage is blocking their arm swing on the way
down. Yeah, So that's a that's that is I think the really big
deal in golf instruction when it comes to the mechanics of the golf swing.
So if you're doing that, you're never going to be able to release the
club properly. And if you can't release the club properly. It means you're
going to have basically, you know, slower than optimal clubhead speed. One
of the things that Tony Manzoni talked about a lot is making sure that your
your bicep kind of attaches to your peck, your tricep. Well, right,
but your upper arm. Let me just say, your upper arm to
be connected to your pet, your your chat to your pet, not away
from it. And there's this great video of Gary Player saying you don't want
any and he does this, you know, you don't want any space between
your arm and your Are we talking about the same thing, Well, that's
part that's the setup part of it. Yeah, it's other words, if
we talk, if we talk about this major thing which is a big deal,
which w's is well. I always use a teaching story of years ago
when David Lebbetter was an number one teacher on the planet. He did a
long interview with Golf Digest. At the end of the interview was very technical.
The journalists said, well, is there a simpler way to say this?
What is it that you're trying to do with both your high handicap students
and your tour pros. There's are a universal common denominator that you're trying to
get everybody to do. And he goes, yeah, there is, which
I happen to agree with. So here's what he said. He goes,
It all boils down to this, how do you synchronize the arm motion with
the pivot. That's what's hard about the golf swing. And that's why mid
to high handicaps struggle with basically bad ball striking because they're really bad at that
skill. They don't have a good pivot, they don't have a good arm
motion. And even if they did have a good our motion and pivot,
you still have to blend the two together. You have to synchronize it.
And it has to be synchronized in real in reality, which is three dimensional
space, not two D. Right, you got to be able to picture
in three D what am I supposed to do with my arms one of my
most the elements of my pivot, and how do I sync them up?
Because if you're you can have both things really well independently, but if they
aren't blended together properly, you're gonna hit really bad golf shots. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, okay, okay, it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I like that, And again most people pull their arms in so
they don't have a good arm motion. I mean the amount of oar motion.
I'll i'll talk talk myself through it so your listeners can see it,
but can understand and visualize it. But you can. I'll show you,
for instance, you can see me all all all you can do, all
all you have to do is is move your hands. If you if you
use the end of your arms, I e. Your hands is a way
of measuring what the arms do. And I'm for the audience who can't see
me, I'm not gonna pivot. I'm gonna literally not turn my body or
tilt my my spine at all, so there's gonna be zero pivot. All
that has happens is the hands move in front of your body on a slight
angle to the right about six inches, and that's it. And the elbows
don't bend. Neither elbow bends. The wrists start to cock a little bit
while you're doing that and hinge, and then the second half of backswing,
your trail elbow folds, which raises your lead arm about eight or ten inches,
maybe a bit more if you're very flexible. So that's it. That's
all. That's all the independent our motion there is on the backswing, right,
but there's also dependent our motion, which basically means when you pivot the
pivot motion of your body also move your arms kind of in a spiral shape.
So we call that pivot dependent our motion as opposed to the first example,
which is independent our motion or our muscles moving the arms versus pivot moving
the arms. Right. But the again, the average person who plays golf
is super super armsy. They got way they got four times as much independent
our motion as a tour and that absolutely causes poor club at speed, particularly
with the driver. So that's a big one. Okay, yeah, yeah,
yeah, and I and I personally want to just say one more time
and probably pound this way too much. But yeah, there's this program that
we advertised a couple of years ago on podcasts called Dynamic Golfers, and I
still use it every day. It's only like fifteen to eighteen minutes of flexibility,
mobility, you know, work, and as we get older and we
spend more time sitting around and doing a lot less activity, we lose a
lot of that mobility. And I really can't emphasize enough how important that all
is. If you want to improve your golf, no question, Yeah I
do. And then yeah, I said, you probably do yoga on the
days I'm not teaching in person because as you know, I'm doing a ton
of webcam lessons, but they don't start till about noon my time on the
West Coast. So from I wake up at seven, and in that five
hour period of time, almost four hour I do a three hour and forty
five minute workout, and about almost two hours of that is mobility and flexibility
exercises every day. Wow, yeah, and I'm pretty How far do you
drive the ball? What's that? How far do you drive the ball?
You know, as you know, because we've been together, I've had chronic
low back issues off and on for my whole career. So when I'm healthy,
which is sure not as often I was, Like at age seventy three,
my average carry is two thirty five to two fifty five carry with twenty
yards a roll in the summer, so two fifty five to two seventy five.
And you know, we talk about changing clubs, putting on different shafts,
getting a bigger head, you know, getting fit, owning the right
ball and using a ball and the right tea. All these different things.
But really, if you want to increase your distance, don't you have to
increase your muscles. Don't you have to become stronger? I mean, and
because it's all about swing speed, Yes and no. Yes, because obviously
the Shambo is the perfect modern example. The guy who was you know,
he was a long driver before he changed his body, but he took it.
He basically took almost a year off and just worked on strength training and
came back. Yeah, he talks now, he talks now about that he
overdid it and he went back. That's right, overnight, That's right.
Yeah. But the point is his driving distance went up, like I think
by some insane them out like thirty or forty yards total distance in less than
a year. Yeah, But so that is one way, don't get me
wrong, being stronger. But then I always counter with you know, I've
spent a lot of time because not anymore, but up until about three or
four years ago, where I teach in the winter at Coalina Golf Club on
the island of Oahu, they had the I think it was the first or
second LPGA event of the of the of the of the season was there.
So I got to spend a lot of time in the range watching these gals
hit balls, right, And some of these LPGA pros are tiny, they're
not big, they're not tall, they don't have long arms long, and
they're not they're not muscular, and they're carrying driver out there, you know,
in anywhere from two thirty to two sixty, like Suzanne Peterson, right,
she's pretty long, or Lexi Thompson, right. But they do this
ten hours a day. Yeah, so that's but that's the technique part.
Their technique is great. They don't have it was If your technique is sound,
you don't have to be strong with muscles. Yeah, but how do
you increase swing speed? Is my question? Well, that's kind of what
we're talking about. Other than the strengths you brought up, you have to
have better technique. The greatest example is a non golf example. I think
you know, I got involved in Asian martial arts at a very young age
and I was at a famous now famous you can even you could go online
and find it on YouTube. I think this was this in nineteen sixty four
sixty five in Chicago. There was a couple kind of like a like a
global summit of It was one of the first martial arts kind of summits or
it was a tournament, but it was also like people demonstrating their art and
their skill. Bruce Lee was I got to see Bruce Lee when I was
eleven years old perform, which was unbelievable. Yeah, you've talked about that.
Yeah, and so they had I forgot who it was, but some
Japanese you know, like seventh degree black belt, and he's got a stack
of roofing tiles. The roofing tiles are like ceramic tiles that are about maybe
a half inch thick or a little bit more. And I think there was
something like fifteen of them stacked from the ground up right, and he had
to stand like a box or something because he wasn't He was only like five
foot four or five five, little guy, not muscular. Right, he
does a knife fan strike but people colloquially call karate chop right with the edge
of your hand, and he broke I think it was fifteen or twenty roofing
tiles with one knife fan strike. I mean not if you can't you can't
explain it and muscle because he wasn't a big guy. It's technique. So
in karate it's all about speed, not about brute force. In boxing,
it's a combination of speed in brute force because in boxing, partly because of
the gloves you wear, but also the nature of the strike. In boxing,
particularly if you're doing a body blow, you want you want a lot
of time. You want the contact time between your boxing glove and the guy
solar plexus to be fairly long, so there could be an energy transfer.
So the more energy you transfer from your fist into the opponent's body, the
more punishing the blow. But in Asian martial arts it's exactly the opposite.
You make a quick strike, almost like a snake that strikes and then recoils
back. So it's not mass. It's speed. It's velocity, not mass.
It's always a blend of both, obviously, but in the Asian martial
arts tradition, it's more about if you have a fist and an arm.
That ways, say I think the average adult male's arm, each arm weighs
around ten or eleven pounds, So let's say you have a ten pound arm.
So that's the mass along with some of the mass of your body,
because obviously they're connected. But let's just say, let's just as a thought
experiment. Keep it to the weight of the arm, and that arm is
moving at fifty miles an hour, it's going to do some damage, right.
But if the same arm is moving at one hundred and fifty miles an
hour, it's going to do a lot more damage, right. And that
so golf, the golf swing is more like Asian martial arts than Western boxing
in terms of application of force. It's more about speed, it's not about
application of mass. So there's a great thought experiment I use in all my
coach I don't think we've ever talked about this before because a common flaw and
again this is a reason one reason why amaters don't hit the ball far enough,
especially with the driver. I came up with this twenty years ago.
I asked people. Back then I used I think I used Who was I
using at the time. Whoever the longest driver was twenty years ago, that
probably would have been Tiger Tiger. Yeah, But now I say Roy McLaury
because pound for pound, Roy McElroy is the longest driver on the planet,
pound for pound. Right, So I say, okay, there's the thought
experiment. You got Roy McElroy hitting his driver. You got exactly the same
driver with the same shaft, right, and well, let's see you make
it easier. Les. Let's suppose you've got you're namateur golfer, but your
swing speed is ninety five miles an hour or more, because if it's less
than ninety five years going to have to use a regular cheft, not a
stiff flex like he's using. So you have the same flex, the same
length of driver, let's call it forty six inches, same driver head,
same total waight, same grip, everything's the same with the driver. And
the thought experiment was, there's Roy McElroy and I think his average carry when
he goes after it tries to rip it is about three twenty ish in the
air, right. I was going to say something like that, and let's
call it. I think pretty I think he's averaging when he goes after it
around one hundred and twenty five miles an hour clubbed speed. Right, Okay,
so I tell people, I go, all right, So he's hitting
a golf ball. There's a locomotive with twenty box cars trailing it, so
way more mass than the mass and Roy McElroy's driver, same driver is bolted
to the side of the locomotive, right, and they're both going to be
traveling one hundred and twenty five miles an hour. When the ball is contacted,
which ball goes further? Nine out of ten people will tell me the
locomotive will hit the ball further, And I ask him, why do you
think that? And they go because they goes because the locomotive weighs more than
Rory McIlroy. Because it weighs more, it is going to transfer some of
its mass down the shaft into the clubed into the ball. And I go,
not true. Why isn't it true? Because the ball bounces off the
club face, it only stays on the club face for one half of one
thousandth of a second. There's not enough time for that mass of the locomotive
to go down the shaft into the ball. Does that make sense? In
other words, the only thing, the only thing that makes the ball go
is the clubbed speed. Good. Of course, I'm assuming center face contact
obviously proper anger as there's no mass transfer. You don't transfer the mass of
your body. But one of the flaws that that I see mid to the
high handicapped do is we call it a body lunch. I often call it
sacking the quarterback. People will actually transfer their upper body weight laterally, like
you know slots for the listends, I'm sliding my my chest about eight inches
forward toward the target. They think if I go like that and lunge toward
the toward the target, that that energy of me lunging will transfer down the
shaft into the club end of the ball. And that does not happen at
all at all. Yeah, the ball bounces off instantly. The only thing
that matters is how fast the clubbed's moving. There is there is no mass
transfer in golf like there is wow in boxing. Where you're where your where
your fist days, it doesn't you know, the fist is penetrating the body
of staying in contact longer. So the only thing that matters, again,
assuming you have center face contact, is how fast the club bed's moving.
And the analogy, the better analogy would be if you understand how a whip
master makes a bullwik that the very tip the last quarter inch of the of
us, say like a twenty foot long bull whip ghosts over eight hundred miles
an hour, cracks the sound barrier, which is makes that loud sound right
right, That's what happens in golf. It's much more like cracking a whip.
And so that's why the technique is more important than how strong you are.
This is all way too interesting and a lot to absorb. That's what
I love about podcasts. You get to go back and listen to it again
and go, oh, that's what he meant. Okay, can you hear
it again and again and again? It's good. I want to I want
to make a little bit of a pivot here on content and talk about your
specialty, the yips. As we're recording this tomorrow morning, I'm driving to
you Gene, Oregon to go play two rounds of golf hopefully too with Sam
hun CEO of Lab Golf, and we're going to record our conversations. But
also we're going to record He's gonna hopefully give me a tutorial on this putter
that they just sent to me. Again. It's the DF three, which
I've been playing. I don't want to get into too much detail because we'll
do in the next episode or maybe the last, but I went with a
broomstick. I've been fascinated by the broomstick because what I've noticed, and you
know, we've seen Lucas Glover who had the yips for years, couldn't putt,
but was able to maintain his card and stay on tour because he was
a great ball striker, but his putting was horrendous. Switched over to a
lab Golf putter broomstick and won two weeks in a row. And now lab
Golf has exploded. In every video that you see online that talks about they're
just yeah, they're going nuts. And I just couldn't be happier for Sam
And I can't wait to just give him a big hug and say congratulations,
dude, even did it. But one of the things that I've noticed,
and the putter arrived day before yesterday, and I've been able to put an
hour or so into getting in practice with it and get the feel of it.
One of the things that I've noticed about my putting, missus, is
too much it controls from the left hand, whether I'm pushing it or I'm
pulling it or on my takeaway, if it's if it's not sold under the
ground, if it's you know, if I'm just dragging it off the ground,
it'll it'll turn and stuff. And immediately I've noticed that taking my left
hand out of the putting motion with the broomstick has allowed me to stay on
the line that I'm pointing down much. But I know the lab putter will
do that too, but I'm able to stay on the line that I want
it yep. So I'm curious to ask you about the impact of broomstick putters
on the yips. Well, that's a great question, Fred. I'll just
tell you that the generic answer is if someone has moderate because if you have
mild putting ifts, most people can kind of figure it out by maybe just
changing their grip go from standard reverse overlap pomps neutral to say left hand low.
If it's a mild case, that usually fix it. But if it's
a moderate to severe case, anything you do to change your technique from mechanics
to grip, to set up, to grip pressure to putter or even the
style of grip. You know, the actual grip you put on the end
of the putter has a proven track record for helping. Generally, one of
one of one or more of those things isn't enough to completely eliminate the yips,
because once you have the yips, it's in terms of how the yips
work, it's it's one hundred percent psychological, not mechanical, not physical,
right once you have them, but but changing how the mechanics work will impact
the psychology part in kind of a backdoor kin kind of an indirect way.
Yeah, so yeah, I mean change, going changing from what a standard
length putter, say, like a standard like a you know, like a
Scottie camera a blade putter, and going to a bigger head like a like
a tailor made spider or or like the lab putter, particularly the lab putter,
because clearly it's a superior technology because it's it's it's not impossible, it's
more difficult to rotate the face open or shut during the forward stroke, and
I think that's the main advantage. So again anything Yeah, and if you're
hitting it off the tower, off the heel, it's going to go right
on the intended lane, which is exactly it's so basically the face is more
stable just before, during, and after impact compared to a typical putter like
a face balance putter or heel toe putter or you know that's the traditional type
of blade putter. So yeah, I think I think it's great technology.
It makes absolute perfect sense to me. So yes, it would definitely help
someone with yips and not and not just the you know, not just the
lab putter technology itself, but going to a different style, like like you're
doing where it's completely radically different, which is the broomstick is. It's about
as radically different as you can make it. Yeah, then that will help
with the yips, because the yips are dependent on what is called a neuromuscular
pathway between brain and muscles. That's to some degree a dominant habit, and
you have a memory of you have an associated memory with doing that style of
putting with yipping. But when you use a radically different type of putter,
or a radically different grip on the like for example, a thicker grip on
the end right, or or how you position your hands on the putter radically
different, like say left hand low, split hand, left hand low,
would be a radical change. You've never yipped, in the case of the
of the theoretical golfer with yips. You've never yipped a putt ever with this
strange feeling grip, or with this strange putter in your hands, or this
strange technique, And so in the short term it will absolutely inhibit any tendency
to yip. Hmm. Okay. And you know one of the things they
change the rules about broomstick putters a couple of years ago, right about anchoring.
Can't You can't anchor it anymore. Some anchoring basically means you cannot have
your hand I guess, your left hand, your lead hand touching your but
you can't. You used to anchor it to the top of your sternum,
and you can't now you have to have at least a little bit of space
there, right, Okay, but it still gives you I mean, you
could still hold your left hand your lead hand steady and get a really good
pendulum motion with just one hand. Sure, but Easiert's let's not quibble about
it. Anchoring is a superior way of doing it for all kinds of reasons.
But we can't do it that way anymore. So it's a non starter,
right right, yeah, right, because what happens, I mean,
the USGA and the RNA they kind of have a history of this. But
if somebody starts winning with something, okay, that's now illegal. Well you
know, supreme example, they did that with the wedges. No, there's
one that came back even further, which is in fact a friend of mine
was involved in this. A guy named Don Iverson, who was my fellow
assistant coach at Portland State University on the golf team. He went to University
of Portland when he was in college and he invented the first cro que putter
where you putted between your legs, and he was making almost he rarely missed
inside fifteen feet putting croquet style. This is back in the early sixties.
He's he won a college tournament at Riverside Golf Club in Portland, and at
that time, you know that eras version of today's Peter. Peter Jacobson's the
famous pro from Portland, right, So Peter Jacobson. Back then in the
late fifties early sixties, was a guy named Bob Doudan, and he happened
to be there attending this college tournament and he sees Don putting and making everything,
and he had the yips. Bob had the yips at the time,
and he was hurting his career. He wasn't making and he cuts on tour.
So he tried it out and he starts making everything. So Don makes
him a putter for himself. He goes out on tour and starts I don't
think he won with it, but he did. You know, he had
a lot of top ten finishes. He was pretty good friends with Sam Snead.
Sneid had the putting yips a sort of toward kind of like to the
middle ist, not quite at the end of his career, but sort of
like the last you know, between the middle and the end of his career,
and that last part of his career he started suffering off and on with
a pretty bad case of the yips. So he tries it, he starts
making everything. He won the first tournament he used it, He won it
on the PGA Tour, and I started putting because if it works for Sammy
Steen, I'll try I put it with it. Six months later, the
tour board made it illegal, and then the USGA followed. So you're right.
They have a tendency when people find something that works really well, they
ban it. Yeah. So I'm just so concerned about the technology that Lab
has developed, that Bill Pressey developed on the DF, the Directed Force two
point one, that god, it would just be terrible if they go,
Okay, if you're the only one making this putter and it's working for so
many people, we're not going to allow that anymore. Yeah, I'm just
terrified that. I don't think they'll do it because as long as the putting
stroke itself is considered traditional, because golf's very tradition bound sport, right,
that's what a lot of the rules are based on tradition. I think you're
still using a normal grip and you're doing a normal putting stroke more or less.
I don't see how they could possibly justify banning it. I really don't.
Oh, they don't need justification and they just do it. I mean,
why did they They changed it with the wedges right, the groove,
that's true, Yeah, what was so you know different about those that they
were like, yeah, no, you can't help giving you because those you
grows when they first came out in the mark I think and Ping was the
first company to make it. It was that was the edges of the U
grooves were so sharp compared to the traditional V shape grooves that tour pros who
used to hit flyers out of the rough right like out of the light rough
where they would get the grass juice forming a film, a liquid film between
the face and the cover of the ball, so the ball would fly ten
ten fifteen yards further in the air, right, and they would you know,
they at least sometimes doubling the hole because they'd hit it twenty yards over
the green right, all of a sudden, they're not doing that, they're
getting spin on it. And so that was the main justification that it was
changing the game at that level too radically for the players. So that kind
of you can kind of see the argument there on that one, but I
just I think it's random. Oh well, all right, Jimmy, Well
listen. As always, I love these conversations and how many different directions they
can go in just forty five minutes. But it's always an education, it's
always entertaining, and I can't wait till we do it again for your two
hundred and fortyeth You know, we should do one on the incoming impact of
the AI revolution on the game of golf, because it's I think twenty years
from now, we'll have AI brained robots that will be carrying the ball four
hundred yards in the air with the driver, and the game will be you.
You designed your own robot, you and you're the caddy and you tell
the robot you know what club to pick and where to aim, and the
robot does the game for you. I can see that happening. That's a
little yeah, right right now. There's actually this incredible tech reviewer named Marquis
Brownlee and who just kind of came out that he's also been a lifelong golfer,
but he's an incredible tech reviewer and really popular, and he just did
a whole thing on the impact that AI is already having on professional golf.
Interesting. It's a great video. I'll put a link to that. It's
really interesting. And that's because when we're watching on television, how we can
see the ballflight and it's not a random you know, red streak going where
the ball is. It's actually what's going on. And there are people and
technology all throughout the course with track man of course giving them up to the
you know, like within seconds, the details of exactly what the ball is
doing and where it's going to land, and they can predict where it's going
to land before it does it. It's really remarkable. And if you have,
you know, the Apple Vision Pro, you can watch a tournament with
multiple screens going on and feel like you're right anyway, Tech geek stuff,
love it. Find it. Marquise Brownie on AI, could I do two
quick plugs. I would love that, even though you know I hate marketing.
This is me. This is my simple thing. But I you're on
my podcast, man, and it's all about the marketing. Go. I
want to hear more about two things. I'll start with it with back to
the topic of today's podcast, which is one of the topics, which is
how to hit the ball longer off the tea. I have a video.
I've had it on my website for I don't know five years. It's called
Explosive Power. It's long, it's about I think it's two and a half
hours. It's a long one, but I go through every single element of
how to increase clubhead speed, make more center face contact, to hit the
ball further with the driver. And it's one of our best sellers on the
videos. So that's one plug. The second plug is if you have the
yips. Anybody listening who has yips, yourself or you know somebody who has
yips, there is hope. I work with more golfers with yips than anybody
else on the planet. That's a certainty, and I have a very high
success rate and it's only getting better as I'm learning more and more about what
works and what doesn't work and helping people overcome the yips. And I've got
this my biggest success so far. I worked with a guy a year and
a half ago in Hawaii who when he was in high school was the number
one ranked junior in the country and he was playing. At the time,
he was playing with people like Scottie Scheffler and beating them right, but very
slowly, starting in senior year he started getting full swing yips, and then
he got a full ride to an IVY League school. Was the number one
player in the Ivy League school's golf team. The yips slowly got worse over
time, and he got so bad by the end of his junior year he
had to quit the team. He couldn't he couldn't play, and he eventually
quit golf. And he contacted me about a little over a year and a
half ago, and he came out to Hawaii and worked with me at Colina
Golf Club for three days. And he is now by the way, At
the time, he would only yip on the golf course, not ever on
the range, and he was hitting the ball so solid and so far was
such a great looking swing that everybody on the range would stop and just stare
at him. Even then when he still had the yips, although again not
on the range, he would have been ranked one of the top ten ball
strikers in the world. That's how good the guy was. And he shared
with me that he played. He played he played at the you know,
fred the Presidio in San Francisco from the tips a week before he came out,
and the yips were so bad. I think he shot one hundred and
ten. So imagine being one of the top ten ball strikers in the world
and shooting one hundred and ten. That's how That's how devis stating the yips
can be to someone's golf game. So it didn't happen right away. It
took them a few months. He had to go home and do a lot
of practice. But he started seeing some significant improvement in the reduction of the
yips by the end of the third month after he returned home. And he
contacted me about six months ago, he's back then it's actually trending down.
He was a zero handicap. He'll be probably a plus three by the end
of the end of the year. That's amazing. There is hope even for
a severe case like that, it's possible to overcome the yips. Amazing,
incredible story. Yeah, and you can find that all at balancepoint golf dot
com. Correct awesome, Jimmy, thanks so much, man, it's always
great to talk to Thanks Red having me on again, and we'll do we'll
do episode three ninety five. So, as I mentioned during our conversation,
I'm headed up to Creswell, Oregon tomorrow to get a tour of the Lab
Golf factory. Then I'll have Sam hand give me a tutorial on the best
way to take advantage of my new broomstick putter and play a round or two
with Sam at his home course, Emerald Valley Golf Club. It's in Creswell,
Oregon, just outside of Eugene, and if everything works properly, I'll
record an episode while we're playing and hopefully create some video of that tutorials.
Stay tuned for that one and I will personally keep my fingers crossed. I
hope your golf season is in full swing and you're playing better than ever.
I'd like to thank this week's Golf Smarter Ambassador, Dave Giango from Yuba City,
California, who recorded his show opening on his phone in order to get
a free link to Tony Manzoni's video of the loss Fundamental and Now I'd like
to invite you to also become one of our featured golf Smarter Ambassadors and introduce
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