Hey, This is Fred Green of Golf Smarter with our sixth installment of spring
Back into Golf season with the late Tony Manzoni. This episode was part two
of our Conversation originally number four hundred and nine for members only from November twenty
thirteen. As with the last two weeks, this is another episode that we've
never included in previous years of honoring Tony's memory, So it's the first time.
Even if you were listening then and you weren't a member, it's the
first time you're hearing it. His book, The Lost Fundamental is available on
Amazon, and his DVD, which we converted to a private link online,
is also available when you write to me. For the most comprehensive information ever
collected on Tony, please go to golfsmarter dot com slash Tony, make sure
you use Tony in all lowercase, and if you'd like access to the video,
please write to me directly golf Smarter podcast at gmail dot com or click
on the Heyfred button when you visit golfsmarter dot com for members only. Golf
Smarter number four hundred and nine published on November five, twenty thirteen. A
Good Golfer's arms never passed the body with Tony Manzoni. This is Golf Smarter.
Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only, Tony, Thank you,
Fred, thank you again for sticking around and recording, forget the recording,
for sticking around and answering more of my questions. I just love it.
Freds Oh, that's very kind of you. There's many things that you said
in our last conversation that I want to bring back and get more detail from
you out of that. Like when you talked about being under pressure and hooking
the ball. You said, when you were playing competitively when you were young,
whenever you were under pressure, you would hook the ball. Now forty
fifty years later and you look back on that, do you know what that
was? Sure? I know what it was. You know, as I
got into learning to be more of a connected rotating or having a connected rotating
swing, I realized that the moving of the of the left arm and the
right arm for that matter, but the left round when you go back in
the backswing, no matter how you take it back to, your left round
goes somewhat across your chest, okay, and it connects somewhere near the left
arm pit and the right arm pit. So that's why you see a lot
of tour players will put a towel across their chest and then put their arms
on the top of the toe and hit shots that way. What they're doing,
you know, it's it's restrictive in a way, but they're teaching themselves
that the body moves the arms. The arms will move off the body and
then back on the body. It's not to say that you can't do that,
and there have been some good players that did that, but I don't
think they had very long careers. Without naming a lot of guys, there's
a lot of guys on the senior tour now that can't play a lit that
were champions on the regular and it's because their game was based on disconnecting and
connecting, swaying to the right and swaying to the left and so forth.
But in my in my swing, what I realize is that when my arms
get to an impact before my left side is cleared, then my because the
head is hairier than the handle, if you swing the arms away from the
body and just swing a golf club, you'll see that the club head turns
over prior to impact because because of the weight the weight of the handle way
to the head. The head weight will roll the clubhead. So these people
that try to teach people to roll the clubhead, if you just swing your
arms ahead of your body, it's gonna roll. If I want to hook
a ball around a corner, I just keep my back of the target and
throw my arm forward, and that clubcase is closed foot from the ball,
So I'm gonna I'm gonna snipe hook it. Okay, Well that's what I
did under pressure, Because under pressure we all get a little fast on the
down. Can't help it, ok And I and realize that the faster my
arms went, the slower my body went, so they didn't correspond, and
they won't. You throw your arms ahead of your body, and there's a
saying the good golfer's arms never passed the body, never passed the body.
Now you say, wait a minute, I see the club, but it's
not because if you follow the turning of the body, the club is standing
in front of the body, but it's not going past it. So this
is how it works, real simple. You stand up to the ball.
I like you to set up sixty forty. You take the club back.
It goes across your chest and it connects somewhere high on the left tectoral muscle.
Okay, when you get to the top, instead of letting the arms
come free of the body and pulling the arms down, keep the position that
you have at the top and rotate your chest area. And now I'm not
going to say hips, because if you're on that left side, you don't
have to throw your legs first or any of that craziness. Unwine which wound
up, unline your chest and shoulders around your pivot leg, pulling your arm
through. And if you'll unwind properly, you'll be unwinding to the left,
just like on the backswing you had to unwind to the right. So when
you unwind, your body's going to turn to the left. So when you
finish your golf swing, your right shoulder should be pulling at the target.
The center of your chest should be pointing quite a bit left of the target.
And if you watch the tour ladies or men's you'll see that that's how
most of the players are finishing. No one's jilted back with high hands.
Everything is around because players are finding that's a more effective way to play.
So when we're connected and I mentioned that at the right arm. Sure,
because the right arm can't come loose and go out away from the body on
the dollswing because the elbow will be out of position. So that closed armpit
of the right side is just as important as a closed armpit on the left
side. So with both of them closed, the right with the right arm
does in the backswing is you turn right arm folds to a position and that's
your position. But that's how you get the club back. You don't do
it with your wrist. Cock. You do the arm fold, okay,
and it sets the wrist so that the club head or the chef, the
shaft in your left arm four form kind of an L position. Okay.
We don't want to V position. That's too much risk. Cock. We
want this L position the club. Your back is to the target. The
club looks three quarters and if you look at the tour today, you'll see
most everybody like that. You don't see that past parallel look except for a
few out there. And they have one commonality. They get wild with the
driver. They don't know if it's going right or left. Under pressure.
Okay. The ones that are compact, they're popping it in the center.
All the time Louis Lushaven just a bunch of them that are rotators. But
anyway, so we're at the top of the swing. The left arm is
connected high in the pectoral. The right arm you can be holding a handkerchief
under the armpit. The elbow is not touching the bot. It just the
armpit is closed. You just take that and you rotate to the left around
the pivot leg, which is your left leg if you're right handed, and
you just keep rotating and the club comes last. And it's kind of like
a hockey player. That the action of a hockey player with a stick to
a puck. It's a one piece action. It's not a throw of the
arms, is a rotation of the body. On my video you can see
that little exercise I do that makes you instantly feel this. And if there's
any one thing that you must do, it's fats. And Ben Hogan said,
you take all your natural instincts and do the opposite, you'll have a
pretty good golf swing. And he's absolutely right, because when the ball is
down on the ground and we've got the club in our hands, the tendency
for us is to hit down on that golf ball to throw those arms.
And we've been told hit down on the ball. If you have the club,
let's say a shoulder height, and you swing it to the other side,
the club has to come down to go up. So there's no need
to try to hit down because all you're going to do is you're going to
great tension and you're going to and you're going to get steeper than you should.
The swing has a shape to it. It's kind of a U shape,
so there is a bottom to it, but you don't need to do
anything to get there. It has to get there for it to go back
up on the other side. So I never advocate hitting down on a golf
ball because then you're thinking about impact too much. And then what we get
into anticipating impact, which causes a tension. And that's why all the beginners.
You see beginners top the ball and the guy says, you looked up,
okay, And then you got their their faces glued to the ground and
glued to the ball, and they still top it that you looked up.
That's such a bunch of beloging. It's just you tighten up and so when
you anticipate impact, you're grabbing that handle tighter. You're getting ready to hit
something. Okay, that shortens the muscle, pulls the club to the to
the center or top of the ball, and you roll it on the ground.
So when we're playing golf, and as I teach all my students,
I'm teaching you where your body is the relationship with that golf ball on the
back swinging on a through swing, and that body has to be on the
ball on the coil, and then the whole right side goes past the ball
on the through swing and the ball is in the way of that action.
If you focus on that back of that ball or hit down on that ball,
try to keep your head down on that ball. You're going to hit
a lot of shots behind the ball because when we start, when we put
that doll cell behind the ball, if we bring it right back to that
spot, we're going to go divot ball. And we don't want to do
that. We want to go ball divot. So there has to be a
forward and somewhere in that motion to hit the ball first and then take the
divot. That's the through motion. So when for all of you out there
that hit the ball thin or hit behind it, that's because you are behind
it. You're not supposed to be behind it when you hit it. It's
supposed to be moving through it. You're supposed to be on the left side.
So don't buy into that crap here all the time. Stay behind it,
keep your head back behind it. That's nuts. There's no sport that
you do that. You hit a tennis ball, you move forward. You
throw a punch, you move forward. You throw a baseball, you move
forward. You got to move forward. You got to move through it with
a Now I'm not saying that your heads go way forward, but it's not
the golf swing. If you rotate past that golf ball, that club has
come and last, and it's going to hit the ball with all the force
of your core. When you try to stay behind the ball, all you're
doing is sewing your arms foward of your body, which is the worst thing
you can do if you're going to try to not only hit it far,
but hit it straight. The golf swing is supposedly a circular like if you
draw, If you follow the club head around, it's a circle correct around
your body. It's a rotational It's a rotational move. That's the only way
that our body moves. When you walk, you rotates, so it's a
rotation move in rotation doesn't mean straight back and straight through. That's why when
people say take the club straight back, you know that's really not that's really
not correct. Because the body's turning. The club has to stay in front
of you relative to where the body is. So when the body's turning,
if the club's in front of you, but it'll be inside the line of
the it'll be inside the ball. And is it must be. You can't
take the club back on the ball and swing it down the ball. And
I hear that all the time. Oh yeah, he kept that club going
right down the ball and baloney, you can't do that. The club the
toe has to be turning because you're turning. Okay, you've got to trap
that golf ball. The more you push that club down the line, that
what's going to happen just out of the construction of the club, the neck,
because that's where the shaft is. The neck is going to lead that
club, and the toad is going to be back and you're going to hit
everything right you or slice the ball, and the blade's going to open up.
The more you push it straight back at the target, the more the
blade is going to open up. That club has to come back. You
know, the path of the swing is from square, it goes inside,
back to square, back to inside. So that's the shape of the golf
swing. And that's that's what your body is doing. It's like a hub
and a spoke. Your body is rotating and the club is rotating relative to
what your body is doing. That's why good players connect the arms of the
body and the arms move where the body takes them. They're not trying to
take the club back and put it in a position because it's then it becomes
disconnected to the body and then they've got to re routed the arms back to
where the elbow hits that inside of the hip area to hit the golf ball.
Oh well that can do that on a consistent basis. Am I making
you crazy? Yeah? Absolutely? Am I making you crazy? Yeah?
Absolutely? There's so much going on right now in my head. It's like
if I if you were in front of me and I set you up and
you had some idea of the golf thing. You've been playing a while,
okay, but you know I slice everything, all right, look everything or
whatever. I show you that when your arms go free of the body on
the downs and the club is either going to roll over or you're going to
hang on to it and it's going to stay open. And that's why you
can get up and hook one ball and then you guard the next one and
you pull it. Yeah. So when when you're when you're addressing the ball
and you're you're setting up with the ball with the club face, you're staring
at the ball, your club face is sitting just behind it when you're coming
So, but when you come through on your swing, that is not the
base of your swing, right, that's the base of it would be in
front of the ball, right, the bottom part of yours, the bottom
part of the swing would be you know when you're falling through because you want
to hit the ball and then hit the ground. Do you want to make
the divot after you hit the ball. Yes, Well, it's that turning
through impact that brings the club so that the ball is being struck on the
down swing, so it hits the ball, hits the turf when you're in
the proper position, just prior to impact. Okay, the club is coming
down, it strikes the ball and it takes a little bit of divot when
you get behind the ball. When you have too much weight on the right
side, it's trying to hit the golf ball. You're going to come down
in behind the ball. You're going to bring the club kinda where you would
have it to start with, so you're going to go dive it ball.
And that's how most people hit it. They take real deep to its,
and even when they hit a good shot, they still hit them a little
flabby because they're in the wrong position. They're behind the golf ball. If
you look at a picture at impact of a good player, you'll see that
his chest area is not in the same position he was at a dress like
some people try to say, get back to the dress. His left side
is open, it's turned to open, okay, and the right side is
now driving past the golf ball. If you look at it you want to
see a great swing, look at Anakis or Instant. That girl had more
birdies of two and three inches because she hit it so dead at the hole
because she was turning towards the target and the arms were being pulled, so
she was trapping at club dead square, so she unwolmed properly. The ball
went right where she unwelmed to and that's what we're looking for, to learn
to hit the ball without a lot of side spin. Now, when I
want to cut it or draw it, I do it by me memory.
I just set up to the ball and feel like I'm going to do it.
But there is a process of doing it that I practiced for a lot
of hours as a young man. But I primarily hit the ball with very
little movement on it, especially with my irons. Because of this action,
I can remember in the past to hit it near the pin, I had
to aim at a club or two to the right of the of the green
and draw it in. I don't do that anymore. I can go hunt
pin hunting. Because of this action, I know I'm not going to put
very much side spin on the ball. Side's been coming from the club face
closing and opening an impact. That's all it is. I mean's not a
big secret. So when you swing a free arm swing that club is going
to roll. I mean, anybody that's listening to me, you know,
just think a golf club out and swing it with your arms a little bit
away from me, and you see that the weight of the club will turn
the club over, and it's going to turn it over. Generally before you
hit the golf ball, and then the next time, because you're scared of
the death that's going to happen, you're going to hang on to it tight,
so you're gonna hold the blade open. Neither one of them are any
good. You can't come off. So you've got to have a golf swing
that if it's it's tight as heck and you got trouble right and trouble left,
that you can get up there and free swing and then know absolutely no
that you're not going to touch either bad area, that you're going to carve
it into the into the free into the fairway one way or another. You're
gonna power slice it or a soft draw, but you're gonna put it in
the fairway. And I can still do that. I just can't, you
know, I just can't hit it far enough to really really compete. If
they put me up on that ladies teas or or old guys teas, I'll
play it with anybody. You just told me in the last episode that you're
hitting the ball to sixty five on your drives. What do you mean,
Yeah, that's short compared to what people hit it now. I mean,
I'm well, but if you're playing with twelve. They play blue cheese.
I play white cheese, and so I'm I'm at least a little bit up
with them, or sometimes it will pass them with the drive. You know,
when I created the Mixed Team Championship that was on television for what sixteen
years, what we did is we figured out what women would need. Professional
women would need to compete against men. They need seventy five yards because they
not only need a distance on the drive, but they needed on the second
shot so that they could hit into a par four a drive in seven or
eight iron because most men are hitting those kind of clubs. Prior to that,
Prior to that, the gals were playing the club. The course is
so long that no one was reaching par fives and two, and they were
hitting long irons into par fours. And when we came up with this concept,
this is many many years ago, that tournament kind of changed the way
the girls perceived the golf course should be because a hard liner said, no,
no, you're making it too easy, and I said, look,
men are shooting nineteen or twenty hunder par every tournament the winners are, and
you're shooting six and seven. The perception then from the general public as well.
You're not playing as good because you're shooting higher scores, but you're playing
a lot tougher golf course. You know, they were set up like they
would be. It was like setting up a men's golf course of seventy eight
hundred yards. That's the kind of golf. But the women played it for
a long time and we changed it. But we found that on the average
galop that that pops the ball out there, they need about seventy five yards
and then they can compete. Well, that's the same by going up.
You know when I go up on a tee, you know I go up
about thirty yards. Well that makes it that has thirty yards of my T
shirt. Now I'm in the game now. So in the history, we
don't play. We don't play championship teasy. Know you played to have a
good time, right, You played the white teas and it's like so proud.
Yeah, I'm proud to play the white play up. I mean,
I love it. If some sometimes I play with clients, they say,
well, look we're going to play the senior team. I love it.
Can't can't wait. You know, I don't have any ego about that.
Good for you, because I know what my limitations are. But if you
put me one hundred and fifty yards of the green every every hole, I'm
going to make a lot of birdies. M in the history of golf,
are are different sets of teas a relatively new thing? No, no,
no, they're always Most golf courses have ladies seas and men's seas, but
most golf course now, they're a lot. I've been on a lot of
golf courses where the ladies seats were twenty yards further than the men's. That's
just that's a joke, to be honest with you. They should be pretty
close to one hundred yards on every single hole for the ladies to enjoy the
game like men. Do you see gals out there with a driver on a
par three? Well, you you put guys, you make the par three
long enough before they have to hat drivers. You wouldn't see very many pars
okay, even at the big boys. So so, I mean it's just
that it becomes an whole resight. When people design golf courses, they design
them for the men, and they don't consider the cows. They put Okay,
put the red teas here, but they don't do it. They don't
mathematically based on how far the most of the gals hit it. So you
know when the gals shoot break one hundred, they go crazy, they pop
the champagne and give everybody a pin. That's a joke. If you put
them in the right place, they're going to be shooting in the eighties and
the good ones will get in the seventies. Well, when you say that
the courses are being when you say the courses are being designed for man,
I think that the courses being designed for PGA Tour events because they're just making
their courses longer and longer and longer, which is playing into their hands of
these guys who have who can hit the ball in my own half, and
they don't have the there's a perception, and it happens at our own valley
where they'll they'll build what they call the championship fee and they'll put them back
in the corner where they you know, the desire didn't even want them to
be okay, because they think that by doing that they're going to bring more
members in. But typically these clubs, the membership is three hundred thousand.
Well, how many young people do you know that will plunk down three hundred
thousand dollars to join a club. So it's usually older, successful people that
don't hit it very far. So they make these teas so that they can,
so that they can say, well, ours is a seventy three hundred
or seventy four hundred rated course. Blah blah blah. Meaningless doesn't mean a
thing because nobody plays them right, you know, and it makes the game
slow. And you get these you get these guys that are eighteen handicaps going
back there and they and they ruin the game for the people behind them.
I don't I'm not advocating that we put the teas up where you're on the
fringe of the green team off, but you've got to you've got to put
you know, we know there's a mean average of what your membership hits the
ball. We know what they hit it, and that's what the golf course
should be played from. And for ladies, you know, come on,
how many gals hit it on? How many gals hit it one hundred and
seventy five yards? Okay, so you can't put them on a three hundred
and seventy yard hole or a four hundred yard hole that's crazy. I mean,
they're they're beating the three with on a third shot. You know what
kind of fun is that. That's why I say I'm very sensitive to this
issue because I've worked with a lot of lady professionals in my life, and
I've given them zillion lessons to gals, and the big majority, I mean,
you know, eighty percent, you know, can't hit it two hundred
yards can't. Okay, So now they get on a golf poole that's three
ninety, you know. I mean, if they get on in two,
it's you know, they might have a heart attack. They shouldn't be that
way. They should be if they hit their good drive, they should have
some kind of an iron or a rescue club to hit, but some kind
of an iron. It's just it's it's unfairly set up. And again I
think it's the responsibility of a golf course and the management to understand these things
and then sit down and come up with an idea. Okay, what do
we think our gals hit the ball? And then plot out a hole so
that they can some kind of a mid iron into that green, and that's
what the tea should be, Okay, And then you'd see that the gals
have a lot more fun and the game, the game is more playable for
them as you look at the scores. I mean, you know, I
give lessons at a lot of clubs. They invite me there to teach,
and I every now and then there's a urnament. You look at the scores,
one hundred and twenty, one hundred and fifteen, hundred and ten every
now and then you get somebody in the nineties, and that's the that's the
field. And these are girls have been playing a long time, you know,
because they're older. Yeah, you get the you know, the young
members twenty one or twenty two or twenty three that married some guy. Well,
some of those guys can play. They're fresh out of college and they
can pop the ball. But most of the girls are in the fifties and
the sixties where they going to hit the golf, you know, And a
lot of them, a lot of them were taught at that age because their
husband played golf and they were, come on, you got to learn,
we'll play golf together. That kind of stuff. Do you have the same
frustrations that I have when you go out and play with people, and they
especially and of course, they've not played to go, well, what's the
distance let's play from this team got sixty nine? They want into yards and
they don't look at the rating. Slow, Yeah, exactly. I know
that a lot of courses, even the men's let's just say the white teas
because they have so many different colors now, but let's say the back is
the blue cheese, in the middle is the white tees. A lot of
times the white teas are ten yards ahead of the blue teese, which is
crazy, it's ludicrous. But again there's no thinking done at the start of
every day when those tees are set. Someone should be setting them based on
what the club professional. You know that he set that golf course up for
the superintendent. You can't expect the superintendent and in most cases do not play
the game. And the superintendent's not setting the teases his workers who probably don't
play the game. So they just cut it down and put the team markers
there with no thought that somebody's got to play from here. So the golf
course, the golf course plays way beyond the slope rating the way harder right
right, And that's that's you know, we talk about slow play. That's
one of the reasons we have slow play because with the long iron on the
third shot, it has nothing to do with their ability. It has to
do that it's too long. Yeah, people are playing from the wrong tees,
their egos getting the way, they slow down the pace of play,
they're they're scoring high numbers when they shouldn't be. It's just it's just this
endless cycle of garbage there, right, and it's rooting the game for a
lot of people, and it's costing. It's costing a lot of money because
you know, if you have a lot of slow play, you can't get
players on the golf course. But a lot of it goes back to management
in the planning of where those teas should be. There has to be calculations
made based on where you think the majority of people hit the golf ball so
that they can enjoy the sport. You know, when you're a successful man
and you've worked all your life, you don't want to play golf. It's
beating the heck out of you all the time, and you're never going to
say this is too hard for me. No one wants to do that,
you know, no one wants to admit to that. So what what what
management? Has to has to do is put them put that make that golf
course not not a sense of easy, but fair, not fair. If
you can't reach a part four and two, if you can hit the ball,
let's say two hundred and ten yards, you should be able to You
should be able to hit that that green in two. Okay, So you
can't. You can't put a high handicap aro on a four hundred and seventy
yard hole or four hundred and sixty year old that's a part five for them.
And that's how. And that doesn't take away from the golf course being
a great course, because the greatness comes in the design. It doesn't come
in the length right right, because a short course, a short course can
be very punishing. Yeah, I mean, you know I've played course that
was sixty six hundred yards long. That'll give you a battle every time you
play it. But it's it's because you have to be accurate. You have
hit the left, left the right, or right the left and those kinds
of things. But it's not because you can't reach the green. I mean,
that's just stupid golf. To me, that's stupid golf, it really
is. And unfortunately there's so much emphasis on distance today in today's world.
That you know, I get these kids at young ages and they're all they're
all swinging on of their shoes, and I say, what are you going
to do when you're playing a twenty yard fairway? I mean, you're done
so. So that's part and parcel of the problem we're exposed to. Everybody
hits at three thirty three, forty and some guy out there fifty years old.
You know, you feel impotent, for God's sakes, But it's it's
because we've been we've been soul a bill of goods. And the game is
never intended to be a driving contest, you know, it really wasn't.
It's a game of strategy. It's a game of ball placement. And to
me, I think they're ruining the game by making the courses longer and longer
and longer. For who I mean for who? Who? Who can seventy
three one hundred yards is a long golf course? Who plays it? Yeah?
Maybe a kid that beats it out there, but the average guy,
man, I mean, you know you can't if you can't get home into
what the heck? You know, time and time again, I sometimes you
know there will be one of those holes out there that you say, oh,
well, this one, I just got to be hope'll be happy with
a bogie. But you can't do that for eighteen holes. Right. A
question about and now I know the obvious answer as well, because the club
is longer, but is do you should you have a different swing, And
that's a loaded question with your driver versus your nine iron. No, it's
going to be it's gonna be flatter because the ball is farther away from you.
But no, conceptionally and feel wise, no. And the difficult part
is temple because we want to swing tow faster than we do a full swing,
let's say with an eight iron, and it shouldn't be it will.
The club will be moving faster because the swing is wider because the club is
longer, and the distance is going to be derived by that longer lever.
But you don't try to swing harder. I mean, one of the great
things I ever heard was Trevino was saying that, you know, he's the
one I played with Nicholas. He was so long. I didn't watch him
hit it. And he said, I used to try to hit it two
thirty eight, and I would hit it two seventy, but when I tried
to hit it two seventy, I hit it two thirty eight, which I
just thought, said, man, that mentioned me in the Bible, for
God's sakes. I mean, it was so absolutely correct. Because when you
attempt to try to hit the ball harder, your swing gets faster in the
backswing, shorter in the backswing, and tighter at impact. That's why a
lot of times, you know, we have a shot and we think,
ah, that's a six ron, but I'm going to hit an easy five
iron, and we fly the green. We say, what the heck I
hit that. I've hit that fire iron way farther than because you relax and
you let yourself get that club all the way back and all the way through
because you weren't trying to hit it. You just want he swung the club.
There's a lot to that, you know, And and unfortunately we get
that driver and our hand all of a sudden you see their jaws tightening up.
And that's not it wasn't intended that. What I tell my boys,
the driver is a placement club, not a distance club. It's the place.
It's a club to place the ball in the fairway where you've got a
good angle to the green. That's all it is. Don't buy into you've
got to hit a three fifty or three forty or three thirty or any of
those numbers. Let that happen. Fine. If you can do that,
fine, but you don't try to make it happen because you're just going to
you're gonna get handsy, you're gonna get your arms ahead of your body,
and you're gonna hit it all over the place. And you know, without
naming guys on tour, there's a couple of guys that win a tournament.
The next week, you know they're at the very bottom because they're all over
the place. So when they're timing that big swing, they're okay, but
they can't do it every week. And then you got the same guys in
the middle of the pack every single week, and then every now and then
then they break through. But when they don't win, they don't drop to
the very bottom. They're always up in contention. And those are the guys
that are in control of that club hit. They're not out there trying to
hit it three fifty right now, that's an excellent point. Pick a spot
in the fairway and get there don't and be fair to yourself. Don't try
to crush it. Just try to get to your spot. Yeah, all
you're trying to do is set the whole up. That's what the driver does,
is sets the whole up for the next shot. Put it a little
bit on the left center of the fairway so you're coming in at the right
angle. You're not hitting over a bunk or whatever. I mean. Hogan
looked at the faraway and quadrants, and you picked out a quadrant and put
it there. Now, you know he was pretty special about hitting the golf
ball. But if you've cut everything, then get over to the far right
of the tee and aim it to the far left of the fairway and let
it cut back into the fairway. That's why you're using the whole ferway.
Aim it to the right edge of the fairway and let your draw working into
the fairway. Now you're using the whole fairway. What a lot of people
do. They stand in the middle of the tee and they hit it.
They're trying to hit it right straight down the middle. So if they push
it, it's going off the ferry. If they pull it, it's going
off the ferry. Because they're only using half of the fairway. You understand
what I mean by that, Yeah, and so we In most cases,
you don't stand in the middle of the tee. You either stand on the
left side or the right side, based on the shape, on the shape
of your of your drive. You know, I hit a little cut,
some people hit a little draw, or if my typical shot cuts or my
typical shot draws, and then I'll play that with the driver. I'm gonna,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna position myself on the tee to take advantage of
the whole pharaweh instead of half of it. So early on in the last
episode when we were talking about you know that everybody's swing is unique, and
it's you know, it's really all about being square at contact. Correct.
That's correct, okay, And so there is no perfect swing, is this
what we're saying. Absolutely, that's not possible. That's why fairways are forty
to fifty yards wide and so forth, because there always is going to be
a little variance of impact at open, a little closed. The more connected
and the more rotational you are in your golf swing, the more that you're
going to bring the club fairly consistently to the ball and you're going to you'll
know where the clubhead is. That's a big key is knowing where the club
hit is. So if you're rolling your forearms over trying to hit a golf
ball, there's no way to know to feel where it is, you know,
But when you're when you're rotating your body and that's pulling the arms,
and the arms are connected with the body, then the arms feel like a
lever connected to a gear, and as you turn the lever, the lever
move moves forward, so you're never swinging your arms freely. All this stuff
about a free arms swing it should be in the comic books because it isn't
reality. The freer you arm swing, the more the clubhead has a chance
to be open or closed. We don't want that. Well, Tony,
once again, you've been a wealth of information. I so enjoy speaking with
you. Thank you so much for your time to these last two episodes.
And again, people, is Tony intrigues you at all. There's a lot
of calls to action that we've gone through. One is make sure that you
check out the video the Golf Smarter TV, the video that we did together,
because it's going to teach you a lot in a short amount of time.
Well, Fred, I'd like to just close with one thing please,
for the people out there that have listened to this, you know there's a
lot of pontificating going on, but if you really want to get into this
game, find someone that really understands rotation and connection. If they're not using
those words to you and trying to get you to hoist the club up the
air and then bring it down, you know, just run. Find somebody,
just like going to a doctor, find somebody that understands the simplicity of
the golf swing. It isn't rocket science. It's really kind of simpliictic once
you connect all the parts and then just move them in a rotational move.
If you find someone like that and that's patient, you're going to grow in
the game and you're going to start enjoying the game. And then go to
a golf pro if you belong to a club, and tell them a little
bit about why don't we set this golf course up based on what the average
guy hits it off the tee and I think your membership will be very happy
and you don't have to say we're moving it up. Just put the tea
in a place where where common sense warrants it. And boy, I'll tell
you what, the game will be enjoyable for everybody at that club. And
you can make the golf course hard, you can narrow the fairways with roughs,
you can put the pin in the funny positions, so you don't have
to worry about to being tough enough