Hi, This is Fred Green of golf Smarter with the eighth appearance that Tony
Manzoni made on golf Smarter number four hundred and fifty six that was recorded back
in September of twenty fourteen. This is the first of two consecutive episodes from
that month as we're getting close to the end of our annual series as we
spring back into golf season with Tony Manzoni. Tony's book The Lost Fundamental,
One Simple Move Better Golf Forever is available on Amazon in paperback and on kindle
format, and the DVD that he created, which we converted to a private
link online, is also available when you write to me. For the most
comprehensive information ever collected on Tony, please go to Golfsmarter dot com. Slash
Tony and Tony is all lowercase. If you'd like access to that video,
please write to me directly golf Smarter Podcast at gmail dot com, or just
click on the Heyfred button when you visit golf smarter com for members only.
Golf Smarter number four hundred and fifty six published on September thirty, twenty fourteen.
You're headed address Hitting behind the Ball in more Part one with Tony Mantoni.
This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Tony,
Hey, Fred, how are you. I'm doing fine. It's nice
to have you back on the show. I apologize immediately for the banging,
but there's some construction being done outside my office, so if it sounds like
someone's knocking to get in, I'm not answering the door. All right,
you got it? How things going down there in Palm Desert, I get
It's amazing, continues to be amazing. This is what your ninth appearance on
Golf Smarter, and every time you're on there's this just a tremendous reaction to
your work and purchases of your book and your video, The Lost Fundamental.
It's well, that really pleases me to hear, obviously, and hopefully this
ninth podcast will generate more interest. Yeah. Well again, the book is
called The Loss Fundamental. It's also the name of a DVD and it's only
available on Golf Smarter website because your site's not working properly. But maybe we'll
get that fixed too. And we're still to those of you who are not
in the United States, we apologize, but we're still trying to figure out
how to make both the book and the video available as a digital download.
At this point it's not, but as soon as it is, we'll let
you know. So that's we're working on that. So how's the team doing
down to College of the Desert. Well, this is a rebuilding period for
us. Last year's team primarily broke off to other colleges and so forth,
and that's always problemly to your schools. You can't build a dynasty. But
that being said, we did win our twenty eighth conference championship in a row.
Then you have built a dynasty. It is a little crazy, and
I think that we've got a shot at twenty nine. I brought in a
bunch of boys that are freshmen, but they're good players. They just need
guidance like always, and that's my job. So you know, we have
high hopes again, Fred, Yeah, awesome. How is it, Tony?
Now you're dealing with kids that are eighteen nineteen years old primarily? Correct?
That's correct? And how you're not close to that age, you're probably
closer to their grandparents' age. How's your communication? Well, well, I'm
trying to be nice about age is a number to me. It always has
been. Yeah, you're right, But I've been lucky enough to stay current
with everything that I can. I try to stay current with music. It
doesn't please me as much as Frank Sinatra, but I still stay current with
it. And I try to keep myself at their level and try to understand
what they're going through, what their peer pressure is, and so forth,
because if I'm going to be an effective a teacher, and I am a
teacher, I've got to understand where they're coming from. And then we kind
of meet in the middle somewhere. So that would be the Beatles. If
that's the middle, we're going from the forties to twenty twenties. Well,
I mean just the things that they do recreationally that I didn't do, and
the things that they strive for that I didn't strive for. You know,
the PGA Tour, for instance, it was a very very small faction.
I didn't have any dreams of being I wanted to play competitive golf. But
you can become a zillionaire playing professional golf at when I played now, I
mean, you know, first prize when I played a lot of terms for
five thousand dollars was first prize, and you know, everything today is pretty
close to a million or more, and there was no endorsement because golf really
wasn't an important sport on television. It is now. I've been watching the
Ryder Cup and it's just it's amazing. It's like the Super Bowl. Really.
Yeah. Actually, the last episode that we did, Neil Sagabel,
author of The Drawing the Dunes, he was talking about golf in nineteen sixty
nine. The book is about the nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup and the concession,
and he talks about the money to be earned even in the late sixties,
how little it was, and how difficult it was for American players to
go and play in overseas because it just didn't pay. I mean, it
cost you money to do it. Even if you won, you probably didn't
make very much money because of the expenses. So, you know, the
money is dramatically changed, and that's that's got to be thanks to television.
Oh, you know, people like Arnold Palmer kind of created the interest for
television to want to put golf on TV. I mean, you know,
he was really kind of the driving force, as did in modern day Tiger
Woods. Uh. And but I can remember we hosted two PGA events at
the club. I was at the Almaden Open and we had everybody there and
I mean, I'm I'm talking about venture Tony Lima, I mean the best
names in golf and first prizes it was five thousand dollars. So things have
changed dramatically, and and what they make and residuals nowadays from sponsors and so
forth. It's just staggering and become if you can make it to the tour
in last even a couple of years, you're you're a multi millionaire. And
that's crazy, right, right, Yeah, And the expenses went up to
Yeah. I'm fascinated about the team concept. When you're doing a college team
like this, how similar is it to team competition like we're experiencing the Ryder
Cup. Well, you know, the chemistry and camaradity is a big portion
of playing golf team wise. When we're out there playing, our egos get
involved sometimes and sometimes when we're having a bad day, we just let strokes
get away from us. We just cavalier with that. And as I have
to really really impress my students is that sometimes we're going to be forced to
keep their score and sometimes they could take an eighty and maybe keep it at
seventy six or seven, or they can let it go to eighty five.
You just can't. You can't waste strokes. You have to always believe that
your score is going to count. You can never say, well, somebody
else pick up slack because when we play in community college golf, we played
six player. Yeah, you know, six players, and we keep five
scores, so we can drop one. But you never know who's going to
get dropped when you're out there beating balls, and you can't assume that,
God, I'm having a bad day, somebody else had picked up the slack
for me, because lots of times you're incorrect. So the scoring is a
conglomerate of all the scores. It is a team sport in that way.
Yes, yes, how's the scoring done? Well, it's the total of
five scores, and you know that number, whatever that number may be,
is goes against the other teams. We're always trying to get for five players,
we're always trying to get somewhere near par, which is very difficult.
You know, usually the number one, two and three man will shoot near
power, sometimes even under. But it's the four and four or five and
six players that make or break you, because somebody could shoot sixty six or
sixty eight, but if you have to keep an eighty, that takes care
of that sixty eight. So we're we have to as a coach, I
know that when all the conference championships we won and all the state championships we
won, our bottom three were the driving force, not the top three.
Kind of like the starting rotation of a baseball team. It's your one,
two, and three guys that are going to carry the team, and you
hope for the best for number four and five, or even your batting lineup
for that matter. Right, So, do you only play one round of
golf? Well, in some cases, in some cases, we play two
rounds of golf when we play. When we play conference championship or regionals or
state championship, you play thirty six holes that day, and they're carrying their
backs and the weather gets pretty warm at that period of time. So you
know, it's a physical challenge on top of a mental challenge, which golf
is consistently right, Right, So when you're playing two rounds, is it
a conglomeration of all ten scores or is it two separate rounds In the conference
Championship, it's two different contest. In the regionals, it's thirty six holes,
so it's a total of all your scores for thirty six holes, and
it's best ball. It's best scoring. It's not match play or anything,
or four ball any of the other other games. It's metal play, right
right. Have you ever been involved in any type of competition that's similar to
the Ryder Cup. No, I have not. I have not. I
think probably everyone that's ever played golf professionally probably dreams of that. Now.
I've played some match play competition, but nothing like that, nothing that lasted
three days and a bunch of different kinds of game, from match play to
stroke play to partners. I've never been involved with that, but but it
sure would be nice. It would be a lot of fun. Oh yeah,
yeah. But I'm just fascinated about the team concept on playing and the
mental part of the team concept and how somebody can coach that. Well,
that's really the challenge, you know, when we play regular tournaments, whether
they're PGA Tour or sectional tournaments, professional, when you're playing, if you
miss a putt, no one's going to clap. In the Ryder Cup,
you've got two groups of people out there, those that are with you and
those that are against you, So that's an additional, additional challenge. And
then on top of it, you're playing for your country and some of those
rounds where you know, you hit the T shot and then the other fellow
plays or you hit that T shirt from now you have that pressure. Also,
I got to put it on the fairly. I don't want to put
my friend Bob in the weeds. So it's so different than typical competition,
and especially with the pride of being an American and winning, and you know,
we're big underdogs right now, but we're holding our own I'm very proud
of the guys. Well. By the time that people get a chance to
hear this, the whole thing will be over. So we really have no
idea what's going on. We're recording this on the Friday of the Ryder Cup
twenty fourteen Ryder Cup. If someone's listening later, Hi, welcome. Let's
change channels here a little bit and let's get into your wheelhouse, which is
swing mechanics, ball striking, the loss fundamental. You know, there's so
many different things and it made to you just come back to the same thing
over and over. But there's things that I see that go wrong or I
suffer from or see my playing partner suffer from that. I want to pick
your brain about and I want to start that with people who are continually hitting
behind the ball. I mean, you'll see a divot that is three to
four maybe five inches behind the ball, even with their especially with their driver.
What do you have to help us out with that? It's a really
easy answer, believe it or not. I'm glad you think so it is.
What's happening is that they're not transferring their weight as the first move of
the downswing. What they're doing is they're dropping the club down to the ball.
The old adage about staying behind the ball, that's true. In its
falls. You have to drive through the ball, and if you're a right
handed golfer, your right shoulder at your right hip have to go past that
ball. So imagine the ball was a line, and when you set up
to the golf ball, half of your bodies behind the line and half of
your body's forward of the line, with your head being in the center on
the dolls wing, You've got to get that part that's behind the ball forward
of the ball. In a rotational move. And when you hit behind the
ball, it's because you are behind the ball at impact and you can't be
You've got to be moving through it. When they say stay behind it when
you hit it. That's a millisecond, but you have to be moving through
it now. In the past, years gone by, or your head went
backwards because we swung and we finished in what we call a C position,
and everybody got a bad back from that. Yes, your head stayed back.
But you watch today's players. First of all, they don't finish with
their hands high. They finish with their hands low, and that's because they're
turning their body and rotating their core to the left of the target. So
the width of the swing is increased from impact to finish. That's the big
change. And you can see that this has happened on the tour. Everyone
is talking about it. And I knowed it because like my new boys that
came in and I said, and I talked to them about the golf swing,
and there's two ways to do this. You can be an arm player.
You can be a body player. They all say, oh, no,
coach, we're body players. So I'm finding that I don't have to
I don't have to prove my point anymore. They already know that because they
watch the Mceilroys and the Coochers and all these players that in some fashion are
more rotary than sliding through the ball. So on setup your head. Should
your body be a little angled behind the ball or should you be completely upright?
I believe you should be centered to the golf ball. I don't want
my head behind the ball. There's an old same you want to stand above
the ball, but not behind it. Your head's like a bowling ball and
weight, and you know you've got to get to the left side, So
why put more weight on the right side to start it? Just you know,
it's unless you're a neuia of or somebody like that that can move quickly
to the left, you're gonna either have to slide or something to get over
there. And then that opens up another Pandora's box of bad shots. By
staying centered to the ball and not being so tilty with the shoulders. Although
some people teach that, and I'm not saying it's wrong me, I want
to be clear on that. It's just harder to do. You know,
you can shift your weight to the right and then shift it back to the
left, and if you can time that move prior to impact, you're going
to be just fine. But I don't think very many people can do that,
nor have the time to do that in a sense of practice. So
what I feel is what I think I saw with Ben Hogan, the changes
he made. He centered himself more to the ball at address, and then
his left side he turned level left. His left shoulder didn't go up,
it went around. And if you keep the left arm connected to the body,
you block the rotation of the arms so that you square the club by
the turn of the body instead of the rotation of the arms, and you're
playoff of really one axis. Getting back to hitting behind the ball, what
happens is that we fixate on the ball so much and instead of thinking about
where we're going with the golf club, and our body has to go because
it is going to go more forward than it was at address and it's turning.
So most people when they top the ball or hit behind the ball,
that's because their focus is too much on impact. Impact is happening, and
it's not something that you can just stand there and wait for. You've got
to be moving athletically, just like everything, when you throw a ball,
when you hit a tennis ball, when you throw a punch, everything is
moving forward in some form. In golf, that forwardness can't be on a
line. It has to be a rotational move. So when I tell my
people, you've got to get to the left side, and your way should
be at least at impact eighty percent on that left foot. The right foot
should just be driving forward. But most people, when they hit behind the
ball, it's just that they get anxious from the top and they hit down
on it too much and they don't transfer their weight. That's it. And
that's the same thing with a thin shot. It's the same exact thing.
Too focused on impact. You just said, well, I find that I'll
play better when I'm focused more on playing the course than playing the ball.
Does that make any sense? Sure? Again, in my teaching, especially
with my boys that are going to be in competition, I tell them when
we practice, you have to pick out a you have to go through a
pre shot routine. When you're practicing, you have to pick out a really
tight target so that you get yourself used to visually your target being very small.
Those things are very important in practicing. And then you have to you
have to use the ball as a point of reference to move through, but
not as something to hint, because if you're thinking hitting, you're going to
anticipate impact. And if you anticipate impact, your hands are going to tighten
it impact, your arms are going to pull back a little bit, and
you're either going to thin it or you're going to top it. But more
importantly, you're going to stay behind it. And that's not good. And
that was actually I was going to get to the concept of topping the ball,
of hitting where it's just going to roll because you've just I guess you
you're glancing the club over the top part of the ball. You're not making
solid contact, and it's just going to be a worm burner is just going
to be rolling on the ground. Yeah, and incorrectly it's diagnosed you looked
up, and I don't believe anybody looks up. I think that when they
tighten up their body, their shoulders hunch up a little bit, their arms
pull back towards them. But what is the core reason for that. The
core reason is that they're trying to hit the ball and the club head is
moving too fast. You know, there was an old saying, good players
sense where the ball is bad players stare at it. And I think that's
really a true statement. I like that good players sense where the ball is
right and bad players stare at the ball stare Oh man, great, I'm
writing this one down. Sense Okay, what about you know your rotation,
your movement. How important is it to keep your lower body still? Try
to keep that from swaying back and forth. Where does that fall in?
Well, when you set to the ball, I believe, and everyone has
their own opinion on it, this is mine. I believe that you set
up with the ball so that your right hip is aligned on the inside of
your right foot, on the end step of the foot. That creates a
kind of a brace. The first move of the swing is it's a combination
of your arms and shoulders working somewhat together. I like to take the club
back because I'm right handed. I like to take it back with my right
side. Don't buy into turn your left shoulder to your chin. I've never
bought that because it makes you move to the right a little bit. When
you pull your right shoulder back, your right shoulder is really going behind your
neck kind of towards the target and for those of you that have a limited
turn, if you work on turning your right shoulder behind your neck, you're
going to find that you're going to increase your shoulder turn twenty percent. When
I try. You know, when I try to illustrate turning from my left
side, I can't make as much turn as when I pull my right shoulder
back. By pulling my right shoulder back, and also it also stops the
feeling of moving back to the right foot, so I can stay inside that
brace. And in fact, as I turn the right shoulder back, my
hip is going to respond back also, and the inclination of my right foot,
because my hip is on the inside of the instep of my right shoe,
the inclination is going to steep in a bit. And if you look
at all the great players that lasted a long time, you'll look at the
right The right leg is not perpendicular. The right leg is steep. What
do you find to be the most common flaw that you have to help correct
moving back from the ball head, moving with the shoulder turn. I have
a PE class, and I did the College of Favor this year. They
didn't have an instructor, so there's about thirty five people in the class,
and most of them never hit a golf ball. So but a lot of
young boys that are, you know, they've played baseball and so forth.
So I teach them to grip in a group, you know, a group
setting. Obviously it's not going to be perfect, but we get close.
And then I watched them hit the balls individually, and the first thing initially
is that they're they're reaching back for power, they're swaying off that right side,
and when they hit the ball, the majority of their wits on the
right foot, and the ball slices or they top it, and I have
to get up, and I say, look, I'm an old guy.
Look at a little effort I make, and I can hit the seven one
hundred and sixty yards, and I go ahead and bang the ball out there,
and they look at me like, how do you do that? But
once they understand that they have to be centered to the ball and then through
the ball, then all of a sudden, you watch these kids whack a
ball out there. It's crazy how far they can hit it. So I
know one thing I've heard more and more Turing Pross saying, I want to
take the timing out of my game, and I want to take the compensations
out of my game. I want to be able to even when my feet
are in the fire, because I'm playing for something I dearly want. I
want to still be able to play well when you're timing the rotation of the
golf club with your hands and forearms. That's a heck of a lot harder
under pressure than rotating your body and keeping your arm connected to the body.
Is it easy to do. No, it's hard because it goes against your
natural instincts. But once you get it, I promise you that you'll not
only hit the ball farther because you'll hit a square them more often, but
your shot dispersion is going to be much narrower. You're gonna have a lot
less side spin on the ball, so when you push it, you won't
push it with a cut or pull it with a draw. And that's you
know, that's what happens to everybody. And the better you are as a
player, the more you fight the draw or the hook. When you first
start out, it's a slice for everybody for a while, but if you're
focusing on playing the game under pressure, you need something to block that hook
without making a block move in a sense, So you need something that traps
that club square. And this is the only way that I know how.
And I know that there's a couple of players out on tour that maybe are
reluctant to do this, but if they did it, they would hit some
fairways every now and then. Come on, name names. No, I'm
not going to name any name. They're not listening. I promise. Who
would you think does that? Well? I think I think anybody that's an
armed player. I think Phil who is probably one of the most talented players,
has said the game when it comes to all the kinds of shots,
he hiss. But he's got a terrible record of driving the ball in play.
And so does Tiger. I mean, and it blows my mind that
Tiger doesn't because the guys are golfing genius. Also, he knows he doesn't
need anybody to teach him to play golf. That's I think that's probably the
biggest problem is he's ever had, you know, I think Butch did him
a favor by shortening his swing a little bit. But Tiger knows how to
play. And when you get too conscious of how to do something, when
you're purposely trying to do something, you get awkward. Everybody does. I
think if Tiger would go woodshed, and I think he's kind of inclined.
He's been saying things like, I may not hire somebody, I may go
out there and figure it out myself. If he would do that like Hogan
did and all the great players, where you own your own swing, because
how they can instruct or feel what you're feeling, I mean, it's not
possible. So you can lead them to you can lead them to some dynamic
moves, or you can say, hey, you're swaying, you're doing this,
but there when you get to be tired of woods, come on,
this guy is one of the greatest players of all time. But once you
get doubt, you lose that mojo, you lose that feeling that you're going
to win, and then you start questioning everything, every move you're making.
You've got somebody barking on instructions. That's a road to nowhere, as far
as I'm concerned,