Speaker 1: Hey, this is Fredgreen of golf Smarter with our sixth
installment of spring Back into Golf Season with the late
Tony Manzoni. This episode was part two of our conversation
originally number four hundred and nine for members only from
November twenty thirteen. His book The Loss Fundamental is available
on Amazon, and his DVD, which we converted to a
private link online, is also available when you write to me.
For the most comprehensive information ever collected on Tony, please
go to golfsmarter dot com and if you'd like access
to the video, please write to me directly golf Smarter
podcast at gmail dot com or click on the Heyfred
button when you visit golfsmarter dot com.
Speaker 2: For members only. Golf Smarter number four hundred and nine,
published on November five, twenty thirteen. A good Golfer's Arms
never passed the Body with Tony Manzoni. This is golf Smarter.
Welcome back to golf Smarter for members only.
Speaker 1: Tony.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Fred, Thank you again for sticking around and
recording forget the recording, for sticking around and answering more
of my questions.
Speaker 3: I just love it. Fred.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's very kind of you. There's many things that
you said in our last conversation that I want to
bring back and get more detail from you out of that.
Like when you talked about being under pressure and hooking
the ball. You said, when you were playing competitively when
you were young, whenever you were under pressure, you would
hook the ball. Now forty to fifty years later and
you look back on that, do you know what that was?
Speaker 3: Sure? I know what it was. As I got into
learning to be more of a connected rotating or having
a connected rotating swing, I realized that the moving of
the of the left arm the right arm for that matter,
but to the left round when you go back in
the back swing, no matter how you take it back
to your left round goes somewhat across your chest, okay, and
it connects somewhere near the left arm pit and the
right arm pit. So that's why you see a lot
of tour players will put a towel across their chest
and then put their arms on the top of the
toe and hit shots that way. What they're doing, you know,
it's it's restrictive in a way, but they're teaching themselves
that the body moves the arms, the arms will move
off the body and then back on the body. It's
not to say that you can't do that, and there
have been some good players that did that, but I
don't think they had very long careers. Without naming a
lot of guys, there's a lot of guys on the
senior tour now that can't play a lit that were
champions on the regular tour, and it's because their game
was based on disconnecting and connecting, swaying to the right
and swaying to the left and so forth. But in
my swing, what I realize is that when my arms
get to impact before my left side is clear, then
my because the head is hairier than the handle. If
you swing the arms away from the body and just
swing a golf club, you'll see that the club head
turns over prior to impact because because of the weight,
the weight of the handle way to the head. The
head weight will roll the clubhead. So these people that
try to teach people to roll the clubhead, if you
just swing your arms ahead of your body, it's gonna roll.
If I want to hook a ball around a corner,
I just keep my back of the target and throw
my arm forward and that clubcase is closed. A foot
from the ball, so I'm gonna I'm gonna snipe of it. Okay,
well that's what I did under pressure, because under pressure
we all get a little fast on the down. Can't
help it. And I didn't realize that the faster my
arms went, the slower my body went. So they didn't
correspond and they won't. You throw your arms ahead of
your body, and there's a saying the good golfer's arms
never passed the body, never passed the body. And you say,
wait a minute, I see the club, but it's not
because if you follow the turning of the bottom, the
club is standing in front of the body, but it's
not going past it. So this is how it works,
real simple. You stand up to the ball. I like
you to set up sixty forty. You take the club back.
It goes across your chest and it connects somewhere high
on the left tectoral muscle. Okay, when you get to
the top, instead of letting the arms come free of
the body and pulling the arms down, keep the position
that you have at the top and rotate your chest area.
And now I'm not gonna say hips, because if you're
on that left side, you don't have to throw your
legs first or any of that craziness. Unwind which wound up.
Unwind your chest and shoulders around your pivot leg, pulling
your arm through, and if you'll unwind properly, you'll be
unwinding to the left, just like on the backswing you
had to unwind to the right. So when you unwind,
your body's going to turn to the left. So when
you finish your golf swing, your right shoulder should pointing
at the target. The center of your chest should be
pointing quite a bit left of the target. And if
you watch the tour ladies or men's you'll see that
that's how most of the players are finishing. No one's
jilted back with high hands. Everything is around because players
are finding that's a more effective way to play. So
when we're connected, and and I mentioned that at the
right arm, sure, because the right arm can't come loose
and go out away from the body on the downswing
because the elbow will be out of position. So that
closed armpit of the right side is just as important
as a closed armpit on the left side. So with
both of them closed, the right with the right arm
does in the backswing is you turn the right arm
folds to a position and that's and that's your position.
But that's how you get the club back. You don't
do it with your wrist cock. You do the arm fold, okay,
and it sets the wrist so that the club head
or the chef, the shaft in your left arm four
form kind of an l position. Okay, we want to
be position. That's too much risk. We want this elow
position the club. Your back is to the target. The
club looks three quarters and if you look at the
tour today, you'll see most everybody like that. You don't
see that past parallel look except for a few out there.
And they have one commonality. They get wild with the driver.
They don't know if it's going right or left under pressure. Okay,
the ones that are compact, they're popping it in the
center all the time. Louis lusehavn just a bunch of
them that are rotators. But anyway, so we're at the
top of the swing. The left arm is connected high
in the pectoral the right arm you can be holding
a handkerchief under the armpit. The elbow is not touching
the bout it just the armpit is closed. You just
take that and you rotate to the left around the
pivot leg, which is your left leg if you're right handed,
and you just keep rotating and the club comes last.
And it's kind of like a hockey player. That the
action of a hockey player with a stick to a puck.
It's a one piece action. It's not a throw of
the arms, is a rotation of the body. On my video,
you can see that little exercise I do that makes
you instantly feel this. And if there's any one thing
that you must do, it's fats. And you know, Ben
Hogan said, you take all your natural instincts and do
the opposite, you'll have a pretty good golf swing. And
he's absolutely right, because when the ball is down on
the ground and we've got the club in our hands,
the tendency for us is to hit down on that
golf ball to throw those arms. And we've been told
hit down on the ball. If you have the club,
let's say a shoal or heighth, and you swing it
to the other side, the club has to come down
to go up, so there's no need to try to
hit down because all you're going to do is you're
going to great tension, and you're going and you're going
to get steeper than you should. The swing has a
shape to it. It's it's kind of a U shape,
so there is a bottom to it, but you don't
need to do anything to get there. It has to
get there for it to go back up on the
other side. So I never advocate hitting down on a
golf ball because then you're thinking about impact too much.
And then what we get into anticipating impact, which causes
a tension. And that's why all the beginners. You see
beginners top the ball and the guy says, you looked up, okay,
And then you got their faces glued to the ground
and glued to the ball, and they still top it
that you looked up. That's such a bunch of beloging.
It's just you tighten up. And so when you anticipate impact,
you're grabbing that handle tighter, you're getting ready to hit something. Okay.
That shortens the muscle, pulls the club to the to
the center or top of the ball, and you roll
it on the ground. So when we're playing golf, and
as I teach all my students, I'm teaching you where
your body is a relationship with that golf ball on
the back swinging on the through swing, and that body
has to be on the ball on the coil, and
then the whole right side goes past the ball on
the through swing and the ball is in the way
of that action. If you focus on that back of
that ball or hit down on that ball, try to
keep your head down on that ball. You don't hit
a lot of shots behind the ball because when we start,
when we put that golf club behind the ball, if
we bring it right back that spot, we're going to
go divot ball, and we don't want to do that.
We want to go ball divt. So there has to
be a forward and is somewhere in that motion to
hit the ball first and then take the divot. That's
the through motion. So when for all of you out
there that hit the ball thin or hit behind it,
that's because you are behind it. You're not supposed to
be behind it when you hit it. It's supposed to
be moving through it. You're supposed to be on the
left side. So don't buy into that crap here all
the time. Stay behind it, keep your head back behind it.
That's nuts. There's no sport that you do that you
hit a tennis ball, you move forward. You throw a punch,
you move forward. You throw a baseball, you move forward.
You got to move forward. You got to move through
it with a Now I'm not saying that your heads
go way forward, but that's not the golf sing. If
you rotate past that golf ball, that club has come
and last, and it's going to hit the ball with
all the force of your core. When you try to
stay behind the ball, all you're using assuming your arms
forward of your body, which is the worst thing you
can do if you're going to try to not only
hit it far, but hit it straight.
Speaker 2: The golf swing is supposedly a circular like if you draw,
If you follow the club head around, it's a circle
correct around your body.
Speaker 3: It's a rotational it's a rotational move. That's the only
way that our body moves. When you walk, you rotates,
so it's a rotation live in. Rotation doesn't mean straight
back and straight through. That's why when people say take
the club straight back, you know that's really not that's
really not correct. Because the body's turning, the club has
to stay in front of you relative to where the
body is, So when the body's turning if the club's
in front of you, but it'll be inside the line
of the It'll be inside the ball line. Is it
must be. You can't take the club back on the
ball line and swing it down the ball line. And
I hear that all the time. Oh yeah, you kept
that club going right down the ball, lie Boloni. You
can't do that. The club the toll has to be
turning because you're turning. Okay, you got to trap that
golf ball. The more you push that club down the line,
than what's going to happen just out of the construction
of the club the neck, because that's where the shaft is.
The neck is going to lead that club and the
toad is going to be back and you're going to
hit everything right, you know, or slice the ball, and
the blade's going to open up. The more you push
it straight back at the target, the more the blade
is can open up. That club has to come back.
You know. The path of the swing is from square,
It goes inside, back to square, back to inside. So
that's the shape of the golf swing, and that's that's
what your body is doing. It's like a hub and
a spoke. Your body is rotating and the club is
rotating relative to what your body's doing. That's why good
players connect the arms of the body, and the arms
move where the body takes them. They're not trying to
take the club back and put it in a position
because it's then it becomes disconnected to the body and
then they've got to re rout the arms back to
where the elbow hits that inside of the hip area
to hit the golf ball. Oh well, that can do
that on a consistent basis. Am I making you crazy? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Am I making you crazy? Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. There's so much going on right now in
my head. It's like there's.
Speaker 3: If I if you were in front of me and
I set you up and you had some idea of
the golf thing you've been playing a while, Okay, but
you know I slice everything, all right, okay everything or whatever.
I show you that when your arms go three of
the body on the downs and the club is either
going to roll over or you're going to hang on
to it and it's going to stay open. And that's
why you can get up and hook one ball and
then you guard the next one and.
Speaker 2: You pull it. Yeah. So when when you're when you're
addressing the ball, and you're you're setting up with the
ball with the club face. You're look, you're staring at
the ball. Your club face is sitting just behind it
when you're coming So, but when you come through on
your swing, that is not the base of your swing, right,
that's the base of it would be in front of
the ball, right, the bottom part of yours, the bottom
part of the swing would be. You know, when you're
falling through, because you want to hit the ball and
then hit the ground. Do you want to make the
divot after you hit the ball.
Speaker 3: Yes, Well, it's that turning through impact that brings the
club so that the ball is being struck on the
down swing, so it hits the ball, hits the turf
when you're in the proper position, just prior to impact. Okay,
the club is coming down, it strikes the ball, and
it takes a little bit of divot when you get
behind the ball, when you have too much weight on
the right side. It is trying to hit the golf ball.
You're going to come down in behind the ball. You're
going to bring the club kinda where you have it
to start with, so you're going to go div it ball.
And that's how most people hit it. They take real
deep dits, and even when they hit a good shot,
they still hit them a little flabby because they're in
the wrong position. They're behind the golf ball. If you
look at a picture at impact of a good player,
you'll see that his chest area is not in the
same position he was at a dress. Like some people
try to say, get back to the dress. His left
side is open, it's turned to open, okay, and the
right side is now driving past the golf ball. If
you look at it you want to see a great swing,
Look at anakis or instant. That girl had more birdies
of two and three inches because she hit is so
dead at the hole because she was turning towards the
target and that arms were being pulled, so she was
trapping that club dead square. So she unwolmed properly. The
ball went right where she unwelmed to. And that's what
we're looking for to learn to hit the ball without
a lot of side spin. Now, when I want to
cut it or draw it, I do it by memory.
I just set up to the ball and feel like
I'm going to do it. But there is a process
of doing it that I practiced for a lot of
hours as a young man, but I primarily hit the
ball with very little movement on it, especially with my irons.
Because of this action, I could remain in the past.
To hit it near the pin, I had to aim
at a club or two to the right of the
of the green and draw it in. I don't do
that anymore. I can. I can got pin hunting because
of this action. I know. I'm not gonna put very
much side spin on the ball. Side's beIN comes from
the club face closing and opening and impact. That's all
it is. I mean, it's not a big secret. So
when you swing a free arm swing, that club is
going to roll. I mean, anybody that's listening to me,
you know, I'll just take a golf club out and
swing it with your arms a little bit away from you,
and you see that the weight of the club will
turn the club over, and it's going to turn it
over generally before you hit the golf ball. And then
the next time, because you're scared of death that's gonna happen,
you're gonna hang on to it tight, so you're gonna
hold the blade open. So neither one of them are
any good. You can't come off. So you've got to
have a golf swing that if it's it's tight as
heck and you got trouble right and trouble left, that
you can get up there and free swinging and know
absolutely no that you're not going to touch either bad area,
that you're going to carve it into the into the
free into the fairway one way or another. You're gonna
power slice it or a soft draw, but you're gonna
put it in the fairway. And I can still do that.
I just can't, you know, I just can't hit it
far enough to really really compete. If they put me
up on that Ladies teas or or old iyed teas,
I'll play with anybody.
Speaker 2: You just told me in the last episode that you're
hitting the ball to sixty five on your drives.
Speaker 3: What do you mean, Yeah, that's short compared to what
people hit it now.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm well, yeah, yeah, if you're playing.
Speaker 3: With l they played blue cheese, I play white cheese,
and so I'm I'm at least a little bit up
with them, or sometimes it will past them with the drive.
You know, when I created the Mixed Team Championship that
was on television for what sixty years. What we did
is we we figured out what women would need. Professional
women would need to compete against men. They need seventy
five yards because they not only needed distance on the drive,
but they needed on the second shot so that they
could hit into a par four a drive in seven
or eight iron, because most men are hitting those kind
of clubs. Prior to that, Prior to that, the gals
were playing the club. The course is so long that
no one was reaching par fives and two, and they
were hitting long irons into par fours. And when we
came up with this concept, this is many many years ago,
that tournament kind of changed the way the girls perceived
the golf course should be because a hard liner said, no, no,
you're making it too easy. And I said, look, men
are shooting nineteen or twenty hunder par every tournament the
winners are, and you're shooting six and seven. The perception
then from the general public is, well, you're not playing
as good because you're shooting higher scores, but you're playing
a lot tougher golf course. You know, they were set
up like it was like setting up a men's golf
course of seventy eight hundred yards that's the kind of
golf the women playing it for a long time, and
we changed that. But we found that the average guy
off that pops the ball out there, they need about
seventy five yards and then then they can compete. Well,
that's the same by going up. You know when I
go up on a tee, you know, I go up
about thirty yards. Well that makes it that that has
thirty yards of my t shirt. Now I'm in the
game now. So in the history, we don't play. We
don't play championship teas. You play to have a.
Speaker 2: Good time, right, you play the white teas, and it's
like so proud, Yeah, I'm proud to play up.
Speaker 3: I mean, I love it. If some sometimes I play
with clients, they say, well, look we're going to play
the senior teas. I love it, can't can't wait. You know,
I don't have any ego about that. Good for you,
because I know what my limitations are. But if you
put me one hundred and fifty yards from the green
every very hole, I'm going to make a lot of birdies.
Speaker 2: M In the history of golf, are are different sets
of tea is a relatively new thing.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, They're always most golf courses have ladies.
He's the men's ties, but most golf course now they're
in a lot. I've been on a lot of golf
courses where the ladies seas were twenty yards further than
the men's that's just that's a joke, to be honest
with you. They should be pretty close to one hundred
yards on every single hole for the ladies to enjoy
the game like men. Do you see gals out there
with a driver on a par three? Well, you you
put guys, you make the par three long enough before
they have to get drivers. You wouldn't see very many pars, okay,
even at the big boys. So so, I mean, it's
just that it becomes an oversight when people design golf courses.
They design them for the men, and they don't consider
the cows. They put okay, put the red teas here,
but they don't do it. They don't do it mathematically
based on how far the most of the gals hit it.
So you know, when the gals shoot break one hundred,
they go crazy, they pop the champagne and give everybody
a pin. That's a joke. If you put them in
the right place, they're going to be shooting in the
eighties and the good ones will get in the seventies.
Speaker 2: Well, when you say that the courses are being when
you say the courses are being designed for man, I
think that the courses is being designed for PGA Tour
events because they're just making their courses longer and longer
and longer, which is playing into their hands of these
guys who have who can hit the ball in mine
own half and they don't.
Speaker 3: Have the there's a perception, and it happens at our
own valley where they'll they'll build what they call the
championship feet and they'll put them back in the corner
where they you know, the desire didn't even want them
to be okay, because they think that by doing that
they're going to bring more members in. But typically these clubs,
the membership is three hundred thousand. Well, how many young
people do you know that will plunk down three hundred
thousand dollars to join a club. So it's usually older,
successful people that don't hit it very far. So they
make these teas so that they can so that they
can say, well, ours is a seventy three hundred or
seventy four hundred rated course. Blah blah blah. Meaningless doesn't
mean a thing because nobody plays them right, you know,
and it makes the game slow. And you get these
you get these guys that are eighteen handicaps going back
there and they and they ruin the game for the
people behind them. I don't I'm not advocating that we
put the teas up where you're on the fringe of
the green team off, but you've got to you've got
to put you know, we know there's a mean average
of what your membership hits the ball. We know what
they hit it, and that's whe the golf course should
be played from and for ladies, you know, come on,
how many gals hit it on? How many gals hit
it one hundred and seventy five yards? Okay, so you
can't put them on a three hundred and seventy yard
hole or a four hundred yard hole. That's crazy. I mean,
they're they're beating a three wood on a third shot.
You know what kind of fun is that. That's why
I say I'm I'm very sensitive to dec issue because
I've worked with a lot of lady professionals in my
life and I've given them zillion lessons to gals and
the big majority. I mean that you know, eighty percent,
you know, can't hit it two hundred yards can't. Okay,
So now they get on a golf poole that's three ninety,
you know, I mean if they get on in two
it's you know, they might have a heart attack. They
shouldn't be that way. They should be if they hit
their good drive, they should have some kind of an
iron or a rescue club to hit, but some kind
of an iron. It's just it's it's unfairly set up.
And again, I think it's the responsibility of a golf
course and the management to understand these things and then
sit down and come up with an idea. Okay, what
do we think our gals hit the ball? And then
plot out a hole so that they can hit some
kind of a mid iron into that green, and that's
what the t should be, okay, And then you'd see
that the galls have a lot more fun and the
game is more playable for them if you look at
the scores. I mean, you know, I give lessons and a
lot of clubs. They invite me to teach, and I
every now and then there's a tournament one hundred and
twenty one hundred and fifteen hundred and ten. Every now
and then you get somebody in the nineties, and that's
the that's the field. And these are girls have been
playing a long time, you know, because they're older. Yeah,
you get the you know, the young members twenty one
or twenty two or twenty three that married some guy. Well,
some of those guys can play, they're fresh out of
college and they can pop the ball. But most of
the girls are in the fifties and the sixties. Where
are they going to get the golf ball? You know?
And a lot of them, a lot of them were
taught at that age because their husband played golf and
they were, come on, you got to learn, we'll play
golf together, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Do you have the same frustrations that I have when
you go out and play with people, and they especially
and of course they've not played to go, well, what's
the distance let's play from this team got sixty nine?
They want into yards and they don't look at the
rating slope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, I know that a lot of courses, even
the men's let's just say the white cheese because they
have so many different colors now. But let's say the
back is the blue cheese, in the middle is the
white tees. A lot of times the white tees are
you know, ten yards ahead of the blue cheese, which
is crazy, it's ludicrous. But again there's no thinking done
at the start of every day when those tees are set.
Someone should be setting them based on what the club professional.
You know that he set that golf course up for
the superintendent. You can't expect the superintendent and in most
cases do not play the game. And the superintendent's not
setting the teases his workers who probably don't play the game.
So they just cut it down and put the team
markers there with no thought that somebody's got to play
from here. So the golf course, the golf course plays
way beyond the slope, rating the way harder right, right,
And that's that's you know, we talk about slow play.
That's one of the reasons we have slow play because
with the long iron on their third shot, right, it
has nothing to do with their ability. It has to
do that it's too long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people are playing from the wrong tees, their egos
getting the way, they slow down the pace of play.
They're scoring high numbers when they shouldn't be. It's just
it's just this endless cycle of garbage.
Speaker 3: There, right, and it's rooting the game for a lot
of people, and it's costing. It's costing a lot of
money because you know, if you have a lot of
slow play, you can't get players on the golf course.
But a lot of it goes back to management and
the planning of where those teas should be. There has
to be calculations made based on where you think the
majority of people hit the golf ball so that they
can enjoy this sport. You know, when you're a successful
man and you've worked all your life, you don't want
to play golf. That's beating the heck out of you
all the time, and you're never going to say this
is too hard for me. No one wants to do that,
you know, no one wants to admit to that. So
what management has to has to do is put them
put that make that golf course not a sense of easy,
but fair, not fair. If you can't reach a part
four and two, if you can hit the ball, let's
say two hundred and ten yards, you should be able
to You should be able to hit that green in
two Okay, So you can't. You can't put a high
handicap around a four hundred and seventy yard hole or
four hundred and sixty year old. That's a part five
for them. And that's how. And that doesn't take away
from the golf course being a great course, because the
greatness comes in the design. It doesn't come in the length.
Speaker 2: Right right, because a short course, a short course can
be very punishing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, I've played course that were
sixty six hundred yards long. They'll give you a battle
every time you play it. But it's it's because you
have to be accurate, you have to hit the left,
left the right, or right the left and those kinds
of things. But it's not because you can't reach the green.
I mean, that's just stupid golf. To me. That's stupid golf.
It really is. And unfortunately, there's so much emphasis on
distance today in today's world that you know, I get
these kids at young ages and they're all they're all
swinging out of their shoes, and I say, what are
you going to do when you're playing a twenty yard fairway?
I mean, you're done. So that's part and parcel of
the problem. We're exposed to everybody hits at three thirty three,
forty and some guy out there fifty years old, you know,
you feel impotent, for God's sakes, But it's it's because
we've been we've been sol a bill of goods. And
the game is never intended to be a driving contest,
you know, it really wasn't. It's a game of strategy.
It's a game of ball placement. And to me, I
think they're ruining the game by making the courses longer
and longer and longer. For who, I mean for who?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 3: Who can seventy three one hundred yards is a long
golf course? Who plays it? Yeah? Maybe a kid that
beats it out there, but the average guy, man, I mean,
you know you can't if you can't get home into
what the heck? You know, time and time again, sometimes
you know there will be one of those holes out
there that you say, oh, well this one, I just
got to be hope, be happy with a bogie. But
you can't do that for eighteen holes. Right.
Speaker 2: A question about and now I know the obvious answer
as well, because the club is longer, but is do
you should you have a different swing? And that's a
loaded question. With your driver versus your nine iron.
Speaker 3: No, it's going to be it's gonna be flatter because
the ball is farther away from you. But no, conceptually
and feel wise, no. And the difficult part is tempo
because we want to swing the driver faster than we
do a full swing, let's say with an eight iron,
and it shouldn't be it will the club will be
moving faster because the swing is wider, because the club
is longer, and the distance is going to be derived
by that longer lever. But you don't try to swing harder.
I mean, one of the great things I ever heard
was Trevino was saying that, you know, he's the one
I played with Nicholas. He was so long. I didn't
watch him hit it. And he said, I used to
try to hit it two thirty eight, and I would
hit it two seventy, but when I tried to hit
it two seventy, I hit it two thirty eight, which
I just thought, said, man, that that should be in
the Bible, for God's sakes. I mean, it was so
absolutely correct, because when you attempt to try to hit
the ball harder, your swing gets faster in the backswing,
shorter in the backswing and tighter at impact. That's why
a lot of times, you know, we have a shot
and we think, ah, that's a six arm, but I'm
going to hit an easy five iron, and we fly
the green. We say, what the heck I hit that?
I've hit that fire iron way farther than because you
relax and you let yourself get that club all the
way back and all the way through because you weren't
trying to hit it. You just want he swung the club.
You know. There's a lot to that, you know, And
and unfortunately we get that driver and I hand. All
of a sudden, you see their jaws tightening up. And
that's not it wasn't intended that. What I tell my boys,
the driver is a placement club, not a distance club.
It's a place. It's a club to place the ball
on the fairway where you've got a good angle to
the green. That's all it is. Don't buy into you've
got to hit a three fifty or three forty or
three thirty or any of those numbers. Let that happen. Fine.
If you can do that, fine, but you don't try
to make it happen because you're just going to you're
gonna get handsy, you're gonna get your arms ahead of
your body, and you're gonna hit it all over the place.
And you know, without naming guys on tour, there's a
couple of guys that win a tournament. The next week,
you know they're at the very bottom because they're all
over the place. So when they're timing that big swing,
they're okay, but they can't do it every week. And
then you got the same guys in the middle of
the pack every single week, and then every now and
then then they break through. But when they don't win,
they don't drop to the very bottom. They're always up
in contention. And those are the guys that are in
control of that club hit. They're not out there trying
to hit it three fifty right now.
Speaker 2: That's an excellent point. Pick a spot in the fairway
and get there. Don't and be fair to yourself, don't
try to crush it. Just try to get to your spot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just all you're trying to do is set the
whole up. That's what the driver does is sets the
whole off of the next shot. Put it a little
bit on the left center of the fairway, so you're
coming in at the right angle. You're not hitting over
a bunk or whatever. I mean. Hogan looked at the
faraway and quadrants, and he picked out a quadrant and
put it there. Now, you know, he was pretty special
about hitting the golf ball. But if you're if you've
cut everything, then get over to the far right of
the tee and aim it to the far left of
the fairway and let it cut back into the fairway.
That's why you're using the whole ferway. Aim it to
the right edge of the fairway and let your draw
work in the into the fairway. Now you're using the
whole fairway. What a lot of people do. They stand
in the middle of the tee and they hit it.
They're trying to hit it right straight down the middle.
So if they push it, it's going off the ferry.
If they pull it, it's going off the ferry because
they're only using half of the fairway. You understand what
I mean by that, Yeah, and so we In most cases,
you don't stand in the middle of the tee. You
either stand on the left side or the right side,
based on the shape, on the shape of your of
your drive. You know, I hit a little cut. Some
people hit a little draw uh or if my typical
shot cut or my typical shot draws, and then I'll
play that with the driver. I'm I'm I'm gonna position
myself on the tee to take advantage of the whole
pharaweh instead of half of it. So early on.
Speaker 2: In the last episode when we were talking about you
know that everybody's swing is unique and it's you know,
it's really all about being square at contact. Correct, that's correct, okay,
And so there is no perfect swing, is this what
we're saying?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that's not possible. That's why the fairways are forty
to fifty yards wide and so forth, because there always
is going to be a little variancid impact, a little open,
a little closed. The more connected and the more rotational
you are in your golf swing, the more that you're
going to bring the club fairly consistently to the ball,
and you're going to you'll know where the club head is.
That's a big key is knowing where the club hit is.
So if you're rolling your forearms over trying to hit
a golf ball, there's no way to know to feel
where it is, you know, But when you're when you're
rotating your body and that's pulling the arms, and the
arms are connected to the body. Then the arms feel
like a lever connected to a gear, and as you
turn the lever, the lever moves moves forward, so you're
never swinging your arms freely. All this stuff about a
free arm swing, it should be in the comic books
because it isn't reality. The freer you armed swing, the
more the club has a chance to be open or closed.
We don't want that.
Speaker 2: Well, Tony, once again, you've been a wealth of information.
I so enjoy speaking with you. Thank you so much
for your time to these last two episodes. And again, people,
if Tony intrigues you at all, there's a lot of
calls to action that we've gone through. One is make
sure that you check out the video, the Golf Smarter TV,
the video that we did together, because it's going to
teach you a lot in a short amount of time.
Speaker 3: Well, Fred, I'd like to just close with one thing. Please,
for the people out there that have listened to this.
You know there's a lot of pontificating going on, but
if you really want to get into this game, find
someone that really understands rotation and connection. If they're not
using those words to you and trying to get you
to hoist the club up the air and then bring
it down. You know, just run. Find somebody, just like
going to a doctor. Find somebody that understands the simplicity
of the golf swing. It isn't rocket science. It's really
kind of simplistic once you connect all the parts and
then just move them in a rotational move. If you
find someone like that and that's patient, you're going to
grow in the game and you're going to start enjoying
the game. And then go to your golf pro if
you belong to a club, and tell them a little
bit about why don't we set this golf course up
based on what the average guy hits it off the
tee and I think your membership will be very happy.
And you don't have to say we're moving it up.
Just put the tea in a place where you were
common said warrants it, and boy, I'll tell you what,
the game will be enjoyable for everybody at that club.
And you can make the golf course hard. You can
narrow the fairways with roughs, you can put the pin
in the funny positions so you don't have to worry
about the being tough enough