Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number three hundred and seventy eight published on
April two, twenty thirteen, and on today's score Zone Short
Game Academy, The Wedge Guy explains bounce and what the
proprietary score Golf vs. Soul means and why it's going
to help your short game.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors. Featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast, Great Golf Instruction Never Gets Old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: Number one predictor of a low score for someone who
is shooting like right around one hundred and five or left.
So maybe not at beginner, but someone's been playing a
little bit. So if you could shoot a hundred and
five or better, there's one statistical predictor of a lower
than average score for that round of golf. Almost everybody
gets it wrong. What do you think it is?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 5: Fairways close, because.
Speaker 3: The answer involves that this is a secondary effect.
Speaker 6: So then i'd go greens in regulation.
Speaker 3: Correct, greens and regulation. That's the number one stat It
presents a problem though, because to hit a green in
regulation or to hit a high percentage the tour pros
today average around thirteen out of eighteen, much lower than
most people think. When they're playing well, they might be
sixteen or seventeen, but I mean the averages around thirteen,
thirteen and a half something like that. The problem with
that stat for average golfers is to achieve it you
have to have a good golf slink. Most average golfers
don't spend the money that's required finding a quality teacher,
or if they do spend the money, they don't spend
the time practicing it long enough to form a fundamentally
sung golf swing. But for those people who do, that
opens up a whole doorway to much improved scoring.
Speaker 1: Power of six practice strategies with Jim Waldron.
Speaker 2: This is Golf Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golf
and golf professionals to how flower your score. It's worked
for your host, Fred.
Speaker 6: Green, Welcome back to Golf Smarter, Jim Fred.
Speaker 3: It's great to be back with you.
Speaker 6: Where are you in the world these days?
Speaker 3: I am on the north shore of a wakot The
next six weeks of sometime off. Let's from teaching too.
Speaker 6: I hate you even more.
Speaker 3: What you kind of do it?
Speaker 1: And how are things at the Balance Point Golf School.
Speaker 3: That's actually they've been really good, very busy. The summer
season is important. We're already filled up our first school
in May and we're starting to fill up our second
one in June. Considering how bad the economy has been
the last few years it's been, we're looking really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no bad economy right now. Stock market's exploding,
apples tanking, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well good, Well, I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 1: And let you know, since we're talking about it right
now and classes are filling up, why don't you give
the u r L and let people know where they
can find Balance Point Golf Schools and more about it
so they.
Speaker 6: Can sign up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Balancepoint Golf dot com. In fact, we're going
to get our brand new website online, I think in
the next two or three days or for sure next
week at the latest.
Speaker 1: Well, that means by the time this is published, your
brand new website is ready to go.
Speaker 3: That's right, and it's going to have just a lot
more well a bit better layout, easier to navigate a
lot more content, more photos, some video, link to our
new YouTube channel.
Speaker 6: Good.
Speaker 3: But you know, we just talked about what a lot
of you know, I still don't have one as we speak,
but it will be up, but you'll.
Speaker 1: Have you'll have it chan all ready to go. I
just have no content. Yeah, well then you have to
come back to.
Speaker 6: We're gonna have to get together so I can produce
some stuff for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, and uh yeah, we'll have some audio files,
some video. You know. It's good. The old website was
got it. I don't think it changed much in the
last like eight or nine years.
Speaker 1: Well, you know you said the economy. You know, you
mentioned the economy. I think it is better because everybody's
redoing their website in two thousands, right, Oh, I'm doing.
I'm redoing Golf Smarter right now, and we're going to
make it so.
Speaker 6: You can contribute writing.
Speaker 1: I mean hopefully you're going to be one of our
contributing editors here.
Speaker 6: Sure, yeah awesome.
Speaker 1: And then I also Green Creative. I'm redoing that one
as well. But anyway, let's talk about golf please, because
you've got a fascinating topic that I'm really excited to
pursue and that you you termed as practice strategies correct.
Speaker 3: Tell me more, something, something that isn't talked about a
lot in golf instruction circles, to the detriment of average
golfers especially, is how do you practice effectively? How do
you take you know, because most instructions about what you
should be doing with your club or your body or,
in the case of mental game, your mind. Okay, so,
but but you know, we also know most practice, or
most instruction rather is geared toward, hopefully, if it's good instruction,
if it's quality instruction, it's geared toward on the physical
side of the game, toward forming new and dominant habit patterns,
physical movement patterns that they are so habitual that they're automatic,
They manifest automatic, and you don't have to think about it. Right,
That should be the goal of anytime you try to
make a physical change. As much as possible, you want
to make that change be a dominant habit pattern i e.
Something you don't have to think about, and that means
you have to practice. And you know, one of the
hard things about golf is is you know, there's so
many different types of shots you need to learn to
score well and to improve your game. And you know,
I've always been an advocate of being very clear about
laying out a practice point for every student, whether there
are a lesson students or off school student. But it's
a complicated topic, and it's only been until the last
I don't know year or so I felt I've kind
of got a really good handle on it because there's
more than one way to do it. There's, you know,
I don't know, half a dozen or so major ways
you can practice. And so there's some rules for effective practice,
and there's some sort of categories of effective practice. I
thought we could talk about today.
Speaker 1: Awesome, So I'm just kidding. I know that we've talked
about this before. But does muscle memory fall into that?
And do you buy into muscle memories? Some people think
it's ridiculous and some people think it's the only way
to go.
Speaker 3: You know, Hogan was actually in the golf world. He
coined the term in an interview back I think in
the sixties with I think it was a Golf Digest,
and then in his last interview with Golf Digest, which
I think was in nineteen eighty seven, he said something
like I wish I'd never coined the term in an
interview because what people took it to mean was let's
talk to our body parts and try to get them
to be behave better, which, of course is that stuff
that superstitious nonsense that I've been critical of on your
show on all the previous However, many times I've been
on guests, I think I think it was my seventh
pair and something like that. So that so that comton
sort of the colloquial definition of it is wrong. You know,
muscles don't have memory, and so talking to body parts
is worse than useless. In fact, in the future, we're
going to do a show on the yips.
Speaker 6: Right absolutely, and that may we'll get.
Speaker 3: The yips they talk to body parts, that's the pre
gip stage. So that sense muscle memory is a myth.
What it really is is that the scientific term is
motor memory, and there's different kypes. There's three different kinds.
There's working memory, which lasts just a few seconds, there's
short term memory, which lasts you know, hours or a
few days, and there's what's called long term motor memory,
which basically is a dominant habit, which is as long
as the back part of your brain where that motor
memory program exists and the cerebellum is stays stays healthy,
have that habit pattern to the day you die. And
that's that's kind of what we want to have, this
long term motor memory right right right, So you couldn't
do it wrong if.
Speaker 1: You tried, well, you know, when you that's just you know,
so many people just go out and they don't take lessons.
They just start swinging, and then this is what they
get ingrained. And then if you get to the point
where I am now of trying to take lessons and
relearn everything, trying to eliminate all the bad habits and
and you know, mishits because of your bad habits, it's
it makes it difficult to make that long term memory
work when you're you're fighting inside your head.
Speaker 3: People people often golf, average golfers especially, they have sort
of like all the spinning the wheels sort of syndrome.
You mean, they they take a lesson or two or three,
or a golf school, or they read a book and
they try it and it kind of works for a while,
and then after a couple of weeks it doesn't work,
and they move on to the next tip. You know,
that just doesn't work, and that literally is like the
hamster on the wheel and condemned to eternity spinning on
the wheel. So what you need is an intelligent, strategic
approach to how you a sort of a portion your time,
especially if you're not retired, just still working for a living.
You've only got so much time in a given week
you can devote the practice. And my whole thing has
been the last couple of years is trying to come
up with a way you can sort of cover all
the basis of improving or at least maintaining your current
skill level in certain the key areas. And this is
where the money you know, the Moneyball book and movie
we talked about earlier approach kind of kicked in a
few years ago for me, which is, you know, not
all goll shots are created equal. Some are more important
in terms of influence on your score, much more important
than others. And so you know, a truly intelligent, an
effective practice plan would would recognize that as being a
true fact. So you aren't wasting your time practicing skills
so that they are not going to result in significant
score improvement.
Speaker 1: That begs the question, is there a least important shot
in regards to your score.
Speaker 3: You know, that's a good question. I've actually put it
in those terms before. I know, if I had to
pick one, especially for average golfer, there's probably more than one.
There are people right now. In fact, there are some
PGA tour pros or hiring. There's three guys I know of.
I don't recall any of these three guys names. Unfortunately
it's out in my head. Otherwise I would give him
credit that are doing some pretty ground baking research. One
guy I know has been He used to write a
column for Golf Digest. He's been doing it for over
forty years. I would probably guess the least important skill
to practice it's gonna be the least productive is pots
between fifteen and roughly thirty feet, because as you're the
odds you're going to make a putt between fifteen and
thirty feet, even if you're a tour pro is very
very much. I'm low on the probability scale, and if
you're decent, not great. As long as you're decent at putting,
you're not going to three put that often. If you're
decent already, from between fifteen and thirty feet it's almost
certainly going to be most of the time it's going
to be a two putt. So you're not going to
gain a stroke in that skill area. You're not you're
probably not going to lose any strokes, right, So that's
just off the top of my head. But from the yeah,
you know, so here's here's what it is I'm going
to start. I call this the power of six. There
are six you can call it, you could say shot
categories or golf shot skill categories that are extremely important
for all skill levels, from tour pros down to beginners.
Well maybe not beginners because one of these is driver,
and beginner shouldn't be hitting driver because they don't have
the skill. But let's let's say if you can break
ninety five and you have at least ninety mile an
hour clubhead speed with your driver, because if you're lower
than ninety, you're better off hitting a three wood. You'll
actually go further hand straighter than the driver. But even
if you are using a three woods, it's one of
the six categories of highly important shots in terms of
influence on your score. Is your driver or again, the
people who have slower swinging speeds of their three wood,
and that's something that you know, great players historically have
all said, I mean, Nicholas said it, Tiger has said
the driver's the most important scoring weapon in the bag,
Ben Hogan said it, Sam Steve has said it. Byron
Nelson said it, Ken Van Turrey said it. And it
kind of makes sense when you think about it, because
most holes are part four's or part fives. You're going
to use that to begin the hole, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny because I was thinking that the driver
may be the least important, but because so we're talking
about the T shot.
Speaker 6: Are we talking about hitting it with your driver?
Speaker 3: Now we're talking to T shot. And let me go
back and back a little bit. One of the three
men I mentioned who's done research, and let's call them
the golf statisticians, and I think the other two are
either agreeing with this or close to agreeing with it.
He said, the number one predictor of a low score
for someone who is I think he said, shooting like
right around one hundred and five or less. So maybe
not a beginner, but someone's been playing a little bit.
Who you know those if you can shoot one hundred
and five or better, there's one predictor one statistical predictor
of a lower than average score for that round of golf.
Almost everybody gets it wrong. What do you think it is?
Speaker 6: Fair ways?
Speaker 3: No close, because the answer involves that is a secondary effect.
Speaker 6: So then go greens in regulation.
Speaker 3: Correct greens and regulation. That's the number one stature. It
presents a problem though, because to hit a green in regulation,
or to hit a high number a high percentage. The
tour pros today average around thirteen out of eighteen, much
lower than most people think. When they're playing well, it
might be sixteen or seventeen, but I mean the average
is around thirteen, thirteen and a half something like that.
The problem with that stat for average golfers is to
achieve it, you have to have a good golf swing.
You have to have a fundamentally song golf swing. Most
average golfers don't take the time. They don't spend the
money that's required on finding a quality teacher to teach
them the fundamentals, or if they do spend the money,
they don't spend the time practicing it long enough to
form a fundamentally sung golf swing. But for those people
who do, that opens up a whole doorway to much
much improved scoring greens and regulation because greens and regulation
secondarily implies hitting the fairway and hitting it pretty long
off the t box with your driver, with your three
wood and in the fairway. So the second category is
fairways like you mentioned, but not just hitting the fairy
but hitting it long off the tee is also a
big advantage to scoring, meaning would you rather have an
eight iron in as your second shot club as opposed
to a four iron?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Which is the whole idea behind T and forward
is to give exactly right, yeah, is to give everyone
the chance to hit it with an eight iron in, yeah,
as opposed to hitting it from you know, your three
wood trying to get it in you know, because you're
playing from t's that you shouldn't be playing from.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so anyhow, so that's the first one of the
power of six. If you want to improve your score,
you need to learn to hit your t ball club,
whether it's a driver, three wood, five or whatever your
skill level can handle further than you do. Now. I'm
talking twenty thirty forty yards further an average. And I
always tell people that if you're a male and you're
between the ages of fourteen, and fifty five, you want
to eventually get to the point and you're healthy, obviously
it have to be healthy to do this, where your
average distance should be at least two hundred and fifty
yards carry enrolled, and you want to shoot toward more
like toward two sixty with the equipment, because if you're
if you're currently hitting at two thirty off the tee,
and through a combination of working on your on your
swing and maybe getting fit for a new and better driver,
if you can get it, if you can make your
distance go up thirty yards from two thirty to two sixty,
you'll be hitting at least two probably three clubs shorter
into the hole into the green, which greatly improves your
odds of hitting the green in regulation because it's again
it's an eight iron set of a five iron for example, right,
So it's pretty important that driver is I believe, of
the of all the clubs in the bag. Once you
can break around ninety five. Once, once you're decent enough
terms of your physical skills to be hitting a driver
to begin with, it's it's more important than your putter.
It's more important than your ledge.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, you know, you're just crushing me right now,
because I keep I keep telling people it's not about
how far, it's about how us and I just how
accurate you mean?
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I mean not how far you hit it,
how close you get it to.
Speaker 3: The pin, right, it's yeah, and that's true. But but
again it's it's it's as you know, it's easier to
get it closer to the pin if you hit it
in the far way and then out there and down
there a long way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I just see people practicing with
their driver only you know, you go to their driving range.
Speaker 3: No, no, you don't. That's that I think that's the.
Speaker 6: Most important thing.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't think it's the most important thing,
and here you are telling me it's now the most
important thing, lowering.
Speaker 3: It's it's the most important thing again, if you have
the ability to hit it right, if you're if your
swing is is decent enough to where you can actually
get around ninety five miles or for sure ninety ninety
minimum or higher.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he's got the caveat there, good, good recovery coach.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's true you because some people don't have
the ability to hit it, so they shouldn't be hitting
it to begin with, but then you know you had
them a three wood, so whatever, whatever, whatever, Whether it's
a five wood for the really high handicappers, a three
wood for the sort of the moderately high handicapped players
out there, and a driver for the intermediate advanced players, whatever,
whichever those three clubs it is, you have to hit
that club with a fairly high degree of consistency in
terms of solidness of contact, reasonable clubhead speed. So the
ball and you know, being on playing with the square
club base, so the ball goes a fairly long way
and in the fairway or at the worst the crookedness
is going to be is in the first cut of rough.
You can still score well from the first cut cut
a rough, right, you can't score well if you're hitting
it into the trees, into the fairway, bunkers, into the
water or obe. That's why it's not just long, it's
long and straight, right, And.
Speaker 6: That's when we get to golf smarter.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Yeah, because.
Speaker 1: Whatever, And it's the other thing I always say to people,
you never follow a bad shot with a stupid shot.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. Yeah, you never want to have two
bad shots in a row.
Speaker 1: No, especially when you don't have to right check their
go and stop it. Yeah, doc gebber your ego a way,
you can't get there. You are not tiger Woods.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. Anyhow, So that's one of the
six important, you know, in terms of shots that influencer score.
Then the second one is and I think from my
research from my angle, I'm not so sure these other
three the golf the golf wizards would agree with this,
but it's pretty obvious to me that the one area
that's the second area of and probably in order and
it would would be second most important, would be super
short pots from two to six feet. If you miss
a pot from two to six feet, you're going to
be pissed off, and rightfully so, because you just wasted
a stroke.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 3: I mean, let's it's a very fast downhill breaking pott,
particularly left the right baking putt for a right handed
which are kind of hard to make. Uh, if it's
you know, if it's not that kind of pot, it's
more of a normal slope and had a lot of
break and you miss it, you just wasted a stroke.
So you know, there's things you can do to improve
your odds of making those short putts, which we'll talk
about in another episode because I know we're doing one
on putting. But basically, if you're not practicing your short putts,
you're probably scoring three, four or five six strokes higher
than you need to. The tour pro spend hours and
hours and hours. They spend very little time practicing medium
length pots and at fifteen to thirty five foot range.
They spend a lot of time on super short putts,
a fair amount of time from eight to fifteen feet,
which is often their birdie range, right, But the super
short putts are to make par occasionally to make birdie
if you hit it really close on a par four,
or maybe on your third shot on you're a fourth
shot on a par five, or maybe it's like a
second putt on a par five, right, so you're making Basically,
you're making par, and if you're an average golfer, you're saving.
You're making bogie with that putt in the two to
six foot range. So if you miss it, now it's
a double.
Speaker 1: Hey, can we make a new rule here? Can we
make a new rule about the super short putts? I mean,
you know, six feet, yeah, But when you're when you're
playing with your buddies and you've got a two foot
three foot or left and they say it's good, pick
it up, right?
Speaker 3: Can we just say I bet?
Speaker 6: Well, I bet, because they want to beat you.
Speaker 3: It's got to be eighteen inches or less for me.
Speaker 6: No, I've had Yeah, that's good, that's good.
Speaker 1: But I want to say that if someone tells you
it's good and you go over to knock it in
the hole because you want to hear the happy sound,
but you miss, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: You don't get to pick it up and go, well, no,
that was good. You said it was good.
Speaker 1: No, if you miss, you know, I'm sorry, it doesn't
count as a give me on that one. Knock it off?
Uh uh yep, So just pick it up so help
the pace the play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an important I mean, that's obviously an important
people average golf. For people who shoot like say eighty
five to one hundred, they're not good super short putters.
They need they need to take some instruction on how
to make those short putts, and they need to practice
it right a regular basis and a lot. You know,
you can practice that at home and if you have
a normal kind of if you don't have like nineteen
seventy five shag carpeting in your house. You can probably
just do it at night on your on your living
and carpet right now.
Speaker 1: Oh twenty five bucks, and you can get one of
those little practice putting things that has the ball return
on it. And I just I have one in my
office and when I'm on the phone or waiting for
something to render, while I'm producing video or something, I'm
just practicing my putting all day long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Okay, here's the third category.
Speaker 1: But before you get to that third category, and I
apologize to the audience because I continue to interrupt you,
but you're used to it with me. I just want
to say that you know, as I have in the past,
that this episode of the Golf Smarter podcast.
Speaker 6: Is brought to you by audible dot Com.
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Speaker 6: Is the one that Jim is going to refer to us.
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Speaker 3: Say was the Stuart Brand book? Right?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, that's it. We we talked about.
Speaker 1: We talked about being old hippies out of San Francisco,
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Stuart Brand and Johnny Heller narrate his Whole Earth Discipline,
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l E. Audible podcast dot com, slash golf Smarter. Thank you,
my friend for the recommendation. Now let's get to number three.
Speaker 3: Number three, which one of the golf stats. Guys calls
uh and Richie, I just don't remember your last name.
I apologize. His first name is Richie. He's actually working
with some tour pros now. He calls it the danger zone.
And I've been teaching this for god for fifteen years now,
that there's one type of shot, but again pally for
average golfers all it also applies to tour pros. That
is almost always, if you're if you're shooting, if your
if your average handicap is between maybe six and you know, twenty,
especially for those guys, this this this range is going
to cause you, is going to cost you some strokes.
That's one hundred and seventy five to roughly two hundred
and fifteen yard range. Maybe if you're a longer hitter
average player, maybe one eighty five to two twenty five.
So that's that's your three four five irons or or
your hybrid equivalent maybe two three and four hybrid, your
five would that's those are the clubs that cost people
almost always, almost every round of golf, you know, certainly
a few strokes per round. And the reason why is
people again, people don't have the you know, enough fundamentals
they're not fundamentally sound enough in their ball striking skill
to hit those longer clubs both the required distance. Let's
say it's let's say it's a two hundred yard shot
for me, that would be a three iron, or it
would be my twenty two degree hybrid. You know, that's
a long part three. It's it's your second shot on
a long part four. If you're an average golfer, it
could be your second shot on a short part five
if you're if you're decent, if you're a good average golfer,
a low handicapper. But oftentimes on these long par threes
or long approaches on par four's, you hit it way
short in the bunker, or way short in the water
in front of the green, or you miss it wildly
to the left or right in the bushes, the rough
or the trees right you. So now you're scrambling to
try to get up and down for par and because
because it's you know, because it went in a really
bad place, your odds are getting up and down, even
if you're a tour pro are pretty much zero. So
but you know, people don't. Probably how many times you
see people practicing with their five, with their four or
five iron on the driving range, they just don't, you know.
And the reason they don't is they don't hit it well.
And because they don't hit it well in the short term,
it hurts their confidence. So they go to their eight iron,
their six iron, their seven iron, you know. And I
always tell my students, look, you know, even if you're
not working on a major swing, change, just take the
swing you have warts and all. If you work with
the with the hybrids in the four or five iron
and even five would and learn to hit those clubs
to at least say twenty five percent better than you're
hitting now, that's gonna have a huge impact on your
score because you're going to feel more confident when you play.
When you when you have that club in your hand
and you're standing over a two hundred yard par three
t shot and there's water in front of the green right,
maybe bunkers behind the green and o b left and
a lot of trees and high grass on the right.
Basically you have to hit the green to make par right.
You got no bailout the area. You're not gonna you're
probably not gonna put a really bad swing on it,
at least not most of the time because you feel
confident because you've seen yourself hit that shot two hundred
yards relatively straight, say six or seven out of ten
ten balls on the driving range, right, because you put
the practice time in. So yeah, Richie calls that the
danger zone. That's that's an area even for tour pros
where they either miss the green badly or they or
they hit the green and trickle over the back edge,
or you know, end up in a bunker. Then they
don't they fail with it up and down. So that's
an area that the average golfers just don't practice and
they should be m.
Speaker 6: Hmm, excellent, excellent advice.
Speaker 1: And and don't just and don't just swing the club
to swing the club, pick a target, I mean you should.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And put alignment sticks down on the ground
so you know you're aiming where you think you are.
You'll never see a pro practice that was without an
alignment stick on the ground. They always they always use them.
Any else. That's pretty important. Number four of the power
of six is the mental game, particularly what I call
the art of shot making, which is what happens from
the beginning of your preshot routine when you're standing behind
the ball and you've picked your club. That's when the
creative you know, sort of the art of shot making
starts right and it and it lasts all the way
through your golf swing until you arrive at at the
finish of your swing. And the part that's really important
is how your mind I'm talking conscious mind here, not subconscious,
how your conscious mind is working from right before you
trigger your takeaway, throughout the entire back swing, through the
entire forwards wing you're finished. Because it's within the swing
motion itself that you can sabotaze yourself by causing some
form of a mistake like a flinch or a yip,
or a deceleration or an over acceleration or hit impulse
or scooping impulse or steering impulse right just because those
If your mind is not working properly, it's not focusing
where it should be focusing, something bads can happen, for sure,
to disrupt your body motion, which disrupts your club motion,
which disrupts your impact, which creates a bad shot that
you're trying to avoid in the first place. So that
basically means you have to have a consistent preshot routine.
Number one. Number two, you have to learn how to
focus your mind. Most people have what we call wandering minds, right,
and there's that just basically means pick one thing could
be the target. For example, could be your grip pressure,
could be rhythm, could be tempo. There's a number of
things that could be theoretically.
Speaker 1: Oh man, would Alpha Brain love it if I were
to come in and do a plug for their product
right about now? And that's not that I just didn't
do that. They'll be happy with it. I just mentioned
to help your mental game or forget Alpha Brain. But
you know, metal game has been the crux of my program,
my content from the very beginning. I've always felt that, Yeah,
is that. I just think that if you have that
kind of a game, if you understand it, you don't
beat yourself up, you don't become your worst enemy. As
doctor Joe Parent would say, then you're gonna lower your scores.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no question. And the key is to have
only one focal point per swing. And there are a
couple exceptions to that, but for my students, they have
to be about five. Handicaps are better where they had
one on the back swing and they switch to a
second one and the forward swing but that's again only
for advanced players everybody else, if you're about a six
handicap or higher, you should have one one focus for
your mind that your mind is engaged with from about
one second before you start your back swing and it
stays with that one thing all the way to your finish.
You know, it sounds easy right when we talk about it,
but for most people and when they first practice this,
it's very very difficult. That could be a whole episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again for those who have not tried to
get alpha brain, really, I know for me, it's just
it helps quiet all that extra noise in your head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's you gotta have. You can't. You can't have
a noisy mind to play good golf.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And we've had Matt every I don't know who,
if you know who Matt every is, well, he's he's
all over alpha brain. And we've had him on the
show a number of times now talking about it, and
he says that it's it.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 1: The year that he started taking Alpha brain, he went
from a five hundred thousand dollars year of winnings to two.
Speaker 6: Million dollars one Yeah, yeah, very impressive.
Speaker 1: Now, listen, before we get to number five and number
six the classic t's. We've hit our thirty minute mark,
so can we stick around and do part two on
members only episode for next week?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, love, all right.
Speaker 6: So we'll do five and six and then let's talk
about the It's not going to.
Speaker 3: Take long to present the inflammation on on five and six.
But what I really really gets interesting is how you
can design your own practice program. So you're covering all
six of these.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Jim, stick around and we're going to do
Golf Smarter for members only coming up soon. Thanks so
much for green to do that.
Speaker 5: You bet.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 1: It's time once again for the score Zone Short Game
Academy on the Golf Smarter Podcast with our special guest
CEO of score Golf, Terry Taylor.
Speaker 6: Terry, how are you?
Speaker 5: I'm doing fine? For it? Are you?
Speaker 6: I'm doing well?
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 6: This is the segment where you get.
Speaker 1: To answer the question that has been submitted by a
Golf Smarter listener and uh, they are going to receive
a gift because.
Speaker 6: You answering their question.
Speaker 1: They're going to receive a customized score forty one sixty
one scoring club. I always want to say wedge, but
I'm going to say Scoring Club for you for because
they came to golf smarter dot com and clicked on
the score.
Speaker 6: Zone Short Game Academy button.
Speaker 1: And we still want to remind every listener that you
get a discount if you use the coupon code golf
Smarter when you check out ten percent off your entire
order at score Golf and get one of these phenomenal wedges.
That is going to lower your score because it is
going to change the way you approach the greens. It's
just it's a It's an amazing club and the more
we learn, the better we get. Anyway, this question comes
in from tac Teoyama of San Jose, California, and he's
done his research. He says, he hears a lot about
the VSOL grind and many of your customers comment on
the need to learn.
Speaker 6: How to use this grind.
Speaker 1: So his question is what is so unique about the
grind and how does it benefit different shots? In other words,
he says, what needs to be learned from your v
SOLE grind?
Speaker 4: Well talk, I think first appreciate you of sending in
your question.
Speaker 5: Glad you've been doing your homework.
Speaker 4: We get a lot of questions about the VSOL and
some of that I don't know where you're reading about
the customers commenting.
Speaker 5: On the need to learn.
Speaker 4: But this soul reacts in the turf differently than any
other wedge on the market. And when I say you
need to learn how to use it, what really mean
is you need to understand or experience this new field.
This club rejects out of the turf differently. And let
me try to explain.
Speaker 5: Conventional wedge design.
Speaker 4: Has The manufacturers offer a wide range of bounces and
low bounces and high bounces and tour grinds and all
of this thing. And my experiences is what we hear
day after day, week after week is people are very confused.
Speaker 5: What we do know is that a higher bounce.
Speaker 4: Angle do help get the ball out I get the
club out of softer turf and fluffy your lies. Conversely,
a low bounce angle is more effective when the ball
is sitting tied on a close crop fairway or our
firmer turf for hardpan or wet sand. So the industry
has offered us these multiple options for years, but we
have to make a choice in the store for the
grind that we want to take to the course. And
yet we don't know what our next lie is going
to look like. And I felt like, well, then that
doesn't make optional various grinds a very good solution, because
I can't carry all of them. It was on a
trip to Scotland a number of years ago, back in
nineteen ninety to be exact, that I encountered the firm
turf of the UK and I had a sandwich and
found it to be a very ineffective tool around the
greens at Saint Andrews because the first day we were there,
because the ground is so firm, and this big soul
sand wedge was bouncing into the middle of the ball
and not performing well. I went down the street to
mister Octorlney's golf shop and asked if I could use
his grinder. I just had this idea, and I ground
the back part of the soul down to where it
had much less bounce, but I left that steep bounce
angle in the front and then even exended that a
little bit and ground.
Speaker 5: Out a little of the leading edge. Really ugly up
my wedge quite a bit.
Speaker 4: But what I found is I had created a club
that would kind of glide along the turf rather than
bounce off of it when the lie was tight. But
yet when I would get into one of these softlies
or get into a bunker, this club still had almost
all the effectiveness that I had had before I ground
away on it. So that got me back to the
workshop and grinding when I got back, and that's where.
Speaker 5: The v soule was born.
Speaker 4: You don't really have to learn how to use it
differently other than you hit some shots with it and
watch what the ball does because of this soul and
feel how this soul interacts with the turf, which then
helps you understand what you can do with it to
hit the kind of shots you want to hit, and
to experiment and broaden your repertoire, so to speak. I
hope that kind of explains that, But it's not some
radically different thing that requires an owner's manual. But it
does give you more opportunities to try different things. And
you can hood down a wedge, for example, a little
bit and still hit really good shots off a tight turf,
And even if it's a little soft, if you hood
down a conventional low bounce wedge, you're going to hoot
all the bounce out of it, and you're going to
turn it into just a ditch digger.
Speaker 5: By the same.
Speaker 4: Token, if you get into a tight line, you lay
it open a little bit. With a conventional wedge, you're
accenting that high bounce and really making it a dangerous
tool for that tight lie. And this vesole doesn't elevate
your leading edge as much, so it won't skip up
into the ball. Don't be afraid of the vesol because
you think you have to learn something new. Be drawn
to the vesole because it lets you learn something new
and different ways to hit different shots. And two of
my favorite lines that customers gave us. One was the
V soul It never met a lie it didn't like,
and we didn't come up with that. Our customers came
up with that and said it was okay if we
started using it. And the other one is I had
a customer say it forgives my mistakes, but it doesn't
get in the way of what I know how to do.
So it's a versatile soul. The V stands for the shape,
the V stands for versatility, and we were trying to
create a soul and we did which really didn't There
isn't a lie out there that this soul doesn't like,
and we invite you to try them. We have trial program.
You know, we'll put a club in your hands and
let you see for yourself what it's capable of doing.
Speaker 1: I hate to open a can of worms on this one, Terry.
But with all the different lies that you're talking about,
how do we practice those? Tell me, you know, going
a practice session with these wedges, because you know, people
are expecting to go out with their news score golf
wedges and be able to pull these off, but they
don't get the feel for the club. So what would
you recommend being practice sessions with these clubs and different
lies and how to take advantage of that.
Speaker 4: Well, I think there's a couple of ways to it. It
depends on where you play your golf. I'm very fortunate
along to private club, but we don't have very big crowds.
And one of my favorite exercises is in the late
evening to throw my bag on my shoulder and take
about an hour to play three holes and around each green.
I just take a couple of wedges and three or
four balls and I just work my way around that green,
chipping and pitching from different lives, bunkers up hillside hill
bear fluffy, because that's a real course condition.
Speaker 5: If you it's really worth a green.
Speaker 4: Fee to go out in the very twilight and don't
worry about getting nine holes in and shooting a score.
Worry about getting your two hours on the golf course
that you paid for and practice. There's no substitute for
practicing your short game on the golf course, because those
are real conditions that you're going to encounter. But another
option is to take your wedges and go over to
a school yard or somewhere that isn't manicured like a
golf course, and you can find areas where the kids
have been running around that's pack tighter and the heck,
you can find areas that are fluffy over by the
fencer where the kids don't play, and you can find
all different kinds of turf and just hit shots off
of that little soft shots and watch how the club
reacts to the turf, watch how the ball reacts to
the club. You don't have to practice your short game
necessarily on the golf course, but what you're trying. There's
two elements of practicing your short game scoring shots. One
element is practicing your technique, which you can do on
the driving range, just chipping balls around on the driving range,
practicing your tempo, practicing ball contact. And then the other
part of practicing is practicing in real situations. Where as
I described earlier, you go out on the golf course
with if you're lucky enough to live on a golf course,
just go round on the green that's close to your house,
but late in the evening, or take your bag. Like
I said, play tree holes, but don't worry about score.
You're you're practicing this session and it's worth that twilight
nine whole green feet to get that golf course to
yourself for a couple hours, and you know, go play
that hole and chip around on a green, and you know,
if it's not all that crowded an evening. And I understand,
I'm fortunate that I play in this kind of facility.
But where there's a will, there's a way dog And Fred,
it was my question, you don't get a free wad.
You already got a hold bagage yell.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because it made me think about if
you're lucky enough to work at a range that it's
a grass range. I know that I never do this,
but I should practicing and hitting out of all those divots.
I mean, I'm always looking for the nicest, fluffiest piece
of grass to hit from, but maybe I should just
be dropping balls in divots and all the crap that's
sitting around the well.
Speaker 4: Go down to one end of the range or the
other where you can practice off the mode T line
and you can throw some balls over in that unmode
rough area. And typically you can find a place over
there where maybe the guy drives the mower back and
forth from the maintenance barn that's mowed down pretty tight
and kind of pack tight from being trafficked on. And
most people aren't going to care if you go hit
a few balls from there and you're not really hitting
full shots all the time. Is you know these where
the club reacts to the ball and the turf is
most critical at the slower club edd speeds.
Speaker 6: And the other thing that.
Speaker 1: I think would be of great value is when you're
out doing that, don't just practice your swing.
Speaker 6: Pick a target.
Speaker 1: Focus on the target, right, especially when you're talking about
short game, is not just swing swing, swing, but see
how consistently you can get to the target that you
want to get to, and then pick various targets.
Speaker 5: Well, that's what I was talking about.
Speaker 4: You know, you go to the practice range to practice
your swing and your mechanics and your technique. When you're
on the golf course doing this kind of practice, you're
practicing your visualization skills, your ability to picture a shot,
your ability to make the ball do what you wanted
it to do. Don't practice blindly. Practice with a mission
and practice with a vision and practice every shot have
a goal for that, you know, and picture the trajectory.
And you know, doctor David Cook is so big on
visualization and his book Golf Sacred Journey Seven Days in
Utopia is a fabulous story and for all of us
for life, business and golf. But his one of his
big lines is the game is played in front of
the ball. Everything that's getting ready to happen is where
the game is played, not that which just happened.
Speaker 6: Very interesting, Well this is this again.
Speaker 1: What I love about this partnership that Golf Smarter and
score Golf has is that we're not just throwing out
commercials here to say go out and buy these new
wedges because they're really great. No, these are scoring clubs
that we want to eat. You about and we want
to help you learn how to get better. And I
just really appreciate the time that you've put into this.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Well, that's my pleasure. I enjoy talking to golfers, whether
it's direct one on one or or one on a
bunch as we do here, and we always have an
opportunity for somebody to get interaction with us. And my
world revolves around helping people play better. I think the
game the better you play, the more fun it is.
And I never met a golfer said well, I'm as
good as.
Speaker 5: I want to be.
Speaker 3: I've never met that guy yet.
Speaker 1: And I've only met one guy ever who says, yeah,
I'm a good golfer.
Speaker 4: You know right, Yeah, No, I'm not very good. I'm
as shoot about eighty, well really good. You're about the
top wolves and the golfers in the world.
Speaker 5: End.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then what about those guys in the turt
And yeah it was okay. I had a couple of
good putts today, but I only shot you know, a
sixty eight.
Speaker 6: You know, it's like, come on, leave me alone.
Speaker 4: But I mean, no, you never and John Madden in
one of the best lines, you never get golf, I mean,
no matter how good you play, you always can see God.
But I have that three poot on twelve, or man
if I wouldn't have missed that fairway on nine, or
there's always something and that's what makes golf so wonderful.
Speaker 1: And the years that I spent I actually, I don't
know if I've told you this, but I spent three
years as John Madden's engineer. And we talked a lot
about it because neither of us were playing golf at
the time. And he says, you know, if I have
my choice of starting a new sport and I had
to choose between golf and tennis, I'd much rather start
with tennis. And I'm like why, and he says, because
when you're a bad golfer, you're out there all day long.
Speaker 6: When you're a bad tennis player, you're done in twenty minutes.
Speaker 5: Well there you go.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: He was awesome, As are you, Terry Taylor. Thanks again,
Speak with you again
Speaker 5: Soon, Okay, noise fun