Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number four hundred twenty published on January twenty one,
Speaker 1: 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: Another way is the way we practice, and I think golfers,
Speaker 3: even to hire as well, will violate these principles, probably
Speaker 3: more than any other fourth that I know. So we
Speaker 3: need to practice in a different way. And there's three
Speaker 3: ways to practice. One is hitting fifty seven irons. That's
Speaker 3: good if you're going to enter a seven iron tournament,
Speaker 3: but I'm not sure when that is. The other way
Speaker 3: to practice is if we're on a range, is to
Speaker 3: practice how you play. So how about next time you
Speaker 3: go to the range, why don't you do first shot practice?
Speaker 3: Change targets on every shot. I can use the same
Speaker 3: club if you really have some skill, you can change
Speaker 3: the shape of the shot. You can change clubs on
Speaker 3: each shot, but you can't repeat anything. Well, you're going
Speaker 3: to find during your practice. Probably won't practice as well
Speaker 3: as when you hit fifty seven irons in a row,
Speaker 3: but it's going to correlate more significantly to what you
Speaker 3: do when you play on the course.
Speaker 4: Winning the Battle Within the return of doctor Glenn Alboch.
Speaker 4: This is Golf.
Speaker 2: Smarter sharing tips and insights from golfers and golf professionals
Speaker 2: to help lower your score.
Speaker 4: It's worked for your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to
Speaker 4: Golf Smarter. Glenn.
Speaker 3: It's it's good to be back, but well.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time since we spoke, but each
Speaker 1: time it's been very meaningful for me because there are
Speaker 1: moments where my mental game gets a little bit wacky
Speaker 1: and I need a tune up, and I'm so glad
Speaker 1: to have you back on the show.
Speaker 3: Well, i'll offer that tune up.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: In the name of your book to remind listeners who
Speaker 1: have been here a long time and for those who've
Speaker 1: never been able to hear you before. It's called Winning
Speaker 1: the Battle Within. Why don't you give us a brief
Speaker 1: summary of the.
Speaker 3: Book, Well, Winning the Battle Within is it is a
Speaker 3: lifetime work and what it centers on, of course, is
Speaker 3: the way that we can finding a way towards self
Speaker 3: coaching so that we can manage ourselves in our games,
Speaker 3: so when we're out there playing, we have a set
Speaker 3: of skills that will allow us to continue playing for
Speaker 3: more enjoyment and lower scores. So the book is full
Speaker 3: of all kinds of anecdotes and stories you know about
Speaker 3: how people have used these particular concepts in their own games,
Speaker 3: and it's full of drills and questionnaires and information it
Speaker 3: you can use is for your own game, and it's
Speaker 3: it's for people who across all skill levels and all ages.
Speaker 3: People able to read it, or twelve and eight people
Speaker 3: that are eighty to be able to use this stuff.
Speaker 3: And in looking through it recently because of putting together
Speaker 3: an excerpt from the book, it will never go out
Speaker 3: of style. It was first published in two thousand and
Speaker 3: six and redone again in two thousand and nine, and
Speaker 3: the information will be golden for everybody in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that I love about
Speaker 1: the Mental Game, and that's really what I try to
Speaker 1: do here on the podcast is present content what we'd
Speaker 1: call evergreen, which means that it's just as good in
Speaker 1: two thousand as it is in twenty fourteen in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: it's just as valid like that. Yeah, And also you
Speaker 1: say from eight to eighty, but it's not just for golfers.
Speaker 1: I know that you've worked with from athletes of different
Speaker 1: sports as well.
Speaker 3: Oh, indeed work with in past years, I've worked with
Speaker 3: athletes across many domains and teams as well. And I'm
Speaker 3: currently working with a couple of teams at the University
Speaker 3: of Pacific, the men's basketball team and the men's tennis teams,
Speaker 3: and work with volleyball teams and athletes across many domains.
Speaker 1: Right and as we're recording this, it is the morning
Speaker 1: after the two thirteen NFC Championship between the Seattle Seahawks
Speaker 1: and the San Francisco forty nine Ers, and you have
Speaker 1: ties to.
Speaker 4: Those teams as well.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, close ties of course with the forty nine
Speaker 3: ers of the eighties. When Bill Waffs in his heyday,
Speaker 3: you know, I missed him every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you were good friends with Bill Walsh and.
Speaker 3: A wonderful coach, and so they have access to them
Speaker 3: during that time was an education indeed for me that
Speaker 3: I can use in all the work that I do.
Speaker 3: And then Pete Carroll We've done many, many things together.
Speaker 3: And as I texted him this morning, there's been a
Speaker 3: long journey since the seventies, you know, when he was
Speaker 3: first exposed to the golf in the Kingdom and the
Speaker 3: intergame oft tenants is all of Timothy Galways stuff as
Speaker 3: any and all of a sudden here he is not
Speaker 3: all of a sudden. His journey has been It's been
Speaker 3: an interesting journey through all of his coaching experiences. He's
Speaker 3: taken the inner game right to the top, and now
Speaker 3: they're headed to the Super Bowl. People ask me, who
Speaker 3: are you rooting for? Well, I'm rooting for a great game,
Speaker 3: and yes, indeed we did. I kind of leaned towards
Speaker 3: Pete and people ask me why. I said, well, if
Speaker 3: you knew Pete Carroll, you'd probably root for them too. Anyway,
Speaker 3: it was, it was. It was quite an epic game,
Speaker 3: with a fourth quarter that was full of all kinds
Speaker 3: of ebbs and flows.
Speaker 1: Actually, I find that really interesting that you know, we're
Speaker 1: as much as I was rooting for the forty nine
Speaker 1: ers peak. I have ties to Pete Carroll as well
Speaker 1: through USC but also because here I live here in
Speaker 1: Marin County and Pete is from Marine County, went to
Speaker 1: high school in Marin County and we here in Marine County.
Speaker 1: You're accused of being a little Oh boy, what do
Speaker 1: I accuse myself of Western thought?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: Sometimes there were a little too two out there for
Speaker 1: some people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is you know, Governor Moonbeam and stuff.
Speaker 1: But Pete Carroll has taken this inner game and he
Speaker 1: has really got a very different coaching approach than any
Speaker 1: other NFL coach we've ever seen. He's happy, he's fun,
Speaker 1: he's the players love him. You think that a lot
Speaker 1: of his inner game, a lot of his teachings help that.
Speaker 3: Well, there's probably more similarities between Pete and the other
Speaker 3: NFL coaches than than was. There's many similarities. Oh, of
Speaker 3: course they are dissimilarities. It's his approach is is quite interesting,
Speaker 3: and probably it's more similar to Bill Wallace, although there
Speaker 3: are different personalities. Yeah, you know his you know, competition
Speaker 3: is everything, and if anybody has read his book, Win
Speaker 3: Win Forever, it's it's not it's not about winning as
Speaker 3: much as it's about preparing to win, and competition is
Speaker 3: the essence of it. And I would say that going
Speaker 3: into the game yesterday it was probably really really exciting
Speaker 3: for him because there they were. It's the Ulfhleman and
Speaker 3: competition with two teams and two coaches that are so
Speaker 3: absolutely incredibly prepared for this. And isn't that the essence
Speaker 3: of competition. It's probably not the winning of it, it's
Speaker 3: the epic competition of the battle that certainly is a
Speaker 3: motivation for Pete. Yes, he has taken the inner game
Speaker 3: and put it into the NFL and the way he
Speaker 3: approaches it. And probably one of the concepts and fact
Speaker 3: in his in my book that he wrote about the
Speaker 3: importance of suspending judgment and what does that mean. It means,
Speaker 3: of course that each spending judgment for ourselves. Let's say,
Speaker 3: for instance, look, let's put it into a shot. So
Speaker 3: we hit a shot, and I said, we hit a
Speaker 3: great shot. They ever connected all the odds, and we
Speaker 3: want to embrace that and anchor it and remember it.
Speaker 3: And it's easy to do because we remember the division
Speaker 3: we see in the feel of the swing and the
Speaker 3: emotions attached to wow and sometimes the misshots, so Pete says,
Speaker 3: and we say, and winning the battle in the most
Speaker 3: important thing you do there is suspend judgment. Describe the shot.
Speaker 3: So we described the shot by saying hmm, well, you
Speaker 3: know I'll hit that one high right, And I wasn't.
Speaker 3: I wasn't connected to the target, and so when I
Speaker 3: got the impact, because I wasn't connected to the target,
Speaker 3: I didn't really allow my club to release. Okay, on
Speaker 3: the next one, I'm going to I'm going to stay
Speaker 3: connected to the target and release it. Or says say that, wow,
Speaker 3: I topped that one. You know, I really was really
Speaker 3: rushed and I was scared to death. You know that
Speaker 3: I was going to hit it in the water. Sure enough,
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: When Pete talked about suspending judgment, he cuts across all
Speaker 3: of his coaching, and of course it's something important for
Speaker 3: us to learn as we play golf as well. That's
Speaker 3: just a couple of descriptions of how we use his
Speaker 3: suspending judgment, how and he's coaching, and of course how
Speaker 3: we can use it as we self coach ourselves in
Speaker 3: our own game of golf. Being able to describe the
Speaker 3: shot to spend judgment so how quickly then we can
Speaker 3: refocus and ready for the next shot.
Speaker 1: This all goes very well with a newsletter that you
Speaker 1: sent out for the new year to remind us about
Speaker 1: the well, not just about winning the battle within the book,
Speaker 1: but you gave us some tools to work with as
Speaker 1: we approach the new year in our golf game and
Speaker 1: our and our mental game.
Speaker 4: And I would love to I just was so moved.
Speaker 1: By exactly the points that you had. It resonated so
Speaker 1: well with me that I that's why I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring you back on the show and talk about this
Speaker 1: newsletter because there's not a lot there, but there's so
Speaker 1: much depth to it that we can really break it down.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, Well.
Speaker 4: The first point.
Speaker 1: You just have a number of points here, and I
Speaker 1: think the first one kind of dovetails right off of
Speaker 1: that football game.
Speaker 4: If anybody watched it.
Speaker 1: But it's a commit to a strategy that fits your game.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear you explain that a little more.
Speaker 3: Sure, Well, it's part of appreciate with team. And the
Speaker 3: most important thing is when you're getting ready to play
Speaker 3: and they have a shot, commit to a strategy fits
Speaker 3: your game. So if you haven't hit the pins on
Speaker 3: the right hand side and they have, you had a
Speaker 3: cut shot in about a month, please don't try it today.
Speaker 3: So you're going to well some then the best best
Speaker 3: shot for me is hit the ball straight right into
Speaker 3: the middle of the green, and I can totally commit
Speaker 3: to That's very difficult to commit to a shot when
Speaker 3: you really don't have the skill, so so maybe you'll
Speaker 3: have to kind of bump it up there. But pick
Speaker 3: something that fits the situation and hits your game.
Speaker 4: And what about those times?
Speaker 1: How do you put yourself in check when you're standing
Speaker 1: on the tee box of a par three. You've got
Speaker 1: to hit over the water. There's a green that moves
Speaker 1: away from you. You've played this hole hundreds of times before.
Speaker 1: You know that you've got to come up short. So
Speaker 1: the ball is just going to take a couple hops
Speaker 1: and land safely, softly in the middle of the green.
Speaker 1: But that flag in the back is tempting you to
Speaker 1: try to put the ball closer to the pin. And
Speaker 1: as you say, you got to You know, when how
Speaker 1: do you hear yourself say, oh, I'm going to commit
Speaker 1: to this shot. Maybe you know, I mean like there's
Speaker 1: something in the back of your head. How do you
Speaker 1: listen to that? How do you not squash that voice
Speaker 1: that's going you really shouldn't be going for this.
Speaker 3: You're going to certainly have that inner conversation for yeah,
Speaker 3: but you got to keep your ego and check and
Speaker 3: making sure that you hit the shot that as I say, again,
Speaker 3: it's's the situation. And sometimes that means, well, I'll just
Speaker 3: take a booge here, but I know this that you
Speaker 3: have a chance if you're totally committed to this strategy.
Speaker 3: You have no chance. If you're not committed.
Speaker 4: How do you quiet that voice?
Speaker 3: Well, then how do we acquire that voice? So the
Speaker 3: main thing is to understand that you are having the conversation,
Speaker 3: and it begins with being having a work so you
Speaker 3: can be in the present. Oh here it comes again.
Speaker 3: You know, well should I go for this? And you're
Speaker 3: going to have that conversation, but you have to come
Speaker 3: back to the fact that you're going to be totally
Speaker 3: committed to us to a to a strategy that really
Speaker 3: fits that situation. And so then it goes back to
Speaker 3: the way we practice. If indeed we were on the
Speaker 3: range and are doing our practices, we're practicing developing the
Speaker 3: shops that we can totally commit to when we're playing.
Speaker 3: And so there's a correlation there, of course, between the
Speaker 3: way that we practice and what we decide to commit
Speaker 3: to when we're playing.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: This is obviously much more than you know. I see
Speaker 1: this coming into play on approach shots or you know,
Speaker 1: after a bad t shot when you're tucked in the
Speaker 1: woods and you're like, oh, I can get through those trees.
Speaker 3: Wait, I have to interrupt you there. See, if indeed
Speaker 3: we're going to suspend judgment and no such thing are
Speaker 3: good or bad.
Speaker 4: Shots, oh thank you, because.
Speaker 3: It doesn't tell us anything. So if I'm working, no,
Speaker 3: there's just there's no such thing. It's just when I
Speaker 3: missed the shot. You see saying describing and we're missing
Speaker 3: when we missed the shot is not judging the shot,
Speaker 3: it's just evaluating the fact, Well I wasn't committed, so
Speaker 3: I topped the damn thing, or you know, I try
Speaker 3: to hit a cut there and I really can't do that,
Speaker 3: or you know I rushed that one. You know, God,
Speaker 3: I was thinking about I was a down one, three
Speaker 3: and five, and I'm not sure have enough money to
Speaker 3: even pay the debt at the end of the round.
Speaker 3: So when those inner conversations has come that are interference,
Speaker 3: is we just we you know, there's just really no chance,
Speaker 3: and so suspending judgment is really important and it's not
Speaker 3: just a good shot. We say that I really connected it.
Speaker 3: You know. So I'm playing the other day and I
Speaker 3: had a fifty yard I had the distance locked in
Speaker 3: and it was a little web shot and I hit
Speaker 3: a lot of web shots these days because I don't
Speaker 3: reach many greens. And I just nailed it. Just write
Speaker 3: an impact. I said, wow, that is really something, and
Speaker 3: I really released that, and I was totally committed to it. See,
Speaker 3: it's not just a good shot, it's just what did
Speaker 3: I do to make sure that I executed. So it's
Speaker 3: really really important to suspend judgment, you know, as a player,
Speaker 3: and I mean a good teacher, Fred is not going
Speaker 3: to say to you that was a horrible shot. Well, coach,
Speaker 3: you already knew that. And when you turn to the teaching
Speaker 3: and say, how about telling me something I didn't know?
Speaker 3: Or the partner you're playing with, you and said, wow, man,
Speaker 3: you know that was an awful shot. Knew that. I
Speaker 3: got to see it. Tell me more about what happened. Then, well,
Speaker 3: I wasn't committed or you know, I rushed that one
Speaker 3: or all the things that have already stated. It's so important.
Speaker 3: It's one of the things that I really learned from
Speaker 3: Pete Carroll the importance of sus sending judgment. Okay, so
Speaker 3: so Russell Wilson fumbles that on a one yard line Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so what do you think to him when he
Speaker 3: comes off the field. I mean, he really screwed that
Speaker 3: out of Russell. No, he probably say to him with
Speaker 3: the next play, So what's the next opportunity we have?
Speaker 3: But primarily with the next play. It's just so nonproductive
Speaker 3: to judge anybody's behavior or anybody's actions. It just doesn't
Speaker 3: make any sense at all because it doesn't tell us
Speaker 3: anything the information we need to have.
Speaker 4: Well, that does make sense.
Speaker 1: But when you said, you you hit this web shot
Speaker 1: and as soon as you hit it, you went wow,
Speaker 1: and then it landed and it's like, wow, that was
Speaker 1: a great shot, right, Yeah I did.
Speaker 3: I made the putt too, by the.
Speaker 1: Way, Oh congratulations. I'm happy to hear that. But you
Speaker 1: didn't suspend judgment. Wait, you're only telling me to suspend
Speaker 1: judgment if it's a negative judgment.
Speaker 3: No, No, it's just it's just that it's so important
Speaker 3: for us to give ourselves the information. I was talking
Speaker 3: to a guy on a basketball team that was in
Speaker 3: kind of a shooting slump, and I said, you know,
Speaker 3: it's just it's just like a golfer. You know, my goodness, gracious,
Speaker 3: you knew learned how to shoot, and you're six years old.
Speaker 3: Why are you trying all these different things on your technique?
Speaker 3: You know how to do it. What's the target? Just
Speaker 3: get back on it, you know, get in balance and
Speaker 3: shoot the thing. Look like a good golfer, not a
Speaker 3: bad one. Yeah right, yeah, And it's so anyway back
Speaker 3: to suspending judgment again, it's just it's just not productive
Speaker 3: at all. And I've already said that.
Speaker 1: Well, and hear your second point of suspend judgment. You say,
Speaker 1: review replaced refocus, explained to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, okay, so I missed a shot and high right,
Speaker 3: So I went high right. Wow. You know I didn't
Speaker 3: release that one because I really wasn't connected with the target. Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna take a swing right here, and boy, I'm
Speaker 3: going to let this one go. Okay, now I'm ready
Speaker 3: for the next shot. And I also okay, so that's
Speaker 3: how I review replaced refocused. Sometimes in there there's some
Speaker 3: nakeadive emotion that floods in. You know, emotion doesn't tell
Speaker 3: us it's coming. You know, when frustration we miss a shot,
Speaker 3: it just comes. So we've got to do with that
Speaker 3: first Okay, yeah, well yeah, I hate to miss those,
Speaker 3: and I was really frustrated. Okay, let's get back in
Speaker 3: the present here, Okay, high right, didn't release it? Okay,
Speaker 3: let's keep going. All right, I get five steps here
Speaker 3: or five seconds for me to get back into the
Speaker 3: present and so I can get ready for the next shot.
Speaker 3: And so that's what our post chart routine is. Pre
Speaker 3: chary team gets us ready, you know, ready to hit
Speaker 3: the shot. You know, selecting this strategy we can totally
Speaker 3: commit to, and a post arrou tine it reviews you
Speaker 3: know what happened. Wow, I nailed that wedge. But when
Speaker 3: I released that one, I was really on the target. Wow,
Speaker 3: you know I pulled that one way left. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just petrified that I was going to miss a shot,
Speaker 3: and sure enough I did. Okay, let's get back in
Speaker 3: the present here, review it, replace it, refocus, be on
Speaker 3: our way.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about the rest of us. Now, we're
Speaker 1: not talking about the players who are at the peak
Speaker 1: level of the sport. You know, the NFL Championship that
Speaker 1: We're not talking about tour players who who occasionally will
Speaker 1: make a shot that maybe they weren't totally focused on
Speaker 1: and it didn't have the result they were hoping for.
Speaker 1: But the rest of a golfers who may do this,
Speaker 1: you know, shot after shot where they're having mishits or
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sorry, that's a judgment that it didn't
Speaker 1: the result wasn't what they had hoped for.
Speaker 4: Where Where do you where? How do you quiet that?
Speaker 1: How do you quell that noise in your head that
Speaker 1: just all of a sudden, now you have no confidence
Speaker 1: in what you're doing?
Speaker 4: Well, thank you for laughing at that.
Speaker 3: You know it? See, do you have a semester?
Speaker 4: And which university am I signing up at?
Speaker 3: It's it's a a person. If a person makes their
Speaker 3: commitment to improve their self coaching. Oh, one of the
Speaker 3: things that they have to develop this performance package which
Speaker 3: pre shot, in between shot and post shot routines. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's one thing. The next thing they have to understand
Speaker 3: the value of the awareness of being presence centered. And
Speaker 3: there's all kinds of ways we can practice, all right,
Speaker 3: that's important. Another way we have to do it is
Speaker 3: the way we practice and I think golfers, even as
Speaker 3: the highest level, violate these principles probably more than any
Speaker 3: other fourth that I know. So we need to practice
Speaker 3: in a different way. There's three ways to practice, and
Speaker 3: one is hitting fifty seven irons, you know, and so
Speaker 3: that's good if you're going to enter a seven iron tournament,
Speaker 3: but I'm not sure when that is. And the other
Speaker 3: way to practice, if we're on the range is to
Speaker 3: practice like you play. So how about next time you
Speaker 3: go to the listeners, the next time you go to
Speaker 3: the range, why don't you do this? Why don't you
Speaker 3: do first shot practice? It was okay, what's first shot practice?
Speaker 3: All that said, I'm going to change targets on every shot.
Speaker 3: I can use the same club. If you really have
Speaker 3: some skill, you can change the shape of the shot.
Speaker 3: You can change clubs in each shot, but you can't
Speaker 3: repeat anything. Well, you're going to find during your practice
Speaker 3: you probably won't practice as well as when you hit
Speaker 3: fifty seven irons in a row. But it's going to
Speaker 3: be more correlate more significantly to what you do when
Speaker 3: you play on the course. Maybe the next time you practice,
Speaker 3: you take the wedge out and you'll get some targets out.
Speaker 3: There at ten intervals thirty forty fifty sixty yards and
Speaker 3: you'll practice hitting your wedges. You know the correct distances
Speaker 3: cease you can't calibrate that distance. Another way to practice
Speaker 3: could be, Okay, you got a half hour before you
Speaker 3: start playing, I can play the course on the range.
Speaker 3: Familiar play the first three holes, hit a drive. Since
Speaker 3: you're familiar with the course, you know what your second
Speaker 3: shot will be. Well, I'm in the tree, I have
Speaker 3: tot low and hear mister green, I have to chip it.
Speaker 3: I get on green and go to the next hole.
Speaker 3: But everything is first shot practice. We need to do
Speaker 3: more of that when we're on the range instead of
Speaker 3: just what we call block practice, hitting one ball after another. Now,
Speaker 3: sometimes that can be valuable if we're running a new technique,
Speaker 3: but we overdo it. So anyway, one of the ways
Speaker 3: that we can manage ourselves on the course is the
Speaker 3: way we practice in preparation for the time we get
Speaker 3: on the course.
Speaker 1: So I'm one of those people, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to speak for a lot of listeners, because I know
Speaker 1: so many are committed to the game so much as
Speaker 1: I am. But I'm not committed to spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time on the range because of time constraints, because
Speaker 1: of so much else going on in life. So I
Speaker 1: need to make sure that I'm comfortable with my swing,
Speaker 1: be prepared for any results after I stroked the ball.
Speaker 4: And so I've.
Speaker 1: Always really tried to make sure that my mental game
Speaker 1: was at its best. So I don't again, I don't
Speaker 1: practice a lot when I'm at the range. It's probably
Speaker 1: because I'm preparing for a round.
Speaker 3: Look at most of the people who are listening might
Speaker 3: have maybe I can practice one hour, maybe two hours
Speaker 3: a week maximum, and so let's use that times as
Speaker 3: best we can, all encompassing. So let's say that you'd
Speaker 3: have a golf professional you work with. Let's pick one
Speaker 3: that can help you learn how to play, help you
Speaker 3: with your swing, but also, but more importantly, to help
Speaker 3: you learn how to play the game and help you.
Speaker 3: And there are some that are enlightened that that can
Speaker 3: possibly do that. But if you can only devote you know,
Speaker 3: an hour two to practice, I would really recommend that
Speaker 3: at least fifty percent of that should be first shot
Speaker 3: practice putting green putt with one ball, you know, practice
Speaker 3: making putts, chipping, put some balls around the green chip,
Speaker 3: one at a time, also for shot chipping, and then
Speaker 3: the other fifty percent of the time you can, you know,
Speaker 3: use to try to perfect your technique, and that would
Speaker 3: be called block practice, working on something in your swing.
Speaker 3: But if you're going to when you're out there, if
Speaker 3: you're going to be totally engaged to targets and really
Speaker 3: trust your swing, you have to do some practice that
Speaker 3: correlates with that, and that's what we call first shot practice.
Speaker 1: I like the concept of first shot practice because I
Speaker 1: think frequently we'll walk away from the practice area and
Speaker 1: we'll hit twenty five shots with one club and maybe
Speaker 1: have four shots that are that we're happy with or
Speaker 1: five shots that we're happy with and walk away feeling
Speaker 1: like that went well. But in fact, if you kept
Speaker 1: score of how it went, you may not be as
Speaker 1: happy with that. So this first shot practice idea of
Speaker 1: just practicing with one ball with one shot at a time,
Speaker 1: can that's how I think that's a really great tip
Speaker 1: on how to take your practice game to the course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of the ways you could practice. There's
Speaker 3: another way we have. The block practice is working on technique.
Speaker 3: The first shot practice is what we call simulated or
Speaker 3: practicing like we play. And then there's another practice which
Speaker 3: feature you know and winning the battle within. We call
Speaker 3: it inner game practice or trust practice, and it's really
Speaker 3: a lot of fun. And a couple of those drills
Speaker 3: would be next time you practice spread, Let's say you
Speaker 3: take out your aid iron and you pick out a
Speaker 3: target and visualize the shot be able to some people
Speaker 3: can see the whole flight of the ball. Some people
Speaker 3: see part of it, but you can certainly see the target.
Speaker 3: Let's see if you can retain the image of the
Speaker 3: target while you're swinging. It's it's masterful in a way.
Speaker 3: It can help you trusting the swing you have. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's one of them. Another endgame drill is take that
Speaker 3: take the same aid on and let's see if you
Speaker 3: can Let's say that you hit an eight iron one
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty yards, Well, I'd like to do take
Speaker 3: the aid iron and take a full swing and see
Speaker 3: if you can hit it ninety yards and keep it online.
Speaker 3: And the benefit of that drill is what need much
Speaker 3: more direction focus and it also distance focus and be
Speaker 3: able to maintain more distance control. And it's a lot
Speaker 3: of fun to do it. Another one was really a
Speaker 3: lot of fun. I was doing it with a young
Speaker 3: player I started with yesterday. We called let it go
Speaker 3: drill and you tee up five of and you hit
Speaker 3: them one right after another, and you just smack them
Speaker 3: and you don't have time to think about anything. So
Speaker 3: that's another kind of a drill to help you just
Speaker 3: trust the swing as you have. And it's a lot
Speaker 3: of fun too. You can do with any club. So
Speaker 3: then we have three ways of practice. One you can
Speaker 3: work on your technique, one is the first shop practice,
Speaker 3: and then we call the inner game practice, just learning
Speaker 3: to trust the swings you have. And thus three explanations
Speaker 3: of the way you can practice to help improve your
Speaker 3: game so that you can have more fun when you're
Speaker 3: on the course, be better at self coaching, and shoot
Speaker 3: lower scores. How's that?
Speaker 4: I like it?
Speaker 1: I like and I think that you know, the inner
Speaker 1: game practice is something that you can take off the
Speaker 1: course and off the practice area as well, though.
Speaker 3: Oh you can, yes again. It's you know, our imagination
Speaker 3: is really rich, you know that part of our brain
Speaker 3: that works a thousand times a sassage in the thinking brain.
Speaker 3: It's like, next time you walk downstairs, think about how
Speaker 3: you're walking, and you'll probably stumble yes, you know, but
Speaker 3: you don't think about it because you just walk down
Speaker 3: the stairs. And of course that to be like to
Speaker 3: play golf the same way that point of the brain
Speaker 3: is is just rich with imagination and intuition and creativity.
Speaker 3: And the way we get there, of course is by
Speaker 3: scene targets, feeling, swings. And it's because the game is
Speaker 3: a non thinking game. It's not an intellectual activity at all.
Speaker 1: It's oh, now you tell me there, right, all right, Glen, Well, listen,
Speaker 1: We've only covered half of the lists of your New
Speaker 1: Year greeting and I'm wondering would you mind sticking around?
Speaker 1: Can we do part two and conclude the conversation? Sure,
Speaker 1: thank you very much.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: For anybody who has not joined Golf Smarter for members only,
Speaker 1: here's an opportunity to improve your game for twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: by improving your mental game. And this is a topic
Speaker 1: that I hope to be covering a lot this year.
Speaker 1: I think this is so so important for everybody to
Speaker 1: get more comfortable with the concept of improving your mental game.
Speaker 1: And some of the things I want to cover, Glenn
Speaker 1: are going to be, you know, visualization and getting deeper
Speaker 1: into that and also pre shot and post shot routines,
Speaker 1: the value of those and how we can take.
Speaker 4: Advantage of each one.
Speaker 1: So again I appreciate your extra time and advise everyone.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear part two, you've got to
Speaker 1: be a member of golf Smarter for members only and
Speaker 1: joined today at golfsmarter dot com.
Speaker 4: And Glenn, thank you again for your time.
Speaker 3: Well, it's delighted. It's always obviously, I'm always looking forward
Speaker 3: the opportunity to talk about these concepts that I am
Speaker 3: braced