I played in the Australian Open. I think it was nineteen eighty nine at
Royal Melbourne and Greg Norman was leading the tournament by I don't know six shots.
On Sunday, the wind blew so hard and the greens are so fast.
It was blowing the balls off the greens. So Greg Norman comes as
a third hole, he hits a pot from below the hole. It goes
up this is the hole and then turns and comes back farther away than he
had originally putt it. And you know what he did. He picked the
ball up and he just walked off the course. He just quick he said,
I'm not doing this. He's leading the Australian Open and he just picked
it up and he just left. He said, yeah, this is so
I'm not doing this. Hi Fred. This is Blaine quarter from Quarterlane,
Idaho, and I played the Highland's Golf Course. This is Golf Smarter number
nine oh four. We don't need to grow the game, just sustain it.
With former PGA Tour pro John Ericson, this is golf Smarter, sharing
stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to if you lower your score
and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back
to the Golf s'mortar Podcast. John, Great to be back. Fred,
It's great to have you back. You're always a source of fun. Well,
it's it's you. You fascinate me. You have such a phenomenally interesting
perspective on golf and the way it should be played and on all levels,
especially on the professional level. And we'll we'll bounce into that. But you
you did get to play professionally with some success, correct, Yeah, Yeah,
I won on the PGA to Canada nineteen ninety one. I shot seventeen
under up at Windsor and broke No. Mo Norman's tournament record there. So
that was probably the pinnacle of my professional accomplishments, i'd say. But yeah,
I played in four Australian Opens, played the Tours down there, you
know, one few other smaller events and that sort of thing. So you
know a little bit of I guess talking about the Windsor golf course in northern
California. No, no Canada, So Windsor, Canada. So yeah,
it was at roseland it was a Donald Ross course up there that they used
had It was a traditional stop on the Canadian Tour, so one of the
you know, nice tournaments up there. I always really look forward to that
week a lot. And you grew up around golf. Yeah, My dad
was a eight time club champion, um, you know, a great,
great amateur player and just had me. Apparently there were clubs in my crib
when I was born. You know, it's not like I had a choice
really, just this is what you're gonna do. You know, some people
are going to be doctors or lawyers. It's like he's going to be a
golfer. Yeah. I think it kind of kept kept me out of trouble
a little bit, probably in high school. You know, being on the
golf team, you know it sort of grounded you a little bit. Maybe.
Yeah. Sports will do that, yeah, high school sports hopefully.
Yeah. Yeah, because you got to play. You know, it's the
etiquette and the presentation and especially probably when you were in high school, it's
a lot different. You had to have a look in an attitude. Yeah.
I mean golf, you know when I was growing up in the nineteen
seventies in high school, um, you know, it was a different kind
of a sport, right, I mean, you know, the pros were
wearing like checkered slacks and stuff or whatever. You know, it wasn't like
you're putting on a baseball you know, it wasn't really you know, this
is long before Tiger, right, so it wasn't really a cool sport.
You know, you weren't cool. You didn't walk around high school with a
I'm on the golf team. Yeah, you know, it was like,
you know, it was really like you kind of not want people to know.
Really really was you know, baseball, football, basketball, those are
kind of the you know, the sports that would kind of get the girls
or whatever. And nobody was like, oh, I'm gonna go follow the
golf team, imagine or something. It wasn't like that, you know.
So I don't know if they're doing it today either. Yeah. So why
don't you, uh, what did you're feeling about the state of the game
today, on the on the on the pro level. We'll get to the
you know, the the amateur level later. Well, the state or the
game to me hasn't changed in my mind. Um, I still believe the
golf should be more of a game than a sport, if that makes sense.
I think I think it's I think it's turned into I think golf's turned
into a sport. And if you look at the the golfers now, they
you know, they all look like linebackers or whatever, and they're super fit
and every I mean, when I was growing up, golf was more of
a game, so and to to to play the game. You if you
could hit the ball two hundred and thirty five yards off the two you were,
you were in the game. You could now be in the game.
So you could look at the at the pro tour and you would have all
kinds of short hitters like you know, Chee Chee Rodriguez or you know,
even Lee Trevino wasn't a real long hitter. You know, you had a
lot of guys that, uh, if you could if you could knock the
ball out there two hundred and thirty five yards, you're in the game.
The average tour player was hitting it two fifty, you know, and the
longest hitters were hitting at two seventy. But with the high spinning ball,
the high spinning rubber wound ball, it spuns so much more so the longer
you hit it, the more just went off line on a miss. So
a guy that was hitting it to seventy was hitting it wild a few times
around and causing him to you know, he he or she really women's two
or two to have bogies very hard to hit it long and straight. So
it's almost better to be kind of in that mid mid range a guy that
hit a two forty two fifty off the tea. But now, you know,
I'm hearing things like college coaches they're saying they won't even recruit a kid
unless you can hit a three hundred. I mean, if unless he's hitting
at three hundred yards, it's not even won't even you know, get the
nod to get recruited. So so it's more of a I think the sport
element. You know, people swinging it at you know, one hundred and
twenty one hundred, twenty five mile hour swing speeds and this sort of thing.
You know, it takes a certain amount of you know, athleticism to
do that. Um. So I think I think I think of golf more
as as a game and as as a great game, a really great game.
Um. When growing up, you would see all types of body shapes,
right, you would have let's say a short and petite someone like chi
Rodriguez. I mean he was what five five maybe waited one hundred and twenty
pounds, right, you know. And then you would have someone like George
Archer that was six six or something, and you know, I mean you
would have a guy like Bob Murphy who was just you know, had a
big beer gut, you know, Roger Maltby, Bob Murphy. You know,
there were these kind of guys that you Craig Stadler, you know,
just guys that didn't you know, they didn't look like they were in great
shape. You know, they could get around a walk. You know,
if you could walk around a golf course, you're in the game. You
could get it out there two hundred and thirty five yards, you're in the
game. From there, it was all about positioning angles. It playing the
game of golf. You know, I'm gonna hit it down the left side,
and we hit it down the right side. I'm gonna you know,
and all that sort of thing. So if you look at the golf courses
that were made, most of the great classic tracks, there was a great
run of courses made from the nineteen twenties into the forties. You know,
I think to the great historic tracks in the United States would have been probably
Australia, as well. I mean in UK you've got the old courses over
there. But I think you know, just let's just take the Montery Peninsula
for instance, right, if you look at those courses, you could not
do that now, I mean you could not. No, there's no way
that in this age you'd be able to get the funding to buy the Montery
Peninsula and build all those courses on the ocean yet a loan, the environmental
hurdles and getting permits to build courses on the water and over the cliffs,
which just just wouldn't happen. If you look at a city like Los Angeles,
okay, you know, one of the most dense metropolitan areas in the
world, and you've got Riviera Country Club, Brentwood Country Club, Beller Country
Club, Los Angeles Country Club North, the Los Angeles Country Club South,
Hillcrest will share Lakeside Rancho Park. I don't know if I'm forgetting something,
but there's nine golf courses that are taking up what two hundred acres apiece?
And of those nine that you mentioned, only one of them is public,
right, that's right, that's right. Um, So you know, think
of the real estate, the valuation of that real estate you know, and
and how little they're paying in taxes. Yeah all, I mean, it
just couldn't. It just couldn't happen. It just couldn't happen, right,
So golf became. They started pushing these courses out to the rural, suburban
or rural areas and we'll build a course out in the desert. We'll bring
him a bunch of bulldozers and make some ski slopes down both sides of whatever
and call it a golf course. Maybe throw some houses around it. It's
just it's just really different, I think in my mind, golf. All
right, let's let's think this way. Let's think about golf is a sticking
ball game, right, A stick in a ball Okay, Baseball, there's
a stick in a ball game. Um, Cricket, Tennis? Really,
um yeah, Polo. I mean we could, we could go on and
on. There's there's a lot of stick and ball games. No sticking ball
game takes up as much real estate as golf, not even close, right,
I mean not even I'm pretty sure that no stick and ball game other
than golf, the ball is moving on all the other sports. Yeah right,
right. But my point is that do we really need to make the
courses bigger. I mean, we're already golf is already taking up I think
it's a minimum one hundred and fifty acres to make a golf course, you
know, and that's that was a classic, you know, sixty six sixty
eight hundred yard golf course. Do we really need these golf courses to be
seventy four hundred yards seventy six hundred yards to make them longer and bigger and
bigger. And we're already taking up so much space in this age of environmentalism
that people and we needed to do this right to think about things being more
green and sustainable. I just don't see how golf fits into that by trying
to say, okay, now the ball is going fifteen percent farther, we
need to make the courses bigger. It just doesn't make sense. If you
looked at baseball, they're still using the wood bat, right, nobody's screaming
about that, you know, why aren't people upset about that? But they
could have an aluminum or titanium bat. The bats to this big around.
But what if they made the bat this bigger round, and they made it
out of titanium and they made it bigger, and then they changed the ball,
the baseball, and they made it out of rubber or whatever, and
then shortstops or hitting two hundred home runs a year and they're like, oh,
that's not good. And you know, we have to make the stadiums
bigger. Now, I mean, that's what's happened with golf. It It
just doesn't make any sense. I mean, you have to think, was
there anything wrong with golf playing? You know, the classic great courses.
Let's just take you know, Pebble Beach, you know, sixty or sixteen
hundred yards, you know, on hosting US Open in seventy two or whatever.
Does it really need to be longer? And then you have to look
at the way that the course was designed, the bunkering, the shapes of
the greens. It's all based upon the trajectory of the shots, the angles
into different pin placements where the bunkers are off the off the tees and this
sort of thing. To sit there and say, okay, well, now
the ball is going to go fifty yards farther and everyone's just going to fly
it over these bunkers into some part of the course that would never would have
been designed for that. It doesn't make any sense from a design standpoint or
from the standpoint of a game. But you know, I think this idea
that that golf is very hard, and I feel like people are angry at
it, like it's just, you know, anyway they can beat up this
game or make you know, if we can figure out how to hit it
farther and take the spin off the ball, we can just beat up these
courses and stuff. It's it's it's almost like I feel like there's some kind
of like a resentment or something of that the game is just hard, and
we're gonna do everything technology. We're just gonna If humans can't do it,
we'll have technology do it. You know, we're gonna we're gonna beat up
this game somehow. And I think people are missing the point. I have
the beauty of golf and the design. I just played. I don't.
I don't play that much anymore. I've only played two rounds this year.
I played Cyprus Point in January and this last weekend I just played Richmond Country
Club. And I have a friend at Richmond, so I get to play
it. Okay, So you know the golf course a little bit, Yeah
I do, Yeah, I do. Okay, so it's I'm not a
huge fan, but well, I'm a huge fan of Richmond Country Club.
And I say this because of the positioning of the bunkering and the shapes of
the greens. Let me give you an example, the seventeenth toll, the
par four Okay, okay, okay. If there's a bunker on the left
off the tea and a bunker off the right off the tea, the bunker
off the right is shorter and distance than the bunker on the left. Okay,
So that weak right fade goes into that bunker, and if you try
and hit a hard draw, it goes into the left bunker, because the
draws typically go farther than the fades right. So if let's say you're trying
to win your club championship and you got one shot lead, two holes to
play, you just parted the last two. You think you know. Let's
say, yeah, you have two shot lead, two shot lead with two
holes to play, you just part in and you're gonna win. So what
do you do when you come to seventeen? You could lay up short of
those bunkers and hit a six iron into the green, Okay, Or I
could I could lay up, stay with a one iron or two iron short
of the bunkers, or I could try and hit a driver through the bunkers.
I'm gonna have to hit a good drive to keep it in between those
bunkers, and then I can come in there with maybe an eight or nine
iron. See you see the risk and reward there. It's just perfect,
It's perfect, It's beautiful. I loved how the bunkers were staggered. I
mean and and I love the risk and reward. Like I could just hit
one iron off the two and take the bunkers completely out of play. I
can't reach them, but I can still. I can still get it on
the green easy enough. But I'm going to come in with a six iron,
not an eight iron or a nine iron, see what I'm saying.
Yeah, And to me, whole number three at Richmond is a part of
three uphill and is the hardest part of five I've ever played. Yeah,
right, it drives me. No this, We're gonna take a time out.
We'll be back right after this. Yeah. They're doing a lot of
work or Richmond right now, and they're doing great work. And but for
me, it feels like so many of the holes have different types of grass
that it makes it harder to play. To me, it's a real thinker's
course, you know. Eating Yeah, yeah, I can see I'm hitting
it. I'm hitting it. I'm playing per simmon, I'm hitting it,
you know, two fifty two sixty off the tea. So I'm playing the
course as it was designed originally. It feels fairly unmolested out there, m
hm, as compared with some of these courses where they've tried to redo them
and make it more modern and that sort of thing. Yeah. One thing
my friend noted, he's a pro from Georgia. He came out to visit
me and we played there. He said, every hole there's a there's a
run up option on the whole m. There's no force carries, which I
think is great for member golf. And you know, remember golf is different,
right. You want to make it more challenging because this is the only
course these people are playing, so you gotta make it tougher. I would
think you can always there's always a way to run it onto the green.
Yeah, you know, you don't. A lot of these courses were just
completely bunkered all the way around, and that sort of thing, and and
even if you have a bunker that sneaks in half the green or side,
but you can always kind of feather something in there. You know, you
could always run one up. And I think that's really that's a good thing.
Alistair McKenzie was pretty good about that, always usually always having a run
up option somewhere. Yeah. Well, during our break, we um I
got news. Okay, this is totally facetious. I got news that jame
Onahan, because of health issues and the board kind of revolting, he's gonna
step down from being commissioner of the PGA Tour and your name is on the
short list to take his job. Yeah. Right, So if now that
you're commissioner of the PGA Tour, what's the first thing you're going to change
everything? Okay, you're hired. Now what's the first thing you're gonna do?
Where are you going to start? Just gonna fire everybody and just bring
in people that I think would be good too. No, I mean I
would. I would just try and get the game. I would. I
think what I would do is, uh is, do everything I could to
start a satellite tour of a classic classic game. I mean, how many
how many different versions? Of football are there? Um, actually, there
are a couple Canadian Canadian rules, Yeah, XFL w our arena football,
right yeah, right right, They all exist, right right. None of
them are going to be bigger than the NFL, which is fine, but
they exist. So I think that like a Percimonum Blade Tour would be great
to just exist, you know. I mean, if professional women's softball can
exist, I don't see any reason why. No, I mean, I'm
not putting that down. I'm just saying it exists. You know. I
don't see any reason why you couldn't just have a tour that plays the game
as it was relatively intended to be played. I mean, these courses were
designed for two hundred and fifty yard drives, and a lot of these courses
are great courses if you look at them from a two hundred fifty yard drive
standpoint. I mean, you could take a kid that hits it three hundred
and fifty yards and I give him a set of persimonent blades and we go
out and play. He might hit a little farther than I do, but
not not not as much as he thinks. And if they're having to play
these courses place like Richmond Country Club. I don't think people are just going
to go out there and shoot sixty two or three out there. You know,
you're you're younger than I am, except you're an old timer, right,
And as far as golf was concerned, you're an old timer. You're
looking at it like it was great. The way we had it. It
was challenging, it was hard. We didn't need that much space. But
all these things that you've listed, are they going to grow the game?
Is there a need to grow the game to get more people interested in,
more people wanting to play than going this is too damn hard. I can't
do this. I don't. I guess I don't really feel there's a need
to grow the game. Ah Okay, I guess. I guess that's maybe
the difference I grow the game. It's kind of like grow the economy,
you know, do we need to do? How about just it's sustainable?
Like how about I can just go down and buy a loaf of bread for
two bucks? I mean, you know, what does it have to everything
have to be growing all the time. I feel like growth is just unsustainable.
You know, the fishing industry, I'm a fisherman, you know,
so I brought in kayak fish, I catch salmon, hallibut in the bay
or whatever. I mean, do we have to grow the fishing industry?
It just depletes the bay of all the fish. And you know, do
we need more and more party boats, more commercial fishermen raping the oceans or
whatever? I don't I mean, is it is that the goal? Or
is it better just have it sustainable? Like why not? Hey, we've
got a lot of golf courses. I mean, growing the game to me
sounds like longer rounds of golf, more more beginners playing, more people hitting
it all over the place, slower rounds, hard to get tea times,
increasing the price of the rounds because you know, golf's getting more and more
expensive because you know, you create more and more demand and there's less resources,
which means that you just just economics, right, I mean, the
prices just go up on stuff. I don't know. Growing the game does
it need to grow? Maybe people that are just interested in golf play golf,
and people that aren't interested in golf don't play golf. I mean,
well, you know, as many times as I've had a chance to talk
to Barney Adams, he always reminds us that the PGA Tour is a television
show, it's not golf, And they're there to get the advertisers to let
them get their brand messages out there, to get the logos on the most
famous players in the world so that they can, you know, increase their
brand recognition. And you know that it seems like the USGA growing the game
for amateur golfers and getting more people to play the game, and then the
PGA Tour to grow the TV show. Are those in conflict with one another?
Do they can they both survive? Can they both be sustainable? The
word you use? And should they? I think? I just think golf
is a game. So let's say that you and I go and play chess.
We meet down at the coffeehouse and we're gonna play You know, I
used to do that at a guy. We'd play chess every week and we'd
meet on Sunday afternoons at two o'clock and we play chess. I mean,
is it important to grow the game of chess? You know, it's like,
come on, everybody, what are you What are you guys doing out
there? Come out and play some chess with us. Come on here,
we got some extra boards it's really important that we make it. I mean,
I don't know, it's just a game. I mean, do you
enjoy I mean, is it important we saw more monopoly boards or whatever,
or part cheese or whatever games people grew up with. I don't know,
battleship or whatever. It's just a game in that sense. The USG,
the purpose of the USG is to protect the integrity of the game. They're
supposed to be the stewarts of the game. That's what they're at. That's
that's their job. And if you look back at I've got some you know,
some old like ads from television and the seventies or eighties, there was
a big controversy about the ball going too far. But like in nineteen eighty
three when the Titlist came out with a new ball, I don't know it
was the three eighty four or something that came out and they said, you
know, and they they did studies and they said that this ball is going
two to three yards farther than the old ball. And it was a big
uproar about it, and they were saying, you don't stop this right now.
This is going to be very bad for the game. But now,
if you look in hindsight. So the longest hitter on the PGA Tour in
the early eighties was a guy named John mccomis who was from Santa Maria,
and he averaged two hundred and seventy six yards two seventy six and he was
the longest hitter on the PGA Tour. And that statistic. Now, if
if you average two seventy six on the PJA Tour, you would be the
shortest hitter on the PGA Tour, the shortest hitter. So something has really
really changed. And if the goal is to protect the integrity the game,
meaning that the game, the parameters of the game. Every game has parameters.
Chess has parameters. The king gets to do the only can move one
space, you know, the ponds can go out to and then one and
you know rooks and bishops go diagonal or whatever. You have these parameters that
that make the game. Just like basketball, you know, the court is
so many feet by so many feet, and the hoop is so high and
it's so big or whatever, and that that's what makes it interesting, you
know, it's it's the limitations that make a game interesting. I mean,
if if basketball, if the hoop was four times as big, and guys
it was just anyone that would just shoot from half court and it's just you
know or whatever. I mean, would it be that interesting? I mean,
that's that's could be making a four point line in the NBA or whatever
I mean farther and farther away, and maybe maybe that would be interesting to
make the hoop bigger, make it so, you know, maybe a guy
my height could dunk it if it was half as high and I could go
up and duck. I don't know. Maybe there's a league for that.
Maybe there's a maybe there are leagues for that. I don't know, But
I just think that golf is a game. I think that they had the
parameters right if you think about baseball, right, I mean when they when
they invented baseball, at some some point they had to arbitrarily set where these
bases were going to be, right, I don't know how how many feet
is it to the first base, do you know? Okay? Ninety feet?
All right? Where did they come up with that number? But but
the bottom line is when a guy hits a hits a hard line drive to
the third baseman right any any grounds, it picks the ground er up and
just throws it to first base. I mean it's just a split second,
right, well, if he babbles the ball, if he babbles the ball
one time, I mean, but between the foot hitting the bag the right
right right out safe, right. So it's there's parameters that people figured out
back then to be if the if it was ninety five feet, it would
totally change, right, I mean, it would just be they'd never get
them out, or they you know, or whatever. It's just I mean,
they've got these things just right. And I think that they had golf
just right with two hundred and fifty yard drives and all the angles and all
right. Take let's take a Gusta for instance, because people people are familiar
with that. The tenth and the eleventh hole, the greens are are narrow,
but they're deep, okay, so they're meant to accept a low trajectory
shot that would skip into those greens. But if you take thirteen and fifteen,
which are part fives, which are almost the same length, really those
holes, okay, they're protected in the front. The greens are wide,
but they're shallow, so it's very risky to come in with a low trajectory
shot over water to a green that isn't that deep, but it's why.
So the shapes of the greens are designed for the trajectory of the shots coming
in or you have a great risk and reward element when you have protected in
a shallow green. Am I going to go for it? I mean I
would get kind of almost a nervous feeling. I remember watching like Sevy,
you know, back there hitting a one iron, you know, into fifteen,
you know, and he's got a one ear. He's going to come
in with this low trajectory shot. He's got to hit that thing absolutely perfect
right to get that thing up in the air and have it come into where
it doesn't too hot, where it's skipping over the green and that sort of
thing. But on the tenth and eleventh holes that you come in, guys
are coming in with long iron, sometimes even a forward coming in a low
trajectory shot. But the green is meant to accept that shot. There's plenty
of depth to it to come in with a low trajectory. So right,
I don't hear announcers talking about this stuff. They should, but maybe they're
told not to. I don't know, but that would be just an example
that I think people should be able to relate to just the design element,
the parameters of the game, so that the player has to, you know,
make decisions about things and are they going to go far it? Are
they not? What are they risking the rewards? Or But if a guy's
hit chipping an eight iron into thirteen or fifteen, I mean, it's not
really that exciting. I mean they're coming in with a with a short iron
and a high shot. It's like, who cares? I does? It
just does nothing for me to watch that. But if I see a guy
with a two iron back there and he's got sweat coming up as brown,
he's trying to win a major championship, that's quite exciting, you know,
it's really quite Yeah, we're gonna take another time out. Do you like
watching golf on television? I don't watch golf on television. No, you
can't do it? Well, I mean even the majors. I No,
I don't. I can't watch the Masters anymore. I can't watch it.
Why it just does nothing for me. I mean I when I when I
look at the way those holes are designed and how they're supposed to be played
and this sort of thing, it just doesn't create the tension. When I
see guys hitting, like I just said, short irons into thirteen and fifteen,
It's like, what do is it really? I mean, how is
that? Or I'll give you another example. Um, let's take the sixteen
that Augusta right, that that Sunday pin on the back left right. Okay,
So the Greens in the old days weren't that fast. I don't know
if you've ever watched any of the old vintage footage of the Masters. Okay,
but the Greens used to put like t boxes now. Okay, So
think of that back left pin on sixteen. What do we what do we
see nowadays? Well, if they hit it up to the right, it
hits the slope and it rolls down and ends up, you know, six
feet from the hole right. I mean, that's common. But where's the
risk and reward there? In the old days, when that slope was slow,
the ball would not roll down the slope, okay. So in other
words, if you wanted to get it close, you had to shoot it
at the pin with the water right there, and if you bailed out to
the right, you had a tough downhill pot from up there. It did
the ball didn't just funnel down to the hole that That to me just makes
no sense. It takes the risk and reward out of it. I want
to see the guy have to shoot at the pin, not aimed to the
right, and have it come down. I think it's absolutely ridiculous. But
I don't. I don't think it's a matter of me being a purist or
some kind of old time or whatever. It's just common sense. It's much
more exciting if you forced the issue. You want to get it close.
You got to go at that pin. If you're going to bail out to
the right, you're gonna have a tricky downhill pot coming down that hill?
Makes sense? Would you slow the greens? Of course? Yeah, okay,
these old well I just played Richmond Countrical again. The greens were like
us open fast out there the other day. I mean it was they were
so fast it was absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, And as sloping as those greens
are, they never had any designs on greens ever being that fast green.
This whole idea of super super fast greens is I think just really kind of
against the design of these courses. They would never be but with everybody hitting,
everybody hitting farther and getting farther where where the challenge is your short game
and the putting that's gonna that's where you're gonna be losing strokes if the ball
and the equipment's going to let you go farther and be more accurate than the
risk reward is going to come in your short game getting it close or putting
on these very hard greens, difficult greens. If the greens, if you
were to design greens and you knew that they were going to be super super
fast, and I think the design of the greens would be different. They
wouldn't be you wouldn't have these big severe undulations or whatever. You'd keep more
flat type services with little, you know, subtle undulations and that sort of
thing. But these old classic courses, the reason that they had these big
undulations because the greens weren't that fast. So if you hit it up here
on a shelf, it was a downhill put coming down. This whole idea
of just putting terror into people on a five foot put or something, and
you know, if I missed this put. There was a one of the
holes at Richmond, I think it was it was the eighth the eighth hole
at Richmond Country Club where the first half of the green was unusable. The
ball would literally just roll up and they just roll back off the green.
It would literally my friend chip the ball up to the hole and it didn't
get to the hole, and it came all the way back and went off
the green. I mean, what's the point of that? Yeah? Why
And we've seen that a lot this year in Majors and whatnot, where the
ball just yeah, it falls right back off and rolls forty yards away.
You know, I played, I played in the Australian Open. I'm thinking
I'm just gonna I think it was nineteen eighty nine at Royal Melbourne and Greg
Norman was leading the tournament by I don't know six shots on Sunday and the
wind blew so hard it was it was, and the greens are so fast,
it was blowing the balls off the greens. Oh, it's just get
blown up. So Greg Norman comes to the third hole, he hits a
put from below the hole. It goes, it goes up, miss is
the hole and then turns and comes back farther away than he had originally putted.
And you know what he did, No, he picked the ball up
and he just walked off the course. Off the course. You just quit.
You just said, I'm I'm not there in this. He was leading,
he's leading the Australian Open, and he just picked it up and he
just left. He said, this is just so I'm not doing this.
And what did they do? They said, Greg, what are you doing?
He said, this is ridiculous and there and then they're like, oh,
yeah, I guess you're right. It is ridiculous. So then they
canceled around and everybody played again on Monday. Oh and what do they do
with the greens? What did they do with the people? Probably watered him,
you know, trying to slow them down a little bit, but a
lot of it was the wind. But the fact is it just became ridiculous.
I don't think golf needs to be ridiculous, you know, especially if
you're you know, you hit a good iron shot into a green, if
you're back there with a fore iron or something, you hit a shot into
the back of the green and you're you know, you hit a ten feet
from the hole, but you know, if you don't make this put,
this thing's just going to roll twenty feet past the whole. I just think
stuff like that's just ridiculous. Nobody's that good that they're going to sit there
from two hundred yards out with a fore iron and say, I've got to
position this thing ten and a half feet short right of the hole. I
mean, you know, if you hit it a little past the hole from
two hundred yards or whatever, you shouldn't be looking at some death trap put
that you know you're gonna just five put or something. You know, you
hit the green, you know what I mean, you shouldn't. You might
have a difficult put. Yes, it's a downhill left or right put,
it's gonna be tough to make it, but you shouldn't have to worry about
walking off with a bogie or a double. I think that kind of thing
has so that would be one of the things I would change. I'd get
rid of all the nonsense out of golf, stuff like that. Just get
rid of it. Tighten tighten up the ferrways, make driving more. You
know, have to hit it in the ferry, or if you don't hit
in the ferway, you're you know. I mean, I played in three
US Amateurs, made the quarterfinals, and it was nineteen eighty three Chicago.
But I remember the grass was like this deep. You know you hit it
in there. Yeah, it was like a foot deep. I mean you
hit it in the grass. If you could, you know this, the
spotter would find the ball down there, put the flag down, you get
there. I mean, you just the first thing i'd you know, look
my catt am, I hitting one am I hitting wedge out of here sandwich.
You know, maybe a nine iron, I don't know. I mean
I wasn't like pulling out a six iron, think I'm gonna get it on
the green or anything. You know. Accuracy, I think it's harder to
have to hit the ball straight. So I don't understand why they're putting so
much emphasis on hitting the ball far and not having a penalty for arrant t
shots. I think you should have to drive the ball straight in a major,
major tournament. In a major tournament, yes, but not in recreational,
not an amateur golf because there are no spotters, right. You can't
have you can't have tall grass and then complain about pace of play. If
there's nobody going, here's your ball, Marshalls drive me nuts. So you've
played obviously, you played you know, amateur golf, you played college golf.
You did well and then you made it to the tour PGA Tour.
I'm curious, what did you learn playing on the professional level that you didn't
know before you got there playing in all those amateur levels successfully in the other
amateur levels. Well, the first thing I learned was there were guys that
I'd never heard of that could just go out and shoot sixty four on a
course that was impossible. I mean, I couldn't believe the guys coming out
of the woodwork. You know, you had when I turned pro. This
would have been nineteen eighty seven, so all the top players from my class.
You know, we're turning pro coming out of college, so you had.
I still had to beat those guys that I was playing against in college,
right, But now I've got to beat some guy who's been out there
for twenty years, who's played this golf course. You know, if I'm
playing in the BC Open in Canada and it's my first year looking at Point
Gray country Club or whatever, trying to figure out how I'm gonna play this
course, and here's a guy who's been playing this same tournament for twenty years,
tis played at five times. You know, he's playing the five rounds
on that golf course every year, right. I mean, so this guy's
played this course, you know, over a hundred times, and I've and
it's like his home course right right, and I'm looking at it for the
first time. I couldn't believe how good players were that I'd never heard of.
Wow. So you know, there was an old saying that if you're
gonna be a pro golfer, you have to be the best player within two
hundred miles of where you live for sure. Okay, so you learned a
lot about the competition when you got up to that level. You learn about
your game. I wasn't good enough, you know. So you know that's
when. And then in my big moment, you know, I know we
don't we talk more golf here, you know, on my site and stuff,
I'm talking more swing theory and all that stuff. And you know how
I knew that I was playing Australian Open. I'm on the driving range at
Royal Melbourne. This would have been, you know, in nineteen eighties seven.
I think I'm hitting balls between Greg Norman and Sandy Lyle. Sandy Lyle
had just won either won the Masters of the British Open or whatever. Greg
Norman was number one in the world. And it sounded like gunfire going off,
you know, I mean the way they were striking the ball. I
mean, it had a different sound to it. I mean they were these
guys were really accelerating the club and compressing the ball in a way that I
had. I didn't know anything about that. So when I came back home
and worked with my teacher, I just kind of thought, you know,
this isn't working. I'm gonna have to change my technique here and become more
of a hitter, you know, than a swinger. I was kind of
more of a dainty sort of you know, swinging the club really relaxed and
sort of you know, had a real pretty, pretty flowing swing, and
that no good. That wasn't gonna work. So I had to change and
then I did, you know, So I committed to doing that. I
worked my butt off and then worked out, got stronger, you know,
just committed to it, and then I became a much better player. So
I think professional golf it made me better because I realized I had to be
better, and I realized the competition was better. And it's the best thing
you could possibly do for your golf if you want to become as good as
you can possibly be, and if you have the fortune to get out on
the pro tour and see how good those other players are and then commit to,
you know, trying to raise the bar for yourself. And I think
that's, you know, why I became as good as I did, and
why I'm even someone like he's even interested in talking to me. When you
said a moment ago, you talked about how accelerating the club. Now explain
the difference between accelerating the club through impact versus swinging hard. Okay, So
there's there's there's two ways to hit a golf ball, either what I would
call swinging or hitting Okay, okay, from a physics stamp, I just
make it as simple as possible. You would have there's a difference between a
momentum strike and a force strike. Okay, So one you would have a
momentum would be, all right, let's say that you're going to be hitting
the ball at one hundred and ten miles an hour clubs. Okay, So
here's the ball, here's the club, Okay, momentum would be I'm already
at one hundred and ten miles an hour right here, okay. In other
words, I'm gliding the thing in. I've reached maximum acceleration on the way
down. I went from zero to twenty thirty, forty fifty sixty, seventy
eighty nine, I get I get to one hundred hundred and ten hundred,
ten hundred, ten hundred and ten. Okay, So you were for these
people who are just listening when you you're talking about that, you're about twelve
thirteen inches behind the ball and you've already reached your maximum clubhead speed. Yeah.
Most people reach maximum clubhead speed, you know, somewhere on the down
swing. You know, they reach their maximum speed and then they're gliding the
club in to the strife. Okay. So that's basically what what those people
are doing. You're gonna you're gonna flex the shaft at the top of the
swing. You're gonna flex it, okay, and then and then that shaft
is going to unflex into the ball. Okay. In other words, you
load the shaft and then that shaft is gonna kick and it's gonna flex into
the ball. Does that make sense. M Okay, that's swinger. Now
they hit her would be saying, Okay, I'm gonna load the shaft,
but I'm gonna keep accelerating, keep accelerating, and I'm going to be holding
that shaft flex into all the way to the strikes. In other words,
you're gonna be picking up speed. So at one hundred and ten, that
same golfer would be one hundred and six seven, eight, nine, ten
to one hundred and ten at contact right trot striving for one hundred and eleven
twelve right. The ball is going to obviously the forces of impact is going
to slow the club down a little bit, but the intention of the golfer
is to continue to accelerate that club beyond the strike, which which you could
do if you didn't have a ball there, if you just took a swing
and you didn't hit the ground like like, I can swing the club to
where the club is moving actually faster after the low point. So in other
words, I'm holding So when I when I flex the shaft, I come
down and I'm holding the flex of the shaft all the way to the strike,
if not beyond now. So you would say, well, why why
does that matter? A lot of people would say, if you're hitting the
ball at one hundred and ten miles an hour, who cares whether you're accelerating
or not because it's say the club's hitting it at one hundred and ten.
But here, here's where where people where people are missing the point. Let
me grab a pen here, okay please, So the audio audience use your
words, yeah, because I'm watching you, but no one else is.
Yeah, yeah, okay. So if I'm if I'm accelerating the club in
other words, there's a resistance in the head. You've got the head on
one end and you have your hands on the other at the shaft. Right,
So I got the club the club head is on one end of the
shaft and my hands are on the other. Okay. If i am pressuring
the shaft through the use of my hands and my body and everything, and
I'm pressuring that shaft and I'm holding the flex of the shaft back, what
that does is that puts feel and pressure in my hands. Here I can
feel the shaft in a tangential way. In other words, a tangential way.
I'm pressuring the grip and I feel it in my hands. That allows
me to feel where the club faces at. I had now have control of
the club face. I can feel where it is. As soon as I
lose that pressure, I lose shafflex, then I've lost the pressure in my
hands and I can't really tell. I don't have the accuracy to be able
to tell where the club face is at h That's a secret to golf.
That's it. That's it secret. Now that we have the secret, let's
take another time out, all right. This week on Golf Smarter, Mulligan's
is part two of our conversation with John Novicel of Tour Tempo from twenty eleven.
These are a great pair of episodes to hear back to back because this
information can really have an impact on your performance. As we learned in the
last episode, Yale University researchers confirmed what John had been teaching for years,
and that's a consistent rhythmic swing. The guy had two bunker shots during the
round after you worked with our stuff, and he hit them both six within
six feet of the pen and they just, you know, nice soft landing
and everything. And he says is playing partners remark on how pro like the
swing looked. And so that's the other thing that we found out for the
long game, that amateurs don't swing tempo wise as fast as the pros.
And then on the shore game. They swing too fast compared to the pros.
That's Golf Smarter Mulligan's episode two hundred and twenty featuring John Novicel of Tour
Tempo in an episode we called when was the last time someone said to you?
Nice swing? Please subscribe for free to both of our golf podcasts,
Golf Smarter, published every Tuesday since two thousand and five, and our sister
podcast that revisits the best of the Golf Smarter podcast called Golf Smarter Mulligans,
being released every Friday from wherever you're listening right now. So with that last
description, is that where your nickname lag came from? Yeah, Lag Lag
Ericsson. Is it you're putting or is it you're the swing? Yeah?
Pressure, lag pressure is my email address, lag Pressure at GMx dot com.
Anyone wants to email, Okay, thank you, we will. Yeah.
So, but lag pressure is a pressure on the shaft. So in
other words, just think of it if you're, you know, in a
fast car, I mean, and somebody hits the gas and you feel pinned
to the back of your seat, right, Yeah, that's what you want
to feel in your hands. You want to be able to be because if
you're if your hand is pinned on the back of the club because you're accelerating,
you can feel the club okay, if you're the whole idea of weightlessness
is that you can't feel anything. You jump up a diving board, you're
free falling, you don't feel anything until you hit the water right right.
But if you're accelerating in a car, you know you're pin to the back
of your seat, you know you feel everything. So you want to be
able to feel because golf is a game of feel. You have to be
able to feel where the club face is in relation to space and time.
And if you if you accelerate too soon, you lose the pressure in the
right hand and you lose a sensation of where the club face is, and
that's why people hit the ball all over the place. This is a problem
with the PGA tour players on tour. Why they're you know, how can
these guys that are out there, you know, playing every day and they're
pros and the best in the world. How can they be hitting a driver
fifty yards offline? How can that happen? And it's very simple because they
have reached acceleration too early on the downcing because the clubs are too long and
they're too light, and they and they lose pressure on the shap and when
they get down to impact, they can't feel where the club face is and
the ball just goes, you know, fifty yards offline where in the in
the old game, when the heads were heavier. Then if something is heavier,
it's harder to accelerate it quickly, right, I mean, something's heavy,
you know. It's just like if I were held a bowling ball and
I had it against my chest and I was going to toss it over to
you, I've got to kind of push on that thing. Push, push,
push, and it's a slower acceleration, right, But if I had
a beach ball, I could just tap it with my other hand and it
would quickly accelerate over to you, just right, excelry, very quickly.
So the idea of the heavier clubs was to help players feel the club and
create pressure on the shaft and acceleration. Slow the acceleration rate so that you
can bring it down to impact. You can actually feel or the club hit
as an impact. That's why the old time game guys used to hit it
straighter than they do now. But that doesn't work. A two and or
fifty yard drive doesn't work on a seventy five hundred yard golf course, right,
So the young players are doing the correct thing by hitting it three hundred
and fifty yards because that's what you have to do in the courses of the
long and they've cut down a lot of the trees on the courses and the
rough's not that high, and they're not really penalized for hitting it fifty yards
offline. Didn't we just watch us when the guy who was gonna get in
the other fairway or whatever. It's no big, no problem, right,
yeah, right in the middle of the trees. So it's just a different
it's a different game. And you know, I'm an advocate for the old
game because I think it's it's a better game. It's more more articulations,
it's a little more of an intellectual game, I think, and it's it's
a more equal opportunity game because if you're five five and you weigh one hundred
and thirty pounds, you can play against somebody six six the way it's two
hundred and fifty pounds or turned seventy five pounds, and you could everyone's in
the game. Short people, tall people, fat people. Everybody's included,
even ugly people, even ugly people. Good, I'm glad. All right.
Let me ask you this as a golfer, not a golf instruct but
as a golfer, which what is your superpower? What's my strength as a
golfer? Yeah, accuracy, hitting the ball, hitting the ball straight,
and shape you can you shape your shots as you need or you're always just
straight? No? I never rarely ever hit a straight shot. I'm always
working at one way or the other, left or right, right to left.
Um, my strength is it. I have very very very good technique
that I've worked very very very hard to master, technique which allows me to
hit the ball straight, accurate, move the ball left or right, right
to left, keep the ball in play. I played Cyprus Point in January
of this year and I hadn't It was only the second round i'd played in
two years. And I went out and in twenty mile an hour wind,
I hit fourteen greens out there, Gee's and the and the four greens that
I missed, I could have easily have hit all those four greens. One
of them I actually hit the green, spun the ball off the green.
Oh, well, another one, I was drawing the ball in from the
right side and it hit just right to the green and it hit a soft
spot and stuck. If it just bounces at all, it kicked, it
would have kicked down perfect to a back left hand placements. It wasn't a
bad shot. Could have that one, could. You know. There's a
lot of wood as shitos in golf, but I'm just giving the yeah.
But these were these weren't like I really hit bad shots. Um I missed
the green on a part five because my my right foot slipped off the tee
because I wasn't able to wear steel spikes, which you know is another topic,
but um my ball went into one of those bunkers off the in the
faraway that you know. I had to wedge out and hit sideways, which
so I usually don't miss the greens on par five's usually yeah, but I
did in that case. And then the only other green I missed was on
the eighteenth. I hit it about four yards through the faraway and I'm down
in the little swale down They're trying to hit a shot up and over the
cypress tree to the green. I hit a nice shot over the tree right
at the green, and the wind was blowing so hard off the coast,
I couldn't feel it from down where I was at. I just miscalculated.
And the Cypress trees are kind of stiff, you know, they don't really
move a lot, so I didn't really see couldn't really see the branches moving
and realize there was that much winded. The ball just took it right to
the green. So those are the four greens I missed. And you know,
I walked off thinking, well, I mean, I don't even play
golf much anymore, but yet I could go out to Cypress Point and hit
the ball this well, you know wind, And I mean the eleventh hole,
I had driver one iron into the green onto the green. Next hole,
driver two iron on the green, next all driver four iron on the
green. When you come straight into the teeth of the wind at Cypress,
you'd turn the tenth hole, he come eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, you're just dead into the wind on the famous sixteenth
too, wood boom right over the right over the bay, you know,
the water put on the left side of the green. So I hit the
ball beautifully out there, but it's that's a strength in my game is just
good technique. Now I need to talk about equipment for just a second.
Here, becausetta O the questions I wanted to ask, but you said a
couple of things that made me want to ask. What's in your back?
What clubs do you carry in your back? And Mike? Right now I'm
hitting nineteen fifty one Tommy Armor, Silver Scott Irons for irons. The reason
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight
nine. Yes, one carry a hybrid? No, no, no,
no no. I care fairway woods, fairway nettles, a driver. I
carry a driver. I carry a two wood and a forwood and these are
Percimmon wood. So my driver is a nineteen fifty six Folding Model twenty eight.
My two wood is a McGregor Attorney M eighty five, and my forward
as a superiomatic. I know, I'm sorry McGregor velocitized for seven forwards.
How many wedges do you carry? Just just a wedge in a sand pitching
wedge in a sandwich? Wow? Incredible. Okay, Now the other question
about your equipment is you mentioned that you slip because you weren't wearing spikes.
You don't wear spike lest shoes, do you, well, no, I
have the removable spike. Yeah. Just the plastic spikes are no good.
I mean not for a proper golf They don't give enough traction. I mean
they get some, but not not as much. I mean, if you're
on something a little bit of a sandy kind of teen area or something like
that, my right foot can slip out. With the steel spikes, for
you know, long steel spikes that really just grip into the ground. It
allows you to swing more in a rotational way. The golf swings have evolved
a lot based upon the golf shoes. And as the golf shoes were steel
spikes and people were really rooted in the ground, you saw a lot more
rotary kind of golf swings, moving more more level as spikes became plastic and
not as good traction, and the golf swings have got more up and down,
more upright because with the rotational swings, it's it's harder to grip into
the ground. I think those shoes are something that I think about it this
way. It's very strange because steel spikes are legal with the us GA.
They're not illegal, they're legal, okay, okay, but I can some
courses are now asking you not to wear them. Well, I mean for
the last thirty years. I mean, you can't show up with steel spikes,
right, So that's that's to me, the same as if I went
to the bowling alley and I bring my bowling shoes and they say you can't
really wear bowling shoes here. You got to go new socks, you know.
But it's like, hey, but these are bowling shoes. They're legal
with the United States Bowling Association. Yeah, but we don't really allow those
here on our on our lanes because yeah, you know, they just don't
you know, they kind of they put they scuff up the lanes and stuff.
I mean, that's how that's how ridiculous it is to me that I
can't go out play around to golf with with steel spikes and my golf shoes
because because they're legal not did the USG make them illegal? No, So
why can't I use them because some local world every course has a local rule
that says you can't use them, I mean their rugs. It doesn't it
doesn't really make much sense. I mean that you okay, the footing in
any sport is important, you know, whether it's basketball, football, So
you need traction, and especially now because they allow the players to tap down
the spike marks. So what's the problem now, See that was the original
argument against steel spikes. Oh they make spike marks. Oh okay, we
don't want that. But now you can tap down the spike marks. But
they're still so yeah. I don't I don't think real highly. It's a
lot of these organizations that are in charge of stuff. All right, let
me go back to this this line of questioning as an instructor, what is
your superpower? I think my ability to take very call implicated concepts and just
make them simple for people. I don't. I don't believe much in these
swing monitors and launch things and all that stuff. And I think the ball
tells you everything hit A golf ball goes over here, goes over there.
You know, I hit it? Fat I hit it. Then I don't
know what is the machine going to say, oh, the club face was
open? Was the ball told you the club face was open? I mean,
well, it just makes no sense to me that I would need track
man or any of these sort of things to tell me what's happening in the
golf ball. So I just get rid of all that stuff. Let's just
look at you know, what's happening with your shot and what we need to
do with your golf sing to fix things. So I just try and keep
things as simple as possible. And I don't trying. I never want to
talk over people or through people. You know. I don't say, oh,
you need to you know, contract this thoratic muscle or you know what
are people? People don't want to be talking like they're in the doctor's office
or whatever. You know it says I talk, you know, knee hip,
shoulders, had should you know, arms risting. I just just common
everyday language of people. I mean, I know a lot of that stuff,
but the technical things, but people don't want to hear that. Okay,
um as a competitor, as somebody who's won on the PGA Tour.
As a competitor, what is your superpower? My ability to win when when
I'm playing good. I was always very confident that I could win because I'm
playing good. I was never really much of a choker. I just thought,
hey, I'm then I'm playing good. My problem was I didn't play
good often enough m so I would get more I would get more teeing off
knowing that I wasn't playing well, then I would if I if I was
playing well, it's like, well, I'm hitting it good. I'm not
worried about hitting this fairway or the screen. I was. I was nervous
when I wasn't playing well. Yeah, that's because you know what am I?
How am I to? You know, pay my caddy in my hotel
room and get to the next tournament? All right? Last one of these
prepared questions. Um, when other instructors are in a conversation and your name
comes up between them, what is it they're talking about? What is it
they're talking about? Yeah, they're talking about you. All of a sudden,
you're not part of the conversation, but it's like, oh yeah,
John Ericson, Oh yeah, he's what are they talking about? I don't
know. I'm you know, I just did. I was just on the
PGA Tour podcast a couple of weeks ago with Mark Engelman. You know what,
Yeah, I don't have the exclusive to John Ericson. I thought you
did. I thought that I thought I did too. I thought you negotiated
this, didn't you? But I was surprised and even knew who I was
or whatever I mean, but he said he listens to my podcast. Probably
he said he'd been following Advanced ball Striking, our website stuff going back to
like, you know, two thousand and ten or something like he was.
He was, we were really inquisitive about all these things a long, long
time ago. So you just never know really who's listening or what they're saying.
I don't know. I don't know if people people think I'm kind of
crazy or not. I don't know. A lot of a lot of instructors
are curious about, um, what I'm doing. I see a lot of
the ideas that I've had are out on the PGA tour. Like you see
these boards people are putting between their feet and that sort of thing when they're
out there on the range that that I started that I'm the one to start
that right on my deck out in the back, this kind a piece of
shelf board, and I was teaching, you know, the internal leg pressures
and stuff. And you know, now people are doing that out on the
tour. So you know, Brad Hughes, you know who I worked for
three years, and he was bringing that out to the tour with some the
guys. Now they're they're on the lp J to where they're using that thing
too, so so I mean I do see some of my teaching methodology is
being influencing the modern game as well. So I guess that's good, you
know. I mean obviously picking up on some of these things, but it's
just all common sense to me. I don't I don't think I've really invented
anything. I'm just basically like, who invented Ben Hogan's golf swing? For
instance, Ben Hogan did, right. If I'm trying to teach what he's
doing, it's not that I invented it. I'm just trying to interpret it
in a way. And that's what I've been actually working on. In the
next few months, I'll be releasing a course that'll teach like what I believe
was Ben Hogan's methodology and how he went about swinging the golf club. So
it's quite fascinating, very very difficult to quite a responsibility too to try and
do that. But I just the reason I did it is I just feel
like the other instructors aren't doing it interesting. I can't tell you how many
times I've had instructors on the show that said I've figured out Ben Hogan's secret
and different interpretation. Oh yeah, and I'm and as I've said, because
I'm not a PGA professional, I'm in no position to dispute what they're saying.
So I let him go and if the audience doesn't agree, then I
advise you to stick around because next week you can have a completely different interpretation.
Well, there can't be a secret. There would have to be at
least two secrets, because any if you do one thing, it affects something
else, right, So it can't just be one thing. If you were
to say, well, Ben Hogan's secret is the way that he flattened the
shaft a transition, It's like, okay, he did that, but what
does that do. Well, then that opens a club face and shallows out
the shaft, which means you're going to have to then turn more level and
accelerate going through the strike to get the bike to then close the club face
up so that you can be able to hit the ball. So it has
to be at least two things. Yeah, Well, there's a there's a
video that's going around on social media these days from a number of years ago
where Gary Player talks about when he was a young man, Ben Hogan told
him something that he says that he never really understood until he turned seventy,
and that was about keeping the left bicep attached to your chest on your swing,
not to have your left arm out too far. And Tony Manzoni,
who we had on for years, he professed that as well. Oh,
I would agree with that. I teach that too. Yeah, keep especially,
you know, working through this tricky you got to keep all that stuff
connected. But then it's got to move all the way around and then and
then move up to you're trying to keep pressure on the shaft all the way
it really you feel like you're trying to pressure it all the way into your
finish. So I think that's what Gary Player would be talking about. But
Gary Player had a great goal saying very much like Ben Hogan, very similar,
So I would say that he would know Gary would Advanced ball Striking dot
com and Advanced ball Striking is social media to track you down, and uh
yeah, so I'm John other ways, John Ericson on YouTube. That's We've
got a pretty good channel, hundreds of videos on there, interesting things and
conversations, and then we have an Instagram Advanced ball Striking on Instagram, there's
things there. It all kind of revolves around the Advanced Ball Striking website.
There's a great forum on there with you know, I don't know, hundreds
of thousands of posts. It's just a forever interesting, fascinating dive to go
there. That would be forum dot Advanced ball Striking dot com. And that's
pretty much it's ask for the social media. Yeah, well, Johnny,
it's great to have you back on. I love our conversations because we don't
know where they're gonna go or they're going to end up right next to the
flag. I like it all right, but we'll talk you again soon.
Thank you, Fred for having me on. So here's a crazy yet typical
story that happened to me on the course last week. On the fourth hole
of one of our favorite courses, Rooster Run with our regular group, Bill
said to me, you know, Fred, you've always hit the ball longer
off the tee than any of us, but lately you've also been hitting the
ball really straight. Well. After saying thank you, I also reminded him
that you never mentioned having lost a ball before the end of the round,
or that looking at your scorecard too soon could mean trouble. And you never
mentioned the no hitter before the end of the game. Well, sure enough
it got into my head because through the next thirty two holes, yes that's
the rest of that round, and over the next one I hit a total
of six fairways and shot eighty six on both rounds. Now eighty six is
nothing to complain about, I know, but when you're shooting below eighty five
on a regular basis, there's a couple of holes there that you know could
be frustrating. But I was able to focus on my tempo and an external
target. And this past Sunday I hit five of seven fairways on the front
nine and four of seven on the back and even the t shots that missed
the fairway didn't really miss by much. So beware, don't let good compliments
scare you away. Just say thank you and move on. This week's Golf
Smarter Ambassador blamed porter from court Aline, Idaho. Wow, that's two episodes
in a row with ambassadors from Idaho. Thanks guys. Anyway, chose to
receive Tony Manzoni's video of the Lost Fundamental because he opened the show. Now,
for more than a year and a half, we've had golfers from all
over the United States and around the world, introduce each episode by sharing where
they're from and where they play, and each of them have received a gift
for their effort, and you can too, because there's two ways to choose
one of three gifts that we have to offer. First, you can write
a review of our podcast from wherever you subscribe, or introduce an upcoming episode,
just like Blaine did. Blaine had already received Tony Manzoni's video of the
Lost Fundamental. But you can also choose to receive a box of oden X
one balls with a Golf Smarter logo. And your third choice is to receive
a glove and glove storage compartment from Red Rooster golf dot com. Let me
say something about my Red Rooster subscription. You know, we don't get a
lot of humidity here in California, so I don't go through gloves that fast.
But wow, I played around this week and it was ninety six degrees
and we did have humidity, and I was walking and I went through a
glove like I've never seen before. I was sweating a lot. So I'm
so glad that my next round I got a fresh glove ready to go because
of my subscription from Red Rooster golf dot com. Now I'm going to leave
a link in the show notes and today's blog posts so you can learn more
about these two fabulous partners. And if you're interested and one something from us
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