Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number four hundred and forty six, originally published
Speaker 1: on July twenty second, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 2: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
Speaker 2: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
Speaker 2: like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: What you really have to have is a relationship with
Speaker 3: the target, not the target itself. If you try to
Speaker 3: point perfectly towards something, your arm in your hand will shake.
Speaker 3: If you try to hold a cup of coffee perfectly still,
Speaker 3: you'll spill it. But if you just calmly find a relationship,
Speaker 3: it's like looking through a window, and where your hands
Speaker 3: end up is kind of like where the window is sitting,
Speaker 3: and you're trying to get your hands in a relationship
Speaker 3: with that target, not reach toward that target. Just like
Speaker 3: firing a gun. You see the target and you're pointing
Speaker 3: a gun in relationship to that target, but you're not
Speaker 3: actually trying to get to the target. I think that's
Speaker 3: another mistake people do is they try to guide things
Speaker 3: toward a target. You have no control over that golf ball,
Speaker 3: literally zero. So what you've got to do is control
Speaker 3: what's within you. And the only thing that's within you
Speaker 3: is this balance that comes to finish in relationship to
Speaker 3: that target.
Speaker 1: See it, feel it, do it. As told by Jimmy
Speaker 1: Demura to Evan denn This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 3: Evan, Hi, Fred, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1: I am so well. I've already got the Texas accent. Wow,
Speaker 1: I've talked to you for ten minutes and I am
Speaker 1: so well. You're contagious, my friend.
Speaker 3: You haven't heard the real Texas accent. Go to West Texas.
Speaker 1: Oh well. You know, if I ever spend like a
Speaker 1: week in Atlanta, which I used to do a lot,
Speaker 1: I would have to go down. I would come home
Speaker 1: with all y'all. Yes, I love all y'all, and even
Speaker 1: I go to New Orleans. It just takes a couple
Speaker 1: of days and all of a sudden, I've picked up accents.
Speaker 1: It's nuts. Yes, it's been a long time since we've spoken,
Speaker 1: but we've continued to promote your power Field Golf DVD
Speaker 1: and training booklet on the Golf Smarter website at our
Speaker 1: golfers Maart and we have been getting reaction to it.
Speaker 1: People find it and they purchase it. We really appreciate
Speaker 1: you selling it here.
Speaker 3: All I appreciate you carrying it too.
Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, and it's been what two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: episode two hundred and eleven was the last time you
Speaker 1: were on, so there are people who will remember you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: though people remember you, but there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have not heard about power Field Golf, and
Speaker 1: I thought it would be great to reintroduce them to
Speaker 1: that and talk about what's going on in your teaching
Speaker 1: and your method of teaching because I found it very effective.
Speaker 3: Well, I would say the biggest thing Fred that's gone
Speaker 3: on since we last talked is my goal is always
Speaker 3: to make it simpler because I feel the simpler you
Speaker 3: can make the game, the more fun it is. And
Speaker 3: you know, get people to understand how to use their
Speaker 3: inate abilities rather than trying to imitate or copy somebody else.
Speaker 3: And you know, like I was always told, when you
Speaker 3: try to paint by numbers, which is what majority of
Speaker 3: instruction is, and they try to tell you what positions
Speaker 3: to be in that doesn't fit your body. Everybody's different.
Speaker 3: We've got five hundred and something paired muscles and we
Speaker 3: have to learn how to use them the way that
Speaker 3: works best for us, not the way that looks good
Speaker 3: with Rory McElroy or Adam Scott or somebody else, because
Speaker 3: we're just not going to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yet we can find our best game if
Speaker 3: we know where to look.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, one of the complaints are the major complaints
Speaker 1: of golf is it's too hard, it takes too long,
Speaker 1: it's too expensive. So when you're saying make it simpler,
Speaker 1: are you talking about making the game simpler or making
Speaker 1: instruction simpler?
Speaker 3: Well, really both, but instruction and the way you go
Speaker 3: about practicing simpler.
Speaker 1: That's huge.
Speaker 3: Yeah. If you think about if you change the way
Speaker 3: you see something, what you see changes. And most people
Speaker 3: just see golf in the wrong way. They see that
Speaker 3: they're supposed to hit a ball with a golf club
Speaker 3: and make it go somewhere, so they're trying to control
Speaker 3: the end of the club rather than understanding how that
Speaker 3: really happens. It's just like if you tried to focus
Speaker 3: on the end of a fork while you're eating or
Speaker 3: the end of a fly swatter. While you're swatting a fly,
Speaker 3: you'll be very unsuccessful. Go on.
Speaker 1: I am enthralled.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, what I found over all the years, and
Speaker 3: it really goes back to what I learned from Jackie Burke,
Speaker 3: Jimmy to Merritt, and Ben Hogan and a few others
Speaker 3: like Julius Boris, who I was fortunate enough to be
Speaker 3: around because they were all good friends with my dad.
Speaker 3: And actually Jackie Burke and Jimmy to Merritt, I lived
Speaker 3: five hundred yards from the club they owned down in
Speaker 3: Houston called Champions Golf Club, and so they were my teachers.
Speaker 3: I started playing when I was nine, and as soon
Speaker 3: as they saw that I was going to be pretty good,
Speaker 3: they started helping me. Well what they started telling me
Speaker 3: was and unfortunately I kind of steered away from after
Speaker 3: I thought I was really good. I wanted to know
Speaker 3: too much. They taught me how simple the game really
Speaker 3: could be. But then once I got into probably my
Speaker 3: junior year of high school, I started listening to all
Speaker 3: these guys. They were talking swing theories and everything else,
Speaker 3: and rather than getting better, I got worse like most
Speaker 3: people do, and so I went through college doing that,
Speaker 3: played college golf major college golf, and then I played
Speaker 3: a little bit of professional golf. But I never felt
Speaker 3: like I had the same game that I did when
Speaker 3: I was fourteen or fifteen years old, because I felt
Speaker 3: like I had lost the ability to just feel the game.
Speaker 3: And one of the things you and I were talking
Speaker 3: to prior to the show we were talking to personally
Speaker 3: about was where see it feel it, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people call it trust it came from. Was when
Speaker 3: I was about fifteen years old, I was playing golf
Speaker 3: with Jimmy Demerit and he rarely played. He played like
Speaker 3: once a year, and he was in his late fifties
Speaker 3: back then, and he asked me to go play one morning,
Speaker 3: and so we went out to the golf course. He
Speaker 3: didn't warm up or anything. His clubs had dust all
Speaker 3: over them, which is in my book, and so we
Speaker 3: get out there and he just smokes it right down
Speaker 3: the tenth tee. We played the tournament course to a
Speaker 3: cypress creek course, and he continued to do that the
Speaker 3: whole nine holes, and on the eighth hole I was
Speaker 3: even par. He was like five under already, and I
Speaker 3: looked at him, I said, mister de merit, I don't understand.
Speaker 3: You never touch a club, you don't practice, you don't
Speaker 3: do anything. You come out here and you make it
Speaker 3: look like it's a walk in the park and there's
Speaker 3: no effort to your golf swing. He said, Evan, you
Speaker 3: see that green up there. He said, all I do
Speaker 3: is I see it, I feel it, and I just
Speaker 3: do it. And he said, I don't think about it.
Speaker 3: He said, I know what it feels like, and i
Speaker 3: know how to control the shot from my hands, and
Speaker 3: I'm not thinking. He said, I'm not thinking about where
Speaker 3: the clubhead is, or my foot position or anything like that.
Speaker 3: So and that's the way he grew up. He rarely
Speaker 3: made to feel the game.
Speaker 1: When you rarely make mistakes, you don't have to second
Speaker 1: guess yourself. For many of us who picked up the
Speaker 1: game later in life and don't play competitively, just love
Speaker 1: to play the game, but are always struggling. Every golfer
Speaker 1: is struggling to improve. That's all across the board. But
Speaker 1: for those of us weekend hacks, you know, we're working
Speaker 1: all week, don't get a lot of time to practice.
Speaker 1: Would love to practice more, you know, inch out every
Speaker 1: hour that we can in the backyard or at a
Speaker 1: range or something like that, wherever we can. I don't
Speaker 1: see it as being so simple like that. What am
Speaker 1: I missing?
Speaker 3: Well, what you're missing is where you focus your energies.
Speaker 3: Like I started to say earlier, where most people focus
Speaker 3: their energy is on hitting the golf ball and trying
Speaker 3: to steer it to a target, so they reach toward
Speaker 3: the golf ball rather than swinging toward the target. And
Speaker 3: one of the things Jackie Burke told me when I
Speaker 3: was probably twelve or thirteen years old was Evan, the
Speaker 3: golf ball goes wherever your hands go, good or bad.
Speaker 3: So if you understand how to get your hands to
Speaker 3: go there, and you have control of the club, then
Speaker 3: you have control of the shot. Now it's happening at
Speaker 3: a fast pace, you know, the usually you're swinging at
Speaker 3: about eighty to one hundred miles an hour. The clubhead
Speaker 3: is but your hands really aren't moving that fast. So
Speaker 3: it's the clubhead that's moving that fast. But your hands
Speaker 3: you can slow them down if you want, to speed
Speaker 3: them up if you want to. But the main thing
Speaker 3: is once you learn how to control the tool in
Speaker 3: your hands properly and direct that energy toward the target
Speaker 3: instead of toward the ball. You change everything.
Speaker 1: I like that idea, So let's figure out how to
Speaker 1: make it simpler for all of us. What are the
Speaker 1: elements that we have to focus on and what do
Speaker 1: we have to stop beating ourselves up with that's going
Speaker 1: to make well the process simpler.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's first get rid of the things you don't need.
Speaker 3: You don't need to know how to put your feet
Speaker 3: at a certain width. You don't need to know where
Speaker 3: to put the club in your stands. You don't need
Speaker 3: to know how to bend your knees. You don't need
Speaker 3: to know how to keep your head down. That's one
Speaker 3: of the worst ones, is keeping your head down because
Speaker 3: that actually gets in your own way of your golf swing.
Speaker 3: So think about that. You What you're really trying to
Speaker 3: do is have as clear and as clean a path
Speaker 3: for your hands to work on as possible. Well, that
Speaker 3: starts with balance. Balance is a feeling. It's a feeling
Speaker 3: of having a tool in your hands balanced that you
Speaker 3: can swing back and forth, not up and down, which
Speaker 3: most people swing up, down and out, and that's why
Speaker 3: most people slice it. But if you can swing back
Speaker 3: and forth with your hands balanced, then the body will
Speaker 3: support that action and it will give the illusion of
Speaker 3: an eye shoulder turn, a nice hip turn. It'll give
Speaker 3: the illusion that your head stayed down when in reality,
Speaker 3: your eyes are clearing the way for your hands on
Speaker 3: the follow through. So you know, if you really watch
Speaker 3: the players on tour, you won't see their eyes stuck
Speaker 3: on the golf ball. You'll see them gently guiding toward
Speaker 3: the target in front of the hands. So it's like
Speaker 3: it's like throwing a baseball. You don't look at the
Speaker 3: baseball while you're throwing it. You look toward the target
Speaker 3: and you kind of clear the way mentally and visually
Speaker 3: for your hand to come through toward that target. Well,
Speaker 3: the same thing happens in golf, but you can't do
Speaker 3: that until you put your energies, your mental especially that
Speaker 3: third eye. If you understand what I'm talking about, toward
Speaker 3: the target. In other words, if you look at something
Speaker 3: ahead of you in pre shot before you swing, and
Speaker 3: you bury that image in your head, then that's where
Speaker 3: your hands want to go. So then you hold that
Speaker 3: image in your head and you kind of do a
Speaker 3: blank stare toward the golf ball, which keeps you from
Speaker 3: focusing on the ball. It kind of takes it out
Speaker 3: of focus, if you want to say it that way.
Speaker 3: So what we're really trying to accomplish is this clear
Speaker 3: space for the hands to work in until they finish
Speaker 3: their work.
Speaker 1: Why do you use the word illusion?
Speaker 3: The illusion of the golf ball is. What you're really
Speaker 3: trying to do is get your mind. You know how
Speaker 3: when you stare through somebody, you're kind of daydreaming about something. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you can look right at someone, but you don't
Speaker 3: really see them they're right in front of you because
Speaker 3: you're daydreaming. That's the I call that.
Speaker 1: I actually call that peeing in the ocean. That look
Speaker 1: you get on your face when you're peeing in the
Speaker 1: ocean's like exactly.
Speaker 3: That's what you should have on your face when you're
Speaker 3: standing over a golf shot and swinging, because that way,
Speaker 3: your mind, your mental energy is toward the target, not
Speaker 3: at the golf ball. Most people stare at a golf
Speaker 3: ball the way if I was looking at you, I'd
Speaker 3: be staring at your nose. It does very little good,
Speaker 3: doesn't do anything for me. You've got to be thinking ahead,
Speaker 3: not right in front of you. And that's why most
Speaker 3: people hit at the golf ball because that's where all
Speaker 3: their energy, mental and physical is directed toward.
Speaker 1: This is a complete coincidence, but two of the last
Speaker 1: three episodes of Golf Smarter we're on target oriented golf.
Speaker 1: We even had JB. Holmes, caddy talking about the work
Speaker 1: that he's done with Colin Cromac who's in the UK,
Speaker 1: and Colin was on talking about his whole program of
Speaker 1: target oriented golf. You sound like you're a believer.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, that's a small part of it again, just
Speaker 3: like process is a small part of the picture. A
Speaker 3: process is extremely important. Target oriented is very important. But
Speaker 3: if you don't have good balance of the tool in
Speaker 3: your hands, if you don't have the idea that you're
Speaker 3: clearing space for those hands to work in, if you
Speaker 3: don't have the idea that you know that your vision
Speaker 3: is toward that target, then it doesn't matter if your
Speaker 3: target oriented. If you don't understand the whole process. Just
Speaker 3: like if you have a process but you don't understand
Speaker 3: that all that energy has to be directed toward the target,
Speaker 3: then neither one work. They have to go together. You
Speaker 3: have to have both process and target to go along
Speaker 3: with understanding what gives you the best opportunity to get there.
Speaker 3: So it's not just one or the other. It's actually
Speaker 3: a combination of things. But the one the phrases I
Speaker 3: like to use is it's balance, control, and vision if
Speaker 3: you don't have good balance. And when I mean balance, I.
Speaker 1: Was going to ask you about that because my biggest
Speaker 1: issue is with the driver. It's the only club that
Speaker 1: I like. Fall out after I swing my driver because
Speaker 1: I'm probably swinging it too hard, but no other club, No,
Speaker 1: keep going.
Speaker 3: It's typically not because you swing it too harsh because
Speaker 3: you swing out of balance. You fall because you're out
Speaker 3: of balance.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: And when I say out of balance, balance is not
Speaker 3: at the feet. The feet are there to be soft
Speaker 3: and to allow the hands to work freely. The balance
Speaker 3: is in the hands. To imagine you had a medicine
Speaker 3: ball in your hands, a ten pound medicine ball with
Speaker 3: a couple of handles on it. You know, you see
Speaker 3: those ones with the handles on it, and you're swinging
Speaker 3: that medicine ball back and forth, just like you would
Speaker 3: a golf swing, kind of underneath you, and you're trying
Speaker 3: to throw it into a wall. Okay, if you throw
Speaker 3: it out away from you. You're going to fall over
Speaker 3: toward out away from you. If you just use it
Speaker 3: along your body and you find a place that's easy
Speaker 3: to release it in front of you, that's where your
Speaker 3: best golf swing is. In other words, what you're doing
Speaker 3: is you're reaching down the target line or the ball
Speaker 3: line rather than actually, let me put it a different
Speaker 3: way so you can kind of get the visual. If
Speaker 3: you had two lines. You had a line from the
Speaker 3: ball to the target, and then you had another line
Speaker 3: from your hands to the target. The ball to the target,
Speaker 3: your hands have to reach out to go down that line.
Speaker 3: The line from the hands to the target is a direct,
Speaker 3: easy to balance line. If you swing that line, the
Speaker 3: golf club works properly. If you swing down the ball line,
Speaker 3: everything's messed up, everything's off balance.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is making so much sense to me, especially
Speaker 1: thank you for telling me I'm not swinging too hard
Speaker 1: because it like, Yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Can swing as hard as you want to if you're
Speaker 3: in balance, if you're efficient. Another good word is efficient.
Speaker 3: If your hands are working efficiently in front of your body,
Speaker 3: then that club is working efficiently too, and you can
Speaker 3: swing with as much effort as you want to as
Speaker 3: long as you don't swing out of balance and out
Speaker 3: of balance. If you were to put your hands the
Speaker 3: left hand to the left of you, right hand of
Speaker 3: the right of you, where you feel like if you
Speaker 3: were holding two five pound medicine balls up in your hands,
Speaker 3: that's as far as you can swing in balance straight.
Speaker 1: Are you saying I'm trying to do this? Am I
Speaker 1: putting my arm that straight?
Speaker 3: Without straightening your arms where you're relaxed and comfortable, hands
Speaker 3: are in a like at a handshake distance. Okay. You
Speaker 3: never extend your arm fully out to shake someone's hand.
Speaker 3: You extend it with a slight bend in your elbow
Speaker 3: and a relax in your shoulder. And so if you
Speaker 3: think of handshake distance on the left side of you
Speaker 3: or right side of you, or in front of you,
Speaker 3: as long as you swing within that, you are in balance.
Speaker 3: In other words, your hands work at a certain distance
Speaker 3: from your body most efficiently. Once you try to reach out,
Speaker 3: If you take your hand right hand or left hand
Speaker 3: and you reach out away from you, you'll feel your
Speaker 3: body go the opposite direction to keep you from falling over. Okay,
Speaker 3: And that's what you experience when you swing the golf
Speaker 3: club that's out of balance in your hands. When your
Speaker 3: hands are out of balance, so is the golf club.
Speaker 3: And not only that, it slows the golf club down
Speaker 3: because your body has to shut down in order to
Speaker 3: keep you from falling again. It can't work faster, it
Speaker 3: actually works slower. So your best golf swing, your most
Speaker 3: efficient golf swing, actually feels slower even though it's actually
Speaker 3: working faster.
Speaker 1: And is that the control part of balance control, vision, well.
Speaker 3: Control is actually how you hold it in your hands.
Speaker 3: You put pressure from your palms out, then you're not
Speaker 3: controlling the club the right way. So think about it
Speaker 3: like your your fingers or your hands become a vice
Speaker 3: on the club and you find where that vice is
Speaker 3: and you hold it up, not pushing out, So you're
Speaker 3: using your finger muscles more in toward toward the sky,
Speaker 3: and you're balancing that club just like you would balance
Speaker 3: a plate or something out in front of you.
Speaker 1: And you lost me, what do you mean pushing up?
Speaker 3: Okay, pushing and not pushing up, holding up, holding up.
Speaker 3: So like you if you had a platter and you're
Speaker 3: holding a platter right in front of you that's full
Speaker 3: of food, say, or wine glasses or something you're not
Speaker 3: going to push out with your palms because the whole
Speaker 3: thing's gonna tip over.
Speaker 1: Right right, Okay, I got the visual.
Speaker 3: Going hold up with your fingers. You grab the two
Speaker 3: sides and you hold it up with your fingers. If
Speaker 3: you imagine that's the way you hold a golf club,
Speaker 3: then now you have control of that tool. And the
Speaker 3: way Hogan showed me that one was he shook my
Speaker 3: hand and he showed me in a handshake. And I'll
Speaker 3: never forget that feeling because you could feel how firm
Speaker 3: his fingers were yet how soft his arms were.
Speaker 1: That's awesome that you can say.
Speaker 3: And actually that brings up a great point because everybody says, well,
Speaker 3: Hogan said hold the club lightly. That's absolutely false what
Speaker 3: he said. And because I asked him that question when
Speaker 3: I was about sixteen years old, I said, I can't
Speaker 3: hold the club like that, and he said you shouldn't, Son,
Speaker 3: and he used a few expletives to go along with it.
Speaker 3: And after he got through berating me about it, he said,
Speaker 3: here's how you hold it. You hold it like you
Speaker 3: mean it so no one can take it away from you.
Speaker 3: But you don't squeeze it with your palms. You use
Speaker 3: your fingers to control it, not your palms. And he
Speaker 3: said that means that all your pressure will stay constant
Speaker 3: throughout the golf swing, because now you've got a control
Speaker 3: that you can use. Rather than if you're pushing with
Speaker 3: your palms, your fingers come loose. Try to hold anything,
Speaker 3: push out with your palms and try to tighten your fingers.
Speaker 3: You cannot do it.
Speaker 1: Right. Why is it that everybody wants to quote Hogan?
Speaker 1: Was he a teacher or was he just an amazing player?
Speaker 3: Actually, Jimmy Demarrett was his teacher. He was an amazing player,
Speaker 3: but he had a major flaw in his golf swing
Speaker 3: that cost him early in his career and he had
Speaker 3: to do a lot of strength training over in order
Speaker 3: to overcome it. And that was that he swung out
Speaker 3: toward the ball a little bit. And so that's why
Speaker 3: his swing looks flat because it was an end to
Speaker 3: out swing and when it wasn't working quite right, it
Speaker 3: turned into a snap hook. And if you talked to
Speaker 3: him who knew him later in life, he could not
Speaker 3: keep from hitting that snap hook because of that. As
Speaker 3: he got weaker, and the best swing in any if
Speaker 3: you had talked to Sam sneid Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson,
Speaker 3: any of the greats of that era who had the
Speaker 3: absolute best off swing of that era, or maybe ever.
Speaker 3: They would all tell you. Jimmy de Merritt that swing
Speaker 3: was so simple and so strong it was unbelievable. Why Well,
Speaker 3: because he was very efficient in the use of his hands,
Speaker 3: and he had great balance of the tool in his hands,
Speaker 3: and he had great vision toward the target. And that's
Speaker 3: where I use vision. Vision is really where your mind's
Speaker 3: eye is. When your mind's eye is only on hitting
Speaker 3: a ball, guess what, that's what you're going to focus on,
Speaker 3: and that's where everything ends. And that's why you can't
Speaker 3: control the direction. But when you have your vision toward
Speaker 3: the target and you're feeling it just like it's part
Speaker 3: of you, that shot, the shape of that shot with
Speaker 3: your hands, like it's part of you. Now you've got
Speaker 3: complete control of it as long as you have good
Speaker 3: balance and good control of the tool.
Speaker 1: This brings me back to and the reason I asked you,
Speaker 1: was Hogan a teacher, because you said earlier, we don't
Speaker 1: want to try to have Rory McElroy swing. We don't
Speaker 1: want to have Adam Scott swing. But then you were saying,
Speaker 1: we want ben Hogan's swing.
Speaker 3: No, I said, we do not want ben hogan swing,
Speaker 3: want his control. Ah ah, we want his control, we
Speaker 3: want his balance. But that's only going to be what's
Speaker 3: personal to us. If and I'll put it in a
Speaker 3: way that might simplify it. There's a reason some people
Speaker 3: will never be good golfers and others will be great golfers.
Speaker 3: It's actually the way their hands work. Some people have
Speaker 3: a natural balancing and control ability in their hands that
Speaker 3: others don't, and a lot of it's in training. If
Speaker 3: you start out young and you do something, let's say
Speaker 3: like volleyball or basketball, and you're using your hand a
Speaker 3: completely different way than you would for golf, you're not
Speaker 3: going to be as good a golfer. You rarely see
Speaker 3: a good basketball player that's a good golfer, and the
Speaker 3: reason is is they're pushing instead of pulling. Even though
Speaker 3: they're using their fingers, they're still pushing and whereas in
Speaker 3: golf you're really pulling with your fingers. The other thing
Speaker 3: that everybody loses sight of is that, you know, we're
Speaker 3: all built differently, Like my flexibility is not nearly what
Speaker 3: it was forty years ago because I've got some arthritis
Speaker 3: issues in my back, so my limits of range of
Speaker 3: motion have decreased quite a bit. So now I have
Speaker 3: to be careful that I stay within my balance. My
Speaker 3: current balance, not what I could do when I was
Speaker 3: fourteen fifteen years old. And that's what a lot of
Speaker 3: people try to swing imitating making shoulder turns hip turns, which,
Speaker 3: by the way, when you try to make a shoulder
Speaker 3: turn or hip turn deliberately, you're now your body is
Speaker 3: out of sequence. If your hands don't lead it, then
Speaker 3: you have lost the sequence of the motion. It'd be
Speaker 3: like trying to turn your hips while you're walking and
Speaker 3: trying to lead with your hips instead of your feet.
Speaker 3: If you've ever done that, you know it's awkward.
Speaker 1: Yes, I definitely know it's awkward because I was like, oh, shoot,
Speaker 1: I've not been I've been not been turning my hips
Speaker 1: on my back swing, and then I try to remember
Speaker 1: it in the back swing, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: everything is now nothing's worth well.
Speaker 3: It gets you totally off focus of what's really important.
Speaker 3: If you narrowed everything down to the ability of your
Speaker 3: hand to do the work, then you can find your
Speaker 3: best off swing instruction is not really that important. The
Speaker 3: only thing you need someone is someone who can guide
Speaker 3: you to help you find that right balance and that
Speaker 3: right motion the first time that fits you. And once
Speaker 3: you've done that, you're pretty much on your own. You
Speaker 3: can self teach from that point on.
Speaker 1: And that should be a goal.
Speaker 3: That should be very much a goal what a lot
Speaker 3: of teachers do. And it's not their fault. It happened
Speaker 3: many many years ago, back in the forties and fifties,
Speaker 3: when the club pros back then weren't making any money
Speaker 3: and they thought the best way to have an extra
Speaker 3: income was to keep people on the hook for lessons,
Speaker 3: and so they were baffling them with bs and they
Speaker 3: were telling them all these things that now have become
Speaker 3: the godlike that. You're supposed to turn your supposed to
Speaker 3: turn your shoulders, You're supposed to do this, You're supposed
Speaker 3: to do that, supposed to bend your knees, supposed to
Speaker 3: stick your butt out, supposed to keep your spine straight.
Speaker 3: None of those are comfortable. If they're not comfortable, they're
Speaker 3: not right.
Speaker 1: So that takes us to right kind of right back
Speaker 1: to where we were starting, is about teaching being too
Speaker 1: complex to the status of teaching today. And now you
Speaker 1: can find teachers on the web, I mean any you
Speaker 1: can get personalized instruction on the web. Is this a
Speaker 1: good thing?
Speaker 3: No, because you know the way I related, It's like
Speaker 3: trying to find a good contractor to come work in
Speaker 3: your house. You got about a one in five or
Speaker 3: one in ten chance of doing it. And same thing
Speaker 3: with teachers. And again it's not a slam on them.
Speaker 3: It's just that they have not been educated. And if
Speaker 3: they're not educated properly, then they're not doing you any good.
Speaker 3: You're better off to just go with what you know,
Speaker 3: then go to somebody who you know. The typical thing
Speaker 3: you hear is well I got worse. You'll hear that
Speaker 3: eight out of ten times. And actually that was a
Speaker 3: study done by the PHA of America about fifteen twenty
Speaker 3: years ago, and they found that fifty percent of the
Speaker 3: people got worse, thirty percent stayed the same, and only
Speaker 3: ten to twenty percent improved from lessons. That's not a
Speaker 3: very good stat and of course they didn't want to
Speaker 3: publish it because they knew how bad it was. That's
Speaker 3: why they're always trying to find a better way. But
Speaker 3: they don't know where to go. Because what we said
Speaker 3: in the very beginning is when you see something a
Speaker 3: certain way, then it's the old adage of you know,
Speaker 3: if you try to do the same thing over and
Speaker 3: over again, you're you know, you're still going to end
Speaker 3: up with the same outcome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing is insanity, right.
Speaker 3: Definition of insanity. And so unless people start seeing the
Speaker 3: game differently, they're not going to improve. They're just going
Speaker 3: to be out there hacking balls, trying all these gimmicks
Speaker 3: that don't work. They just will never work because they
Speaker 3: don't fit you personally. You have to understand how your hands,
Speaker 3: your hand eye coordination works and how to focus on
Speaker 3: that target, which I again I love target oriented, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't do any good if you don't understand what
Speaker 3: it is you're orienting toward the target. If you're orienting
Speaker 3: the golf ball toward the target, that's like trying to
Speaker 3: tell the golf ball where to go, and it's got
Speaker 3: no brain. When you find a golf ball with a brain,
Speaker 3: let me know, then I'll believe the golf ball you tell.
Speaker 3: Then you got to use what the sense of eye,
Speaker 3: hand coordination you have.
Speaker 1: So it's best to find a teacher that you can
Speaker 1: work one on one with and he can help you
Speaker 1: with your hand, he can touch, he can be there
Speaker 1: with you. Then trying to find someone who's just looking
Speaker 1: at your videos of your swing, right, and.
Speaker 3: Again, what you want is, which is rare. You're going
Speaker 3: to have to find someone who understands feel and eye
Speaker 3: hand coordination, not someone who's teaching you ball position, club
Speaker 3: head position, backswing, the backswing. If the backswing were important,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't have players like Jim Furick on the tour.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't have like Craig Stadler on the when he
Speaker 3: played and played great. You wouldn't have even had Jack
Speaker 3: Nicholas if it was about backswing, or Arnold Palmer. What
Speaker 3: separated them from the rest was their ability to focus
Speaker 3: on where they were going, not what they were hitting.
Speaker 1: Should we be looking at down the line at the
Speaker 1: target when we swing the club, No, you.
Speaker 3: Have to it has to be a mental picture of
Speaker 3: the target, and it has to be what you really
Speaker 3: have to have as a relay relationship with the target,
Speaker 3: not the target itself. So imagine that if you put,
Speaker 3: if you pointed at something, if you try to point
Speaker 3: perfectly towards something, your arm in your hand will shake.
Speaker 3: If you try to hold a cup of coffee perfectly still,
Speaker 3: you'll spill it. But if you just calmly find a relationship,
Speaker 3: like it's like looking through a window, and where your
Speaker 3: hands end up is kind of like where the window
Speaker 3: is sitting, and you're trying to get your hands in
Speaker 3: a relationship with that target, not reach toward that target.
Speaker 3: So in other words, you see it in the background,
Speaker 3: just like firing a gun, you see the target. You're
Speaker 3: pulling a trigger in relationship to that target, pointing a
Speaker 3: gun in relationship to that target, but you're not actually
Speaker 3: trying to get to the target. I think that's another
Speaker 3: mistake people do, is they try to guide things toward
Speaker 3: a target. You have no control over that golf ball,
Speaker 3: literally zero. So what you've got to do is control
Speaker 3: what's within you. And the only thing that's within you
Speaker 3: is this balance that comes to a finish in relationship
Speaker 3: to that target.
Speaker 1: I think the name of this episode, and I want
Speaker 1: to pursue this even more, is go with what you know.
Speaker 3: Exactly and learn to understand how your body functions balance
Speaker 3: and control and vision in relationship to balance and control
Speaker 3: and vision in relationship to that tool and focus from
Speaker 3: the hands to the target, not the club to the target,
Speaker 3: not the ball to the target. Okay, So once you
Speaker 3: build the relationship between your hands, your eyes and that target,
Speaker 3: the club just becomes a tool in your hands, like
Speaker 3: a hammer, a shovel or anything else. It's just a
Speaker 3: tool you're holding on to. We understand the tools. We
Speaker 3: have this inate ability to understand where things are. It's
Speaker 3: just like if you ever watch anybody that it does fencing,
Speaker 3: sword fighting, you'll see they don't focus on the end
Speaker 3: of the sword. They focus on their target, and they're
Speaker 3: always and so they're just feeling it in their hands,
Speaker 3: how to get the end of that to the target,
Speaker 3: and they never see the sword itself.
Speaker 1: One of your things that we talked about before and
Speaker 1: i'd love to talk about again in the power field
Speaker 1: golf is all the stress that's put on your body
Speaker 1: in the golf swing, and how your program is designed
Speaker 1: to help remove or eliminate or even reduce the stress
Speaker 1: on your body.
Speaker 3: And okay, well let's let's talk about it. And everybody
Speaker 3: remembers Michael Johnson the runner.
Speaker 1: Right sure, Okay, so does everybody here. Oh it's just me.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, So most people remember Michael Johnson the runner.
Speaker 3: Why was he so good at what he did? He
Speaker 3: was very efficient in his motion, so there was very
Speaker 3: little stress on his body. That's why he never got injured.
Speaker 3: And then you watch other runners who put out a
Speaker 3: lot of effort, probably had more ability than Michael Johnson did,
Speaker 3: but he was so efficient he could beat them. They
Speaker 3: were so inefficient that they injured themselves. It's the same
Speaker 3: thing with a golf swing. If you're efficient with the
Speaker 3: use of your hands and you allow your body to
Speaker 3: simply react to their use, you're using minimum amount of
Speaker 3: effort to create maximum amount of power and control.
Speaker 1: It's it's starting to make sense to me here and
Speaker 1: I'm and I'm going over you know, as you're talking,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to realize how much, way, too much thought
Speaker 1: that's going into every swing that I'm taking, and I'm
Speaker 1: overdoing everything and not getting the results that I know
Speaker 1: I can.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what I hear from most people is they're
Speaker 3: just trying too hard to control something they have no
Speaker 3: control over. You know, there's another old saying, give up
Speaker 3: control to gain control. Give up control of all those
Speaker 3: things that you have no control over and then gain
Speaker 3: control of the things that you can control and go
Speaker 3: back to the word process. Well, if we understand balance,
Speaker 3: control and vision as that being the total that we
Speaker 3: need to play our best golf. We just have to
Speaker 3: have our best balance, our best control, our best vision,
Speaker 3: which is totally different than somebody else's, then we have
Speaker 3: now gotten our best process too to go with it.
Speaker 1: So now that we're feeling stronger, we're feeling better, we're
Speaker 1: feeling balanced, we you know, and we're not thinking as much. Right,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot left to better scoring, is there not?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yes, there is. Now you can focus on your
Speaker 3: imagination and that's the one. Once you've got balance, control
Speaker 3: and vision, vision is just simply understanding the relationship to
Speaker 3: the target. Now, imagination is how you shape your hands work,
Speaker 3: how you shape that vision in relationship to the target.
Speaker 3: So if you want to hit a high fade, a
Speaker 3: low draw, if you want to hit a flop shot,
Speaker 3: all you have to do is imagine how you're going
Speaker 3: to do it with your hands first, and everything else
Speaker 3: will fall into place. Then it's up to you to
Speaker 3: really expand your imagination to see where your limits are
Speaker 3: on the shots you can create.
Speaker 1: Expand on the idea of imagination with your hands first,
Speaker 1: that really hit me.
Speaker 3: Well, think about it, like if you've ever watched you
Speaker 3: ever been to a sushi place or a what do
Speaker 3: they call it, well, like Kobe steakhouse or whatever it's called,
Speaker 3: where they sit there and they do all kinds of tricks.
Speaker 1: With the not Benny Hannah, Benny Hannah.
Speaker 3: Okay, what yeah, exactly, But what they what they're doing.
Speaker 3: What they're doing is they're using their imagination to create
Speaker 3: all these illusions with the tools by simply using their
Speaker 3: hands differently. So imagine he's slicing the left and then
Speaker 3: he's doing with his left hand and on his right
Speaker 3: hand he's coming over the top with the right. Well,
Speaker 3: that's a fade and a draw, you know, that's all
Speaker 3: that is. And so it's your Your imagination is your
Speaker 3: limitation really and other than physical. Once you get past
Speaker 3: the physical. If you have physical ability to control a
Speaker 3: golf club, then your imagination is what separates the best
Speaker 3: from the rest.
Speaker 1: Do you find golf as a creative sport?
Speaker 3: Oh very much, so, very very much. So. That's why
Speaker 3: Tiger at his peak was so good, because he was
Speaker 3: more creative than anybody else, and he trusted his creativity.
Speaker 3: You see guys that look great swing in the golf club,
Speaker 3: but they have no creativity. They never win. You can
Speaker 3: go back to Gene Lttler, didn't win much, had a
Speaker 3: beautiful golf swing. I could name dozens of them if
Speaker 3: I could remember their names, but you know, over the years.
Speaker 3: I mean Tom Weiscoff is a great example, one of
Speaker 3: the best golf swings of all time. Had no imagination
Speaker 3: or very little. So you know, he didn't win. He
Speaker 3: won one British Open in a few tournaments. He was
Speaker 3: not considered a great player. He was considered great potential.
Speaker 1: Someone mentioned on the show that you know, we're talking
Speaker 1: about creativity and you mentioned Tiger is that but Tiger
Speaker 1: never took a shot that he didn't practice a thousand
Speaker 1: times in his mind, and so you're saying that it's
Speaker 1: going to be that he didn't take every one of those,
Speaker 1: like the two hundred yard shot from the bunker over
Speaker 1: the water, around the tree, landing softly.
Speaker 3: On the green, not a thousand times. Yeah, he probably
Speaker 3: did that for the first time that day and he
Speaker 3: just felt it. He felt it was right and he
Speaker 3: felt he could do it.
Speaker 1: So there's confidence obviously.
Speaker 3: Yes. I don't know if you remember there was a
Speaker 3: shot Jack Nicholas hit at Firestone back in the probably
Speaker 3: late sixties early seventies where he took a like an
Speaker 3: eight iron up over a tree right in front of him.
Speaker 3: It looked impossible out of the rough and landed it
Speaker 3: softly on the green at that sixteenth I think it is,
Speaker 3: at par five, and ended up winning the tournament because
Speaker 3: of that shot, And it was just his imagination. He
Speaker 3: knew he could do it where no one else probably
Speaker 3: would have even attempted it. They would have been chipping out.
Speaker 1: And most of us weekend bums. We're playing out of fear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. You're playing to your weaknesses rather than
Speaker 3: to your strengths. You're trying to stay away from trouble
Speaker 3: rather than embracing your abilities. Hmm.
Speaker 1: I like that. So how do we change our mindset
Speaker 1: on that?
Speaker 3: Well, it all starts with changing your whole perception of things.
Speaker 3: If you start seeing things from your hands, you can
Speaker 3: start understanding your limitations. Until you understand your limitations, As
Speaker 3: long as the golf ball controls you, you don't control
Speaker 3: it really, So it's all about again imagination balance, control,
Speaker 3: and vision. And if you can bury that in your brain,
Speaker 3: that balance, control and vision are the keys to your
Speaker 3: best golf, then all you've got to do is find
Speaker 3: your best balance, your best control, your best vision, and
Speaker 3: you know where your limitations are. So if you're not
Speaker 3: capable of hitting a shot two hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 3: over a cree, then you lay up to that creek.
Speaker 3: If it's just out of your realm of possibility, you
Speaker 3: play to your straints rather than trying to hit the
Speaker 3: hero shot. But you understand when you have the ability
Speaker 3: to do something and you don't have to back down
Speaker 3: from it. So if you can hit it two fifty
Speaker 3: over a creek and it's no big deal, then you
Speaker 3: can go for that shot. That's the way Tiger played.
Speaker 3: He played to his straints and knew when he could
Speaker 3: go for something. He never was afraid of it. Today
Speaker 3: he looks almost like he's afraid of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what would your assessment? I mean, he can't It
Speaker 1: seems like he can't put together two good rounds in
Speaker 1: a weekend.
Speaker 3: Well, the reason is that he's changed his golf swing
Speaker 3: too many times, trying to find the perfect swing, which
Speaker 3: is fool's gold. I mean, you just can't. Like I
Speaker 3: was telling you earlier, when I was young and I
Speaker 3: got away from what Hogan, Burke and de Merit taught me,
Speaker 3: I started trying to improve my golf swing. It got worse,
Speaker 3: get better. I tried to change my grip. It was
Speaker 3: the worst decision I ever made. And it took me
Speaker 3: a year to get over that one. And so you know,
Speaker 3: all I can tell people is find your best, tweak
Speaker 3: it a little bit, to try to get better balance,
Speaker 3: better control, and use your vision better. But don't try
Speaker 3: to change the world in your golf swing. And understand
Speaker 3: your limitations. Because I don't think Tiger understands his limitations.
Speaker 3: He thinks he can do all these things. And again
Speaker 3: he's It's like something that if you go back to
Speaker 3: the era of Nelson of Rockefeller, the guy that was
Speaker 3: worth a billion dollars, like in the thirties or forties,
Speaker 3: someone asked him said when are you going to be
Speaker 3: rich enough? And he said never. Well, it's like asking
Speaker 3: the golfer when are they going to be good enough? Never?
Speaker 3: So we're always after this illusion of improvement, and that's
Speaker 3: when we destroy ourselves. When we learn to be comfortable
Speaker 3: with who we are and our abilities, then we can
Speaker 3: play a lot better.
Speaker 1: So what I'm getting your saying is that Tiger, we've
Speaker 1: seen the best of Tiger.
Speaker 3: Probably unless he goes back to finding his best balance,
Speaker 3: his best control, and his best vision. Right now, he's
Speaker 3: trying to make golf swings. He's not playing golf shots.
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow. And the boy they golf needs him, Oh
Speaker 1: oh yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean he can still win with what he has.
Speaker 3: He can't dominate with what he has because he is
Speaker 3: so talented. I mean, it's just you can't replace that talent,
Speaker 3: that it, that it factor. You just can't replace it.
Speaker 3: He's destroyed it himself. No one else has.
Speaker 1: And you think he's just tweaking. He's overtweaked himself. He's
Speaker 1: just tried too many things.
Speaker 3: And yeah, he didn't have to have a perfect golf swing.
Speaker 3: If I go back and look at at quotes from
Speaker 3: Nicholas over the years, he never changed his golf swing.
Speaker 3: Even though everybody said, well you got to fry flying
Speaker 3: right elbow, you got this, you got that. He said,
Speaker 3: I don't care. I beat y'all, don't.
Speaker 1: I That's what I say to my friends, and like,
Speaker 1: come on, let's play the fronties days. No, I'm not
Speaker 1: playing the fronties. That's for girls. That's the lady like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna shoot part there? No, yeah, then shut up,
Speaker 1: let's go. And it's gonna be more fun because you're
Speaker 1: gonna score lower because you can you can hit your
Speaker 1: wedge and the green as opposed to hitting a hybrid,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have much more fun.
Speaker 3: Come on, Yeah, that's true. And that's the other thing too.
Speaker 3: People have to learn how to how to play the
Speaker 3: golf course where they can enjoy it. A lot of
Speaker 3: a lot of guys just go right to the back
Speaker 3: tee and don't think about it, and they think, well,
Speaker 3: I got to keep up with Joe because he's a
Speaker 3: good player. You don't. You don't play it from where
Speaker 3: you're comfortable, not from where he's comfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure I'll play with you there, but
Speaker 1: I don't have to. I mean, do you really have to?
Speaker 1: Are you that good? If you're that good, then you
Speaker 1: know then and you feel like you it's a discussion
Speaker 1: I have it seems like almost every round and they
Speaker 1: think I'm a whimp. It's like, okay, I'm a whim.
Speaker 1: I don't care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's right, as long as you enjoy the experience.
Speaker 3: I mean, when you get right down to it, you've
Speaker 3: got to learn to enjoy the experience. You cannot enjoy
Speaker 3: the experience when you're thinking about every golf swing and
Speaker 3: details of it.
Speaker 1: You know, and.
Speaker 3: Information overload is a great term for today's instruction. It's
Speaker 3: all information overload if you simplify. That's why I said
Speaker 3: in the beginning my goalhole goal has been year after
Speaker 3: years to get it simpler, not more difficult. I'm trying
Speaker 3: to find ways to get it down to the lowest
Speaker 3: common denominator for my students and anybody I talk to,
Speaker 3: so that way they can really enjoy the experience if
Speaker 3: it's lowest common denominator and all they need to know
Speaker 3: is how to hold that club properly, how to keep
Speaker 3: it balanced as good as possible during the golf swing,
Speaker 3: and how to keep their vision on where they're going
Speaker 3: and be as efficient toward that target as they can.
Speaker 3: Then they're going to enjoy the game and they're not
Speaker 3: going to have to think very much.
Speaker 1: Let's start wrapping this up by talking about your power
Speaker 1: field golf DVD, training, grip and booklet. Why should the
Speaker 1: golf Smarter community. What's the value for them? What are
Speaker 1: they going to learn? What are they going to take
Speaker 1: away from Well, I think.
Speaker 3: What they're going to learn is simplicity, and they're going
Speaker 3: to learn how to see it differently, see the game differently.
Speaker 3: They're also going to get to see some really cool
Speaker 3: stuff as far as shot making. They're going to get
Speaker 3: some good stories about some of the people I learned
Speaker 3: from growing up, like the Merit and Burke and Hogan.
Speaker 3: They're just going to get a better understanding how to
Speaker 3: find their best game. And it's not perfect because you
Speaker 3: can't put everything in a book in a video. It's
Speaker 3: really hard, but it at least sets them on the
Speaker 3: right path so that they can start thinking in a
Speaker 3: lot simpler fashion rather than being buried with all these
Speaker 3: thoughts of is my left elbow straight? Is my wrist
Speaker 3: at this position? Is the club head or the club
Speaker 3: between my feet and the right spot or my feet right?
Speaker 3: You know, all those things that are holding them back.
Speaker 3: They can just get rid of those. And what I
Speaker 3: tell people is, don't add to what you're doing, take
Speaker 3: away from what you're doing, and replace it with something simpler.
Speaker 1: So who should buy this? Who should have this of course.
Speaker 3: Literally everybody all the way to Tiger Woods, because Tiger
Speaker 3: needs it as much as anybody to the beginning golfer.
Speaker 3: Because the more you can simplify, the more you can
Speaker 3: enjoy the experience.
Speaker 1: That's huge. Just simplify and enjoy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, process of elimination rather than a tion.
Speaker 1: M interesting. Hey, Eban, it's been great to talk to you,
Speaker 1: reconnect with you. It's been a long time. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you had the time and agreed to come
Speaker 1: back on golf Smarter. Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: Well. I enjoyed it too. It's always good. I love
Speaker 3: talking it because I just want to see people get
Speaker 3: better and enjoy the game. I don't need to teach them.
Speaker 3: If people want to come see me, great, but that's
Speaker 3: not my idea. My idea is to allow them to
Speaker 3: go experience it for themselves and self teach. They really
Speaker 3: don't need the teachers as much as they think they do.
Speaker 1: And it said powerfield golf dot com, right, that's it.
Speaker 1: You can tin more about you and if they want
Speaker 1: to book some book some lessons with you, talk to
Speaker 1: you more. Powerfield golf dot.
Speaker 3: Com right, yep ebin at powerfield golf dot com.
Speaker 1: That's your email address, that's my email address. Eban is
Speaker 1: e b e n.
Speaker 3: E b e n. That's correct, all right, buddy.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you again. Really enjoyed. I continue.
Speaker 3: It's been my pleasure and I hope a lot of
Speaker 3: people get something good out of this.
Speaker 1: M