Hi, This is Fred Green of Golf Smarter with the penultimate episode of our
annuals Spring into Golf season with the late Tony Manzoni. This is the continuation
of our conversation that started last week with Tony discussing taking your game to the
next level, one club at a time. From June of twenty seventeen.
Tony's book The Loss Fundamental is available on Amazon, and his DVD, which
we converted to a private online link, 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, and while you're there, check out how you
can make a tax deductible donation to the Tony Manzoni Memorial Golf Smarter Fund,
we created in his honor to benefit the first t of Coachella Valley, where
Tony lived and taught for decades. If you'd like access to that 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. Oh there's more.
This is part two of taking your game to the next level, one club
at a time. With Tony Manzoni. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories,
tips and insights from great golf minds to help you lower your score and
raise your golf IQ. There's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to
the Golf Smarter podcast. Tony. Great to be back. It's good to
have you again. Thank you for even though it's been a week since we've
recorded our last one. Usually when we do two part episodes, we'll record
one right after the other, but you had to go, so it's great
that we can just go ahead and pick this up. Before we started recording
a moment ago, we were talking about our excitement that the NBA Finals is
beginning tonight. Now I know when people listen to this, it's going to
be old news, so I don't want to talk about the teams and their
chances and what's going to happen. You know, there's something about the Warriors
that is so interesting that there are two players, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson,
who are all stars, and Steph's a superstar, but they both grew
up in an NBA arena, right, Both of their fathers played in the
NBA. Right, And then you think about players like Ken Griffy Junior who
grew up in a major league dugout because his dad played in the majors.
And there's you know, other baseball players as well. What kind of impact
or do you know of players on the PGA Tour whose fathers were also players
on the PGA Tour and what kind of impact did it have on them in
their play? Well, in some cases, if they get the dads were
great, let's say like Nicholas, it's it's very difficult for the sons to
they go in there with an anchor because they've got to beat a record that's
already been established. So that's the downside. The upside to it a lot
of times is that because their dads were involved in a sport, whether it's
baseball or whatever, they have a better comfort zone there and they have a
better understanding of what's going to happen because they've been around it, you know,
all their youth. So you know, it's kind of a two pronged
thing there. One is one is a little bit tough on you, and
the other one makes it a little bit easier. Yeah, I could see
how that if that's if in fact, you do pursue the same line that
your dad did. You know, It's like a lot of a lot of
kids I can see just going, yeah, I want nothing to do with
that, because there's you know, I can't match up to him, and
I don't care. Well, that's true. I mean, you know,
I was lucky enough to know Frank Sinatra a bit and his son was a
tremendous singer, but you know, going to stand up to Frank, Yeah,
it always seemed like Frank Junior was a junior. He always just seemed
like a bad copy of Frank trying to do Frank. He never seemed like
you know, at least I never knew him, and just what I saw
of him on television that he was just trying to do Frank and it just
wasn't working, you know. The truth being known, his his speaking voice,
it was exactly like Frank, so his singing voice was going to be
similar. He didn't have the pizazz and the aura that Frank presented, and
he didn't really have the chops that Frank had either, but he sounded like
his dad. I remember when I used to I was involved in the Celebrity
the celebrity event that Barbara Sinatra put on for abused children. And one year
Frank Junior did the show. This was after his dad had passed, and
it was eerie. I mean, you you would think it was Frank Sinatra
on stage until you saw him and and the way he handled him. So
he had very unique the ways about him when he sang. He did some
really cool things. But his dad had, you know, when his When
Frank got on the stage, I don't care who was up there previous,
he just owned the thing. He just had that. He just had that
it thing, you know, that's it. Plus he could sing his butt
off and then talking about wayward suns, I have to do it. Any
comments about Tiger, you know, I don't know the details. I do
understand that you should be you know, you can't mix prescription drugs. But
a bigger question is you worth seven hundred and fifty million dollars? What are
you driving from northern Cals to southern cal by yourself? Number one? And
why do not? Why not have a driver in Florida or he was going
I mean it was a long drive. He's going a Florida or some someplace.
Yeah, And he said he was going home and he was going in
the opposite direction. Yeah, and you know, I mean, you know,
when you look at the look at the videos that they're showing, it's
very incriminating. But you know, I know of people that have had really
bad reactions to drugs that are mixed. So I think that I think the
jury is still out, but a lot of people like to make a big
deal out of it and make him look like a bad guy. You know,
he's got a lot of people that don't like him, and that kind
of comes with the territory of being famous. But I think there's also a
lot of people who are going, oh, that's so sad. Oh.
I think there's a lot of people feel bad. Yeah, I mean it's
you know, with Tiger, at one time he could have run for president.
Yeah, and then after well, he came onto the scene. He
he kind of exploded onto the global stage at the same time as Barack Obama,
right, I mean a little bit earlier, but at two thousand and
eight, he was at his pinnacle and here comes Barack Obama and anywhere in
the world. It was kind of a debate on who was the most recognizable
person in the world at that moment. Was it Tiger was a Barack Obama
yeah, I think I would have voted for Tiger, to be honest with
you, he was, you know, he was bigger than life there for
a while, and unfortunately, because of his escapades, he lost favor with
everyone. Yeah, for a bit of a time. And then little by
little people start creeping back into his camp, including sponsors. But there for
a while he was very disliked because he had this perfect marriage, kids,
the whole thing, and then he dumpster for you know, for doing stupid
things. Yeah. Yeah, My greatest fear in all of this that,
you know, with all the surgeries that he's had, and he's had multiple
back surgeries, and if you've been following the Warriors, you know about Steve
Kerr and he's now regretting the surgeries that he had. He says you should
never do back surgery. And what Tiger's now had four Uh, my greatest
fear is that he's addicted to pain meds. That's that's a very good possibility,
very good possibility. Sure, Like you said, he's had so many
operations, you know, And I go back to I met Tiger a long
time ago at at a tournament, on the Celebrity tournament, and he just
happened to be there because the's a lot of celebrities there. Was he a
pro at this point? Was he still a pro? Was he already a
pro at this point or was he still before that? No, it was
before that. And the first thing I noticed that he was very small bones
for a guy that hit it so far. He was out of college,
and you know, he could bench press three hundred pounds when he weighed one
hundred and fifty. So he's a real strong guy, and he was very
he could run really fast too. But I noticed that he had his hands
are medium sized, but his wrists were very small, and so his tendons
and everything and were built for that kind of a frame. And then he
started doing all the weight training and heavyweight training and got very big and it's
still big, really, And I think that that, you know, you
can put on a lot of muscle about your structure is built for a certain
body type. And I think that's where a lot of his injuries came from.
It's just that he got so heavy muscled, and I don't think his
tendents could hold up his knees and so forth and back. Everything kind of
fell apart. Because I did a tournament years ago called Kids for Kids,
and I had Justin Leonard and Tiger. Tiger just hit the drive on one
of the holes with like a pro am to raise money for children that couldn't
afford to play golf and so forth. And I remember I was a fairly
long hitter at that time, and I got up on the hole where it
was a long drive contest, and I really cracked when I was thinking,
man, nobody's catching that one. And I got out there and I saw
this little flag but forty yards ahead of my ball. He said, well,
what the heck is that? Oh that's where that sixty year old kid
hit it. And I mean tired, must wait, you know, like
you weighed about fifty pounds when I when he was there, just skinnier boy,
he could just move the ball. And I think he hit it farther
as an amateurs than he did as a pro. Really, and he was
he was skinny, he was you know, big muscled people don't hit it
long. Davis Love is a perfect example of a long, lean guy that
hit it long, even even in his later years. So I think he
was taken, I think, and I'm afraid that Rory McElroy's does the same
thing. He got into really heavy weight training. You know, way way
back when, there was a guy named Frank Stranahan who is a He was
a first bodybuilder golfer, and I just don't think that the two match.
I don't think they go together. Interesting And then like jose Canseeko was like
the first big weightlifter for baseball, and then the accusation of steroids and then
everybody else, and then he came out and said he and what's so interesting
is he came out and said he was going to do this book that everybody's
doing steroids, and everyone's chastised him and berated him and pretty much blackballed him
from the world of baseball. And now that many years later, he was
right, all wrong. He's the one that was right. You can't blame
athletes for trying to get an edge when everybody else is doing the same thing.
And you know, no one's really said, no one's ever been definitive
about steroids and things like that what they can and cannot do and if you
don't abuse them, and doctors prescribed them for guy's sake. So but the
problem is is that when you get into weight training and you get into Okay,
my arms is this big. I want to get him bigger, and
I want to do this. You're in that arena where that stuff is bandied
about, and that's when you get that's when you're you're you know it's I
think it's I think it's like something that is like a drug almost. You
want to get bigger, you want to get stronger. You get in the
gym, your press bench pressing so much, you want to press more,
and that stuff is available and it kind of calls out to you, and
that's when that's when the mistakes started happening, and you started injecting stuff and
doing more of it than you should, and then you pay the piper.
That's why you see so many football players dying so early. I really attributed
to a lot of that kind of stuff, the steroids line and pain medication.
Sure sure, yeah, you know, when you're od on that stuff
or when you do it too much in your system eventually catches up with you.
Let's get back to our conversation started to be last week. I wanted
to continue this week because you gave so much really valuable information and what we're
talking about is taking your game to the next level, one club at a
time, and we're dissecting each of the clubs in our bag to see what
we can do to improve our game and improve our ball striking and lower our
scores by focusing on practicing with each club and what we can do. Last
week we talked about the putter, the eight iron, chipping with an eight
iron, and the lob wedge, uh, and the sand wedge, and
then you know how how a ball releases when you're when you're chipping, and
how much it releases. So if you miss that, you've got to go
back to hear that. But let's talk now. Let's start again here.
Let's start at the sandwich. We really didn't cover much of it. Uh,
what tell me what i need to do better with my sand wedge that
I'm not doing that's going to get the ball closer to the hole? Well,
you know, the sandwich is a marvelous club. Jean Sarahson was the
one that invented the thing, and it's been primarily used for bunker shots and
shots on the green and hitting flop shots, but then with the advent of
higher lofted clubs being made with lob wedge and so forth, in my estimation.
And this is just my opinion. And maybe I'm just a little old
school, because I am old. I like to hit all kinds of shots
with the sandwich. I don't even carry it, you know. I put
a six degree in and it it befuddled me because I couldn't get the distance
control that I wanted. I expected more distance, and I came up short
with a lot of shots. So I've learned that I've gone back to the
sandwich. I've taken a little bounce off of it so I could use it
in the fairways and I can open it up and hit that lob shot.
And really it's that that's what you should do. When I got to know
when I was with Callaway and I got to know teaching Rodriguez a little bit
and listen to him. You know, he had about twenty shots with a
wedge. He could just do anything with it. And then in subsequent with
Lee Trevino, Lee Trevino, he said, I could I could do brain
surgery with my wedge. Uh. You know that's that is. If you
want to play golf and shoot low numbers, you've got to be a wizard
with those short clubs, especially the sandwich and pitching wedge and then shots around
the green. But the sandwich is a fantastic club, but you must make
sure that you have the correct bounce for what you're trying to get done.
Uh and and that's uh and And you know, I love the Cleveland wedges.
I love the title of Volky Wedges. They seem to be whoever is
doing the design and seems to be a good player and understands what they should
be like, especially in the bounce area. Can you It's been discussed before,
but there's still it's confusing. What do you mean by bounce? Well,
bounce there's a you know, the flange on the golf club. Well,
if you take it to club and turn it over, you'll see that
a high bounce club, the flange kind of sticks out a little bit.
It's it's higher, I'm sorry. Flange is is the part that touches the
ground? Yes, so a highlight. Uh uh. The idea of the
flange is that it penetrates the sand a little bit. It goes into the
sand a little bit, and that's what put sand on the face of the
club, and then you hit the ball and the ball comes out soft.
So way back when I've got an old Wizard wedge by Johnny Rivolta that's like
an anvil, very heavy, big big flange on it. But it was
primarily for the sand, for the sand, But you also want to a
sandwich that you can use off the turf. And if you have too much
bounce on it and you're hitting off a tight lie, you're gonna hear some
some nifty little skull shots that you don't you don't want. So I've always
believed that I want to I can get the ball out of the bucker and
I don't need I don't need that the high loft of the bounce. I
don't need high a big, big bounce on it. I can use a
lower bounce, and I just open the thing up. And I feel like
I want to slide the club under the ball a little bit more. I
don't. I don't stick it in the sands so much and explode it out.
And I think in today's world you see more of the sliders where they
slide the ball out a little bit. You don't see the too much chunk
and run as as you did way back when. So I like, I
like my sandwich to be a little bit more utility for me where I can
use it in the fairways, use it off of a tight lie and use
it in the bunker. So the that that little piece that comes down,
it's kind of a V shape. That's that's what it looks like when you're
looking at the bounce, and the more V the shape is, the bigger
the bounce. Hard to say, Yeah, it's hard to explain with holding
a club up. Yeah, it's hard to explain with the words. You
have to see it. Yeah. Are you saying that it's easier to get
the ball to stop when you slide it under the when you're in a bunker,
or when you explode it up get the ball to stop? It has
to do with speed. The more speed you can generate and hit and do
it properly, the more spin you put on the ball, the more you
stop the ball. A lot of people like to hit it so that it
releases a little bit and not too many guys are trying to carry it to
the hole and make it stop. That's the conditions have to be perfect for
that in the sand. But you watch the guys today, they really they
have that blade really open with the sandshot, and you know they just come
from au to in on it and slide that baby underneath. Venturre used to
when I when he was alive and I got to play golf of them,
I used to watch them, and that's that was his things. I feel
as if there's a tea under the ball and try to clip that tea.
And I hit a lot of skull shots for a while until I got that
feeling where I could slide the thing underneath. You said perfect conditions, when
the when the when your ball's in the sand and under perfect conditions? For
for me, I'm a public course guy, right. I don't play the
country club that has fresh sand brought in every six months and so lots of
times, especially after a harsh winter like we had. You know, the
sand the bunkers are now hardly sand. They're almost mud or have turned into
hard you know, hard dirt. What are perfect conditions? Well, then
you have to get a little you know, when you have it really hardpan,
you've got to be steeper on the shot. You gotta literally make your
own sand by hitting straight down into it and digging a little bit that you
you just that's what that would be a condition where you're stuck with it because
if you try to pinch it off of a hard pen, you run the
risk of the club bouncing because of the law of the bounce on the club
and it bounces into the ball when I mean you know, the club head
bounces into the ball and you hit it the middle of the ball and scull
it. So in that case you got to get steeper with it. The
problem COMMUNI places and places like that not only is sometimes there's way too much
sand and it's really soft, because it's not it's not a silica sand.
It's a it's like a blow sand that you get it or in the desert,
and that's really much more difficult to get it out and make it do
what you wanted to do. In that case, you're just trying to get
it out and hopeful, hoping for the best. Uh. But if you
look at the tour, the bunkers are perfect and they and they have kind
of what they call the silica sand, and it's it's it's a tight sand
in a way you can slide the club under, but it's not arduous where
you can't get true real heavy sand. It's very difficult. And when you
look at the tour, you'll notice that even if they hit wayward shots,
they don't lose balls. That's because there's people standing there watching where they land.
I mean, it would be so much nicer and we'd play so much
better if we didn't have to go searching for a ball that we saw land
and okay, it's in the rough over there and you can't find it anyway.
That's yeah, very very seldom you see a lost ball on tour because
there's so many people watching. It happened occasionally, but very seldom. And
plus I think the average guy's errant shot is a little bit more erranch than
the pros. But you're right, that's a that's a great thing that you
never never really lose a ball. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a difference
of the way bunkers are prepared or the type of sand that are in bunkers
in the fairway versus the green side bunkers. No, they're generally, you
know, if they're using a silica sand, they're using it all the bunkers.
Typically muni courses, they're they're using a heavier sand so it stays in
there a little bit more. But they don't use a different sand for fairways
than they do a green side generally, okay, good, I need to
know that how many how many wages do you carry in your bag? A
pitching edge and sandwich? So what do you carry? Fourteen clubs? Sure,
then you load up? Yeah, where do you load up? I
load up with the rescue clubs. How many do you carry? Let me
see, I've got a driver, three wood, five wood three four five
three four five rescue than six seven eight nine pitching white sandwich. So I
carry driver forwood, then a high three hybrid, four hybrid, and my
irons are five six seven eight nine pitch gap sand lob I carry. I'm
more on on the wedge side because to me, it's you know, I
I'll hit my forwood. You know, my driver I can hit I average
like two forty or two between two forty to fifty. But the I can
hit my forewood about two ten to two twenty, and then my three hybrid
I hit two hundred and then one eighty five. So to me that I
feel like I've got all that covered that distance because I'm not going to go
beyond it. You know, each individual is different. I tried the gap
wedge for a while, but again it was confusing for me. First of
all unless you're unless you really play a lot and you're very skilled. The
hardest part is distance control. If I've got a ninety one yard shot,
it's really hard for me to hit at ninety one yards. I remember the
funny story the cat he said, Hogan said to the caddy, how far
is He says it's ninety six or ninety seven? He says, which one
is it? Because that's how immaculate Hogan was about playing the game. I
mean, he really could hit it within yards. But the average person,
even a guy's on tour, as you can see, they're either short or
long most of the time. So what's the difference in your distance between your
pitching wedge and your sand wedge on a full swing? You know, I
had my set, my set set up so that my sandwich is a little
on the strong side, so it's a little closer to my pitching wedge,
so there's no need for the gap. My sandwich is a fifty four degree.
A lot of them are fifty sixes and so forth right, So you
know, I don't find it. I've never had a problem. And I
played for years before there was gap wedges and sixty degree wedges, and I
did just fine. But you know, manufacturers put that seat in your heads
so you can buy more product. You know, you gotta have a have
a gapodge. You got to have a sixty degree. I mean, and
I think Michelson has a sixty four degree or something like that. I'd be
afraid I was going to hit myself in the head with a thing, you
know, so, but I just don't see an need for it. Well,
I have like a thirty five yard difference between my pitching wedge and my
sand wedge, And to me, that's like, why would I want a
thirty five yard gap there when it could be so many different shots for me
as I'm getting you know, from my approach shot, I can deal with
a twenty five yard distance between my long ones, but on those short spots,
but you can. You may be your pitching wedge is a little strong
and your your sandwich is a little weak, but you should be able to
take a pitching wedge out and hit it fifty sixty, seventy eighty. You
should be able to hit it all those distances. So, I mean,
for Haven's sake, they didn't have lob wedges or rescue. I mean,
what am I trying to say, gap wages for a long our gap clubs
for a long time. Uh, And people were able to you know,
that's called shot making, and that gets back to these clubs. You know,
the great players. I hold him. He would hit every club in
the bag and during a practice round twenty five times, and he hit them
different trajectories left to right, right to left, high and low. And
he could stand out there and with his whole set of clubs and hit it
and hit a green say out about one fifty one sixty with every club in
the bag, including the driver. So he had the ability to speed it
up or slow it down and still make a legitimate swing and hit the ball
flush. That's what's missing today. Everything is uh. You know I hit
a seven and one seventy and that's all I hit it. Well, you
should be able to hit it one twenty or one ten. Uh. If
if a person would take the clubs that they have and practice with them and
use them for different distances, you'd be surprised they could literally eliminate some of
the clubs in their bag and still and still be able to play without any
problem. You're making a basic assumption that we practice well. I can't tell
you how many people complain about the fact that they want to be more consistent,
but they never practice, right, that's right. I mean, oh
man, if I was only more consistent, well, what are you doing
to work on that? Play golf world when best in the world, that's
all they do for a living is play golf. Ah, the keywords there,
the keywords for a living. Will have to do other things. Yeah,
that's why. I mean, you can't expect to play at the level
that they play and not hit the ball. A number of balls that they
hit, I mean, just not possible. It's just a comfort thing.
It's a mental thing. Really. When you've hit a lot of balls,
you're storing that in your subconscious mind. And the better you hit it,
the better picture you have in your subconscious mind. Average guy when he goes
to play, he doesn't I mean, he doesn't know what's going to happen
that day, probably within a twenty stroke period. Where the turing pro you
know, if he has a bad day, he's going to shoot seventy two
or three or four. The average guy who maybe averages let's just say eighty
five, he doesn't know if it's going to be one hundred and twenty ninety
five or maybe an eighty, and that's because the golf clubs aren't his friends,
because he hasn't hung out with him enough. That's one of the things
I talk about when someone asks, you know, if I play for money,
It's like, no, I'm competing against too many things that I can't
bring money into the equation as well, because then I really freak out.
And one of the things that I feel like I'm competing against is my golf
clubs. I mean there's the terrain, there's the weather, there's my head,
and then a different club for every shot, different length, and you
know I'm competing against those two. Yeah, I mean, it's the game
is we manifest a lot of things, like the thing when I have a
young lady that I teach. I'm not going to use her name, but
she constantly talks to me about the pressure, and you know, that's a
that's something that we we create because of doubt. There's no such thing as
pressure. I mean, the golf hold doesn't know anything about pressure. The
golf clubs don't know anything about pressure. The player is the one that is
putting a value on the shot that doesn't need to be put on it.
You know, I got one hundred and fifty yard shot to a green.
I've got a club I select, and if I make a decent swing,
I should be able to put it on that green. But now if I
don't get it on that green, I may lose the tournament. Or if
I hit in that bump or hitt in the water, these are all perceptions,
and that's what as a coach, that's what I'm always trying to explain
to my players that there is no such thing as pressure. When the flag
goes up, it's no different the golf course that change. The ball didn't
change. The only thing that changes is your mindset. See so in trying
to be a good golfer, you have to work on that aspect too.
And of course, the more that you practice and the more good shots that
you see, the better chance you have of having a good image as you
stand up to that ball getting ready to strike into a target. He was
playing yesterday with some guys and one of them drove the green with a flag
in the back and left himself about a twelve foot putt for eagle. He
had more pressure on him than the rest of us did because we were you
know, putting for par or bogie, and he was putting that all the
pressure was on him, not the three pot. Well, but to see
there you go, it's a twelve foot putt, right, It hasn't changed.
It's a twelve foot putt. But it's how we deal with it.
If it's a twelve foot putt for a triple bogie, his chances are probably
better to make it than if it's a twelve foot putt for an eagle.
And yet it's still a twelve foot putt. But again it becomes a you
know, it's it's there's a value associated with it. And and that's where
we get into trouble in this game if you could. But we're but we
have emotions and that you know, it's easy for me to say that,
But we have emotions and and we we have pride, and we have ego,
and we have all these things that we have to deal with. So,
but there is no such thing as pressure. That's a that's a manifestation
of our mind where we perceive things that are things. This is more valuable
than that. I want to be able to tell everybody I eagle as whole.
Uh. And so you know this, this becomes more difficult than the
twelve foot putt is uh, but who knows that button? If I if
I knew how to press that button, we wouldn't be talking, you know,
I'd be in the Caribbean in a big ship or something. You know.
That's that's the constant dilemma that we all face as players. But I
mean the reality of it, there is no there's no such thing as pressure.
It's just perception, you know. Well, I would think that a
twelve foot putt for Eagle, for an amateur, the guys in his head
going, I got to make this putt, I have to make this I
have to make this pot. Well, he's doomed, right. But on
the professional level, a twelve foot putt for Eagle to win, it's a
difference. I mean, you're saying, he's not going I have to make
this putt, I have to make this putt. Well, I think professionals
have a little better idea of what what is the percentage of makes with a
twelve foot put on tour? And if I think if you if you look
at statistics, you know they don't make every one of them for sure,
I would probably say that you've got maybe a forty percent chance of making it.
If you hit ten balls on a twelve foot putt, you probably make
six or four. But it's a lot the percentage is a lot higher.
And and that's another thing I tell my boys. Look, if you got
a twenty footer, know that that's that's a low number percentage on tour to
make for sure. So relax a little bit, put a put a good
role on it. And if you if you don't three putt it, if
you roll it up there close, you sometimes make it, bravo. But
if you don't make it and you get it up by the whole, good
job and tapping the putt, go to the next hole. You've got to
be realistic about puts. I mean, I've had I've had boys on my
team that miss a fifty footer and you know, they lip it out and
they'll go crazy. Is it? What you what? Are you insane?
Do you think you're gonna make a fifty footer every time? You know?
But that that but when you get that close, but I mean, like
when it lips out at from fifty feet, of course you're going to like,
oh I wish that would have gone in, But you should laugh,
could laugh, Holy Macro Hobbs made that thing, you see, it's the
way you look at it, you know. Jordan Speed, I mean he's
like a wizard. I've never seen anybody make long puss as many times as
he does and when he misses. But you can't fall apart at the seams
as something that's unrealistic. I mean, you just can't. And I think
the better, the better players handle it differently. They'll smile to themselves with
a little wry smile. God almost made that, But they're not beating themselves
up because they missed it. And I mean you just have to be a
lunatic to think that. But young people, especially young people, they think
that everything is makeable and when you miss, it's a disappointment. But not
always. You know, if you've got a thirty or forty footer and you're
rolling up there a couple of feet from the whole, good job, it's
happening, and go to the next hole. But again, I think that
the unqualified player, the high handicap player, or the mid handicap player,
or even the scratch player, we have a different view of things than the
guy that's on the tour plane. I think that you and you talk about
young people today and getting upset about missing fifty foot putts. You probably don't
play golf video games, do you, Tony, because they make those all
the time. No, I don't. I try to stay away from that.
To me too, because I have had a personality that that's all I'd
be doing. I want to get into the long irons. You talked about
the seven iron and the different shots that you can have with the seven iron.
I know, for me, one of the shots that I like to
practice a lot. I'm about one hundred and forty five with my seven iron,
and fact, the fact that you said one hundred and eighty just blows
my mind. So I'm about one hundred and forty five. But I also
know that where I play, how often I play, where I play,
there's a lot of trees, and so there a shot that I have to
have in my bag is to be able to punch it back out to the
fairway and keep it under the branches. And so for me, I can
do a seventy yard or one hundred yard shot with my seven iron just letting
it roll out, just you know, punching it out. So that that
is definitely one of those shots that I practice. So let's talk about long
irons and other things you can do other than just you know, being on
the driving range and hit ball after ball after ball, How far, how
straight can I hit it? What other things can I do to take my
game to the next level. Well, when it comes when it comes to
a club more than a six iron, when it comes to five, four,
three two, possibly one, the first thing I say is take those
clubs and throw them in the garbage and go get yourself some rescue clubs that
have the same numbers, because it's a different world. Getting a three iron
two iron up in the air high enough to worry when it comes down on
the green it's going to stay is really difficult. It takes a lot of
strength, and it's a much harder club to hit than if you get a
three rescue or two rescue or whatever those kinds of shots are. It's hard
to have a lot of shots with a long iron, you know, but
you can. You can do a little bit more with the rescue club.
The width of the bottom of the club, you can get it out of
higher grass. You can't do that with a with a hozzled club like a
two hour and a three arm and there's no way. But that's why the
pros in the pass when they got the ball and heavy rough, they had
to use their forward or five wood. But now that these rescue clubs are
just unbelievable. But there's not much you could do with those kinds of shots.
There's two hundred yard shots or one hundred eight yard shots, depending on
how far you hit a ball. But for me, I hit my three
rescue about two hundred yards sometimes too, but that number two is what I'm
selecting because I always leave a little bit, a little bit for error.
But there's not much you can do with them. Mean, hopefully you can.
You don't have too many of those shots per around, really, because
it would make a long day, Yes it would. I'm just curious.
Are you playing tailor made clubs? No? Actually, uh, somebody turned
me onto it's club called Xxio. It's it's a Japanese brand carried by shricks
On and they're expensive as hell, I will tell you that, but they're
the best clubs I've played in a long long time, especially the Restshue clubs,
the Driver and the Far. The three would three would has always been
a tough club for me. Off of a tight line and these these clubs,
I don't know what it is about them, but it gets the ball
up in the air really easy. So I'm at that age. Anything I
can do to make it easier, I'll go for it. Right. No,
the reason I was asking you is because I think that Taylor Made was
one of the first to bring out that club, and they called it a
rescue club. I think that's a brand name, rescue, but they're actually
referred to as hybrids. Is that what a hybrid is? Hybrid or like
my xxios this is U four U five? Uh? You know, everybody
has her way, but that I like to because that really describes it to
me. When you put if I had to pull out a fore iron today,
I would need to be rescued, believe me. Yeah, it's amazing
how it cuts through long grass like butter. On those clubs, it really
makes a huge difference. They put the CG on the golf club, son
of gravity on the golf club. On these new clubs, it just gets
that ball up in the air really easy. And you know that's what that's
what you fight. As you get older, you get slower, you get
weaker, so the shots that you could get up in the air like Nicholas.
You know they said that Nicholas could hit a one iron the heights of
an eight iron. Wow, what a huge badge that is. But it
takes tremendous strength to do that, right, So let's move on to the
what used to be called fairway woods, and now they're called fairway drivers or
uh fairway metals because nobody makes a wood anymore. What do you use?
Use them for? How many? You know you carry two of them?
The advantage of having multiple ones and you know, what is the best thing
we can do to again take our game to the next level with those clubs.
Well, the faraways are very important because they put you on the par
fives. They put you in a position to where you can hit a somewhat
easy third shot whords in your sweet spot area where you're let's say your wedge
or dine iron. The furweys are important and a lot of times it's best
to use a fairwayo off the tee on a lot of holes. The distance
difference isn't that? Isn't that? Why? Now you know I have again
with a lot of my players, I say, look, this hole doesn't
call for a drive. You don't need that distance. You can put the
ball in a position where you have a fairly easy shot and then you don't
run the risk of you know, hitting it in the trees or whatever.
But a lot of people are stuck on that driver. They pull that driver
out no matter what the distance of the hole, or no matter how narrow
it is. So the fairway woods can be used off the fairway, but
they can also be used off the tee. And I wouldn't hit would I
would be using my treewood most of the time when I was opted when I
said, okay, I'm not going to use my driver on this hole.
But there are times that I watch on the tour where the guys are using
iron off the tee. Of course, they hit an iron a lot further
than the average player. But the point is is that in managing yourself on
the golf course, you have to look at the hole and appraise, Okay,
where do I want to hit it or do not want to hit it?
Okay? And then what's the what's the club I can use to get
somewhere in that area? Because the woods are just to set the hole up.
You're not going to drive the green. So twenty yards or whatever between
the driver and the three wood. Isn't that that's significant? But unfortunately everything
is stressed today about distance and not shot making. I think a lot of
players, a lot of people that play the game, would be better off
not using their driver as much as they do and putting the ball in play
and then and then on the second chout on a par five. For a
lot of good players, they'd be much smarter to hit an iron up there
within you know, that sixty seventy yard range, and then throw that thing
up on the green. Even Sam Steed, who is a long driver in
his day, said, if I can't hit a high lofted club on the
same I can shine on a dry on a par five, I'll hit an
iron into my wedge area. That's the way you play the game. But
we're seduced by not on a par five and two. You know, when
you're young enough to do it, and the ball's coming in too low.
If it hits the green, it's going to go to the back of the
green. So you're going to be looking at a long putt, and now
you've got to try to two putt for that birdie. And if your three
putt it really demoralizes you. Where if you knock get up there with a
wedge, you got a good chance to hit a ten to fifteen feet good
chance to make that putt. So it's just a different mindset and these are
the things that you have to do to keep the round going mentally. You
don't want a lot of up and downs emotionally, and you put yourself in
that position when you try to hit those. I hope I can get this
on in two. You know, that's where the ego gets involved, and
that's what you got to liminate. I know that many times that if say
on a par five especially, you can really use strategy to your advantage here
because of that extra shot that you're given. So that if my drive on
a par five is leaves me three hundred yards out, instead of trying to
pull out my fairway metal, my fore would and try to get it.
You know, listen, it's three hundred yards out, I'm not gonna be
able to reach it. But then I'm gonna leave myself a sixty yard shot,
a forty yard shot. I'm not as comfortable with those. I'd rather
take my nine iron and hit it twice and get close to the pin.
In three, then try to get there in two and not and come up
short and then have that awkward distance in the middle there. Yeah, there's
no question about it. Those shots where you say the thirty and forty yard
shots, those are really difficult shots, even pros. They're not easy shots.
You're having a you know, not take a full swing. It becomes
a little bit more difficult. And those little tender wedges are tougher than heck.
Yeah, so that you know, you just watch watch the good players
play and you can go to see that their strategy is a lot different than
the average guy. The average guy swinging from his you know, from his
toes to hit as far as he can hit at every club, which is
you know, borer lines on being a little nuts. And the same thing
that what you had talked about is using a fairway wood off the tee fairway
metal fairway driver off the tee on holes that either have narrow fairways or aren't
as long. Again, I don't want to get too close and make it
a difficult second shot. I want to be in the range of what I
think is a good shot for me, like one and one hundred and twenty
five yard shot, But I'm real confident with those, far more than I
am with a forty. So I'll take that fairway wood off the tee.
Sure. And even if sometimes look even if sometimes it's a long hole,
but there's a lot of problems that the designer put on the hole. They
put in a lot of big fairway bunkers and are hard to get out of.
They put they put water, they put out of bounds. Uh,
it's still sometimes even though it's still a long hole and you're not going to
be able to get on into. Uh, you've got to go ahead and
saw all that bitter pill and put that thing in play and then get hit
another shot and keep it in play, and then trust your wedge, your
putter. The worst thing is gonna happen. You're gonna walk away with a
bogie. But you're going to eliminate that big number by trying to stretch out
because the hole is long without looking at the factors that are involved at that
in the designer, you know, he set that up for you to come
on hit that driver body. That's what I want you to do. Uh.
You know it's like a sucker pin, you know, to use your
head when you play right, you know what we call that, Tony,
what's that? Golf smarter? Golf smarter. That's exactly right, that's true.
I mean I think I think there's a hole in the Masters that Hogan
always purposely hit to the right of the hole or right of the green,
just on the fringe and then chipped up and punted. And they always said,
why do you do this? Because this hole if you if you hit
the wrong side of the green, it's going to kick right into the water.
So even the great Hogan, who really mastered hitting the ball, he
had a strategy sometimes where he swallowed that bitter pill because he wanted to he
wanted to eliminate the big number. And and you you got to do that
when you play the game, and it's like a chess game, it's not
all about four. Sometimes you have to have a little finesse. Yeah,
let's wrap it up with the driver, and I'll start with that one I
have. I don't like to just walk onto a golf course and tee off.
I really need in my mind, my metal preparation. I need an
hour to hit balls, to practice short game, A bunch of shots in
the short game, very few shots with a driver, very few shots with
my long my fairway metal. But I'll spend a lot more time on short
game stuff when I'm warming up. But when I do take out the driver,
instead of taking full swings with it, I'll try to swing so easy
that I only hit it one hundred yards or one hundred and fifty, but
try to you know, at a specific target, right at it, and
that allows me to get a rhythm going and put the ball, you know,
a short distance and feel more confident about taking a big swing after that.
What would you advise on driver for you know, again for your warm
up session or your practice session. That's going to help your game keep the
ball in the fairway. So critical with the driver? Well, you know
the old saying, I want to swing fast, but not hard. Uh
with the driver. The driver is a is a wonderful club, and it's
it's and used properly, it's a great tool, but it can be your
worst enemy if you're if you're thinking about distance. Lee Trevino once was talking
about playing with Nicholas and how far Nicholas hit it compared to everybody else,
and he says, so when I played with Nicholas, I would try to
try to hit the ball two hundred and thirty yards off the tee. And
when I did that, I hit it about two seventy's and I tried to
hit it too seventy. I hit it to thirty. And you know,
that's just such great wisdom, because that's that's so much the truth. How
many times have we got up on a par five and it's a long one,
so we're going to give it that extra and we we throw it from
the top and we get a little steep with it, we pop it straight
up in the air like a wedge, or we hit a way right or
way left. There's a speed that you have to get used to with the
driver, and a lot of it has to do with defocusing on the ball,
defocusing on any thought of hitting and swinging from point A to point B
in a rhythm that you can keep your balance. If you do that with
the driver, you're going to keep the ball in play most of the time.
But most people, you watch them, and they'll swing the driver a
lot harder than they do any club in their bag. That's the problem with
the driver, because again the emphasis is always on distance instead of direction and
placement. That to me, the driver is the placement it sets the hole
up for the next shot. It's not I'm going to hit it into infinity
because well, no one does that. And you know, then you see
Rory McElroy or some of these guys that hit it pretty close to four hundred
yards and you know we can't wait to get to the tee to do that.
Well, no, you're not in their category and never will be.
You know, you have to play the game based on your game and not
anybody else's. And I highly recommend for anyone listening there, find the speed
that you can finish perfectly and hold your fallow through position where you're in balance.
That's the speed you should swing the driver, and the better you get
and you can make it go a little faster but still be unbalanced. But
if you're falling all over the place, you're swinging too hard. Phenomenal tip.
That is such a fabulous piece of advice. Oh my god, I'm
so happy with that. Thank you. That's great. I got to end
here with a quick anecdote about my round yesterday. I was playing with these
three guys that are actually around the same age as my younger son, and
one of them my son wrestled in high school for four years, and one
of the guys that I was playing with wrestled against my son's team, and
so he knew of And so because I knew that the kid wrestled, it
allowed me to communicate with him in a better level. But what I noticed
in the first three holes four holes, he had absolutely no hip turn on
his swing, and his address position was pretty much kind of slouchy, shoulders
stand straight up, So he really wasn't in a ready position, and he
wasn't doing anything, and he couldn't get the ball off the ground. He
was rolling it, he was duffing it, he was missing it left and
right. So I do not give advice at swing advice on a golf course,
I don't do that. And sometimes if I have an observation that might
help on a mental part or a strategic part, I'll do that, but
I'll stay away from swing mechanics, especially during a round. But I said
to the guy when I found out that he wrestled, I said, where
do you get Where do you get all your power when you wrestle? And
he said in your hips? And I went uh huh, And he kind
of looked at me, and I said, you don't turn your hips when
you're when you're hitting the golf ball, and he went, oh, my
right. I said, what's your ready position when you when you're wrestling And
he immediately got into this very athletic position and you know, like looking right
at me, and I'm going, uh huh, look at the way your
position when you you you start off the tee. And that point on he
played the best golf of his life and broke a hundred for one of the
I mean the second or third time in his life. He was very and
even thanked me at the end of the round. He says, that made
that one tip about my hips made all the difference for me. So you
did something there that that good teachers are able to do. You got him
to relate to something that he could that he does, so that he could
it wasn't foreign to him. Uh. And that's it. That was That
was great. That was very astudent on your part, because a lot of
people teach, but they're more than they're more pontificating than teaching. Uh.
And you made him relate to something that he does in a different sport but
was germane to the sport he was playing. So that was great, great
great stuff. You know, I played with a lot of fellows that I
teach, uh and when we're out there playing, you know, they're they're
trying to show me how good they're doing and so forth. And I understand
all that because what I've played with touring pros, I did the same darn
thing. But I try to stay away from quick tips other than to say
you might want to slow it down a little bit, or you might,
you know, you might want to wind your stance a bit. But I
don't get into too many swing tips because if if they overemphasize that, they're
going to fall apart at the seams, and then they're going to be looking
at you as that you ruin my day. They're not going to say it,
but they're going to feel it. So you have to be you have
to be careful with tips on the golf, of course. But that was
real smart on your part. Well, thank you. I was actually fishing
for the compliment. I appreciate that that was because you got him to equate
to something else, but something that he's comfortable doing. So that's great stuff.
Yeah. Well, the first teacher that I ever had in golf,
his first question, and this was huge for me. He says, first
question was what sports did you play as a kid? And from that point
on he just made me. You know, he put it in those terms,
you know, of what sports that I played and how I can translate
that into improving in my golf. And I always thought that was an incredibly
valuable tool because all I did was ask the kid a question. He fixed
it himself once he realized what it meant in relation to his golf game.
I didn't do a thing. I just made an observation to him. Yeah.
Yeah, Well, I'll just tell you a real quick story. One
time I was inside the pro shop. I was watching the guy in the
range and he pull up his beautiful set of Callowey clubs, beautiful bag.
I mean, he had invested a lot in product. He gets up there
and watch him and a pretty strong looking guy, and he was slicing everything,
I mean, just sad. And I kept watching him, so I
thought I can't handle it anymore. So I went out and I said,
let me ask you something. Have you ever played baseball? He said,
yeah, I was a really good baseball player. I says, just take
a club and imagine that you're hitting a low pitch how would you how would
you hit a low pitch? And you know, he swung with a kind
of a baseball action, released his hands, released the clubhead, and I
said, yeah, that's that's pretty good. I said, now, why
don't you treat that golf ball like it's a low pitch. Just go ahead
and take a good baseball cut at And of course he had a ball there
with a little bit of a draw, and he looked at me like,
you know, like God has spoken to him. So he little by little
by little, you can see he was now using He was swinging the club
in an emotion that he was familiar with. And that's really as a boy
when I first caddied, I caddied so I could make enough money to buy
clothes for school, and I could play baseball pretty good as a young kid.
Like a lot of young kids, we all played baseball. And that's
what I's those were my first thoughts. She had a golf ball, was
just to hit the back of that ball with a baseball with a kind of
a baseball action, and I could clomberate the thing right off the bat.
I never I never sliced the ball when I started playing, because I equated
more to baseball. Now, if I had been given some formal lessons,
I'm sure I would have sliced the heck out of the ball. So sometimes
sometimes those are the best lessons when you when you can open up a guy's
or a gal's mind to something that they've done in their past when it comes
to hitting a golf ball, especially women. Gosh, I teach a lot
of women, and I talked about it. Have you ever played baseball?
Have you played tennis? And then we try to use a similar stroke and
it works like magic. Well, Tony, I don't want to say,
I don't want to equate you with God, but there's something God like.
Now let me finish my sentence, my friend, there is something God like
about great teachers, and you are a great teacher. And I really appreciate
you spending so much time with me. Every time I call. Thank you.
Well. I listen. I love your show and I know that the
listeners to your podcast love your show, and to be a small part of
it is really an honor for me. Believe me,