I asked the student as they stand behind the ball and they get prepared to
take their shot, that they spell the word trust. And on the very
first letter T they start their motion forward to address the ball, they spell
the word trust. And on the very last T they swing the club,
so it's t r U S T and then they pull the trigger and swing
the club. And what that does and what it did for me as a
student and a player as well as now as a teacher, is it allows
myself and my students to kind of take that breath, focus on what we're
trying to do, and trust that we're going to do it. Hi,
this is Herb Strachman from Tampa, Florida, and I play a cheeky Rodrigue
country club. This is Golfsmater number eight nine four. Amen. Well did
a Tory's student proudly continues his teaching legacy with Trish Future. This is Golf
Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf mines to help you
lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green.
Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast. Trish. Hi, thank you Fred.
How are you good? How are you? I'm doing well? You
come highly recommended. A long time Golf Smarter listener and ambassador Rick Petrick suggested
that I give you a call. That's wonderful. He's taken lessons with you.
He is not. He's actually just part of my YouTube channel. He's
one of my followers. Oh so he follows you in Yeah, awesome.
Yeah, how's that working out? It's good, it's good. I started
my YouTube channel about I don't know four years ago and it was literally intended
for my students as reminders of what I did every day with them in their
lessons, and then it just kind of from there. So he is one
of my followers, so I ate the well, please please publicize it.
It's eight fifteen tea time, right, yes, it is eight fifteen tea
time, one et tim And it actually started off as a date. So
I went to my attorney's office when I wanted to incorporate my golf business and
he said, well, what do you want to call it? And I'm
like, yeah, I got nothing, so golf business. And he handed
me a piece of paper and he said, well, try coming up with
some names, and you know, think of something creative. And I dated
the piece of paper and it was August fifteenth of nineteen ninety nine, and
I was like, oh, eight fifteen, that's a good time to play.
Ha ha ha, And that's how it started. So, oh,
that's so fun because I actually thought you meant the clock eight fifteen. It
is converted to the clock, but it is actually the Yeah, okay,
as an eight oh four birthday. Oh yeah, I relate, all right,
I love it. Yeah in August birthday. So you grew up Chicago,
moved to Milwaukee, never lived Florida, never lived in Milwaukee. You
never lived in Milwaukee. Nope, nope. I commuted from Chicago to Milwaukee
to Seemanuel. Oh okay, well that's what I wanted to bring up.
Manuel de la Torre. Yes, who you got to work with and take
lessons from or tell me your history with him, because he's We've had many,
many people who've worked with him on the show, and including Manuel before
he passed away, was also featured on this pie. I've listened to that
podcast many times. Actually, oh thank you, oh wow, thank you
all. Let we'll talk about that absolutely. So I actually I was a
very young professional. I had just started in the business. I was all
of twenty years old and so it was a long time ago, so people
are going to start doing the math. Yes, I'm old, but darn
so not. So I was. I was an assistant professional at a golf
course outside of Chicago, and I'm hitting balls on the range one day and
this woman came up to me and she said, Hi, I'm Pat Kimball.
I'm the new teaching pro and I went, Hi, I'm Trash,
I'm one of the teaching pros too. And she looked at me and she
said, you're going to teach golf with that golf swing? Wow? And
I was like, Ah, what are you talking about? And so she
introduced me to a concept and from that moment forward, I knew that she
had something there. And about a month later, she invited me to go
to Milwaukee with her to meet Manuel and I never looked back. I met
him, I spoke to him. I didn't have a lesson that day,
but I met him, I spoke with him, I observed him, and
from that moment forward, I never ever looked back, and my career with
him began. So it was pretty cool. And what was it that?
Yeah, what was it that that just clicked for you? Well, so
my whole history and at that point I knew I wanted to teach. So
you could say my vocation in my life was to teach. Whether it would
be somebody teaching somebody how to tie their shoes, I didn't care. I
knew that I wanted to teach, and I haven't had to teach junior so
how to tie their shoes. But so well, it's because of Velcrow and
now slip on, you don't need to tie your shoes. But I observed
him teaching, and I and I observed Pat teaching, and Pat was manual
student for almost fifty years, and I observed both of them teaching, and
I I got a sense of calm. It's for lack of a better way
to put it. And it was just so cathartic the way they both communicated,
The way Manuel communicated, and how precise he was in the words he
used and the images he projected to his students that I knew I wanted to
emulate that. And then I started to learn about the concept that he taught
and how basic and fundamental the physics and the geometry were that it just fascinated
me and I never looked back. So unbelievable. Yeah, you say,
how precise he was with his words. Flesh that out a little bit.
What what was it? Manuel used to tell a story about the fact that
he was not born in this country and that Spanish was his first language.
And he told a story about being in school at a very young age,
and I can't remember the word that he said, but there was a double
on tendre on the word, and it was something like, you know,
how are you feeling today, Manuel, And he said, I feel very
gay or whatever it was, and the word had a double lundra. And
he learned very quickly that the words he used had to matter because in English
there could be dual meanings of a single word. So he was super super
specific about what he said and how he said it, so he never made
most mistakes again, so wow, now, let's let's take it back even
farther because growing up in Spain Um he his father was also a very famous
instructor and Angel yes I'm sorry that's Hispanic pronunciation, but yeah, or Angel
Delatorre, who was a great instructor in his own right, Yes, yes
he was he And did Manuel follow his father's um methods or just his footsteps?
So a little bit of both. So Manuel told the story that from
the time of his you know, toddler years, his father put a golf
club in his hands, and he his father and Ernest Jones were very close
and had a very good relationship, and everything that Ernest Shawn in Angel Dilatory
taught they taught to Manuel, who was this receptive little sponge at you know,
two, three years old, and literally for his entire life he lived
to his mid nineties. He never turned away from any of that, and
he absorbed all of that information, expanded upon it, and that was his
life and his mindset. It was pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. So
even he's been gone now since I think you passed away in twenty sixteen.
Yeah, and he was featured on Golf Smarter back in two thousand and nine.
I had him on the show, Yeah, episode one eighty seven,
which was rerun as Golf Smarter Mulligan's nineties. So people just go back and
listen to that. He Why is it even today that his lessons, his
methods are so embraced by golf instructors. Well, I wish it were embraced
by more golf instructors, but I think truthfully, because there is nothing in
the concept, and we refer to it as the concept, but there's nothing
in the concept that can be disproven through physics and geometry. So everything that
I strive to teach my students that I was taught by manual or by pat
is proven through the physics and geometry and science and physics don't lie and math
doesn't lie. So there's no simpler way to learn how to use a tool
than use the tool the way it was designed, if that makes sense.
And what is the tool? The golf club? It's that simple, it's
the golf club. We use tools every single day, works knives, pens,
computers, bones, glasses. Nobody teaches us how to use them.
They teach us what to do with them, not how to do it.
Wow. All right, we're gonna go deeper with that, but we're gonna
take a time out right now. We'll be right back. All right,
let's go into the concept. Okay, let's talk about the concept. Let's
explain it from the ground level up. Okay, So, in the game
that we call golf, we are given a full set of golf clubs,
which include fourteen tools in our bag. And each of those fourteen tools have
a specific purpose, and that's to propel a golf ball forward in a direction
presumably our target. And if we use that tool, each of those fourteen
tools are designed to do different things more loft, less loft, longer,
shorter, things like that. But if we use that tool in the same
way for a basic shot, we swing it in the direction of our target,
and a golf ball is propelled forward. And the biggest word I just
use beside tool is swing. And the definition of the word swing, if
you were to look in a dictionary, or for your listeners that are a
little younger, if you were to google it, you would see that the
word is defined as a backward forward motion from a fixed point or a two
fromotion from a fulcrum. We become that fulcrum in the golf swing. We
our bodies are the fulcrum that the golf club swings around. It's that simple.
Literally, that's simple. So the takeaway that I always get when we
have these conversations about him is the center point, the spine right, and
that you're working from there correct correct, specifically your sternum. So if if
we take we as human beings, have a spine that keeps us upright,
our skeletal system. Spine keeps us upright as human beings. And our sternum
is what is the focal point or the center of that swinging motion, because
we swing the club with our hands and our arms around that sternum. Okay,
so does that make sense? You want to keep going? So we
hold the golf club with our hands, and we swing the club back to
our trail shoulder with our hands, and we swing the club forward in the
direction of the target with our arms. And our arms are defined as the
part of our appendage from our elbow to our shoulder. And so I ask
my students all the time, I say our fingers, our hand, our
wrist, our forearm or elbow, upper arm, which is our tricept bicept,
and then our shoulder. So I give each of my students a tennis
ball in a string, which if you've ever heard or seen anything about Manu
and the club focus instruction and the concept that I teach, we use it
a ball on a string all the time. Ernest Jones used to tie a
pocket knife to his handkerchief. So Manuel gave me my first tennis ball on
a string, and we swing that ball and string with our arm our forearms
create a lever motion, but our arms, our upper arms, triceps,
biceps can create a swinging motion. So we swing the golf club backward and
forward with our hands and arms, and the full crumb between our tricep bicep
each shoulder to our elbow is our sternum. So specifically, in my humble
opinion, the center of your golf swing is your sternum. Makes sense now
there, Yeah, it does, It does to me. But there are
so many many different methods, concepts. There are so many different ways that
golf is being taught from, so many different instructors that we have things like
Manuel delatrees swing. We have stack and tilt, we have single pivot,
we have stillness, weight up on the front, weight up in the back.
We have so many different ways of going. Why does now, I
know you were saying math doesn't lie, but do these get incorporated into that
or are they separate? How do you feel about these? So in my
humble opinion, and again, I'm just a local golf bro. You know,
I'm a nobody so to speak. I'm a somebody to my fing.
No you're not. You're featured on golf Smarter. You're an important person right
now. But so I would say that most golf instruction, most people that
teach goal teach pieces and fixes, and what's the word I would like to
use. They teach pieces of a puzzle. We that teach club focus instruction
in this concept with manual or from manual, teach a philosophy, and it's
a completely different way to look at it. We teach an entire system or
concept that incorporates every single person. So if I were to take a teacher
that say, teaches stack until what, and I specifically teach special Olympics,
I teach wounded warriors, I teach veterans, and I teach people with physical
limitations. Thank you, Thank you. I love doing it. Thank you
for doing I love doing it. That's awesome. It's probably the most rewarding
part of my job. But we'll talk about that then more later. When
I encounter somebody that is missing a leg or a person that is paralyzed from
the waist down, how could I possibly teach that person stack until? I
can't? But I can teach that person to swing an object, which in
this case would be a golf club around their center, which in my humble
opinion is their sternum. However, that person's ubility to do that, the
concept remains the same. A swing is a backward forward motion from a fixed
point. It is a to and fro motion from a fulcrum. So,
however that can be accomplished with that particular person and their body is how you
get it accomplished. But I can't teach them to put their weight on their
front foot. I can't teach them to forward press. I can't teach them
to keep their left arm straight because what if they don't have a left arm,
if they're a right handed player. What if? What if I myself
personally happen to be blind in one eye and legally blind in the other.
How can I teach somebody to focus on the dimple of the golf ball?
Why? I can't because I don't see the dimple of the golf ball.
So how could I possibly teach somebody to do that? I myself, personally
don't use an intermediary target like a lot of teachers teach, because I can't
see it. So how could I possibly teach you to do it if you
can't see it? Can't? So the concept of swinging a tool, in
this case, a golf club backward and forward from a fixed point can be
accomplished any way. Your body can physically do it, and you can still
accomplish a great golf swing and be very successful at the game. Wow,
Yes you can, and you are and we'll be back right after this.
Your visual impairment, yes, does it? How severe is it to impact
your game and your instruction? It's not it really. I I actually have
no way to answer that because I've never known any other way to be because
I was born Is this something that came on? Well, I you were
born this way. I was born this way, So I have no concept
of what it is to see out of my right eye, and I don't
know what it's like. Um. I mean, I have I have contacts
where I can I can drive a car. You might not want to be
on the road when I'm around, Oh okay, So I I mean I
can fluction on a day to day basis, But I don't see what other
people see, so I have no way of knowing what they interpret. You
never never have, Yeah, and it Likewise, I can't tell you if
I were to work with you on your golf swing, I can't possibly tell
you how to feel something because I'm not you, So how could I possibly
interpret what you feel? And I think that's the thing that frustrates me as
a teacher is when I observe other teachers trying to teach this game and they're
doing the best they can. I'm not dissing any other teachers. I'm really
not. But when a teacher says, well, you've got to feel like
you're doing X, well, how could you possibly tell me how to feel
something? I can't. So I think that's my biggest frustration watching other teachers
is they have to use words that means something. Going back to Manuel's words
matter, I can't tell you how to feel because I'm not you. I
can tell you what to picture. I can't picture it for you. I
can give you an idea of what to picture, and that will make your
brain send synapses to your body, which will interpret you word movement. A
number of years ago, when I was first starting to play golf, and
I picked the game up when I was in my early forties and golf school,
Yeah sure you're talking about you're getting old. Bit okay. So so
there was a female instructor that I was working with, and she kept saying
to me, do you feel that? And I'm like, what are you
talking about? Exactly? I had no idea what she was saying, and
she said, no, feel how this is? And I she kept repeating
it, and I kept saying, I'm sorry, I don't understand what that
means. I'm new to this game and I really don't understand what you're trying
to explain to me. She goes, no, but listen, just do
and she would just All she did was repeat the same words over and over,
and it was not connecting. I was getting very frustrated. And now,
unfortunately that's more common than I care to admit. Oh yeah, it's
so sad. That's why one of my mottos in golf is a break am
I fix him? Well, thank you for taking on that role. UM
how did you? Um? I? Actually? You know one time I
was reached out to by a listener who was visually impaired that he developed as
an adult and but he's playing golf regularly and says, you want to go
out and play golf with the blind guy? And I love it? You
kidding? Of course I do. I love it. I love it.
And he had he had a handler. I mean, as as you do
and he plays competitively now and he's you know, his handlers lining them up
and telling him which direction to go with club to hit. You know,
they discussed the hole in everything, but it was oh, I hate to
pun, use this pun, but it was so eye opening for me to
be able to just trust the feel. That's trust the feel, trust the
observation and not Yeah. So I wouldn't say trust the field because our fields
changed. I would say trust your observation or trust your awareness. So and
that was yeah, I would go with awareness because he definitely had that,
definitely. And that's That's another one where I talked to my students all the
time. I try very hard not to ask them how something felt. I
tried to ask them what they were aware of because a feel can only happen
after something takes place. So if I'm in a touch something, I only
feel it after I've made the action of touching it. So I can't create
a feel, but I can be aware of the feel after it's happened.
So fabulous. How did you get involved with UM Special Olympics, PGA,
Hope, Wounded Warriors, these groups and tell me, just give me a
story, but first tell me about how you got involved asking too many things
about So that's okay. So I form in nineteen ninety nine when I when
I came up with an ame eight fifteen tea time, I opened the first
ever indoor golf learning center in the state of Florida. And I was basically
golf tech before golf tech existed. I had a simulator and three knew back
then, and so my parents got ill. I ended up helping take care
of my parents and I closed my golf shop. So I went out back
to the green Grass Facility to teach because I no longer had my indoor facility.
Whatever. Long story short, fast forward. I was at a facility
that ended up selling and close their doors. So I was looking for a
job teaching, and I was hired by the former LPGA tour professional Donna White,
if you've ever heard that name, kind of a pretty popular name in
women's golf. And Donna hired me to teach at her facility, which was
local here in South Florida. It was Okay Hilly Golf Course in Lake Worth,
and she kind of plunged me into Oh, by the way, we
have this group coming. It's called PGA Hope and you're going to teach it.
Oh okay, whatever. And the PGA Hope Program is helping our patriots,
patriots everywhere, and it's a it's a program offered by the PGA of
America and it is specifically for veterans. It's an eight week program and it's
no charge to the veterans whatsoever. And you're certified in adaptive golf, so
in case veterans are wounded or have limitations, we are trained how to teach
them. So Hope, the PGA Hope and Wounded Warriors started because of Donna
and her just throwing me into this program, which was awesome. And then
about two months later she said, oh, by the way, Tris,
you're taking over the Special Olympics program here at Okiheely, Palm Beach County,
Florida. This our golf courses, their home for the Special Olympics in Palm
Beach County. And by the way, you're doing the program. It's like,
oh okay. And there I went, and I walked out and there
were about thirty five Special Olympic athlete everything from physical to autist day to physical
limitations, to everything under the sun, to blind to deaf, to everything
else. And I just kind of got thrown into it and figured it out
the first couple times, and then started researching about adaptive golf. I got
hooked up with a woman named Judy Alvarez, who for the PGA of America
is the woman who created and was one of the founding people that created PGA
Hope and Wounded Warriors and adaptive golf. And Judy and I have been friends
ever since, and I'm certified with her instruction and mentorship on how to work
with people with adaptive needs. So that's kind of how it started. And
I'm telling you to this day, eight or nine years later, I can't
even remember when I started it with them. It is probably the most rewarding
part of my job. Truly. I can imagine. Oh, I can
imagine. Is adaptive golf growing Absolutely, They're really pursuing it. Absolutely.
Is it growing on just organically? Yea, it is. Um, There's
there's adaptive golf tournaments there throughout the country. There's I was actually just reading
a whole article about um somebody was somebody made a comment on Facebook about Tiger
playing and the Masters and about how he this person that wrote the article or
the question, how he had his leg amputated, and he thinks that if
Tiger had gone through amputation, he wouldn't be suffering as badlan if he is
now. And so it was. It was really cool. But adaptive golf
is really growing because golf is a sport. Like I said before, if
you use the tool, if you have the concept in your mind that it
is a swinging motion around a center, and you use the tool the way
it was intended, anybody can play it. Missing limbs, paralyzed, blind,
deaf, doesn't matter. Anybody can play it, which is cool.
It's very cool. Yeah, it's it's wonderful. I love that about golf.
Is Judy Alvarez still around? She is doing this, Yes she is.
She's MALPJ. And you got to get her on the show. Oh
she would love it, she would love it. Oh yeah, all right,
all right, we're gonna talk after the show to to get me introduced
so we can get her on the show. But we're going to take another
time out right now and find out what's happening golf Smarter mulligans. And maybe
even while we're talking about golf Smarter Mulligans, let's bring in a clip from
and we'll come back with a clip from Manuel Delatoria's show. As I announced
last week, we're following up on our nine Lessons from the late Tony Manzoni
with six episodes from the Golf Smarter Archives that featured doctor Glenn Alba, who
passed away earlier this year at the age of ninety one. Glenn was a
mental game pioneer along with being a professor and the golf coach at the University
of Pacific for nearly three decades. In our second episode that was originally published
on November twenty nine, twenty eleven, we continue to discuss Glenn's first book,
Winning the Battle Within When we develop a strategy, you're going to pick
a strategy that fits your game. SIT's a situation and when you can totally
commit to So if we only had a cut shot in about a month,
please don't try it out here or go back to that lob shot. And
so if you don't have a lob shot and you have a tight line,
just get it on a green. You might have a thirty footer, but
it's a lot better than trying to do something you don't know how to do
and they say you're in the trees and instead of attempting a miracle shot,
punch it down on the fairway. Another words, do something you can do.
And one of my players I work with for a long time, Kirk
Triplett, says conservative strategy in aggressive swing only do what you're prepared to do
and prepare yourself to do as many things as you can. That's our sister
podcast, Golf Smarter Mulligan's episode two hundred ten, the second of six in
our series featuring another incredible mental game coach whom we recently lost but allow his
legacy to live on. This episode is called the Perfect Swing is the one
you Trust. Check the show notes or our blog post to learn more about
Glenn, how to get either of his books, Winning the Battle Within and
The Clutch Golfer Formula, and information about donations in his memory. Please subscribe
to both of our golf podcasts, Golf Smarter, published every Tuesday, and
the podcast that revisits the best of the Golf Smarter podcast that's just no longer
available on any podcast app, called Golf Smarter Mulligans, being released every Friday
from wherever you're listening right now. The club is designed to give you a
certain height for certain distances and the other thing that people don't understand of the
loss of trajectory. The loss of trajectory are very simple. The further you
propel an object, the higher it goes. The shorter you propel it,
the lower it goes. So when you're hitting a shot, for instance,
if you say five yards off to the left of a bunker that's on the
left side of the green, and you have to say it to the green,
that ball is not going to go very high. But everybody has this
tremendous picture of the ball going high, and they hit it right in the
middle and knock it right in the bunker. So the mental picture is always
the ball going forward, so that the club gets a chance to meet the
ball in the face of the club, and then the face of the clock,
which has the waft, gets the ball in the air well. From
an interview in two thousand and nine, episode one hundred eighty seven, that
was Manuel Delatore, and it was also you can go back and find it
on episode ninety of Golf Smarter Mulligans. You got any stories from adaptive golf,
from the programs you work with that just you love to repeat. I
would love to hear it. I have one, and it's it's not even
so much about a physical limitation. But the first PGA Hope program that I
did that Donna White threw me into with no preparation. There were about fifteen
veterans in this program, one of whom was at the time a ninety two
year old World War two VET, and unfortunately this week he has just gone
into hospice, which breaks my heart. But anyway, I digress. There
was a woman at at this program and she suffered pretty strongly from PTSD,
and so the first it was an eight week program. In the first week
she kind of sat on a bench and took stock of what was going on
and didn't participate. And the second week she was sitting on the bench again,
and I walked over to her and I asked her if I could say
and she said yeah. So I said, you know, there's no pressure,
there's no need to feel like you need to participate, but if you
ever want to, just jump in whenever you're ready. And I went on,
and I left, and I went on and I continued teaching it with
the other teachers. There were more teachers there than just me, And at
the end of the eight and she ended up starting to participate, and at
the end of the eight week program, we all sat in our little food
court area at the golf course and we were having pizza, and I asked
everybody to just give me a summary of what they thought of the program and
if there was anything we could do as teachers and as a facility to make
it better. And this woman stood up, and we went around the room
and everybody talked, and Bob talked about being in World War Two, and
then this woman, Christina came up and she said. She looked at all
the other veterans and she said, you know, I know you're going to
understand what this means. But eight weeks ago, I was dragged here against
my will because I wouldn't have been available after that day, so she said,
because I would have made myself unavailable permanently. And so we all kind
of took stock of that, and then she looked over at me and she
pointed to me, and I'm a big I'm usually wearing loudmouth shorts or you
know, tied eye and bright colors and knee on it. And she pointed
to mend she said, and you with your goofy clothes and your goofy personality,
that you got more sunshine coming out of your eyeballs than anybody I know.
She walked over, she put her hand on my shoulder and she said,
because of what you did and how you did it, you saved my
life. And I started to cry and I was like, you know what,
this is why I do it every day. I don't care if you
ever hit a golf ball. Oh, a's the golf club hits the golf
ball, you don't hit one. I don't care if you're ever good about
yourself, right, I don't care if you're ever good at this game.
I care about whether or not you take pleasure in the time that we spend
together on the lesson tea and in the time you spend on the golf.
That's all I care. That's it. It's literally, it's it's pretty awesome.
That's so awesome. Yeah, you know, thank you. That's why
you do what you do. And you know, eight years later, seven
years later, or whatever it is, she is now a national ambassador for
the PGA Hope Program, and she travels the country talking about how this program
saved her life and gave her hope. So that's it. That's why I
do what I do. That's why I do when I go thank you.
Yeah, it's pretty cool. She's pretty awesome. All right, let's talk
about golf for a second. Yeah right, I'm gonna I'll gather myself here.
Um. So I was playing golf this week with um a foursome that
Will I one of the guys I've met before, but I hadn't played with
them for years, and the other guys I didn't know, and they knew
that I do this podcast, so you know, they're asking me about the
podcast and like, and always the question is who's the most famous person?
Even it's like, I don't do famous people. This is not what this
podcast is about. That count. Yeah, well, I actually like to
say that this podcast features the unsung heroes of game improvement, and so you
are definitely one of those heroes and clearly a hero. Thank you, Thank
you. And so I was, you know, watching and I don't,
you know, like, even though I feel like I have this master's degree
in game improvement just because of speaking to hundreds of golf instructors, I don't
like to give out tips and lessons. I like to ask somebody if they
want an observation and one of these guys. My observation was, you know
you're alignment. You hit the ball exactly where you were pointing, so I
don't know why you're surprised it went so far right your body was where.
He goes, well, I said, show me how you line this up.
And he steps up to the ball and he looks over. You know,
he's right handed, so he looks. He turns his head and looks
over his left shoulder and he's like looking down the line. And I'm like,
really, did you ever play any other sports as a kid. He
goes, yeah, I played basketball in high school. I said, show
me how you shook a free throw and he, you know, stands right
there in front of it and he shows the motion. I said, oh,
you don't look over your left shoulder and push the ball after the ses
No, that's ridiculous. I said, why do you do that? I
said, show me, you know your preshot routine. Maybe you should stand
behind the ball and look and pick a spot. I said, make three
points the ball the target, and something about twelve to fifteen inches in front
of the ball. Make that your line, and then then step up to
the ball and focus lining up with that little spot in front. So with
that said, he's like, WHOA, I've never heard of that. It's
like, yeah, well, I'm glad I was able to share it with
you. Jack Arnold Palmer, tell me, tell me about your preshot routine
and how important you feel it is. So my preshot routine for myself personally
is basically the same preshot routine I have used my entire career that was taught
to me by Manuel and by his student Pat Kimmel. And we used to
go through a process and we would say to ourselves if we were practicing,
it was out loud, if it was in a tournament or something, it
was to ourselves, and we would say, I will swing the whole club
from the top to the finish in the direction of the target in one uninterrupted
motion. I have translated that over the years to bring it to my students
as what I call the trust drill. And I ask my students in a
lesson, what do you swing and their answer is the club And then I
say, we swing it around are and they say center, and we swing
it in the direction of the and they say target, and we swing the
club to the finish and then I asked them what they swing the club with,
and they say their hands and arms. So after I ask those series
of questions, in a lesson, I ask the student as they stand behind
the ball and they get prepared to take their shot, that they spell the
word trust. And on the very first letter T, they start their motion
forward to address the ball and they spell the word trust. And on the
very last T they swing the club, so it's t R you s T
and then they pull the trigger and swing the club. And what that does
and what it did for me as a student and a player as well as
now as a teacher, is it allows myself and my students to kind of
take that breath, focus on what we're trying to do, and trust that
we're going to do in if that kind of makes sense. Is it a
distraction? Are you trying to get them to not think about the body parts,
about what they should be doing or what they want to do during the
swing? Oh? Absolutely absolutely it's a distraction, but it's also a calming.
Just kind of take a breath and trust the fact that you have learned
what you're trying to do. So I've always said that there's four basic fundamentals
in the game of golf. And it's not grip, dance, posture alignment
like everybody thinks it is. WHOA, I say, those more fundamentals are
we will hit the ball in the center of the club base, or the
ball will be struck in the center of the club base. We will swing
the club in the direction of the target. We will choose the correct club
for the shot at hand, and we will trust those decisions. So if
I can instill those four things centeredness of contact, swing in the direction of
the target, choose the correct tool for the project at hand, and trust,
my job is done. I don't want to be a that's disturber here,
but shouldn't choose the club? Be first? Choose the club. It's
one of the four. It's one of those four phenomenal Okay, it's not
a sequential four. Okay, noose, yeah, yeah, okay. Those
are the four things that we're trying to accomplish, and those things will produce
the trust. So now we stand behind the ball, we spell the word
trust as we address it and pull the trigger. So we've already done all
of our work, already taken right right, And trust is a huge word
here because there is so much self doubt. There's so much self sabotage.
There's so much um doubt, you know, lack of trust in almost every
swing that an amateur golfer makes, and maybe even on the Yeah, I
mean absolutely, they're questioning everything you're doing while you're standing there. So trust
is an important word to remember, but maybe the hardest thing to execute.
Absolutely. I remember Manual telling us in every lesson, or just about every
lesson, and I bring it to my students now, is that once you
quote unquote pull the trigger to start the motion of the golf swing, you
have to leave it alone. You have to allow it and trust the fact
that the club is designed to do its job. Golf club manufacturers spent a
heck of a lot of money designing and researching equipment to a job, and
we don't trust the fact that those clubs are designed to do a job.
So we got to help it right, leave it alone, trust it right,
right, that's it. That's simple. That's simple, all right.
So tell me. I'm not hard enough to make it, but Manuel was
absolutely, um so much. Tell tell me one more time. Tell everyone
how to get in touch with you, where to find your website? Um
and where they can follow you and your your teachings online. All right,
so it's pretty simple. It's a really good tea time to have every morning.
It's eight fifteen teatime dot com eight one five T E E T I
M E dot com eight fifteen tea time. And it's pretty simple from there.
If you type in a fifteen tea time, you can type in my
name. You could do whatever. I'm on YouTube, Instagram, all those
fun social media stuff and all of my information is listed. Pretty simple.
Well, thank you so much for your time, and thank Rick Petrick for
turning me onto because we've learned a lot. I've learned a lot and I'm
going to do everything I can't take that trust with me to the next teat
box. Absolutely, thank you so much. So I really want to give
you a quick update on the hidden gem of a course I played last week.
Northwood Golf Course is tucked away in a grove of massive redwoods in Sonoma
County, designed in nineteen twenty eight by Alistair mackenzie, with a very rich
and riddled history. But it's only a nine hole course and we played through
twice, which was kind of a dream come true because whenever I play a
new course, I frequently think about how I can't wait to play it again
with a little more course knowledge under my belt. Well it's now May,
yet we still had three separate downpours during the round. It was so strange
for northern California to get rain that late in the year, but clearly this
has been one of the strangest and wettest winters that I can remember. But
the rain served its purpose as I'm training for ninety holes in three days this
coming June a Bandoned Dunes. As a matter of fact, I've just scheduled
an episode with Bandoned Dudes to get a history and overview of each of the
courses on that incredible destination property, So stay tuned for that now. Over
the weekend, again, in preparation from you know, I'm in training,
I played at Bedega Bay Golf Links, which again it was perfect training because
we were on the coast of the Pacific Ocean with strong winds throughout the round
no rain, think goodness. But it also included an eight plus mile walk
and nearly three hundred forty feet of elevation change. The marshals thought I was
crazy for not only walking the entire round, but for pushing a golf cart
up these hills too. I'll leave some photos from each us on today's blog
post to share some of the incredible beauty I saw in both places. I
want to give a shout out to Herbstrackman of Tampa, Florida, whereas he
says, Tampa, Florida. But you can't fool me, Herb, your
new England accent tells me that you currently live in Tampa, but that's not
where you're from air quotes and as our newest Golf Smarter Ambassador, Herb chose
to receive Tony Manzoni's video of the Lost Fundamental, and you two are eligible
to win one of three great prizes just for leaving a voicemail. You can
choose Tony's video a glove and glove storage compartment from Red Rooster golf dot com,
a unique glove subscription service that offers many styles of gloves and twenty six
sizes for both men and women. Or you can get a box of X
one balls with a Golf Smarter logo from Oden Golf, the golf brand that
sponsors and pays everyday golfers. These twour quality balls are a fraction of the
price that you'll usually pay, and when you use the code golf Smarter at
checkout, you'll receive an additional twenty percent off the order. Their link is
in today's show notes. Just send an email and I'll get back to you
with some instructions of what to do and what to say, and you are
officially a golf Smarter Ambassador. Write to golf Smarterer podcast at gmail dot com
or pay a visit to golfsmarter dot com and while you're there, click on
the Hey Fred button and leave me some questions, comments, or maybe even
suggestions for upcoming episodes.