What are influencers right? What are social influenced people who use products that then
say use what I'm using, and then that influences us to do what they're
doing well. Kelly Slater influenced Adam Scott to try the technology and the putter
and eventually leads to Adam Scott putting in his bag and helps Adam Scott in
the last five years. If you look at Adam Scott's putting stats before lab
Golf and now after lab Golf, it's night and day. So the proof
is actually in the pudding. Whether you buy a lab or don't buy,
I'm just telling you this is a hell of a story of how one thing
leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another, which
leads to Lucas Glover going from push putting and a horrific case of the yips
to winning back to back PGA torments. Hi. This is Hugh Levinson from
Danville, California, and I play golf at the Bridges Golf Course in San
Ramon. This is golf'sparer number ninety three. TV personality writer and producer Matt
Janella on the rags to riches story of lab Golf This is Golf Smarter,
sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to help you lower your
score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome
to the Golf Smarter podcast. Matt, thanks for having me, Fred,
I appreciate it looking forward to the conversation. I am too, because you
have had a conversation that I've been following for weeks and weeks and weeks.
I've been traveling. I was in Costa Rica, I was in the Deep
South, and every time a new episode of your podcast, The fire Pit
Collective comes up and you're doing this long form story on Lab Golf, I'm
like, I've got to listen to this because I'm a big fan of Lab
Golf. Sam's been on the show multiple times, all the way back to
twenty twenty. It was the first time he was on the show. And
then you're doing this breakdown of the company, and I'm like, obsessed.
I we we have that in common. Obsessed would be a good word to
describe my interest in what I didn't you know again, I've, as I
explained kind of in part one of this series that I chose to kind of
break up in different different parts so that it's more consumable to the consumer.
I'm not an equipment guy. I'm not. I don't I put it with
the same putter for fifteen years. I you know, I get offered to
get fittings, and I definitely do it because getting fit is the right thing
to do. But I literally play whatever they tell me I should be playing.
I don't think with my God, there's stuff. There's stuff in my
back. If it works, I don't swap it out. You know,
I'm always the believer that it's definitely the Indian not the arrow right, Like,
if something goes wrong, it's not the equipment's fault, it's it's and
so I come at it from that. So I got introduced to Sam through
a college friend at the PGA Merchandise show. Going back to what I believe
was twenty eighteen. He had bought the company in twenty eighteen, so it
had been probably twenty nineteen was when I actually met Sam. He showed me
the revealer. I was like, I have no idea what I'm looking at.
Things were flopping around that stakes well, it all felt a little like
pitchy to me. And again for a non equipment guy, I walked away.
I called my buddy, I said, I met Sam. Looks really
cool. I have no idea what we're talking about here. I have no
idea what the technology I know. And that was it. That was it.
That was the last. I mean, we might have had a slight
correspondence, you know, Oh, send me a video and I'll give you,
But I never did. I never, I never was. That was
the last interaction I had in and around lab Golf was January of twenty nineteen,
Sam Han while he's meeting you know how many people he meets at PGA
Merchandise Show, I walked away. Now I follow Lucas Glover. We both
have warn link soul forever. We have a mutual friend in John Ashworth and
a mutual friend in Michael Simms. Plays out at goat Hill Park if and
when he's around town. So Lucas Glover has been a somebody that I've followed.
I know Lucas, We've had several long conversations out, you know,
in my time of traveling around and following golf. And this gets back to
the obsession of where I'm going and our common denominator here, which is obsessed
with lab golf. I didn't know I was obsessed until I know what I
know, right, And when I watched Lucas Glover Struggle we all have very
infamously on the greens four years now, coming and going, you know,
on the verge of breaking sixty, shooting fifty nine, very infamously yips a
putt from a couple feet away, and it gets shown like I can't even
watch that, we can't even I can't even think about like and as Brett
Rumford says in the series, you know, this guy's on an absolute heater
and yips a short putt to break sixty, and he ends up push putting,
literally soling the putter from behind the ball and essentially like pushing the putt
towards the hole to try to prevent this yips and goes on to win,
and then with a Lab Golf putter in his hand, wins back to back
PGA Tour events in August of last year. That's when I called my buddy
and I said, hold on, remember you introduced me to that guy and
he had that putter. Is this the same putter that we're talking about?
He goes, yeah, that's Lab Golf. That's Sam Hun who I introduced
and I said, that's what Lucas is using to win back to back tour
events. He goes yes, and I was like, I'm making some phone
calls. I said, can you connect me to Sam? I want to
understand what's going on. If that putter helped Lucas Glover cure those yips and
win back to back PGA Tour events after push putting, what in the hell
is going on here? And that started it all? And it was one
So it was it just a natural curiosity to learn more about it or did
you see a story that like, oh, I've got to flush this out.
No? Well I assumed there was a story, but then I got
on with Sam. Sam said, this is like two weeks after. This
is two weeks after Lucas wins, right, and it's I interview Sam even
before they had announced the Ryder Cup players, So sometime around the Tour Championship,
but before they had announced the Ryder Cup picks, and Sam agrees to
do an interview with me, and two hours later we finished the interview.
I got two hours of Sam Hunt telling me the whole story of lab Golf
and the stuff that he shares in those interviews. I was like, wait
a minute, I've talked to Sam for hours. I don't know any of
this. It was so good. He he comes jumps off the page right
like, as you know, Sam is a colorful human being. He's a
colorful character. He's obviously very smart, he's very articulate. He's passionate.
He unders you know, he's passionate not only about life but about his product.
Right, He's he literally figuratively, financially, spiritually, emotionally bought into
this company and to Bill, the Bill Pressey. So I didn't even know.
I don't know Bill at all. So I'm going so he mentions Bill
Bill, and I got the and I go, so, where is Bill?
Like, in my mind, did he did Bill? Is Bill alive?
Is Bill like some eighty five year old guy? I had no idea
who Bill Pressey was. I had no idea we bought it? And he
goes, yeah, Bill's Bill, Bill still, you know, part owner
of the company. Bill and I talk all the time. Bill's still alive.
Where is he? He's in Reno. He moves like, I'm like,
so I can get access to So I have two hours with Sam and
I'm going, wait, this guy is still alive. So not only is
still alive, Bill Pressey has become one of my favorite people roaming the planet.
Sam turns me onto Bill. So the next call I make is to
Bill Pressey and he gives me two hours. So I have two hours of
Sam and two hours with Bill, and I'm going, I've got, I've
got. I might be sitting on one of the best stories I've ever told.
And it's because Fred. It's not just Sam's story and it's not just
Bill's story to me. The spokes that come out of you know, when
Sam says there are four magic moments. Okay, there's you know, there's
there's the idea that I that my putter broke, which is why I got
on with Bill, which is then we created this chemistry. And then I
bought in on the company. And then it's von Taylor that needed to get
his card that Sam happens to be out there late night one day at the
at the Barracuda and he gets the hand in Voluntael. Then there's Kelly Slater,
who is impervious to sort of the looks and the bullshitty of like that
that's associated with like, oh if it doesn't look good, I don't want
to play it. Kelly Slater cuts through all that, because Kelly's later is
one of the most competitive human beings roman the planet. He just wants to
win. He just wants to get the ball in the hole. He just
wants to putt well, he wants to beat the guy that he's playing.
I don't care. He didn't care who it is, so for him to
use the directive force at Pebble Beach with his friend Adam Scott and put better
than anybody else in the group all week, and Adam Scott say, let
me see that. Now it's Adam Scott using it, which then ultimately leads
to Lucas Glover saying, give me what Adam Scott has wear the same height.
That trail and that narrative arc is what Sam articulated to me in the
two hours of like these are the four critical moments. And I'm like,
well, if I drilled down and tell all four of those stories because I
got access to Kelly Slater, he plays at goat Hill Park. We have
a lot of mutual friends. I've had a lot of you know, interaction
with him over there. So I'm got if I can, if Sam can
get me Bill and Bill and these guys can get me Von Taylor, which
I know, and I've covered Vaughan his whole career, and then I can
get to Kelly Slater, and then I can get to Adam Scott. Well,
I know I can get to Lucas Glover. Now I've got the framework
of being able to tell this whole narrative arc, and then it leads me
all those stories lead me into all other directions with a lot of other voices.
And the fire Pit podcast has always been one story told by multiple voices,
piecing all these voices together to create one narrative arc, and it just
so happens. This is like an eight hour narrative arc that I think spokes
out into ten twelve, fourteen different story. Brett Rumford, I'd never heard
of Brett Rumford, and Sam tells me about Brett Rumford. That's a whole
other story. Jason Kuhn is the Navy seal who helps. So it turns
out Lucas Glover gets good at putting, not just by lab golf, but
also through that through the mental training of a Navy seal sniper who overcame yips
himself. So now I'm going like, oh my god, I can't stop.
I can't stop. I'm twenty. I mean, you have to you
have to stop right now. I'm going to take a break here because you've
dropped Yeah, right exactly, but you've dropped so many names that I want
to pick apart because of this amazing story in this podcast series that you're doing.
But we're going to take a break and we'll be back with Matt Janella
right after this. So what it blew my mind is you just mentioned that
there's more episodes coming by at the time we're recording this. Just the last
week, listened to episode eight, and I was absolutely convinced that was the
end of the series because you played the full song at the end of it.
I'm like, okay, so that's a nice way to wrap it up
because I love the song and it's perfect. Did you write the words to
the song? I mean, that's a Joe Horowitz song. Joe Horowitz is
a good friend of mine. He is a golfer, you know, very
accomplished, you know, professional who played on the Canadian Tour. He's in
places association, He's won some good events. But he's also a musician.
Yeah, and he's a hell of a guitar player and a musician, and
I've gotten to know. I got to know he had the makings of a
of a jingle. Essentially, he created that the tune and for the podcast
back in twenty twenty when we launched the Firepit podcast, and if you go
back in the history of our podcast and go back to the episodes, I
meet a guy at Jason Day's event by the name of jaquir King. He's
a Grammy Award winning producer, music producer and avid golfer and I paired jaquir
King with Joe Horowitz and they flushed out and built out that song which is
called The Story, that he then recorded in Nashville at Jakir King's music studio,
and I did a podcast on the making of the Story. So there's
actually a podcast that tells a story of the making of that song, which
is called The Story, in which Jakir and Joe share how they work through
and come up with and we recorded them recording the Story. I'm not one
to promote other people's podcast especially golf podcasts, and so this is rarity,
but I'm because I love the story so much now and when I first saw
fire pit. What does that have to do with golf? Right, But
now that you talk about how every episode is multiple a story from multiple angles,
from multiple voice vices, that now makes sense to me that it's just
a bunch of guys sitting around the fire pit chatting. That that was the
that was the thought, and that also it's not golf specific. Goes back
to the beginning of time, people sitting around warmth and a fire, listening
to or telling good stories of the day of their life, of their career.
It also allows me to go in different directions beyond just golf. I've
told this, I've got a multi part series on the history, the life
and legacy of Tony Gwynn. That's a passion project for me. I went
on Ken Griffy Junior telling the story about back to back home runs with his
father in which I had you know, so I've done I've done some baseball
podcasts, you know, Tony Gwinn and Ken Griffy our baseball. I've done
stories about uh, you know, Alan Schipknok how he got his job at
Sports Illustrated and all the different sort of ebbs and flow. I've done a
Walter Yost podcast on like shooting the catch in the corner of the end zone,
and Michael Jordan all of the photos he's done, following around Michael Jersey.
So it allows me to just follow my nose. It allows me to
to to be passionate about the stories I want to tell, so being the
journalist that you are. So I was telling you before we started recording.
I told you my whole thing about fantasy play by play. I was in
Seattle for a baseball game. Seattle Mariners were one of the teams that we
did fantasy play by play. I was in the game. I was there
for the night that Ken Griffy Senior got a double. He's on second base.
Junior comes up and hits a home run, right, And you know
usually when a guy is on base and comes home and he's waiting for the
guy who hit the home run, he slaps him on the button and then
they go in the dugout. Oh no, not Senior, No, what
does he do? He's the He rubs his head like good kid. I
lo was like, oh, that was heaven. And after the game,
I'm leaving with my friends who work for the team. Junior's behind me about
five feet walking and his Dad's about eight feet in front of me, and
I'm right in the middle, and they're john back and forth to each other,
and it's just the kind of stuff you can never remember, you never
repeat, but you know you were there. Well. One of the greatest
thrills of my life. I never I tell Arnold Palmer's story in this pod
in a podcast that my last visit with Arnold Palmer three months before he died,
by the way, that's that's a whole And he tells a Roger Merris
story that's worth if anybody's listening and likes Arnold Palmer and Roger Merris, that's
an incredible story about the nineteen sixty hitcock Belt. That's that's a whole nother
story. I never got to meet Tony Gwynn. You know, I never
got to meet Vince Scully. These are my you know, my Mount Rushmore.
These we're talking about, these are my guy, right, but being
able to interview Ken Griffy Junior, and he popped on like you know,
I popped on here on Riverside. He popped on screen for this zoom sit
down and behind him are all of his gold gloves, and he told me
the story of being able to do that. As Tom Verducci says in the
podcast, it's pretty safe to say this will never happen again, that father
and son will play for the same team, be in a lineup back to
back and get an opportunity to hit back to back home runs. This is
something that may never ever happen again, and quite possibly would be one of
the greatest sporting feats that well, you know, I'm a father, now,
you know, I tell my son to say, you know, you
know, that's my boy kind of a thing, right like your brother,
that's my guy. Exactly the idea that you could be hitting in front of
him and hit a home run, which that must feel amazing hitting a home
run in the major leagues and to be then look you go to the dugout
and then to watch your son in the next at bat. I think it
was a three to zero pitch, knock it out of the park. I
mean, so yeah, that if all the things, I don't know how
many episodes I'm in and whatever, I mean, that conversation with Ken Griffy
Junior, and that opportunity to talk baseball and golf by the way, Avid
Golfer, and he tells me a story about how he and his dad played
golf with Tiger and his dad, which is a cool which is a cool
story in itself. You know, Ken Griffy Jr. I was never a
Mariners fan, but I was a baseball fan. And he is, He's
up there for me. Man, you are like one of the greatest flies
on wall in history. It's it's you know, that's a good place to
be. It's when you're, when you're, when you're you know, I
love to observe life. I love to listen. I love to watch and
see what's moving around me. And the idea to be able to do that
with these types of and you know, Sports Illustrated, Golf, Digest,
Golf Channel has provided me those opportunities in life. And even going back to
Saint Mary's College where the Warriors practiced their their their basketball which I got to
meet Tim Hardaway and Chris Mullen and the Trell Spreewell and all those. You
know, is that during the run TMC, right, Run TMC, Mitch
Richmond, that was you know, it was a cool time to be so
going way back and then even in you know, uh San Rose, California,
I grew up working at a golf course where Charles Schultz played. So
you know, I was always like enamored and impressed and and taught you know,
you got to look look around, look look what's going on around you,
and don't be afraid to list. You know, as someone always told
me when I was growing up, you know, you got two years in
one mouth. Use the ears twice as much as he used the mouth right
on, right on. I don't know if I'll do that, but I
tried. Well, you know, as I've been doing this for years,
I like to look for stories too. I love to try to flush out
and find outrageous stories. And one of the most outrageous and and I've ever
heard this one because it seemed like no one ever had. But there was
the kid who San Francisco base kid, you know, working liked playing golf
and wanted to get out there someday and thought, God, I would love
to play in a national championship, but I'm not that good. He ends
up sneaking into North Korea and plays in the North Korean Open Championship and tells
this whole story about how he did it. I can't remember his name right
now, and I'll tell you after we're done here. But but it's an
incredible story. When when we finish, I said, so, and when
you got home back to San Francisco, what did you do? You said,
I went back to work, And like, did you have you told
anybody this story? He goes, I don't think so, Like, what
do you mean, No, I just went back to work. I didn't.
I didn't, you know, tell anybody about it. That's me is
a story that just like lab to go back to lab, that that story
ended up inspiring so many other questions that then lead more stories. See what
I'm saying, Like I could have just clipped off sam Han and ran that
podcast in three parts two hours and just taken sam Han's perspective. But to
me, once he told me Bill was still alive, I was like,
I got to hear Bill. Bill invents the revealer in his garage, which
then leads to him you know, I mean, this guy was homeless in
two thousand. You know, he lost the mother of his daughter. You
know at some point as I was living out of his car selling putters out
of the trunk of his car, I'm going, what And then this leads
to Lucas Glover going back to back on the PGA tour. Like I'm like,
so I knew where I was going to end, which is Lucas Glover.
I knew where I was going to begin, which was Bill po I
do what the journey was? Everything else happened in between, all right,
And we're going to talk more about that because now I want to bring in
some of the names that you talk to and how they fit in the story.
But we're going to do that after this. Did you ever think that
this podcast series on lab Golf was going to be a book, because like,
like Malcolm Gladwell will write a book, but he got all enamored with
podcasting and turned his books into audio books to you know, podcasts, and
it's it's really brilliant. And this series is now eight parts and sounds like
there's going to be more. It plays like it's an audio book the way
you have the stories going in and out of one another and the people all
speaking, but you get to live with it because you're hearing their voices.
I love it so much. It's it's it's a audio book, is what
it is. It's amazing. I Well, thank you first of all for
listening and doing this and for saying all that you're saying, I don't.
Look, I don't think of anything like I don't think of it like that
at all, Like in my mind. And we talked a little bit about
this offline, but my roots go back to radio. The romance of creating
an audio experience like it literally is emotional for me to even talk about,
honestly, because no, really it is. I mean I don't as a
kid, and my parents have too, you know, I used to there
used to be these little mini recorders. My dad used to commute from San
Rose to San Francisco every morning. He rode the bus. This is these
are these are the nineteen seventies. Okay, late nineteen seventies. I'm no
traffic then, eight years old, nine years old. He'd leave the house
at a time at like four thirty five in the morning, and he'd get
home at eight o'clock at night. That's all. That's all you know by
bus Fred this is a man who and he set up his family in San
Rose because that's where he could afford a bigger house because he had five kids.
I'm youngest of five kids, and I I used I was a pottery
fan. He was a Giants fan, and I would create fake games,
make up games on a recording, put him by my bedside at night,
and he'd take those in the morning and listen to him on the bus when
he was going to and from work. And I would create the Podreys would
win one game, the Giants would win gut. I created like an ongoing
series, and sometimes I'd love Podreys won most of the games, but he
would take those and listen to those. As a kid, my dream job
was to be the Podreys radio announcer. So going back to you know,
play by play announcer, So going back to you know, Jerry Coleman obviously
was famous. I thought, how am I going to get Garry Coleman's job,
you know? So now be Nagler, who was like one of the
best in the business. And I love that he's so good, but I
hate that he's so good because it means I'll never get his job, you
know what I mean. But uh, I love listening you know people.
Vince Scully again, like I said, he can't say that name enough.
A man who could do both aspects of play by play and color commentary.
And you know, I think about Vinnie a lot, and this I'm sorry
about this aside. I want to get to Kelly's later. I think about
Vinnie a lot because the way they have sped up the baseball game, which
I think is a beautiful thing. The only one who don't I think doesn't
like are the announcers, right, because it's like they're storytellers. They want
to tell stories. They want the pace so they can tell. And Vinnie
was the master, the the you know, the professor of all that.
Would he be able to do it? Well? Yeah, of course yes
he did because games didn't used to take three now, you know. And
he did it. He did it by himself. I mean he he did
these broadcasts by himself. He h He had that ability to weave a story
in and out of the actual the actual broadcast, so you could man keep
you touching form. So I mean, the guy who's capable of everything anything,
I mean, would you bet against Vin Scully being able to do anything?
No, No, of course not. And I think I think his
art and and you know what, he never stopped doing. He never stopped
reporting the details. The one thing that I don't think there's no shortcut to
the reporting, you know what I'm saying. I think there's a lot of
people who cut corners, who don't go down on the These the announcers that
they grew up with television, so they don't think they need to talk as
much as the guys he did radio. Yeah, there's a lot of color
commentators who end up saying the same thing that the good play by play guy
said, just in a little different way. You know, they miss and
they miss opportunities to weave in their own personal experiences, like an ex baseball
player is there to bring X experiences and insight into the broadcast that the play
by play guy isn't doing. But if the color commentator is ends up saying
what the play by play guys, then they're not doing their job and the
play by play. So that's why Vin Scully was genie. He told you
about what's happening in the game, and he told you the extra layers of
the stories of the players who played the game. You know what I'm saying,
yep and I and I. Now, if you're a fan of Vin
Scully, you probably are disappointed with most broadcast teams because you're like, Pully
did better as one man than most people do as two people. Yes,
no question about it. All right. I want to get to Kelly Slater
because you talk about Kelly Slater and his competitiveness, but this is not a
golfer. That's he's not known as a golfer, right, but he seems
to be influential on the highest level of golf. Well, he's you could
argue, Kelly Slater is the greatest living athlete. You know, Michael Jordan
six NBA championships, you know, Tiger Woods fifteen major championships, Jack Nicholas
eighteen major championships. You got Wayne Gretzky, who you know owns most every
you know record that matters in the world of hockey. And but Kelly Slater
has eleven World championships in surfing. That that's you know that. I think
the next best has five or something, you know, like I and that
and that guy did it in the eighties. I give the stats in the
in the podcast. Kelly Slater is is is a is a machine at his
craft. He's easy, he's like, he's next level okay, and he's
so therefore he's an incredible athlete. And he's a scratch golfer. And there
are golfers who love to surf and Adam Scott is one of them, and
so they've been on surf trips together. They're good friends, like they they
are, They're friends. Okay, So that's why they're playing together at AT
and T. They play at AT and T. And Kelly Slater, you
know, is legitimately a scratch golfer, like he can he can flat out
play golf clearly, and I spiritual, you know, and there's no waves.
What do surfers do? They play golf in places like Hawaii, Wendy,
Florida, Windy. You know they're going to play. You know,
they're traveling the world and they play golf. Well. Slater is one of
the best. And so when he when he finds a directed force and he
starts making all these putts and Tommy Armer says to him, don't ever take
that thing out of your bag. And he develops a relationship with Sam hun
As. Slater says, he what are influencers, right? What are what?
What are social influence? People who use products that then say use what
I'm using and then that that influences us to do what they're doing. Right.
Well, Kelly Slater influenced Adam Scott to try the technology and the putter
and eventually leads to Adam Scott putting in his bag and helps Adam Scott in
the last five years. If you look at Adam Scott's putting stats before lab
Golf and now after lab Golf, it's night and day. So the proof
is actually in the pudding, like this is not I'm not I'm not trying
to say I don't whether you buy a lab or don't buy. I'm just
telling you this is a hell of a story of how one thing leads to
another, which leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to
Lucas Glover going from push putting and a horrific case of the yips to winning
back to back PGA tourments. In these nineteen years that I've been doing this,
I've had lots of small manufacturers on and I always know that it's like,
you know, it's a shame. But unless this gets seen on tour,
unless this has some success on tour, it's not going to translate very
well to the public. And there's been a couple of companies that don't.
This has be ten, this has potential, but there's been nothing like lab
Golf. And again it's the magic of Sam Hun It's it's the personality,
the captivation of his passion that that brings that out. But again, the
proof is in the pudding, starting with the revealer, that shows all this
nonsense about toe balanced, heel balanced, face balanced, whatever, it's all
malarkey, it's all bull it's marketing, it's marketing. There's probably a toe
hang putter actually hangs with the toe facing, you know, towards the ground,
and a face balanced putter actually you know, hangs with the face facing
up to the air. So you know, but what how does that translate
into something in which you are creating this torque as you're going back and forth
and you know, you know what I'm saying like that. So it takes
Bill Pressey to kind of like part the clouds of the marketing mumbo jumbo.
But then it takes Sam's marketing of lab to try to get it up and
out there and articulate it in a way. Because Bill would be the first
one to admit, like he saw through the bullshitty of the marketing of the
OEMs, but the company was going to go out of business if Sam doesn't
come in and try to help it in a way. That then articulates in
a way that people can understand and are willing to use. Right, Bill
had a skill set, but it wasn't being a businessman. No. And
by the way, he's doing a lot of different things. He's juggling you
know, life, you know. And so as someone who is now going
on to start my own business, it's like there are strengths and weaknesses of
people. You know, as a as a business owner and operator, your
key is to surrounding yourself with the people who are better at the things that
you're not good at. Right, if you can't get that done in a
way and timely fashion, then you're gonna go out of business. Bill.
You know, Sam needed Bill, but Bill needed Sam. And Sam has
needed a lot of people in his in his universe and his ecosystem to try
to make this work, you know, his own hustle. But then a
lot of buy in from people that work with him, and there are others.
So you talk about other episodes still coming. There is there's one episode
in particular. The story is done. The story has been told on lab
Golf. That's eight episodes. There is more stuff in there that I want
to that I want to share with the audience who was willing to learn or
what Well, if you listen, Sam talks about how Brett Rumford, this
short game guru in Australia who's like widely respected and considered one of the best
at what he does from a short game standpoint, and understands technology in ways
that probably Bill Pressey does. Brett Rumford was the one who came to Sam
and said, I get it now, I understand what you have to do
with a lab golf putter. You've got to let go of control to gain
control. You've got to get out of the way of the technology. You've
got to stop your instinct to manipulate and create torque with the putter in order
to actually reap the benefits of this technology. Let go of control to gain
control. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. Sam tells me
that every single person I interviewed, and there's eighteen people interviewed, I asked,
what does it mean to you to hear let go of control to gain
control? So I am going to do one a additional episode in which you're
going to hear every single person I interviewed give their perspective on let go of
control to gain control, as it relates to putting Life lab golf. Everybody
has their own, you know, Kelly Slater's perspective on that is different than
Brett Rumford's, which is different than Bill Precy's, which is different than you
know, Von Taylor's, which is different than Tim Wilkinson's, which is different
than you know, all of these different people I interviewed. And so that's
that's going to be a bonus episode number nine and number ten is to give
a chance to Sam to come back on. It might be twenty minutes,
it might be four minutes to say, oh it's Sam. It'll be an
hour and I'll just say Sam, what what? What did I get right?
What did I get wrong? Who needs special call outs? Who do
I miss? I was going to do that, Okay, you get to
do so Sam, we need to talk about the fire pit. Yeah,
well, no, I want to. I just want to. I want
to hear. I mean, I interviewed him in August of twenty twenty three.
This is April of twenty twenty four. I want to know, you
know, as he's listened, going back to his own story, and I
probably will have Bill on. I probably will do one more with Sam and
Bill to say, what are your thoughts reflections? You know, Bill says
he's getting noticed now at PJA superstores and saying, oh my god, you're
the guy, you know, because he's always he's always been way behind behind,
behind the scenes, and the guy who was in his garage and don't
look behind the curtain. Yeah right, well, I you know, for
for the last I'm hoping that this is going to be the summer that I
can do this. I've been trying to do it for a couple of years,
but I've been wanting to make take from northern California and take a road
trip up to Eugene to go see Sam and see his factory and see the
place. So I'm hoping I get to do that this year. But your
thinking about let go of control. I'm going to pick up on that.
But we're going to take one last break. Maybe you know, we both
have hard stops here, but we're gonna do that. We'll back after this.
So there's a couple of running themes that it's going on through the entire
series. And again, to my podcast audience, please, if you've been
intrigued by Sam Han and the conversations I've had with him, I know that
many people in the audience have picked up a Lab Golf cutter since being introduced
to Sam. But you've got to listen. Again, I don't promote other
podcasts, but you've got to listen to Fire Pit Collective and this long series
on Sam Han and lab Golf and one of the things let go of control
to gain control. Another theme that you have running through it, especially late,
that I just was blown away by, was this isn't a golf story.
This is a sports story. And that's about Lucas Glover, right,
yeah, because I think I think there's a winner on the PGA Tour every
week, right, There's there's someone who breaks through and wins and and and
they sometimes they're better stories than others. Sometimes it's you know, it's someone
who has won several times. Sometimes it's someone who broke through and got a
Monday qualified and then got you know, there's a variety, and those stories
are being you know, mitigated at this point because of the structure of men's
professional golf, which is a whole nother story. But I think that when
you take a Lucas Glover winning once at the Wyndham Championship was a really hell
of a that was a great golf story. But when he came back and
wanted to back to back when he won the first FedEx Cup playoff event,
to me, it became a sports story. This this then becomes transcendent and
that's what gets that's what then starts becoming on Sports Center. It's like this
guy went from again horrific case of the yips playing out in a public forum
and all the stuff that he was dealing with, and everybody can relate to
sort of just being ridiculed and down and being questioned and what are you doing?
Why are you doing it? You know you're done, Hang it up,
get off my TV screen. Essentially, I mean, you know what
Luca's Glover endured was was insane to going to winning not just one, but
then following it up the next week. To me, became a sports story.
And I think that's something any anybody who follows sports, it becomes it
becomes even more than a sports story. To me, this becomes, as
I talked to Lucas about a human story. It's a human story. His
grandfather instilled a work ethic and a and that that family DNA in him,
right like cultivated that the harmon brothers are involved at Carmen specifically. Then Lucas,
you know, was a baseball player. He's a good athlete. He
comes from a family of athletes, and he started playing golf as Mac Barnhardt
his agent and you know life friend coach said, you know, I knew
this kid was different from the beginning. This guy, this is a guy
who has with ten years of dealing with putting woes, has kept his PGA
Tour card. That's what Sam was reiteratings like, he had the yips for
ten years and kept his card. That's unheard of. Doesn't happen, doesn't
happen. That's how gritty and grindy Lucas Glover is. And then let Sam
has a great point in there there there was a level of acceptance for Lucas
to be and Jason kuh By the way, we also get to hear the
story of a Navy Seal sniper. I get chills saying that, right,
this is a guy who that was My next question is like, how did
a Navy seal end up in this story because and again I don't know when
I make that first call to Sam, I have no idea where I'm going.
But Sam leads to Bill, and Bill leads Bill leads to you know,
we talked to Von Taylor and Kelly Slater and Adam Scott, and then
I get to Lucas Glover and Mac Barnard goes lab golf and the putter is
critical. But before we got to the putter, we had to fix something
bigger with Lucas and that was done through Jason Kuhn. And I'm like,
how do I get to Jason. I needed to. I couldn't even start
the series unless I got this Navy seal who got in with Lucas and helped
him train his mind. Because Jason Kuhn didn't even know what the YIPS was.
He ended his very you know, legitimate college baseball career because of the
YIPS. He didn't even know what it was. He just stopped being able
throw. He's throwing the ball over the backstop and he's like, I don't
even know what it is and leaves baseball and he goes into the military and
he becomes a Navy Seal and he gets through all the training and becomes the
you know, becomes a Navy Seal, and he says to himself, the
YIPS can't be a byproduct of being mentally weak. If I'm mentally strong enough
to become a Navy seal, therefore, this can't be a mental hurdle that
needs to be solved. It's got to be something else let me dig down
to. So he he backtracks from the idea that I'm not mentally weak,
therefore this is not a mental issue. What is the yips? He does
a deeper dive and figures it out and helps Tyler Matsik of the Atlanta Braves
overcome the yips and go on to pitch and win a world series. And
he's like, I'm onto something and he has created his own business, and
I think he's forty for forty is what he says in the interview of helping
people overcome something that idiotman know what it was called back when he was dealing
with it, called the yips, And he helped Lucas Glover not only transform
his mind, but then also try the lab putter mid season. And this
is how this is what ends up becoming back to back with There's just so
many This was one big, just long puzzle piece. And that's why it's
a book. I mean, that's why it plays like a book, but
see go On novel. We never really finished it. But like I don't
think of it. I don't think is it a book or is it Like
to me, it's just a story, and I prefer to tell my stories
with an audio experience. Some people prefer to tell their stories as books,
as novels, and then read those books as an audio experience. For me,
you know, I'm my script. If you look at my script that
I have of Lab Golf is sep. Eighteen thousand words long. But that's
not including the actual quotes of the people. So if I if I translate,
if I got the transcript of the whole series and turned it into a
book, it would be a book. It would I could take that audio
experience and turn a book. Some people turn books into audio experiences. But
I don't even look at it like that. I just look at it as
I prefer to tell this story in an audio form because going back to what
we're talking about, my roots and what I love and the romance of a
radio experience is where it's where I started. Yep, I know it well.
A couple of weeks ago we had Jim waldron on. Jim is a
regular been on probably more than any other golf instructor I've ever had on the
show. And he's based out of Portland and he's a phenomenal coach. But
he also refers to himself as the Yips Whisperer. I call him the Yoda
of Yips. But I told him, I said, I've got a podcast
episode you have to listen to, and I turned them on to your show,
said this was I want you to listen to the whole series if you
can, but listen to this specific episode because it's all about the Yips.
And he was very excited about that and was at the Jason Kuhn episode.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think my wife and family are probably very
tired of me talking about all of this, but you can talk to me,
man, It's okay. You very often, no, I think,
and my son I listened because what happens is I listen. We're driving back
and forth to San Diego, or I've taken him to school, we get
tim in the car. That's my time to listen to podcasts. Sometimes I'm
listening to my own podcast before we hit send on the finished product, and
my son has probably heard My six year old son has probably heard this podcast
each episode at least two or three time. He also likes to sit on
my lap and listen in. You know, I mean it's probably in his
DNA, right, Like I don't know. We're all byproduct of you know,
we're product of our environments. So he he he sings the song,
the theme song. He's picking up on Lucas glove. He's thinking, he's
hearing all these different things, and it's a really neat experience to actually be
going through this with him. As you know, as we're rolling all these
different episodes out, I hope he's picking up some of the life lessons that
are learned from this, which is never give up. You know, as
Lucas says, this is about his son Ate, his daughter eleven. He
actually got to show them that never give up because anything and everything is possible
by actually doing it himself instead of just saying it, right, he actually
showed them. And if you hear the broadcast and then daddy, you won,
Daddy, you won, you won, Daddy. You know, I
mean that was making me. I was, you know, I cry when
I listen to that. Yeah, And it's and it's just that simple,
right, Lucas did it for himself to prove it to himself, but also
to prove it to his own kids that what I say to you is not
just talk, it's I walk the walk. Yeah, if if it helps
it all. My older son, who's forty one now, when I was
first starting with my fantasy play by play, and you know, he was
a he was a little boy, and I was doing everything myself, all
the design work, all the production everything, and he would stand over my
shoulder and watch the design stuff, and he would make comments and he always
had really brilliant insights to yeah, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna
work. It translates to his work today. It's not what he does,
but he still has a great eye and I and I attributed to spending that
time with him. So your son, he's going to be good. It's
gonna well. He's already an observer of life. My wife and I marvel
at the way he he takes in what's moving around him. He's learning from
a lot of older people in his life by virtue of our travels and our
experiences and the people we move around with. He's got a lot of great,
you know, mentors and people who have a vested interest in him as
a human being, and so by virtue of that, we don't have to
do as much, you know, coaching or or parenting because he's being raised
by a village of really good human beings and we see him as a byproduct
of all of that. And that's true for all of our kids. And
it's magical time to six years old. That's pretty great. That's it.
That's their sponges. So we got it. We got to watch our well,
the attitude. He'll get the attitude. He'll get the attitude. Not
yet. So I need to I need to go to one more place with
you because and I you know, I thought we'd be able to talk about
the show, but I didn't realize it this good. But we just announced
recently that we're going to be doing a Golf Smarter adventure and we're going to
Northern Ireland. And so I watched your video of Janella's Journeys about the best
of Belfast on and off the course, and so I need to get a
couple of hits because some of the courses that you went to we're playing and
we're going to be doing this in July of this year with just me,
and we had two foursomes. We're going to me and seven golf Smarter listeners.
So Royal County Down, give me quick hits because I know you got
to go soon. Some quick hits about what we need to know about these
courses we're playing. Royal County Down. Well, Royal County Down is top
of the top of the mountain. That's you know, at the base of
the Mountains of Morn you're looking at one of one of the best. It's
in the conversation for being one of the best golf courses in the world.
So Royal County Down is top of the top. About thirty five minutes from
Royal County Down is one of my favorite places on earth, which is our
glass. So don't go to which we're also playing great So Paul Vron the
pro there is just one of the kindest, most gracious human beings on earth.
There there's I try to help people navigate, not just the golf course,
right, you know, oh this is a good golf course. It's
about the experience. To me, again going back to what we're talking about
from podcasts. To me, all of it is an experience. Life is
an experience, and we gravitate towards what feels good as an experience and not
just a oh I love that part four or I birdied that hole. That's
great. Those are little those are little highlights within the experience itself. But
Royal County down our glass Port, rush Port, Stewart, you know Rush,
some of these places, they're going to provide great experience. Ireland and
I group Northern Ireland. There is you know there there is. There is
a fundamental difference and a cultural difference between Northern Ireland and Ireland US as North
American consumers. Only if you really go often and talk to a lot of
people within town, would you really ever kind of know you're going to change
currency. There's gonna be different flags up as you cross over borders, different
driver you know, license plates on the cars. But it's not really something
that's going to actually impact your experience. So to speak to me, the
Irish still at their core, are incredibly warm, hospitable human beings and they
are very proud and they want to make sure that you have a great experience.
So those courses, you know, Castle Rock well another one that we're
playing that you covered in the video. I was like, oh my god,
it's a Parkland course. Look at all those trees was Royal Belfast.
Royal Belfast, so a whole different type of experience that we're going to have
a Royal Belfast shocked to see that shot. Yeah, So, I mean,
you know, and and I you know, the Irish will point out
to you that they're you know, there's a small percentage of golf courses that
are actually links courses. There is a lot of parkland courses in Irish.
We as North American consumers used to parkland golf and have to you know,
kind of go to the places like Bandon Dunes, Banded Dunes, links golf,
true links golf. There it's a little more prominent than here. They
have more they have they have developed more land there as links golf than we
have here. So we gravitate towards those links experiences because it's so much more
unique to us. To them they're playing, they're playing. Most of them
actually tend to play part. Most consumers in Ireland will tend to play parkland
because it's less expensive and it's more, you know, more prominent, and
it's more you know, more their their home club, so to speak.
Mm hmm. Well, so it sounds like we're on a good, a
good set of courses to be playing on this trip. You are I that
you five different courses. We're also playing Royal Belfast. Okay, So so
your exact itinerary is our Glass, Royal Belfast, Royal County Down Royal.
Yeah, Port Rush and Port Rush right and Port Stewart not Stuart. Hard
to imagine you'd play Port Rush without playing Port Stewart. See if there's any
way you can at least play the front nine at Port Stewart. So in
that in that show Janella's Journeys to Belfast, I got to play with Des
Giffen, who is the former right of you know, and has spent time
with Ricky Elliott who's brooks Kepka his caddy, and Graham McDowell. Uh,
And he essentially, for a couple of pints of beer, designed that front
nine at Port Stewart. And it's a couple of miles away from Port Rush.
You're gonna want to go to the Harbor Bar meet Crazy Willie in between
Port Rush and Port Stewart. And there's a great little restaurant behind that bar.
You can have a good meal there. You're going to want while you're
near Ardglass you're going to want to see Saint Patrick's grave. You know,
this is the patron saint of Ireland. He's buried there at a at a
at a church right around the corner from Ardglass And you know, you know,
I don't care what kind of religion that's that's a pretty significant moment in
the history of life. And Saint Patrick's days is celebrated all over the world.
That guy is buried right there, So that's a that's an incredible experience.
You know, Game of Thrones has been shot in and all around.
If go to go to Titanic Belfast, go take two hours, do the
tour of Titanic Belfast and you want to be moved, talk about it's an
audio and visual experience and go through what what is you know, widely considered
one of the greatest tourist attractions in the world. Titanic Belfast. Thank me
later. Make time for it. If you have a rainy day and you
you don't you don't want to go out on the golf, go to Titanic
Belfast. You'll think we'll do we'll do well. Listen, clearly we're cut
from a lot of the same cloth in many ways, and one of them
is that we prefer to ask the questions then to be asked. And you
are a little anxious about being a guest on a podcast, but well done,
my friend, you did an incredible job. I really enjoyed having you
on the show. Well thanks for having me as an honor, honestly,
and I know, I know, I know of you, and Sam told
me great things and obviously you're you're great at what you do. This is
a very neat opportunity to just talk about the audio experience in general, but
also this podcast that I really enjoyed putting together. It is not just a
story. It's several very good stories that happened to be a part of what
is LAB Golf's story. But it's also the Lucas Glover and it's you know,
Jason Kuhn, and it's Vaun Taylor who kept his card because of Lab.
And it's Kelly Slater who still puts with a directive force, and it's
you know, it's all these different little nooks and crannies, and I appreciate
you giving me the oppte to talk about it. And by the way,
if you've never heard the episode that Matt and I had discussed about the young
man who played in the North Korean Open Championship that was published in September of
twenty sixteen as episode number five hundred and fifty eight, Call the nineteen handicapper
that played in a country's Open and lived to tell about it. His name
was Justin Kreibeck. And when people ask me what were your favorite episodes after
doing over nine hundred, that one is definitely on my Mount Rushmore of golf
smart conversations, and speaking of Mount Rushmore of guests, clearly Tony Manzoni is
up on that pedestal, not just for me, but for you as well.
Just this past week, I've received emails that said, I love this
time of year with the Tony Manzoni replays, and another one read, every
time I listened to Tony's single pivot method, it gets a little clearer.
And just this morning I received an email from Sweden. It included I wanted
to extend my gratitude for providing such insightful content on Tony Manzoni and his Lost
Fundamental. Being published this Friday will be our fifth installment of twenty twenty four
Spring into Golf season with Tony Manzoni and the second in a row that we've
never repeated before. Here's a taste. And I'm not going to say that
every player that plays for me plays off the left side, but a lot
of them have changed to it, and when I explain it to them,
they realize that mathematically, if it makes sense, it's not very It's just
that. Look, if we got to get to the left side, and
when we hit the golf ball, the farther we get to the right,
the harder is to get to the left. There's a whole bunch of things
happening on that downsling that you've got a time and we want to eliminate timing
as much as we can in the golfling. And so if we can rotate
on a axis instead of two but one, if we can trap the club
against our body via the connection of our arms to our body, then as
we rotate the club fay stay square through impact and it's easy to do physically.
So that's this Friday's episode of Golf Smarter, when we dip into our
vault of helpful and entertaining conversations. If you'd like to receive a copy of
Tony's video, that could be your payoff for becoming a Golf Smarter ambassador.
Do just what Hugh Levinson of Danville, California did at the top of the
show by telling us where he's from, where he plays, and what episode
we're listening to. And when you do, you'll have a choice of gifts.
So if you're interested, just write to me Golf Smarter Podcast at gmail
dot com and I'll write back with some simple instructions of what to do and
what to say. It's easy and it's a way to tell your buddies that
you're on the Golf Smarter Podcast. Hey, I was on a podcast this
week. They're like what anyway? Now, Hugh Levinson lives in Danville,
California, which isn't that far from me, so I'm hoping to join him
to play the Bridges golf course out in San Ramon. Actually, I've also
played a course called the Bridges just outside of Saint Louis before. I wonder
how many courses have that name, the Bridges. Hmm. Anyway, I'd
like to play with with you too, and have always requested that if you're
in or coming to the San Francisco Bay area and want to play together,
I'd love to meet you. But why wait for you to come to me.
Let's go play this July in Northern Ireland. We talked a lot about
it already, Matt gave you some great insights to these courses, and we
still have room for you to join us, and there's only room for two
foursomes. So let's do this because we're going to have a great time again.
The trip is July two through nine, second through the ninth of twenty
twenty four for five rounds. That includes Royal County Downs, number one course
in the world. Other courses include Royal Port, Rush, Arglass, Royal
Belfast and bally Lyiffin. But the clock is ticking. You can get the
full itinerary and pricing at TMI golf dot com slash golf Smarter. That's TMI
golf dot com slash golf Smarter, and I'll leave a link in the show
notes. So I've been saying this closing line for almost twenty years now,
and just yesterday I received an email asking if I'm open to suggestions for guests.
Yes, doing this show every week requires the greatest resources in the world,
and that's you. So if you have any questions, comments, or
suggestions for upcoming episodes, or need more information and want to discuss our royal
adventure this July. Please write to Golf Smarter Podcast at gmail dot com or
click on the Heyfred button when you visit golfsmarter dot com