Speaker 1: Hi, This is Dave Kern from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I
Speaker 1: play at Diamond Run Golf Club.
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter number four hundred and seventy three, published on
Speaker 2: January twenty seven, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 3: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 3: Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets old. Our
Speaker 3: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
Speaker 3: like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 1: I get a lot of these people to shoot between
Speaker 1: like ninety one hundred and five. That's probably two thirds
Speaker 1: of my new students are in that range. And I say,
Speaker 1: do you want to lower your scores as quickly as
Speaker 1: possible by any means necessary? And you'd be surprised most
Speaker 1: people say no. They go no, I don't care about
Speaker 1: the short term. I just want to want to hit
Speaker 1: the ball culture to how it pro hits. But for
Speaker 1: the guys who say yes, I do, I'll go to
Speaker 1: that guy's golf bag and I'll start throwing clubs out
Speaker 1: of the bag on the ground. Throw the drive, run
Speaker 1: the ground, throw the three on the ground. Throw the
Speaker 1: three hybrid are on the ground, and maybe leave everything
Speaker 1: else in. There's a four or five r and I'll
Speaker 1: throw those on the ground too. I go play with
Speaker 1: that set and the guy go, well, I can't play
Speaker 1: without a driver. I go, well, that's the club that's
Speaker 1: costing you a lot of strokes. To score well from
Speaker 1: a strategic standpoint, you have to know what your limitations
Speaker 1: are as a player, what your actual ability level is
Speaker 1: in terms of striking a golf ball, and don't try
Speaker 1: to hit any hero shots that are mostly based on luck.
Speaker 2: Three critical elements for a great golf swing with Jim Waldron.
Speaker 2: This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 1: Jim, thanks Fred. Great to be here again.
Speaker 2: And you know, last time we spoke, I think you
Speaker 2: were up in Portland and where you spend most of
Speaker 2: your year teaching at the Balance Point Golf School. But
Speaker 2: not now.
Speaker 4: Now I'm on the north shore of Oahu.
Speaker 1: This is my twenty first year where I get to
Speaker 1: spend most of the winter time in Hawai.
Speaker 2: A little little better than Portland weather.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's much better. So and you know, and
Speaker 1: I spend my my actual home is actually east of Portland,
Speaker 1: seven hours up in the Willawa Mountains, and so right
Speaker 1: now at my house it's probably you know, ten degrees
Speaker 1: above zero with a couple of feet of snow in
Speaker 1: the ground.
Speaker 4: So this is quite the contrast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nice, nice, All right, we're all we all hate you. Now,
Speaker 2: let's get on with the show.
Speaker 4: I get that a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet, I bet. I guess right now, you
Speaker 2: and I are the only two people in the industry
Speaker 2: who are not at the PGA show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I've I've been a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but you have. Oh yeah, it's good. It's a cool thing.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a fun show. It's it's geared more
Speaker 1: toward the club professional, uh, director of golf general manager
Speaker 1: than teaching pros. I mean, it's it's more of a
Speaker 1: merchant that's what they call it, the merchandise show.
Speaker 2: Well, isn't it more for buyers than it?
Speaker 1: Well, it's basically a trade show for the golf industry
Speaker 1: that's put on by the PGA of America. But it's
Speaker 1: it's mainly it's mainly the equipment company. That's pretty much. Yeah, right, do.
Speaker 2: You anticipate hearing anything new and exciting this year.
Speaker 1: You know, I think we were pretty close to have
Speaker 1: reached the point of no return on the technology front.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's only so much tweaking they
Speaker 1: can do given the rules, the RNA and the USG
Speaker 1: limits to what, you know, how much better technology can get.
Speaker 1: So unless they change the rules draft dramatically, we're not
Speaker 1: going to see I don't think significant technological improvements.
Speaker 2: So that means that people are going to have to
Speaker 2: keep their driver for more than a year. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: how are we going to survive if we can't buy
Speaker 2: new drivers thinking it's going to add ten yards every
Speaker 2: single year?
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because that's I think that is
Speaker 1: part of the reason we're hearing about declining participation rate.
Speaker 1: I think that kind of marketing strategy is sort of boomerang.
Speaker 1: I think people are a lot of golfers are getting
Speaker 1: are feeling a bit ripped off by the equipment company
Speaker 1: marketing hype.
Speaker 2: Really, I mean you're getting sense from your from your students,
Speaker 2: you hear that.
Speaker 1: Kind of feedback, Yeah, because you know, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're a company that puts out a new driver every
Speaker 1: six months, and the driver is supposed to be seventeen
Speaker 1: yards or whatever it is, twelve yards further. You know,
Speaker 1: you totaled it up in five years. You should be
Speaker 1: hitting it like you should be hitting your driver, like
Speaker 1: six hundred yards, right, I mean, it just doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. So you know, at some point the logical
Speaker 1: line of the golfer kicks in and goes, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this doesn't seem right.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, they're still not getting fitted for
Speaker 2: the club anyway. They're just buying what their friend has.
Speaker 1: Well some are some are getting fitted but which definitely helps.
Speaker 1: But and don't get me wrong, I mean some of
Speaker 1: the newer stuff in the last few years.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's there was a huge change in the in
Speaker 2: the equipment. But now, like you said, they kind of
Speaker 2: reached the limit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean the lower spin. If you're a
Speaker 1: decent player with relatively high clubhead speed, those low spin
Speaker 1: drivers really do help you hit the ball further. There's
Speaker 1: no question, no question about it. So even though I'm
Speaker 1: getting up in age, I'm sixty three now, I still
Speaker 1: have fair amount of clubbed speed, and I've always struggled
Speaker 1: with hitting these, especially in the wind and Hawaii, hitting
Speaker 1: the driver high or it hits the If you have
Speaker 1: too much spin, it'll just carry on that wind in
Speaker 1: balloon and you lose a lot of distance. So I've
Speaker 1: been playing around with the SLDR. Haven't quite got it
Speaker 1: figured out yet as far as where I want to
Speaker 1: put the setting, I'm still I'm still testing it, but
Speaker 1: it definitely hits it further because it does spin less.
Speaker 2: Wow, does it? Shouldn't the average golfer, the you know,
Speaker 2: the recreational golfer who mid to higher handicap, shouldn't they
Speaker 2: avoid those adjustable clubs. Shouldn't they get it set once
Speaker 2: and just leave it be.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's what they mostly do. It's it
Speaker 1: just sort of makes it easier to do a little
Speaker 1: bit of testing on your own, because you know, you
Speaker 1: really don't have time and a fitting to totally nail
Speaker 1: it down, and the fitting is designed to kind of
Speaker 1: gets you in the ballpark and then you've got to
Speaker 1: got to tweak it by going to the range and
Speaker 1: taking to the course and playing in real world conditions
Speaker 1: and figuring out you know, most people generally play one
Speaker 1: to maybe five courses that are on the kind of
Speaker 1: the ROTA for for golf courses, they play frequently, and
Speaker 1: so they kind of know you know what, because you
Speaker 1: know so much. It depends on how firm the fairways
Speaker 1: are and what the wind is like those two things,
Speaker 1: and also how long the golf course is, and and
Speaker 1: you've got to you've got to dial in the trajectory
Speaker 1: that will produce the overall maximum amount of carry and roll. Right.
Speaker 1: So like in Hawaii, we're oftentime you're hitting into a wind. Uh.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, the good Hawaii players hit a low draw.
Speaker 1: That's the shot you see good players here all the
Speaker 1: time off the team, I mean really low by mainland standards, right.
Speaker 1: And the only time they don't do that is if
Speaker 1: it's been raining a lot, then they might. If it's
Speaker 1: if the fairies are really soft, which isn't that often,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll they'll bump up the loft on the setting
Speaker 1: and then you want to get most of your distance
Speaker 1: from carry. But typically in Hawaii the fairways are pretty firm,
Speaker 1: particularly in the side of the island that I live on,
Speaker 1: which is the driver side, and you can get I've
Speaker 1: seen people all of the time get thirty forty fifty
Speaker 1: yards a role here all the time. Wow. And so
Speaker 1: if you couple a low spin driver that hits it
Speaker 1: low to begin with, lowish, so it'll bore through the
Speaker 1: wind better. With relatively low backspin, you might carry it
Speaker 1: out there and say a two club wind, you might
Speaker 1: hit it out there two thirty two fifty in the
Speaker 1: air and then get thirty to fifty yards a roll
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: For those of us who get to play golf in
Speaker 2: the winter, and I apologize to all of those who
Speaker 2: were confined for four to five to eight months and
Speaker 2: don't get to play, But for those who do get
Speaker 2: to play twelve months a year, why is winter golf
Speaker 2: so much more difficult? I've noticed that, you know, when
Speaker 2: I look back at my score as year to year
Speaker 2: to year, they balloon in, you know, October, November, December, January,
Speaker 2: things just go up. It's like, what is so different
Speaker 2: about the game.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't get the runoff, like we said, you
Speaker 1: don't get the roll on the driver typically, so the
Speaker 1: ball just sort of sits and even might even plug.
Speaker 1: It won't roll at all.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't fly as far.
Speaker 1: Doesn't fly as far. The ball's colder. You're colder, so
Speaker 1: you're not moving, your muscles aren't warm enough, and so
Speaker 1: you're you're not you know, you're not contracting the muscles efficiently,
Speaker 1: you're not loose enough, you're tighter. That would all those
Speaker 1: things reduce your clubhead speed. And you got to deal
Speaker 1: with the mud and the bad lies. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you hit it, if it's a summertime line and
Speaker 1: you hit it, say like a sixteenth of an inch fat,
Speaker 1: it's still going to go out there close to the
Speaker 1: normal distance, right, might be five yards short or something.
Speaker 1: If your normal carry you the sixteenth of an inch
Speaker 1: fat in the ground, so wet, the ball's going nowhere.
Speaker 1: So it's just harder for all those all those reasons.
Speaker 2: And how do we remedy that? What do we do to.
Speaker 4: Don't play in the winter time?
Speaker 2: Moved to the east coast or into the northern part,
Speaker 2: or moved to your place in Portland or east of
Speaker 2: Portland and just hide yourself from the snow. Okay, so,
Speaker 2: but those of us who are weather whimps and won't
Speaker 2: move to the cold weather.
Speaker 1: Well, you're asking the wrong guy. And I'm like the worst.
Speaker 1: I'm the worst cold weather rain. I don't even play
Speaker 1: in the I just don't do it. I just don't
Speaker 1: enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't either. I mean, I definitely like drizzle maybe,
Speaker 2: but if it's rain, I'm not interested in playing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got. I don't mean I play in the
Speaker 1: rain here because it's warm rain, but but I don't
Speaker 1: like what it's cold and raining and I don't find
Speaker 1: it fun at all.
Speaker 2: Last time I was in Hawaii, I was on Kauwhai
Speaker 2: and I played in Poipu and the pro there and
Speaker 2: he's been on the show. I can't remember his name,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, but he was saying that that's what the
Speaker 2: locals know about slowing your swing speed in the big wins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean. The idea is if you swing, see,
Speaker 1: the more club at speed you have, everything else being equal,
Speaker 1: the more backspin you produce.
Speaker 4: You know, on the cover of the wall, when.
Speaker 1: The back third of the ball gets squished between the
Speaker 1: against the club face, that creates friction, which which which
Speaker 1: creates backspin. So if you have a lot of club
Speaker 1: at speed and you're hitting into a win, you get
Speaker 1: that ballooning ball effect like I mentioned where go. It
Speaker 1: might start out at normal trajectory, then it quickly balloons
Speaker 1: straight up and then fall straight down. You get literally
Speaker 1: no role. So the idea and the wind. This has
Speaker 1: been known for years for generations. Early you take one
Speaker 1: or two more clubs and then cut your tempo down
Speaker 1: by may maybe ten or twenty percent. So instead of
Speaker 1: between like a number ten speed, swing it like a
Speaker 1: number eight speed, and that that produces, you know, like
Speaker 1: a baseball and knuckleball. It produces almost knuckleball effect on
Speaker 1: the golf ball, so it'll bore through the wind with
Speaker 1: very little spin.
Speaker 2: Do you think there's any chance that you know, we
Speaker 2: talked about the clubs having reaching their limit in development.
Speaker 2: What do you think about the golf balls. Do you
Speaker 2: think there's any change in the future for golf balls
Speaker 2: maybe be smaller or I mean, well, you.
Speaker 4: Know there used to be.
Speaker 1: Are you aware there used to be a smaller ball.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read that recently. I was blown away by it.
Speaker 1: And they travel farther, they go further. Yeah, they're a
Speaker 1: little harder to make solid contact because they're smaller. Obviously,
Speaker 1: so it's a little harder to get the sweet spot
Speaker 1: on the back of the ball because it is smaller.
Speaker 2: Well, but when those balls were around, the club faces
Speaker 2: weren't as large as they are now either, right.
Speaker 1: That's true, Yeah, yeah, but that was the British ball.
Speaker 1: That's the ball they played in Ireland in the UK,
Speaker 1: and I forgot when it went out.
Speaker 4: I think it was be twenty something years ago.
Speaker 1: Twenty five years ago made the switch to the American ball,
Speaker 1: and I don't even recall exactly what the American ball
Speaker 1: is one point six eight inches. I'm thinking the British
Speaker 1: ball was maybe one point three five or one point
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: It was very small.
Speaker 4: But that's pretty small.
Speaker 2: So where is where is the innovation in golf going
Speaker 2: to come from?
Speaker 1: It has to come from the instruction side, which is
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do, as you know, have been
Speaker 1: for twenty five years.
Speaker 2: AND's why we've talked so frequently, because of your instruction
Speaker 2: and your insides.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we have this quit rate. It's pretty high.
Speaker 1: We have the highest quit rate of any amateur sport
Speaker 1: and have had for a long time, but it's gotten
Speaker 1: worse in the last I don't know, ten, ten twelve years.
Speaker 1: The peak was I think in two thousand. I think
Speaker 1: we had something like thirty five million regular golfers in America.
Speaker 2: And what years do you think that was? I mean,
Speaker 2: how closely did that coincide with Tigers.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was okay, it was at the peak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was right around two thousand and two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: if I believe, And then we've had fining participation rates.
Speaker 1: So we had that little bump from Tiger, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think the Tiger thing, people who normally wouldn't
Speaker 1: have any interest in taking a golf took up the game,
Speaker 1: particularly the millennial generation started taking up the game. And
Speaker 1: then it kind of fell off pretty sharply, and then
Speaker 1: after the economy collapsed in two thousand and eight, really
Speaker 1: the participation really went down. The only place where it's
Speaker 1: significantly growing in participation rates right now is in a
Speaker 1: lot of the Asian countries China, especially India, and it's
Speaker 1: no secret that those two countries have the fastest growing
Speaker 1: middle class of any countries on the planet. Southeast Asia, Thailand,
Speaker 1: it's middle class has grown fairly, fairly significantly. It's pretty
Speaker 1: popular there. Singapore, it's popular mostly among the wealthy elite.
Speaker 1: It's growing. Even Vietnam it's starting to grow. So there's
Speaker 1: Asia sort of booming, but it's declining here for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons. But one of the reasons is it's
Speaker 1: it's always been a hard game to be reasonably you know,
Speaker 1: at least reasonably good, which would be I guess what'd
Speaker 1: you call that? Maybe fifteen handicap or better. But you know,
Speaker 1: a lot most people are not a fifteen handicap or better.
Speaker 1: As you know, they're higher than that. And some folks
Speaker 1: don't mind being a twenty five handicap and never getting
Speaker 1: any better. But I say, by the end of their
Speaker 1: fifth year, they get down to a twenty five or
Speaker 1: twenty somewhere in there, and they never see any improvement.
Speaker 1: But they're playing for social reasons, right primarily. But for
Speaker 1: the people who enjoy the challenge of getting better, they general,
Speaker 1: a lot of those folks hit a wall even if
Speaker 1: they take what I would call traditional instruction, and then
Speaker 1: they get some improvement, well, i'm you will get significant improvement,
Speaker 1: but the majority get little or no improvement. Uh, they
Speaker 1: get frustrated and they quit. So it's a big topic
Speaker 1: right now in the golf instruction world. How do we
Speaker 1: find a way to solve this dilemma? And I think
Speaker 1: the big mistake has been This is going to sound
Speaker 1: strange coming from me because because in early on in
Speaker 1: my career I was I was known for the opposite
Speaker 1: of what I'm about to say. But I think I
Speaker 1: think there's been way too much sort of onus put
Speaker 1: on a quick fix in terms of science and technology,
Speaker 1: in terms of instruction, and we're starting to see the backlash.
Speaker 1: In the last i'd say a year or two. People
Speaker 1: are taking track man lessons, they're taking three dimensional you know,
Speaker 1: three D swing capture, motion capture technology lessons, and again
Speaker 1: there will always be a minority will improve no matter
Speaker 1: what type of lesson you give them. But for the
Speaker 1: vast majority of people, they're walking. This is This is
Speaker 1: the I'm hearing from students who go this route and
Speaker 1: then come to see me, and they're saying, yeah, I
Speaker 1: understand now why I suck, but I can't. But I'm
Speaker 1: not any better from knowing how badly how bad I
Speaker 1: am at this right and from seeing myself compared to
Speaker 1: Tiger in sixteen different ways. I see the Tiger's doing
Speaker 1: these sixteen things right, and I'm doing the sixteen things
Speaker 1: totally the opposite. But how does that help me be better?
Speaker 1: If it's purely intellectual knowledge, which most of this sort
Speaker 1: of high tech science oriented instruction is geared toward. If
Speaker 1: it doesn't translate into the subconscious mind, which is the
Speaker 1: part of your brain that controls your body motion in
Speaker 1: every sport. Right, then what good is it? Then?
Speaker 4: The answer is.
Speaker 1: Not very much.
Speaker 2: I think that what I personally have experienced is the
Speaker 2: course management, more than swing mechanics, helped me lower my score.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a cool thing about golf.
Speaker 1: I mean, the good teachers know this, that there is
Speaker 1: more than one way to lower your score.
Speaker 4: But the thing about.
Speaker 1: A lot of golfers is they're not like you. They
Speaker 1: don't really, at least is what they've claimed. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's one hundred percent true.
Speaker 2: But is that a phone or is that really a
Speaker 2: Rooster's at rooster?
Speaker 1: Yeah, roosters are all over the island. I see how
Speaker 1: bad is it three in the morning when they're doing that.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's really funny.
Speaker 1: A lot of people it's not so much about score.
Speaker 1: I'm in one of these, I'm in one of this.
Speaker 1: I'm in this camp. Actually, it's about how you make
Speaker 1: the score. And you know most people though who I interview,
Speaker 1: you know, potential new students. I ask you, would you
Speaker 1: rather lower your score by any means necessary?
Speaker 4: Or is there a precise way you.
Speaker 1: Want to play golf, And nine out of ten people
Speaker 1: will tell you they want to They want to be
Speaker 1: good in the long game, right, and so they don't
Speaker 1: care about course management. Right. It's just because it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if they're on the range or on the golf course.
Speaker 1: When you mishit a golf shot badly, you get a
Speaker 1: bad feeling in your mind and your body. Right, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel good. It feels kind of embarrassing or humiliating
Speaker 1: or depressing, or you get angry. You want to learn
Speaker 1: how to find that sweet spot more often. Right, That's
Speaker 1: that's the big to me, that's the big challenge to golf.
Speaker 1: I mean anybody, If anybody spends enough time on a
Speaker 1: putting green without any professional instruction, they'll figure out a
Speaker 1: way to be at least a decent putter, if not
Speaker 1: a great putter. Same with maybe chip shots, little short
Speaker 1: chip shots around there. You can if you spend enough time,
Speaker 1: you're going to figure out a way to be halfway
Speaker 1: decent at those two skills. If someone like a three
Speaker 1: iron off a tight line in a fair way.
Speaker 2: Good luck, lon's a three iron, Well, that's.
Speaker 1: Traditionally at least to be a two iron even a
Speaker 1: one iron when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: But yeah, right, but when we're talking about these fifteen
Speaker 2: handicap and above, they don't known three irons.
Speaker 4: But I'm saying that that would be the challenge if
Speaker 4: they have a good swing.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have a really good swing, you
Speaker 1: should be a hit a one iron off the fairway, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it shouldn't matter. The point is that is
Speaker 1: a hard shot that even a hybrid is going to be,
Speaker 1: even a three hybrid off the tight line. If you're
Speaker 1: an average golfer with not not a very good golf swing,
Speaker 1: is something you could you know, you're not gonna hit
Speaker 1: it that well that often. So it comes down to
Speaker 1: how do you master a golf swing that will allow
Speaker 1: you to play good golf for you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of years into the future. That's that's the thing that
Speaker 1: trust me, almost every teaching pro that's what we hear
Speaker 1: all the time is how do I hit the ball
Speaker 1: more consistently, you know better, more consistently.
Speaker 2: Now we all know there's no perfect in golf. It
Speaker 2: doesn't exist. It can't, So how do you master a
Speaker 2: golf swing?
Speaker 1: Why? That's that's like a podcast that would have to
Speaker 1: be like like a thousand hours long. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's such a huge topic, but I mean it's it
Speaker 1: starts with the obvious, the basic stuff, which would be
Speaker 1: a you have to be reasonably healthy and fit. You
Speaker 1: can't have any kind of major injury like low back
Speaker 1: or wrist or shoulder. You got to be reasonably healthy.
Speaker 1: You have to have a reasonably strong core. You have
Speaker 1: to be reasonably flexible right in order to do the
Speaker 1: proper motion. So I would start there with you have
Speaker 1: to be somewhat fit. You have to have golf clubs
Speaker 1: that are somewhat close to fitting you perfectly. They don't
Speaker 1: have to be perfect, but they have to be in
Speaker 1: the ballpark. Can't. You can't play good golf with the
Speaker 1: instrument that doesn't fit your body right. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's club's the right length, the right overall weight, things
Speaker 1: like that. And then it's it's grip stance, grip set up.
Speaker 1: And by grip, I don't mean just hand position, I
Speaker 1: mean overall grip pressure and some other stuff having to
Speaker 1: do with your hands. You're set up, your starting position
Speaker 1: is really really that's that's probably the most important mechanical
Speaker 1: fundamental is to set up and there's no reason not
Speaker 1: to set up as well as a tour pro. It
Speaker 1: takes zero athletic ability. All it takes is standing in
Speaker 1: front of a mirror for you know, a few minutes
Speaker 1: a day for about maybe six weeks, and you can
Speaker 1: master a tour pro setup and then aim. You have
Speaker 1: to be able to aim the club face exactly at
Speaker 1: your target. That's often not discussed, but I would guess
Speaker 1: that in our go out we do these three day
Speaker 1: boot camp golf schools called Great Shot, and I would
Speaker 1: estimate it at least ninety five percent of our students
Speaker 1: are badly mis aiming the club face, sometimes by as
Speaker 1: much as thirty to forty yards off at the driver.
Speaker 1: Typically it's to the if they're a right hand at
Speaker 1: golfers to the right. So I'll say, aim at that
Speaker 1: telephone pole holding up the driving range net on the
Speaker 1: far left pole, and they'll aim at the middle pole,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, forty yards to the right of
Speaker 1: the far left pole, and I'll go, are you aiming
Speaker 1: at the far left pole and I'll point at it,
Speaker 1: go yeah, I go no, No, you're aiming at.
Speaker 4: That one that's three poles over.
Speaker 1: And then he does and believe me. So I put
Speaker 1: my alignment stick down in align with his club face
Speaker 1: so it's perpendicular the club face and hold it real still,
Speaker 1: and he walks behind me and sees it. And you
Speaker 1: should see the look on people's faces. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: no wonder, I can't play be cause I'm not even
Speaker 1: aiming it close to where I think I am. So
Speaker 1: those those have traditionally been called the three pre swing
Speaker 1: fundamentals pre motion fundamentals, you know. And to be honest,
Speaker 1: if you're about a twelve handicap or higher, the odds
Speaker 1: of you being.
Speaker 4: Spot on on.
Speaker 1: Grip, grip, pressure, set up, and aim are close to
Speaker 1: zero percent. That's how rare it is if you're a
Speaker 1: twelve or higher. So if you're like a you know,
Speaker 1: twelve handicapped to thirty five handicap, there's a really strong
Speaker 1: chance that.
Speaker 4: You're somewhere between a little bit off.
Speaker 1: And more likely way off in those three really really
Speaker 1: important fundamentals. So it starts with those three, and then,
Speaker 1: you know, the really hard part is once your three
Speaker 1: pre swing fundamentals are spot on, then you've got to
Speaker 1: get these the motion parts, you know, the body, the
Speaker 1: moving body part, fundamentals to be correct, and that's where
Speaker 1: it's it's I would say traditional instruction has fallen down
Speaker 1: for lots of reasons. But in the motion itself, there's
Speaker 1: three basic categories. There's mechanics, which is which is basically
Speaker 1: how the body parts move. You know, the range of
Speaker 1: motion that they move on, the angles relative to the ground,
Speaker 1: relative to each other, you know, the so called swing
Speaker 1: planear swing geometry stuff. That's the mechanics. And then there's balance,
Speaker 1: which is a really important I call it the supreme fundamental.
Speaker 2: You call that the name of your You call that
Speaker 2: the name of your school, don't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, name of my school is called balance point because
Speaker 1: of the three which are which are coordination, balance and mechanics.
Speaker 1: Balance Trump's mechanics and coordination you could have. You could
Speaker 1: have the best swing in the world right now. Actually,
Speaker 1: I just saw a guy at the Sony Open last
Speaker 1: week who I'm now putting up.
Speaker 4: Tied with Justin Rose.
Speaker 1: His best golf swing in the world is twenty one
Speaker 1: year old kid who shot sixty one on Friday at
Speaker 1: while I Justin Thomas, I didn't even know he shot
Speaker 1: sixty one. I happened to be there early Friday afternoon
Speaker 1: and I had a meeting and at lunch, and then
Speaker 1: after that I went to the range and it was
Speaker 1: about one o'clock and he's out. He had just just
Speaker 1: shot sixty one, unbeknownst to me. But I want to
Speaker 1: I always go watch was whoever has the best swing
Speaker 1: in the range. So I happened to just watch him,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, who's this kid? Justin Thomas.
Speaker 1: Never heard of him before, But for your listeners, go
Speaker 1: check out go YouTube Justin thomas golf swing. You're going
Speaker 1: to see it literally a technically perfect golf swing anyhow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you could have Justin Thomas or Justin
Speaker 1: Rose's golf swing mechanically and their tempo and their rhythm,
Speaker 1: which is the coordination part, so the timing part, right,
Speaker 1: the sequencing part. But if you lose your balance at
Speaker 1: any point in the swing, you're going to hit a
Speaker 1: terrible shot. Right. So so those are the three things
Speaker 1: you got to learn to You got you have to
Speaker 1: learn e motion a golf swing motion where you start
Speaker 1: out in rock solid balance, you swing in rock solid balance.
Speaker 1: Rock solid balance was Ben Hogan's turn, by the way,
Speaker 1: and you finish in rock solid balance. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: you've got to do the timing part, which is basically
Speaker 1: for mid to high handicap that's mainly swinging at the
Speaker 1: proper speed, the proper tempo with good rhythm. Right. So
Speaker 1: that's sort of a that's sort of a very big
Speaker 1: picture overview, Fred, what what it would take to get
Speaker 1: your get your mind wrapped on how do I learn
Speaker 1: to hit the ball better?
Speaker 2: I want to back up to aim for just a moment.
Speaker 2: Are you talking about in your preshot routine a lot
Speaker 2: of aiming? What where are we aiming? Are we aiming
Speaker 2: the ball? Are we aiming our feet?
Speaker 1: One thing the only thing that matters, not the only thing,
Speaker 1: but the main thing that matters by far, is only
Speaker 1: one thing, and that's the club face. So that means
Speaker 1: the leading edge, which is the bottom edge on an iron,
Speaker 1: and the top line, which which applies on a wood
Speaker 1: or a hybrid. You want to have the leading edge
Speaker 1: or the top line, as the case may be, exactly
Speaker 1: ninety degrees to your target line. So your target line
Speaker 1: is that imagining line on the ground that runs from
Speaker 1: your feet when you stand at the beginning of your routine,
Speaker 1: when you stand behind the ball about ten feet behind
Speaker 1: your ball, and you look look down on the ground,
Speaker 1: and you got to put a line there, imagining line
Speaker 1: between between you know, where your feet are through the ball,
Speaker 1: all the way out to your target.
Speaker 4: That's your target line. It's imagining line.
Speaker 1: On the ground. And then when you walk in and
Speaker 1: aim your club face, when you start to set up
Speaker 1: to the ball, you got to put that club face
Speaker 1: exactly ninety degrees to that line on the ground, so
Speaker 1: the club face is aiming exactly at your target. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we're this is this is if you're trying
Speaker 1: it a straight ball. You're not trying to curve it
Speaker 1: on purpose. Right. It's a little different if you're trying
Speaker 1: to slice it or hook it, but that's what. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then all you're doing with your body, with your feet,
Speaker 1: your knees, your hips, your shoulders, your eyes, your head,
Speaker 1: is you're aligning your body on a second line on
Speaker 1: the ground, which is called the body line, which is
Speaker 1: roughly three feet parallel left of your target line. Right,
Speaker 1: So you've got like a railroad track. You got the
Speaker 1: two tracks of a railroad. Right. There's the inner track
Speaker 1: where you're where you're standing, where your feet are, and
Speaker 1: there's the outer outer rail, which is where the which
Speaker 1: is where the target line is. So you got these
Speaker 1: two parallel tracks, right, And so what you have to
Speaker 1: realize is most almost everybody who comes to see me
Speaker 1: doesn't understand this.
Speaker 4: This is one of the reasons.
Speaker 1: Why I'm always talking about I always use the word
Speaker 1: illusions a lot in my teaching, and one of the
Speaker 1: big ones is called the paralax solution, which is if
Speaker 1: you and I were in Kansas in a cornfield with
Speaker 1: a railroad track running through it, flat flat, flat all
Speaker 1: the way to the horizon looking but cornfields, and we're
Speaker 1: standing on the railroad tracks looking out to the horizon,
Speaker 1: it's going to look like the rails get closer together
Speaker 1: the further out they go, right. Yep, that's the parallax solution.
Speaker 1: And so the reason why people mid to high handicaps
Speaker 1: especially struggle with aim is a lot of them don't
Speaker 1: even know you're supposed to really aim the club face
Speaker 1: precisely at the target, at the target alone.
Speaker 2: Now we focus on our stants on our feet, yeah,
Speaker 2: and your.
Speaker 4: Body is not.
Speaker 1: I hit shots all the time in the school where
Speaker 1: my feet, even my shoulder girdle is thirty degrees left
Speaker 1: or right where my club face is pointing, and I
Speaker 1: still hit the ball exactly where the target is. The
Speaker 1: body has almost I won't say none, but it has
Speaker 1: very little influence on where the ball goes. But matters
Speaker 1: is where the club face is pointing. It's like aiming
Speaker 1: the sight line on a gun. You've got to aim
Speaker 1: the club face precisely at your intended target.
Speaker 2: Now, when you talk about the club face aiming at
Speaker 2: the target, we're talking about at address or contact.
Speaker 1: Well, well contact too if you're trying to hit a
Speaker 1: straight ball. Yeah, but it starts with setups. So when
Speaker 1: you're setting up to the ball. Part of setup is
Speaker 1: this aim in alignment procedure. You're aiming the club face.
Speaker 1: You're aligning your body parallel left of the target line
Speaker 1: right and so those two lines never get further away
Speaker 1: and they never get closer together. So I get people
Speaker 1: all the time. I had a mechanical engineer out well
Speaker 1: never forget, from Mexico years ago, at fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: come up to port and take the school. He was
Speaker 1: about a eighteen handicap if I remember something like fifteen
Speaker 1: handicap maybe, and we always explaining this. He goes, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not right, He goes, If I don't aim my
Speaker 1: body at the target, how is the ball going to
Speaker 1: go there? I go, Really, I go, why would you
Speaker 1: have to aim your body at the target? I go,
Speaker 1: Are you going to shoot yourself out of a cannon?
Speaker 1: Are you going to the target? No, you're standing to
Speaker 1: the side of the In golf, we stand to the
Speaker 1: side of the ball. We stand to the side of
Speaker 1: the target line, which connects the ball to the target.
Speaker 4: We don't.
Speaker 1: We're not straddling it like in croquet, where you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're running a croque out, you know, through your legs, right.
Speaker 4: But the issue is most.
Speaker 1: Other sports, with a few exceptions, your body line and
Speaker 1: your target line are the same line. So when you
Speaker 1: when you serve a tennis ball, same the two lines
Speaker 1: are the same. You're standing on the target line. Right
Speaker 1: when you shoot an arrow or shoot a rifle. You're
Speaker 1: standing on the target.
Speaker 2: Line shooting a basket throwing a.
Speaker 4: Ball in basketball, same lines.
Speaker 1: But imagine if if rifle shooting was like golf, and
Speaker 1: I actually do this in the school, I take my
Speaker 1: golf club and turn it into a rifle, hold it
Speaker 1: like a rifle against my shoulder, and then I stick
Speaker 1: my arms out to full extension in front of me,
Speaker 1: and then I pulled the trick, and I pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1: In golf, you're standing to the side, about three feet
Speaker 1: or so to the side of the actual target. You're not.
Speaker 1: You're not You're not standing on top of the target line, right.
Speaker 4: So so the only thing that really.
Speaker 1: Matters is though not the only thing again, but the
Speaker 1: main thing that really matters is are you aiming the
Speaker 1: club face exactly at the target or not? And because
Speaker 1: of that illusion I mentioned, people, either consciously or unconsciously
Speaker 1: or both, they aim particularly the right, the left side
Speaker 1: of their shoulder girdle, they aim that at the target.
Speaker 1: So they you watch high handicapped golfers, they look over there,
Speaker 1: they like they side along their left shoulder and try
Speaker 1: to get their left shoulder in line with what they
Speaker 1: perceive their target to be out there. And good players
Speaker 1: don't do that because they know that their left shoulders
Speaker 1: should never aim at the target. Ever. No part of
Speaker 1: your body ever aims at the target ever. Not your feet,
Speaker 1: not your knees, not nothing. You're standing to the side
Speaker 1: of the target line, right. But if you aim your
Speaker 1: if you aim your your left shoulder to target. Even
Speaker 1: even if you did start out by aiming the club
Speaker 1: face correctly, if you then rotate your chest so your
Speaker 1: left shoulder is aiming at the target, and you look
Speaker 1: down at your club face, which is actually aiming at
Speaker 1: the target, it'll look like it's aiming to the left
Speaker 1: of the target, and you'll either consciously or unconsciously or both,
Speaker 1: you will rotate the face open to the right, and
Speaker 1: now it'll look in your mind like it's pointing at
Speaker 1: the target. It's not. It's pointing to the right of
Speaker 1: the target. That's the most common mistake we see in
Speaker 1: aim in alignment, people missing the club face way way
Speaker 1: right at where they think they are.
Speaker 2: So now we have let's just pretend that our feet
Speaker 2: are aligned just to the side of the target, not
Speaker 2: at the target. Man, our club face is pointing directly
Speaker 2: at the target. We're in alignment there and I'm still
Speaker 2: hooking the ball.
Speaker 1: Oh there could be. But so you're asking why, Well, first,
Speaker 1: first of all, this is one of the first things
Speaker 1: I tell on my new students. You have to realize
Speaker 1: that the game of golf, particularly the long game, the
Speaker 1: ball striking part we're talking about, it's so complex that
Speaker 1: when you fix one area and make it more how
Speaker 1: a pro does it. It doesn't. It's not. It's in
Speaker 1: no way, shape or form a guarantee you're going to
Speaker 1: hit a good shot. It's just it just increases the
Speaker 1: probability you'll hit a good shot right, So you can
Speaker 1: you could hit every you could hit. You could have
Speaker 1: the perfect aim in alignment, and you can still hit
Speaker 1: it fifty yards left or right of your target because
Speaker 1: the things things that are going to happen incorrectly in
Speaker 1: your body and club motion right.
Speaker 2: And we wonder why people are leaving the game.
Speaker 1: You see, That's what I'm saying people. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people take up the game. They watch it
Speaker 1: on TV and they think, oh it's I can do that.
Speaker 2: It looks simple, or they play a video game and
Speaker 2: think I can do this exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because you know your club face can your
Speaker 1: club face not just the club fate. The entire club
Speaker 1: head is rotating in a huge five hundred and forty
Speaker 1: degree arc from the beginning of the swing to the
Speaker 1: end in three spatial dimensions, is going up toward the
Speaker 1: sky and the back swing and then down toward the
Speaker 1: ground on the forwards and then up toward the sky again. Right,
Speaker 1: it's going away from the target line on the back swing,
Speaker 1: and then it's going toward the target line and on
Speaker 1: the downswing, and then away from the target line to
Speaker 1: the finish, and it's going in a big circle. We
Speaker 1: call that the horizontal dimension away you know, to the
Speaker 1: right of the target on the back swing, and then
Speaker 1: toward the target to the left on the forward swing.
Speaker 1: So the club ad is moving in three spatial dimensions, right,
Speaker 1: the vertical dimension, the fifth dimension, the horizontal dimension. And
Speaker 1: you have the ability because of the way, because of
Speaker 1: human anatomy, you have the ability to rotate the face
Speaker 1: way open relative to that five hundred and forty degrees
Speaker 1: of path the club that's moving in or way shut,
Speaker 1: which people do I mean typically you know, average golfers
Speaker 1: do that. So the challenge is to learn something about
Speaker 1: the basic sort of physics in the basic geometry of
Speaker 1: what the club is supposed to do, and then how
Speaker 1: your body motion affects that. And we basically call that
Speaker 1: there's there's six laws of club motion that people should
Speaker 1: know about it. They want to learn to masterball striking,
Speaker 1: and there's there's thirty laws of body motion. Now some
Speaker 1: of those are much more important than others. But other
Speaker 1: thirty laws, there's about ten that are really important. Twenty
Speaker 1: not so much. But if you violate one of those
Speaker 1: ten laws of body motion badly, right, then you're going
Speaker 1: to automatically violate at least one, probably all six laws
Speaker 1: of club motion. And that's why people again, that's why
Speaker 1: people find it difficult when I first think up the
Speaker 1: game as beginners, because they are violating those those you know,
Speaker 1: those really important ten laws of body motion.
Speaker 2: All right, So if we had and it's hard to
Speaker 2: say everything being equal, but if somebody has excellent swing
Speaker 2: mechanics and a lousy mental game playing with somebody that
Speaker 2: has not such great mechanics but an excellent mental game
Speaker 2: and attitude, and they're they're basically the same, you know,
Speaker 2: a handicapped I think, I mean, like, who's going to
Speaker 2: be the better player? I mean, what what? What falls
Speaker 2: to be more important?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's real? A lot of it depends
Speaker 1: on what they're if. It depends on what their handicap is,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: But let say they're equal, they're about fifteens or twelves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, I mean I mean literally, even if
Speaker 1: they're equally depends what what what their skill is in
Speaker 1: terms of scoring. But if they were like if there
Speaker 1: were two high handicaps, one with uh with with Let's
Speaker 1: say let's say there's there's uh uh two two twenty
Speaker 1: handicaps playing together, but one of the twenty handicaps is
Speaker 1: actually a ten handicap ball striker, right, uh. And the
Speaker 1: other guy and he and he's a thirty handicap at
Speaker 1: the mental game. If you could, if you could handicap
Speaker 1: the skills like that, So he's a thirty handicap at
Speaker 1: the mind stuff, ten handicap at the mechanical stuff, right,
Speaker 1: And then it's the opposite one the other guys he's
Speaker 1: a thirty handicap ball striker, but he's a ten handicap
Speaker 1: in mental game. I would say it would be a
Speaker 1: toss up. I would say they both would probably play
Speaker 1: pretty close to the same score. But where it gets
Speaker 1: where the mental game becomes more important, is when you
Speaker 1: get down around ten handicap or lower. Then I would
Speaker 1: give the edge for sure to the mental hand the
Speaker 1: guy with the better mind game. And if they were
Speaker 1: thirty five handicaps, I would give I would give the
Speaker 1: edge to the guy with the better golf swing mechanics.
Speaker 2: And I've always been under the impressioner. I actually my
Speaker 2: whole basis on starting the show is I always felt
Speaker 2: that if you had a good mental game and understood
Speaker 2: course management or I like to call that strategy, you
Speaker 2: can lower your score faster than if you just focus
Speaker 2: on your mechanics.
Speaker 1: Well, there's no question about it. Okay, yeah, from a speed,
Speaker 1: from a speed of lowering your score. I tell this
Speaker 1: to my students all the time. I get a lot
Speaker 1: of these people to shoot between like ninety one hundred
Speaker 1: and five. That's probably two thirds of my new students
Speaker 1: are in that range. And I say to them, do
Speaker 1: you want to do you want to lower your scores
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible by any means necessary, And you'd
Speaker 1: be surprised most people say no. Like I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: they go, no, I don't. I don't care about the
Speaker 1: short term. I just want to want to hit the
Speaker 1: ball closer to how it pro hits it right. But
Speaker 1: for the guys who say yes, I do, I go
Speaker 1: I walked. I'll go to that guy's golf bag and
Speaker 1: I'll start throwing clubs out of the bag on the ground,
Speaker 1: throw the driver on the ground. Throw the three wood
Speaker 1: on the ground, right, throw the three hybrid are on
Speaker 1: the ground, and maybe leave everything else in right. Well,
Speaker 1: if there's a four or five iron, I'll throw those
Speaker 1: on the ground too. I go, okay, let's go play
Speaker 1: with that set. And the guy go, well, I can't
Speaker 1: play without a driver. I go, well, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the club that's cost you a lot of strokes, right,
Speaker 1: So you got it to score well. From a strategic standpoint,
Speaker 1: you have to know what your limitations are as a player,
Speaker 1: what your actual ability level is in terms of striking a.
Speaker 4: Golf ball, and don't try to hit any shots.
Speaker 1: Don't try to hit any hero shots that are mostly
Speaker 1: based on luck.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, that's my number one edict, which is never
Speaker 2: follow a bad shot with a stupid shot exactly.
Speaker 1: And know how far you actually hit the clubs. We've
Speaker 1: talked about that before. Know what your actual real world
Speaker 1: the yardages are, not the one out of ten good
Speaker 1: ones you hit in the range. That one doesn't count
Speaker 1: because you're only going to hit a ten percent of
Speaker 1: the time. You've got to know what your actual yardages are.
Speaker 1: And then I go do playing lessons with people where
Speaker 1: they only have maybe six or seven clubs in the bag,
Speaker 1: and I tell them where to aim and what club
Speaker 1: to hit and how far they should try to hit it.
Speaker 1: And the guy who shoots one hundred and five shoots
Speaker 1: like ninety two the first time. We do this right,
Speaker 1: and they can't believe it. They're like in shock. I go,
Speaker 1: they go, that's really fast improvement. I go, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you.
Speaker 4: Think of all the lost balls.
Speaker 1: All the penalty strokes from lost balls or you know,
Speaker 1: or poor shots because you hit a ball in the
Speaker 1: rough or in the sand. You know. So strategy is
Speaker 1: certainly a very fast way. But then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you've got a guy who's got a good strategy, has
Speaker 1: good clubs, thoses yardages and the shooting say mid to
Speaker 1: high eighties. And then a year goes by no improvement,
Speaker 1: another year goes by no improvement. Strategy it can only
Speaker 1: take you so far. Then you got to ask yourself, Okay,
Speaker 1: how am I going to get better at this game?
Speaker 1: And it really comes down to is do you want
Speaker 1: to work on your mental game? Do you want to
Speaker 1: work on your on your ball striking, do you want
Speaker 1: to work on your putting, or do you want to
Speaker 1: work on your short game. Those are the four main
Speaker 1: skill areas. And I always tell people, look, especially if
Speaker 1: you're working for a living, you don't have time to
Speaker 1: change all four areas. Just pick one area of the
Speaker 1: four for the next year and try to get much
Speaker 1: try to try to get significantly better in that one area,
Speaker 1: and practice just enough in the other three areas so
Speaker 1: you don't lose ground there. Right. So, if you're working
Speaker 1: on ball striking and you take a lesson from someone
Speaker 1: like me, and I say to you, Okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to work on your swing for the next year, and
Speaker 1: for the first six weeks, you're going to work on
Speaker 1: improving the mechanics of your takeaway by doing this drill
Speaker 1: every day in the mirror for fifteen minutes. Right, But
Speaker 1: you still got to practice. You're putting a little bit,
Speaker 1: your short game a little bit, and you got to
Speaker 1: work on your mental focus skills a little bit, just
Speaker 1: so you don't go backwards in those three areas, right, Right.
Speaker 1: And then by the end of the year, that guy
Speaker 1: will be significantly better because they'll be hitting a lot
Speaker 1: more fairways and greens in regulation than he was at
Speaker 1: the start of the year because the mechanics are better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty fourteen for me was a big, big year
Speaker 2: for dropping my scores down. And it was really for me.
Speaker 2: I focused a lot at what I found to be
Speaker 2: the biggest hole in my game, which my short game
Speaker 2: and the concept of turning three shots into two when
Speaker 2: you're inside one hundred yards. My problem is I still
Speaker 2: can't put from four feet.
Speaker 1: See, that's part of it. That's why you can't like
Speaker 1: you know, it's I'm always reluctant to make really ironclad
Speaker 1: statements about how to improve because so much of it
Speaker 1: depends on the person, So much of it's an individual,
Speaker 1: case by case basis. So I always usually try to
Speaker 1: like sort of temper my remarks with like in general
Speaker 1: or for most people, or with a certain name and
Speaker 1: within a certain handicap range. This is this, this statement
Speaker 1: is likely to be true. But it really comes down
Speaker 1: to if you study your game, and there are there
Speaker 1: are applications now you can put in your smartphone for
Speaker 1: basically when you finish the whole you can quickly, you know,
Speaker 1: type in you know how many pots did you get
Speaker 1: up and down? Uh, even track the length of your drive,
Speaker 1: whether you get the fare away. You want to figure
Speaker 1: out what is what is the weak area, what's the
Speaker 1: what's the number one weakest area that's costing you the
Speaker 1: most strokes? And then you want to you want to
Speaker 1: fix that area. You want to fix that that issue.
Speaker 1: That's how you do right. But again, we talked about this.
Speaker 1: I think the last time I was on your show,
Speaker 1: we talked about sort of the new burgeoning field of
Speaker 1: golf statistics, and I think Mark Brody's book was brought
Speaker 1: You brought up his book and some other people.
Speaker 2: Mark was on the show.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And to me, that's Iron Klett.
Speaker 1: And I've been teaching this for over twenty five years now.
Speaker 1: I always tell people, look, you know, I know you
Speaker 1: hate to I know what defies conventional wisdom that putting
Speaker 1: is really important and then short game is really important,
Speaker 1: and it's just not true. What what what costs specially
Speaker 1: especially mid to high handicapped golfers where they lose strokes.
Speaker 1: You know, again, there could be one out of one
Speaker 1: hundred people where this doesn't apply, but nine to ninet
Speaker 1: of one hundred people who are right around fifteen handicaps
Speaker 1: or higher, if they could improve their long gain by
Speaker 1: say twenty five percent, they would score so much better
Speaker 1: because they're they are losing golf balls, they are hitting
Speaker 1: balls out of bounds, they are hitting balls in the
Speaker 1: deep rough you know, behind trees, in the fairway, bunkers,
Speaker 1: they're missing they're typically missing the green in their next shot.
Speaker 1: So now they have to rely on a really, really
Speaker 1: good short game thin get up and down for par right.
Speaker 4: So I don't mean an average I mean like a
Speaker 4: tour pro quality.
Speaker 1: If you get in a really bad situation and your
Speaker 1: second shot on a part four where you're short sighted
Speaker 1: yourself right, or you've got a really bad lie in
Speaker 1: a bunker, or you're in the long grass, you'd have
Speaker 1: to have a tour pro quality short game to get
Speaker 1: up and down right, which one of the odds of
Speaker 1: the average golfer is going to have it. Even if
Speaker 1: you practiced a lot, it's going to get to a
Speaker 1: tour pro quality short games not not very practical. So
Speaker 1: so you know, I think we talked about how last time.
Speaker 1: My belief is that you need to need to learn
Speaker 1: a good enough golf swing where you can hit the
Speaker 1: driver long and straight, because if you can hit a
Speaker 1: driver long and straight, you should be able to hit
Speaker 1: your irons and your hybrids in the green also, you
Speaker 1: know the right distance straight.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about tour players who are playing every day
Speaker 2: all day and have phenomenal mechanics and hopefully have a
Speaker 2: decent enough mental game to get or maybe they have
Speaker 2: none whatsoever because they've just always been a good golfer.
Speaker 2: How much help is a coach at that point?
Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting you bring there, because that's the big
Speaker 1: thing that's being talked to in the golf industry because
Speaker 1: a tiger, right, yeah, yeah, I got is what his
Speaker 1: fifth coach since he turned pro? I think it's his
Speaker 1: eighth coach in his in his lifetime. Chris Como's his
Speaker 1: new coach. Yeah, well, I can tell you this. There's
Speaker 1: only a handful of people on tour right now, on
Speaker 1: the regular tours, European Tour, PGA Tour, who do not
Speaker 1: have a swing coach, very very few do not.
Speaker 2: But should they be tweaking these mechanics that they've gotten
Speaker 2: them to this level?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the big That's the big argument, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I would say say, if you look at the track
Speaker 1: record overall, it's more positive than negative. And more words,
Speaker 1: when when a tour pro works with a coach, most
Speaker 1: of the time, they see somewhere between a minor level
Speaker 1: improvement and a dramatic level of improvement. But there's there's
Speaker 1: always that sort of maybe twenty percent of the time
Speaker 1: where they can get worse. There's that that there's sort
Speaker 1: of like that level of risk. Right.
Speaker 4: My philosophy is.
Speaker 1: You have to do a really really close statistical analysis
Speaker 1: of what their ball striking stats are to see would
Speaker 1: it ever justify making a radical In general, if a
Speaker 1: tour pro came to me and wanted to work on
Speaker 1: a golf swing, I can't imagine that would make a
Speaker 1: radical change to their like Tiger's gone through with his teachings.
Speaker 1: I would I would be inclined. I'd be more as
Speaker 1: a coach, more along the lines and making like minor
Speaker 1: to moderately changes to their golf swing, but also work
Speaker 1: on their mental gain, their mental focus, their routine, controlling
Speaker 1: their emotions and the short game and their putting kind
Speaker 1: of a mixture. But to do what Tiger does, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's pretty radical, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, what would you do if if Tiger called?
Speaker 2: What would you tell Tiger if he called you and said,
Speaker 2: I need some help.
Speaker 1: I like a lot of the stuff that Sean Foley
Speaker 1: did with him in his golf swing. Obviously, Tiger like me,
Speaker 1: I'm in the I've been in the bad, bad back
Speaker 1: camp and golf for two decades now, so I've been
Speaker 1: through the ring around. I've pretty much tried everything, so
Speaker 1: I know how that can affect your game. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: make I would only make one major change. I actually
Speaker 1: believe Tiger Woods only has what I would call one
Speaker 1: major swing flaw. Right now, you know that the swing
Speaker 1: we've seen since he came back from his back what
Speaker 1: two months ago, He's already made some changes that are better.
Speaker 1: He has less forwards athleen than he had had the
Speaker 1: last two years. There were some There were some driver swings.
Speaker 1: You can find him on YouTube if you positive impact.
Speaker 1: His hands were like eight inches ahead of the ball
Speaker 1: that impact with the driver, which is way too much shaffleen, right,
Speaker 1: and not just the driver, all the clubs in the bag.
Speaker 1: He was getting too much shaffleing and that that could
Speaker 1: creates all kinds of problems with solidness of contact and
Speaker 1: also accuracy. Right. So he seems to kind of fix
Speaker 1: that for the most part. So assuming that fixes is permanent,
Speaker 1: he still has one really big flaw. That is something
Speaker 1: you would see like in a twenty five handicap. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about it? No, well, well he dips.
Speaker 1: He and I don't mean dip a little bit. Most
Speaker 1: good players dip about one to three inches, so they
Speaker 1: increased their forward tilted. The torso spine angle toward the
Speaker 1: ground increases a little bit most good most pros do
Speaker 1: like an inch or so on the transmission. He dips
Speaker 1: down like eight to ten inches, so his chest gets
Speaker 1: too close.
Speaker 2: To the ground on a down swing.
Speaker 4: As soon as he starts his downcing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he dips. Yeah. Yeah, So that means he's gonna
Speaker 1: hit He's gonna hit really really fat unless he stands up,
Speaker 1: which of course he does most of the time. He
Speaker 1: has to stand up by almost the same amount he
Speaker 1: hit the ball solid, So talk about a compensation move.
Speaker 1: He's got to totally stand up as he's striking the
Speaker 1: ball by several inches. And you know, he's been doing
Speaker 1: this since he was a kid, so it's a really
Speaker 1: strong habit. But I think it's good. I think it's
Speaker 1: really holding him back. And if it were me, I'd say, Tiger,
Speaker 1: I know you don't want to fix this. Probably because
Speaker 1: it's something it's so natural to you, so deeply ingrained with,
Speaker 1: you know, probably a million golf swings in your life.
Speaker 1: But I think it could be fixed. I would fix that,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't fix much else. Uh. Mechanically he has
Speaker 1: he has a known tempo flaw, which is if you
Speaker 1: look at his driving range swing, it's noticeably slower and
Speaker 1: smoother tempo, particularly with the drive. And he's talked about
Speaker 1: this where he gets the driver on the range like
Speaker 1: really long and really straight with a much slower, smoother tempo,
Speaker 1: and he walks to the first tee and he gets
Speaker 1: short and he gets fast. Wow, I mean really fast.
Speaker 1: So he has again a flaw you would see in
Speaker 1: a mid to high handicap amateur, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like I can't tell you how many
Speaker 2: shows that we've done, and and just on taking your
Speaker 2: game from the range to the course, knowing that amateurs,
Speaker 2: it's one of the biggest complaints. I'm a scratch golfer
Speaker 2: on the driving range, right, but even for that level,
Speaker 2: I'm shocked.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, although I have to say I would say
Speaker 1: he probably suffers from that more than any other well
Speaker 1: known pro. And again his credit he talks about it.
Speaker 1: He says.
Speaker 4: He says, I'm ranger Rick, meaning on the driving range,
Speaker 4: Ranger Rick.
Speaker 1: He goes. But the longest walk, that's the old saying,
Speaker 1: is from the range to the first te he goes.
Speaker 1: He says, he's always struggled, apparently his whole life with
Speaker 1: taking his range swing to the golf course. It's surprising,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really is. I'm kind of stunned here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me tell you else.
Speaker 1: I would tell Tiger, so other than those two physical
Speaker 1: one being temple, the other would being the dipping too much.
Speaker 1: I would say I would have him do extreme exaggeration drills.
Speaker 1: I'd have him open the club face on his driver, like,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty degrees and aim way way left. I'll say, Tiger,
Speaker 1: let's see if you hit one hundred and fifty yard
Speaker 1: slice and have it end up at that tree in
Speaker 1: the right side of the range. Then have him do
Speaker 1: the opposite hundred and twenty five yard hook. Show me,
Speaker 1: show me a driver that never gets higher than fifteen
Speaker 1: feet off the ground. Then show me a driver that's
Speaker 1: sky high right, And then I just I would have
Speaker 1: him do major changes to his normal golf swing in
Speaker 1: other words, I have n't I have him do bizarre
Speaker 1: exaggerated body mechanics and therefore club motion mechanics to produce
Speaker 1: unusual shots like super high shots, super low shots, shots
Speaker 1: the curve a lot, right, you know, hit shots like
Speaker 1: put a put a styrofoam coffee cup upside down and
Speaker 1: put a golf ball on top of it. Try to
Speaker 1: hit a golf ball off of that, or go out
Speaker 1: in the golf.
Speaker 4: Course to extreme side.
Speaker 1: He'll lie where the mall's way above its feet, right,
Speaker 1: because because what I know is that because he used
Speaker 1: to practice like this with his dad, right, And that
Speaker 1: is a proven way of speeding up the mastery process
Speaker 1: in any sport of learning new movement patterns. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of the golfing public thinks you learn what
Speaker 1: the model golf swing is and then you just try
Speaker 1: to match the model. And that certainly is a big
Speaker 1: part of it, for sure. But one of the ways
Speaker 1: we teach here at balance Point is the opposite way,
Speaker 1: where we have people do these sensory awareness exercises with
Speaker 1: a club in their hand, right, and it does two things.
Speaker 1: It expands your mind so you can start to feel
Speaker 1: more what your body and club are actually doing. Anytime
Speaker 1: you can increase your level of feel awareness for body
Speaker 1: and club motion, that's a good thing, right. And because
Speaker 1: you're hitting shots that by their very nature are very
Speaker 1: difficult to hit well, and you're actually hitting them well,
Speaker 1: which you will for most people will you know within
Speaker 1: a few minutes, it helps your confidence. Right. Like one
Speaker 1: that I do a lot is we actually do it
Speaker 1: as part of the segment we do this. We do
Speaker 1: like a half a day on swing plane swing geometry
Speaker 1: in our three day boot camp golf school, and at
Speaker 1: the end of that, this is a segment of that.
Speaker 1: For people who have this typical high handicap over the
Speaker 1: top golf swing, you know, where they hit a lot
Speaker 1: of polls to the left, we do about I don't
Speaker 1: know ninety minutes of drills on that. And the last
Speaker 1: drill for people who have a severe over the top move,
Speaker 1: we call it the backwards drill. And it's sort of
Speaker 1: like it's an actual drill that I've known about for
Speaker 1: over thirty years. But it's also a little bit of
Speaker 1: comic relief because what I do is I actually hit
Speaker 1: the ball backwards. I stand so my back is facing
Speaker 1: the target, my club face is in the normal position, right,
Speaker 1: So my club face is directly aiming at the target,
Speaker 1: but my back is to the target. And everybody starts
Speaker 1: laughing because they think, oh, yeah, of course nobody could
Speaker 1: hit it, and I hit it really usually hit it
Speaker 1: really good, like I usually hit a hybrid about two
Speaker 1: hundred yards or about a ten yard draw on it,
Speaker 1: and it looks impossible. So people are thinking, holy, how
Speaker 1: can he possibly hit a I mean, how can he
Speaker 1: hit a ball backwards? It doesn't even you think it's impossible.
Speaker 1: But you know what, it's not that hard to do.
Speaker 1: So I have the students try it, and yeah, the
Speaker 1: first maybe three to five they hit really bad, and
Speaker 1: then by the fifth or sixth or seventh one they're
Speaker 1: hitting it as good as their normal setup. Right from
Speaker 1: a starting position that should be impossible to do. And
Speaker 1: so that really helps your confidence. And what Tiger needs
Speaker 1: right now is a huge, huge jolt of confidence, don't
Speaker 1: you think? Yeah, absolutely, because when you look at his
Speaker 1: body language, he doesn't have the com he doesn't walk
Speaker 1: around on the golf course with that like that Tiger
Speaker 1: King of the Jungle type of body language he used
Speaker 1: to have.
Speaker 2: Well, he intimidated the competition, right didn't Tiger at that
Speaker 2: point or at any point, or hasn't he exhibited the
Speaker 2: most creative use of shots and the widest range of
Speaker 2: different types of shots that you've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's what I'm saying. He was known for that,
Speaker 1: and he kind of got because he not so much
Speaker 1: into Butch, because Butcher knows about what. I'm sure Butch
Speaker 1: used a similar drills with his tour pros, but he
Speaker 1: got to Haney. Haney was a much more technical teacher
Speaker 1: than than Butch Harmon.
Speaker 4: Was, and Sean Foley was like orders.
Speaker 1: Of magnitude more technical teacher than even Hani was. So
Speaker 1: the problem with it with I think too much of
Speaker 1: a technical approach is if you don't mix in equal
Speaker 1: parts of the creative part of golf the artistic part.
Speaker 1: If it's all technique, technique, look at video. Put you
Speaker 1: on track man, try to try to get the try
Speaker 1: to try to get better numbers, like Tiger was always saying,
Speaker 1: on track man, try to hit better positions, replaying the
Speaker 1: video and slow motion. If you start getting too much
Speaker 1: down that road, it inhibits the artistic and the creative
Speaker 1: side of golf. And one reason I called my company
Speaker 1: balance point is, I don't see those things as antithetical
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 4: I see them as complementary.
Speaker 1: But they can become antithetical if one becomes too dominant
Speaker 1: relative to the other, Do you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So here's Tiger Wood's one from being probably if you
Speaker 1: wanted to put it in percentage, I would say he
Speaker 1: was a ninety percent field player as a junior, only
Speaker 1: ten percent technical. Right. Then he's when he was seventeen
Speaker 1: years old senior in high school, started working with Butch,
Speaker 1: and Butch is sort of closer to called. I would say,
Speaker 1: Butch is probably more you know, maybe seventy percent feel,
Speaker 1: thirty percent technical and rough approximation.
Speaker 4: And then he went to Haini, who was.
Speaker 1: Probably sixty forty sixty percent technical, forty percent field. Then
Speaker 1: he went to Sean Foley, who was like technical, ten
Speaker 1: percent more creative oriented. And I think I think Tiger
Speaker 1: just got off track, and I would have him go
Speaker 1: back toward maybe you know, for six months or maybe
Speaker 1: a year, just just get don't look at any video,
Speaker 1: don't don't go on track, man, literally right, just take
Speaker 1: a vacation from that stuff.
Speaker 4: Learned to play golf by feel.
Speaker 1: Again. I think that would be the most important advice
Speaker 1: I would give him for sure.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, Well, let's talk for a moment so people
Speaker 2: can get in touch with you about Balance Point Golf School.
Speaker 2: I know that I got an email the other day
Speaker 2: from from one of the women that was on our
Speaker 2: prog trip years ago, who's still a listener, and she
Speaker 2: said that she's on her way to Hawaii and she
Speaker 2: wanted to reach out to you in March. She was
Speaker 2: on the East coast.
Speaker 1: She said, so yesterday I'm going to try calling her
Speaker 1: tomorrow and go over some options for her.
Speaker 2: She's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, BJ right, yeah, yeah, J. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: guess what can I tell you? I've been doing this.
Speaker 1: This is my twenty sixth, sorry, the twenty first year
Speaker 1: I've had the schools. I started in nineteen ninety five
Speaker 1: in the winter time over here in Hawaii. Actually that
Speaker 1: was over in the Big Island. I'm pretty proud of
Speaker 1: the company. I've got four assistant pros that work with
Speaker 1: me in the busy summer season in Portland, and in fact,
Speaker 1: one guy's been with me. This will be his eighteenth year.
Speaker 1: I won one eighteen year old veteran eighteen years with me,
Speaker 1: A fifteen year old and a thirteen year old and
Speaker 1: a seven year old, so they've all got a lot
Speaker 1: of experience.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: They're all good players, good golf swings. I usually I
Speaker 1: consider myself a holistic instructor, and I teach all phases
Speaker 1: of the game, all parts of the game, mental game,
Speaker 1: short game, putting game, golf swing mechanics. Although I spent
Speaker 1: about eighty percent of my time teaching golf swing mechanics.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's what the marketplace demands. People want want
Speaker 1: to have that type of instruction. And I call it
Speaker 1: balance Point because I use a mind body connection model,
Speaker 1: which is basically it's a model based on neuroscience, which
Speaker 1: is how does how does.
Speaker 4: The brain mind slash body?
Speaker 1: How does that system work in terms of learning new
Speaker 1: movement patterns and in terms of performing to your highest
Speaker 1: potential when you play?
Speaker 2: And the website is balance balancepointolf dot com.
Speaker 1: Correct balancepointgolf dot com. And we have schools from May
Speaker 1: through October and Portland, uh spring and fall in Palm
Speaker 1: Springs and wintertime in Onawahu. Teach at Coalina Golf Club,
Speaker 1: which is about twenty minutes west of Waikikiwa.
Speaker 2: And you were telling me that you have an ebook
Speaker 2: now for us all to take advantage of.
Speaker 1: I have our Great Shot, our most popular golf school
Speaker 1: is called Great Shot exclamation Point, and it's a three
Speaker 1: day boot camp, eight hours a day, really intensive total
Speaker 1: immersion training on the range on those thirty laws of
Speaker 1: body motion, six laws of club motion. But again mainly
Speaker 1: it's the ten really important ones, ten important loves of
Speaker 1: body motion. And that school has a two hundred and
Speaker 1: five page training manual that I've spent most of the
Speaker 1: summer rewriting and updating, and we've turned it into an ebook,
Speaker 1: and it'll be up on our website. I'm hoping by
Speaker 1: the end of next week, which would be what around
Speaker 1: the eight twenty ninth of January something like that.
Speaker 2: Okay, so by February first it should be ready.
Speaker 4: It'll be downloadable.
Speaker 2: And this is twenty fifteen that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a PDF version right now, but you
Speaker 1: have to call the office to get that one. But
Speaker 1: this will be epub. Epub will play on any device
Speaker 1: from a tablet to a smartphone to a desktop computer.
Speaker 1: And I'm also while I'm here in Hawaii, I'm working
Speaker 1: on updating the short game, putting game and mental game
Speaker 1: training manuals. So those will be available as ebooks. I'm
Speaker 1: hoping by middle to end of the summer. And I've
Speaker 1: involved in reshooting our Great Shot golf Swing training program
Speaker 1: which I did. It's been twenty years ago, which was
Speaker 1: back in the VHS tape days. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Time to reshoot that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with a brand new Panasonic twenty fourteen high def
Speaker 1: camera with a really good audio system.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you the video that you shot it with.
Speaker 2: Then you could shoot with your phone now and it
Speaker 2: would look better.
Speaker 1: Well, I know it was, there's no question amazing. So
Speaker 1: we're about a third through the shooting. We've got module one,
Speaker 1: Module two almost done. We're going to sell them as
Speaker 1: individual modules. It's going to be five modules total. It'll
Speaker 1: be almost exactly twenty four hours of viewing time. It's
Speaker 1: everything I know about the golf swing, and it's designed
Speaker 1: to be a self directed sort of training program, so
Speaker 1: you can you can download the whole thing and you
Speaker 1: can take one year, two year, four years, five years,
Speaker 1: whatever long you want to learn the golf swing and
Speaker 1: its sequential order. Where there were certain things are more
Speaker 1: important are the things like I mentioned at the start
Speaker 1: of the conversation, and a beginner golfer could take this
Speaker 1: program and by the end of the first year have
Speaker 1: a really good golf swing, and professional golfer could go
Speaker 1: to the parts where they apply more to them. So
Speaker 1: it's going to go from the real simple, basic, sort
Speaker 1: of introductory fundamentals all the way through when you get
Speaker 1: closer to the twenty hour mark to the really advanced stuff.
Speaker 1: So I'm pretty proud of It's everything I know about
Speaker 1: the golf swing awesome.
Speaker 2: And you do know a lot. I mean, it's amazing
Speaker 2: to me how fast an hour can go by when
Speaker 2: we get on the phone together.
Speaker 1: It's been an hour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, we've been recording for over an hour.
Speaker 1: Incredible.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, Jim, as always, I just love having
Speaker 2: you on this podcast. I love to listen to you.
Speaker 2: I learned so much. I really appreciate that you share
Speaker 2: so much time with us.
Speaker 4: Problem.
Speaker 1: It's always a pleasure chatting with you. As you know,
Speaker 1: we got to do the time meal again this summer.
Speaker 2: Okay, we got to go out for somewhere food and
Speaker 2: that was episode number four hundred, and we're approaching this
Speaker 2: summer we're going to be coming up to number five hundred,
Speaker 2: So maybe this summer we'll get together.
Speaker 1: I'm honored. I got to I think this is my
Speaker 1: tenth time. I think right ninth or tenth.
Speaker 2: I I haven't looked, but yeah, I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 2: if it was at least ten times. Jim, let's wrap
Speaker 2: this up with your closing tip.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the main tip is you need to
Speaker 1: understand that in golf, you never aim your body at
Speaker 1: the target. That is, aiming the body at the target
Speaker 1: is one of the most common golf swing misconceptions that
Speaker 1: the new students bring to the table when I work
Speaker 1: with them in schools and lessons. I mean to the
Speaker 1: point where people will actually take a club and put
Speaker 1: it across their shoulders and kind of look at their
Speaker 1: target and go like that aim their should People do
Speaker 1: that usually almost always high handicapped to do that. Your
Speaker 1: body has no relationship to the target involve The only
Speaker 1: relationship to the target is with the golf ball hopefully
Speaker 1: going to the target when you're done hitting it, and
Speaker 1: your club face. So the key is to aim your
Speaker 1: club face exactly at your intended target and never try
Speaker 1: to aim your body to the target. Your body does
Speaker 1: not aim to the target. Your body positions itself parallel left.
Speaker 4: Of a three foot long chunk.
Speaker 1: Of target line, with the ball sitting in the middle
Speaker 1: of that three foot long chunk. So once you're done
Speaker 1: aiming your club face precisely at the target, you simply
Speaker 1: look down at the ball and you see an imaginary
Speaker 1: line eighteen inches either side of the ball. Right, that's
Speaker 1: your three foot long chunk of target line. And you
Speaker 1: position your toe line, your feet, your knees, your hips,
Speaker 1: your shoulder girdle, even your eye line parallel to that
Speaker 1: three foot long chunk of line, like you're standing on
Speaker 1: the inner rail of a railroad track and the ball
Speaker 1: is and that three foot long chunk of target line
Speaker 1: is the outer rail. Right, You want to keep those
Speaker 1: two rails parallel to each other. Never aim your body
Speaker 1: out to the target. Only the bug base