Speaker 1: Hi, This is Rick Patrick or for Laardel, Florida, and
I usually play it calling me West Golf Course.
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter Nerder four hundred and seventy four published on
February three, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: 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: Especially for the guys that are trying to break ninety.
There's a lot of simple things you can do to
get better. Some of the things I'd suggest for guys.
A simple thing like an impact bag is really really good,
even with the golf club. If you're really crazy about it,
just go to your local golf store. Get yourself a
seven nine, Maybe get a mold and grip put onto it,
or training grips some people might call them. Get yourself
like an impact bag. If you're at home, what you
can do is throw your bag in the backyard and
just push it around, make a few small swings, just
try to build up that feeling of what the correct
impact position is. If you start pushing the bag, it's
going to get your body angles better as well your
body and wrist angles. And also if you've got a mirror,
I get yourself in front of a mirror because what
I generally try and do. A lot of guys anyways,
when they come, they set up son't very good, so
I try and get them set up the correct way.
Obviously when they leave it probably feels a little foreign,
but it's like anything, if you do it enough, it
just becomes a new normal because you're gonna find with
golf the fields are always constantly changing, but visually it's
always going to look the same.
Speaker 2: Simple tools to breaking one hundred, ninety or eighty with
Josh Willard, this is Golf Smarter. Welcome to the Golf
Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 3: Josh, thanks very thanks for having me here today.
Speaker 4: Thanks for coming into the studio. This is great.
Speaker 2: We met just a few weeks ago out on the
driving range.
Speaker 4: Over at Pickoar Gap. That's correct, Yeah, and you're teaching
there now or that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I actually work at Pickcock Gap five days a week
and I work another day down in Alameter Chucker Rick
at Golf Complex.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I can tell you by your accent,
your local that's right. Yeah, No, originally from local to
Marine County.
Speaker 3: No, originally from Sydney, from Sydney, Australia and been in
the US for about four years.
Speaker 4: Now, okay, and would write you here? Where'd you leave?
Speaker 3: Before I came to America, I was actually working in
Austria in Lynz And before that I was working in
Singapore for three years. And then before that I played
on the tour for about eight years. Which tour I've
had status on the Australasian Tour, on the Asian Tour
and also on the South African.
Speaker 2: Really really and what are the differences between each tour?
Is it just another level up or I.
Speaker 3: Think with those three tours maybe the Asian Tour possibly
slightly stronger because there's more events, there's a bit more money.
The Australian Tool of the Australasian Tours, it's known probably
they've lost quite a few events compared to say fifteen
years ago. But they're all really sort of tours that
get the guys starting tour, to get you onto the
PGA Tour or to get you onto the European Tour.
Speaker 4: And you obviously left Australia a while ago.
Speaker 3: That's right. I left about thirteen.
Speaker 2: Years ago, okay, all right, and this was to pursue
a career in professional golf.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I played for eight years before that.
I was actually an apprentice golf pro. I got my
PGA status in Australia, my Class A status, and then,
like most guys when they're sort of twenty one twenty two,
when you finish your Class A, you want to go
try and play golf professionally. So I did that for
about eight years, and then I got to around twenty nine.
I figured that I sort of wasn't working out how
I hope it would, and I had to pursue something else.
So I really enjoyed teaching, so I thought to go
down that route. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Very different skill set teaching than being a player.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. You know, I guess with well, because he being.
Speaker 2: A player, you're in your own head, right, that's true,
and teacher you've got to bring it out.
Speaker 4: That's got to be able to articulate it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: So what is the hardest part to make that transition?
Speaker 3: I guess it's just trying to get the knowledge on
how to instruct people, how to get people better. And
I guess that just takes time. You sort of like
any skill, you've got to develop it over over years.
And I guess I've been doing this for now thirteen years,
so I feel like I'm getting better every year at it,
and you know, communicating and just getting people to improve.
Speaker 2: How are you able to translate your thoughts into instruction.
I mean, let me get you were probably a natural
player growing up. You just immediately were starting to play
really well when you were a kid and fell in
love with the game.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think I was introduced to the game through
my grandfather. And in Australia when I was a kid,
you couldn't you couldn't join a golf club til fourteen.
You could still get onto the public golf courses and play,
but if you want to join like a golf club,
you have to be at least forteing to start.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So being a strong player as a
kid and wanting to succeed and then going to the
different tours and then going into teaching. To me, it's
natural players are not necessarily the best instructors. I've always
thought like the best teachers were the C students, not
the A plus students, because the A students it comes
naturally to them, it's easy, and they don't understand how
people struggle with whatever they're teaching.
Speaker 4: So do you have do you get.
Speaker 2: Frustrated when you're instructing and people just aren't getting what
you're trying to You're trying to teach them because you
think it's so obvious.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess as an instructor, you have to have
some patience. Yeah, you're dealing with people that maybe play
golf once a week or once a month or once
a year, or they're just starting up. But you know,
as far as the instructions concerned, I really feel that
you've got to keep it really simple and for people
to get better, I just feel that you've just got
to keep it really basic. And to me, the way
that the tour players play, they've got maybe more flawed.
You know, they've got a lot of compensations in their
swings and they can make that work. But for the
average person, for me, they need something simpler. You know
that they need to have, you know, less motion to
it all to make it repeat.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting idea is how the pro players. The
better players can adjust from shot to shot on their swing,
and yet the amateur has to really learn how to
have a swing. And then you go out on the
course and these guys who are struggling to break ninety
or going oh I knew what I did wrong then,
or yeah, I got to shape this one around the tree.
Speaker 4: It's like, really, you have that shot in your back? Really?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 4: Come on? Really?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I guess. I guess for the professionals
that obviously got more time to work at it, they're
a lot more talented, really, they're or more athletic than
say the average person. Whereas the average guys, it's I
guess he's out there to try and have some fun
and and you know he's going to be a little uh,
a little more all over the place, I guess, as
far as you know, off the tee, and he's gonna
have to try and create shots to get back get
the ball back into playing. Yeah, and that's that's that's it.
That's why I guess goes so difficult.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, what what is the So let's let's
talk about your instruction a bit. What do you like
to focus on with Let's say somebody who's who's been
playing the game for a while. They're struggling and they
don't know what it is that's preventing them from breaking ninety.
You know, they're in the upper nineties, they're occasionally in
the broad round, they're in the low hundreds, but they're
mid and upper nineties, and they just can't get down
to ninety. And if they break ninety, they it's like
that would be a major event in their golfing career.
Speaker 3: Well, I feel it with most people. You know, probably
they're the short game lets them down a little bit.
You know, for a lot of people, when most people
come for lessons, what I find is they want to
learn how to hit the long shots, the long game.
And then when you talk to them about their game,
and if they come consistently, you sort of say, well,
are you spending any time on your short game? And
most of the time the answer is no, not really.
But you know, other people they can come and you know,
they sort of chip and put okay, but they're long
games rotten, you know, So it just depends on the individual.
But I find, you know, normally, if their long game's written,
if you can sort of fix up their long game
a bit as well. They can drop you know, quite
a few shots. Just depends on on the individual.
Speaker 4: I guess the long game being after tea.
Speaker 3: Well, just just in general with when you've got a long,
you know, the long game. As far as the consistency
of it, you know, most people tend to fight the
right side of the golf course for the right hander,
and I think a lot of that just stems from
the starts and their concepts of where the power comes from.
Speaker 2: Let's let's let me take you on that right there,
and let's expand on that.
Speaker 4: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, for I guess, the way the game's
traditionally been taught is is that you know, you're here
in the US. We've got the Golf Channel, and that's
sort of like the new and YouTube, I guess, and
that's like the new golf magazines. You know that the
golf magazines screwed. I feel sort of have messed people
up a bit for a long time. But you know,
the way the game's traditionally been taught is that you know,
you've got to You've got to get it, get yourself
over the ball, get yourself comfortable, and then try and
make this massive, big turn and for most people when
they try and make, the more they try and turn,
the more out of position they get. And then once
they're out of position, they're trying to recover to get
back into the right position so they can hit the ball.
And the problem with golf is we don't have a
lot of time. You know, the club's traveling at seventy
to one hundred miles an hour, and you don't have
a lot of time to try and match it all
up and hit the ball straight. And that's why I
feel that a lot of people struggle with it.
Speaker 2: Off the tee a bigger problem to swing or the
club selection.
Speaker 3: Well, I think if people were a little more conservative
with the selection, you know. I mean, of course some
you know, it depends on the course, but people tend
to gravitate, gravitate towards the driver and they feel like
that's the that's the fun club to hit. But you
know a lot of the times they.
Speaker 4: Just really that's fun.
Speaker 3: Well it's I guess it all ends in tears a
lot of the time. But you know, if they sort
of maybe went towards like a three wood or a
five wood or even a hybrid off the tee and
sacrifice a little bit of distance. Sort of their strategy
was a little better and just got the ball and
to play and sacrifice the twenty or thirty yards you know. Okay,
they might have as long as second shot, but they
probably find that they're playing the ball more off the
short grass than in the rough and in the trees.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And then they get themselves into the rough and
in the trees, going oh I can get there from here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, they just aren't realistic, you know, get they
when they get the ball out of pause and then
they're trying to get it back into position. And you know,
most people, they're playing a shot that's really I might
pull off ten percent of the time instead of so
just taking the medicine and chopping the ball back out
onto the fairway.
Speaker 4: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: You call it taking your medicine and getting back in
the fairway. And yet it took me a while to realize.
But once I started figuring out, if I quote unquote
took my medicine and just put the ball back in
the fairway, get it into play, I can get the
next shot onto the green.
Speaker 4: Okay, now I'm putting.
Speaker 2: If I two putt, I bogie the hall, all right.
So but if I see a slide opening, I'm over
on the side there, I'm the right. I'm in between
trees and rough and there's a tall tree in front
of the green, and there's a bunker in front of
the green as well. I mean, there's all these things
that are in my way. But I think, but it's
only one hundred and thirty yards. I can reach that, right,
But there's all these obstacles in the way. And I
go for it, and of course I hit a tree.
Then I have to go under another one that I'm
in the bunker. Now all of a sudden, I'm putting
for a seven. You know, if I to pay it
takes me five strokes. Where are we not thinking it through?
Speaker 4: Of like what are the consequences here? Oh?
Speaker 3: Definitely I feel that, you know, you know, if you
looked at that situation, say, like, if you're going to
invest money, you know you wouldn't put your money into
something that you feel it you got a ten percent
chance of making money out of, would you know? You'd
definitely be a little more conservative with you the way
you think. But you know, I guess maybe that's the
attraction with golf you're feeling that. You know, you watch
golf on t you see Phil Mickelson play and he's
sort of all over the place and he hits this
miraculous shot. So we all feel that we can do that,
you know, and it's obviously that's fun when it comes off.
But when it doesn't come off, then, you know, then
we look a bit silly and we rack up a
big number.
Speaker 2: Big number, again and again and again. I love to
emphasize getting fitted for clubs. I know that when I
got fitted for my driver, it really made a big
difference in the game because I started finding out that
by hitting more fairways, I'm definitely in position for more pars.
Whether I have to chip up, you know, close to
the pen and try to put in one, or I'm
on the green in regulation, it really does make a
huge difference when you're playing from the fairway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, you know, golf's much easier off the shorter
grass than when you're in the rough. And like you
said about getting fitted for the driver, people tend to
have generally need a lot more loft on their driver
than what they've got. You know, people like to maybe
it's a bit of a macho thing. But people like
to have like a nine or ten degree driver, whereas
I feel if people had more like an eleven or
twelve degree driver, Okay, if they really had a good one,
it may not go as far, but it takes a
bit more spin off the ball, well, actually takes a
side spin off the ball. Ball gets a bit more
up in the air. It's a bit easy to hit.
It's easy to get the ball into play.
Speaker 2: We've already mentioned a couple times of hitting it far,
hitting it far, which seems to be the great lure.
Speaker 4: We did an.
Speaker 2: Episode a couple of years ago that we called give
me ten feet closer than ten yards farther any day
of the week? Run are we putting the what is
that attraction of watching the ball fly in the air
for as long as we can and not realizing and
not analyzing At the end of the round.
Speaker 4: It's like, Wow, that really was awful.
Speaker 2: I hit my driver twelve times today or fourteen times today,
and I only made two fairways.
Speaker 4: That this isn't good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I guess that's the way the game's going,
isn't It's all about power, whether you're talking about golf
or tennis or any of those other sports. It's you know,
the guys hitting the ball.
Speaker 4: Further and only the guys on tour.
Speaker 3: Well that's true, but we see the guys on tour,
they're the guys that are driving the whole business run.
Speaker 2: Well, are they driving it into the ground with that?
You know, they were making golf once. Once there was
this boom of golf course construction going on in the
country in the early part of the century, right, and
now nothing's being built in this country because they were
making them longer and longer and longer, and that only
appeals to a handful of select players.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, definitely, I think the courses are getting too long.
You know, if people played off the right t's. You know,
Nicholas had a thing out a couple of months ago,
maybe six months ago, we talked about you know, I
saw an ad on television here in the States and
he was talking about play from them from the te's.
That fits you, and for a lot of people, they
tend to want to play from the back teas. But
I think they'd have a lot more fun if they
sort of moved up and played more off the members
t's or off you know, the forward tees. Yeah, some
golf course have like a senior tea or have like
a member's tea, but people tend to gravitate towards the
back teas.
Speaker 2: We've got to give We've got to stop giving those
teas names, because that's part of the stigma that I'm
not blaming the ladies teas.
Speaker 4: They're not they're red.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: Well, they're just the red tea's.
Speaker 2: And they're you know, and I keep going back, and
I have this conversation with my friends all the time
when we're out playing. It's like, do you are you
here to score as low as you possibly can? Then
why not play up a little closer? What's the big deal?
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, definitely. You know, if you're.
Speaker 4: Not a scratch golfer, friends.
Speaker 3: That's right. You know, if you if you're if you're
hitting like an eight or a nine iron in instead
of a five iron, it's going to be a lot
more fun, and it's going to be more scorable. If
it's more scorable, you're going to want to play more. So,
you know, you're more fun if you're shooting lower school.
Speaker 2: I'd much rather hit an eight or nine iron than
a five or six any day of the week on
my second shot, yeah.
Speaker 3: I'll go for those.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I just have a lot more confidence in
that shot, and I keep working on the five and
the six, and then I get out there and it's like, no,
this is I'm feeling shaky about this.
Speaker 4: This is not good.
Speaker 3: No, definitely, you know, like like that's that's probably the
biggest criticism with a lot of people is the new
golf courses that they are building. They're tending to get
longer and longer and longer, and you know, we're struggling
to get people to come to golf, and you know,
if they can make it a little bit easier by
making it a little bit shorter, I think it. You know,
you probably keep a lot more people.
Speaker 2: The other thing it's it seems to be so obvious,
is that people really don't know the distance they hit
each club. They have an idea of what they've hit
on the longest shot they've ever had with that club
and use that as the standard. But that I think
creates more problems than people are willing to admit. Well,
people tend to get to sense when you when you're
talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you know when you talk to people, say
how far i'd hit a seven on and they say, well,
I hit one hundred and seventy yards.
Speaker 4: Well, no, you don't.
Speaker 3: Well maybe if you hit your absolute best one behind
Yeah exactly, that's a firm like a runway. But and
yeah's you've got a fifty mile an hour win behind you,
like you said. But you know, people, the great probably
the best tip you can give anyone is just take
an extra club. You know, people tend to always under
club you know, especially if you played a lot of
pro ams in my day, and the biggest thing is
they're always they're always under clubbing.
Speaker 4: Take an extra club.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about your short game intensive sessions that you offer.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, walk me through that. What does that mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I do them up at peacock gap and
down an alimeter and basically it lasts for about three hours.
And what we try and do is we cover all facets.
We try and cover the putting, the chipping, pitching, bunker shots.
And that's really when people come. They can really pick
up shots quite quickly. There.
Speaker 4: Pick up strokes are knocked down on your.
Speaker 3: Skill exactly because you know, a lot of the time
they've just got the wrong concepts with which club to use.
And which situation, And if your listeners out there, probably
your best tip you can give peoples, it's try and
kick the ball on the ground. You know. The club
that people tend to gravitate towards is the sand wedge
and the lob wedge, And I just find with those
clubs they're great in some situations, but when people pull
them out in every situation, that's when it gets it
gets a little trickier. You know, first you get hit
the ball quite precisely, and then when you've hit, if
you've hit a precisely, then you've got to land the
ball precisely as well. So if you can pull a
seven and eight iron out and just try and run
the ball along the ground, you know, it's still going
to fly a little bit, but it might fly maybe,
you know, depending on the situation, it might fly twenty
percent through the air and a percent along the ground,
you know, and you know you can mishit it there
a little bit more with a seven or eight iron,
and the ball is going to want to release up
to the hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's pretend we're here now. Peacock Gap is a
good example because it's a short game specific kind of course.
I mean, if you it's not a long course, but
if you don't have a good short game, you're going
to struggle on that course.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you know that. We've got a new greenkeeper in
there at the moment, and the last few months he's
he's really turned it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, hude, you got him. You got him up from
the Metal Club, which is quite the coup.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right. He was the number two up there
and he's come down and he's he's really sped the
greens up. He's lowering the fairways a little bit as well.
And I think once the summer comes around it gets
a little warmer, it's going to be a lot more playable.
Speaker 4: It's in great shape right now, it is.
Speaker 3: He's really he's really turned it around. And like you said,
the golf course itself, it's a fun golf coast to play.
It's not a long golf course, but it's not some flat.
It's easy to walk and like you said before, you
can have a lot of eight and nine pitching wages
into the hole. So it's quite school where you can
sort of the greens are a little tricky maybe, but
you know that sort of balances it out as far
as you know. That's that's that's the thing I like
about it. It's not very long, but then it's a bit
of a challenge once you get around the greens.
Speaker 2: The other thing that's nice about playing Peacock is there's
not a lot of uphill, downhill lies. You know, the
ball being above or below your feet.
Speaker 3: That's right, she gets It's it's a pretty flat golf coast.
Speaker 4: Pay Yeah, yeah, it is. That helps a lot.
Speaker 2: Well, let's say we're on a par for our second
shot leaves us four yards off the green. Were but
we're in the rough. It's not it's not the false
front leading up to the green. We're all in the rough.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 2: There's nothing between us and the green itself except the
tall grass. And I see more and more people reaching
in for what you were saying is the pitch and
the sixty degree and they try to scoop under it
and give it a nice loft onto it, and they're
not that precise. And why don't we understand? Why don't
we get that? And for me, what I would do
in a situation like that is I would take an
maybe a seven or an eight iron and just putt
with it. So if I do a putting motion. It's
just going to get over that rough, gonna get through
and over it. But then it's gonna roll.
Speaker 3: Is this exactly? It just depends on where the pin's located.
But if you got yeah, if you've got a little
bit of room to work with, definitely pull out. You nine,
you're eight, you're seven on Like you said, almost feel
like it's a big putting stroke. But the difference is
she's going to hit down on a little bit more bulls,
kind a little flutter, it's going to release up to
the hole and you know, it's just a more high
percentage shot, you know, then pulling out's maybe people tend
to gravitate towards the sandwich of the love witch.
Speaker 2: And you said hitting down on it versus.
Speaker 3: Scoop, but I yes, you might. Well it depends on
the lie as well. That's the other sure thing with it.
But you know, if the ball is sort of sitting okay,
you know, just just sort of make sure you hit
down on a little bit. With the chip shots, people
tend to sort of try and help them up a
little bit.
Speaker 2: And where's the weight on our body? Are we leaning
into it or are we holding.
Speaker 3: My preference is I mean, depending on the on the
on the situation. But normally I try and get people
pretty level. I just feel that they're a little more level.
They tend to sort of brush it off. But it
just depends on on the severity of the life. It's
down deep, you know, it's down deep. Maybe you want
to lean a touch more foot towards the left side
for the right hand and feel like you're going to
hit down on it because you're sort of going to
get sort of chop it out and get the ball
up onto the green. But yeah, I mean that's that's
sort of the direction I try and do with most people.
Speaker 4: Anyway, What do you find to be.
Speaker 2: Not the easiest shot to teach, but the easiest shot
for your student to comprehend and like the light bulb
goes ah, I get it now, that makes sense to
me and I can do it. What type of shot
do you find that works for most of your students?
Speaker 3: Well, I guess the short game. You can get the
most pop, you can get people, you can fix them
the quickest with the short game. You know, whether it's
like we're talking about before pulling out the you know,
the sandwiche and you've sort of give them a seven
and eight iron and say, you know, try try this
for you. Drop a few balls down and try this.
You can really you know, I get people I teach
and they come back and they say, well, you know
that tip you game with the seven or eight iron's fantastic.
You know, I'm saving so many shots. You know, before
I was like sculling, hitting the ball thin with a
sand wage that's going across the other side of the green.
Now if I mishit it with the seven eye, it
just it doesn't. It's sort of it's not so exaggerated
as far as when.
Speaker 2: It you know, oh you said the magic word sculling. Okay,
so you've just won the prize. As we're recording this,
the Phoenix, the Waste Management Phoenix Open is going on,
and yesterday, the opening day of the tournament, Tiger makes
his triumphant return. Well, we were the media wanted to
be a triumphant return. He obviously was looking, you know,
a little bit stale, but his not that I want
to talk about his score or anything, but his play
around the green looked more.
Speaker 4: Like someone shooting in the nineties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, he's interesting. Watch, wasn't it. You know,
he's it's almost like he's got the yips with he's chipping.
He he was trying to keep the lot of the
situations he was in, he was trying to keep the
ball low, keeping it on the ground. How he would
try and just get a guy that's shooting sort of
between one hundred and sort of trying to break that
in the magical ninety number. He was pulling out like
a seven and a nine or an eight or whatever
it was, and he was you could see he was
trying to get on the ground quite quickly. And you
know somebody who'struggling with the chipping, that's sort of a
lot of the time. How I'll try and play the shots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, either you know, he came up short, he went,
he sculled one and just rolled right over the other
side of the green. It was really quite I mean once, okay,
he's stale once, but he did it multiple times.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, we saw back at the Tiger Challenge in
December that he was really fighting his short game. He's chipping. Now,
whether that's just something because he's trying to change his
swing and or it's something more sinister. As far as
you know, he's he's he's sort of getting to that
age you know on the tour they call golf. Once
he hit forty, they caught the black hole for most guys,
you know, they sort of their game tends to sort
of deteriorate and and and sort of sort of not
be as sharp as what it was before that.
Speaker 4: He hit that a long time ago.
Speaker 3: It feels like, well, yeah, he hasn't sort of before
before the the Thanksgiving incident. I guess he's he's he's
his game hasn't mean the same since.
Speaker 2: No, No, this is a game we like to play
here a lot. If Tiger called you, I mean, he
seems to be trying the lots of coach. He brought
down another coach again. If Tiger were to call you
and say, I need your help this week, what would
you talk to him about?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's a tough one. You know, Tiger's
obviously he's probably the most talented guy that's maybe ever
played the game of golf. So, oh, what would I
do with him? Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to let you get away with Yeah,
being stumped on this one, it is.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, Well, you know, he he's always had the
club a bit stuck and behind him, you know, so
explained well, you know, for most of the amateurs, they
tend to come too much from the outside and they
come over the top and they take big divots with Tiger,
and you're gonna find with the better players, they tend
to get the club more caught behind them, so it's
sort of the club's coming too much from behind their body.
And you know, that's why he's always sort of blocked it,
or especially with the driver, he's always he's always struggled
to hit the ball straight. You know, at this point
in time, for me, he's got too much turn too quickly,
And that's sort of a little bit of his old
patterns with what he was doing. He's working with Sean
Foley and the more the sort of stack and tilt
or the golf machine stuff or whatever you want to
call it, and he's sort of going away from that.
It seems like he's going more back towards you know,
his oldest swings when he was sort of back in
the two thousand, two thousand and one. You know, i'd
sort of just work on the direction of his turn.
I feel like he's got a lot of turn like
I said, a lot of turn really early.
Speaker 4: He's so flexible, he's so strong.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's very athletic, isn't he. You know he can
do he can, you know he can. As we've all seen,
he does some amazing things with a golf call.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really he really does.
Speaker 2: Another thing that you offer at least that on your website,
which is Josh Willard Goolf dot com w I L
L A R D correct Josh Willard Goolf dot com.
If you want to check it out, if you know,
you can give him a call, talk to him on
the phone, or you can even book a lesson with Josh.
You talk about on course lessons in addition to you know,
private lessons, short game on course and one day golf schools.
On course lessons, what do you find the most common
mistakes when you're on course lessons with with let's let's
talk about that mid handicap upper eighties nineties player.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just course management a lot we talked about before.
I just find that, you know, people are sort of
grabbing the driver every chance they can. But you know,
to me, if they pulled out a five wood or
a three wood and just sort of sacrificed a little
bit of distance, but got the ball and to play.
And then also around the greens, you know that they
just they just they course management isn't very good. Yeah,
Like I said before, they'll tend to go for shots
that's maybe it's a ten percent shot. They might pull
it off ten percent of the time.
Speaker 2: What about for the better players? Now we're talking about
guys who are single digit or you know, a ten eleven,
twelve down there. They shoot in the low eighties regularly.
Occasionally they'll break into seventies or even shoot in the
mid seventies on a regular basis. When you take them
out on course lesson what do you find to be
the issue?
Speaker 3: Normally they're not too bad.
Speaker 4: Again, it just obviously yeah, well that's right.
Speaker 3: It's more when you sort of get down to that
sort of number where they're shooting sort of low eighties,
it's to me it's more of a technical stuff and
i'd work more of that on the range. I mean,
you can take them on the golf course as well,
but I find they'll get more bang for their buck
if they're if you're working on their swing or working
on their short game. Normally, if they're shooting sort of
high low eighties to sort of mid eighties. They're sort
of their cost management isn't terrible. Again, they could probably
pull a few three woods and five woods instead of
pulling the driver, but they're just not as I guess,
they're a bit more sensible as far as the clubs
that they are pulling most of the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they probably know they're just as much better.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, they're more consistent golfers, so they're hitting the numbers,
are a little more consistent consistently. But what you will find
is again that they're always probably a lot of the
time taking They could always take an extra club.
Speaker 4: Everybody can.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, you know, I think even with well, I
would say with the two appliers, but with the amateurs,
they're always under clubbing.
Speaker 4: We're always talking about the amateurs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all about the amateurs. They can go to
the Golf channel and watch the pros and the single
digit guys. They can focus on that, but that's not
where we are. We're talking about breaking ninety and hopefully
breaking eighty sometime.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what we're about here.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, We're always talking about the amateurs. Yeah, it's all
about the amateurs.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what we're about.
Speaker 3: Here, absolutely, So you know you're gonna find with most suppliers,
you know, especially for the guys that are trying to
break break ninety. There's a lot of simple things you
can do to get better. Some of the things I'd
suggest for guys is just a simple thing like an
impact bag is really really good, even with the golf,
with the golf club. If you're really crazy about it,
go out. Just go to your local golf store. Keep
yourself a seven nine, maybe get a molded grip put
onto it. You know that they're just really to me,
they're the only decent training aids out there that you
can buy, and they're probably the oldest and the best ones.
Speaker 4: And these are mold you said, molded grip.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like a molded grip. So if you
went into a gold shop and you see if you've
got a training grips some people might call them, get
yourself a training grip, get yourself like an impact bag.
If you're at home, what you can do is throw
your bag in the backyard and just push it around,
make a few small swings, just try and build up
that feeling of what the correct impact position is. And
you know, fine, if you start pushing the bag, it's
going to get your body angles better as well, your
body and wrist angles. And if you can do that,
and if you you know and all so, if you've
got a mirror, get yourself in front of a mirror,
because what you're going to find is when you're training,
when you're trying to I always say to my students,
you know, they come, we video them, we try and
use some models, some other top players, and then when
they go away, I always try and email their swings
to them, some pitchures, and probably the last thing I
say to them is get yourself in front of a mirror,
right because what I generally try and do a lot
of guys anyways, when they come, their setups aren't very good,
so I try and get them set up the correct way,
and obviously when they leave it probably feels a little
foreign to some people, but it's like anything, if you
do it enough, it just becomes a new normal. And
if they can get themselves in front of the mirror,
because you're going to find a golf the fields are
always constantly changing, but visually it's always going to look
the same. Right. So if you can get the correct
set up, you know you're going to find you get
the sequence will get better once you start trying to
swing the club. So to me, the start positions the
most important because that's going to set the sequence to
how everything begins. So you know, for example, you know,
if you if you haven't got the right body shape,
I'm sort of big on trying to get people get
their body angles correct at the beginning, So my preference
would be trying to get people more into like an
impact position at the start. Okay. So if you can
get that a bit more of an impact position at
the start, then all you really got to do is
just pull your arms back fully, swing your arms back,
and that's going to if you've got the right angles
at the beginning, that's going to pull your body and
make your body turn the right way, okay, because the
biggest thing with a lot of people is they don't
start the right way and then they're trying to turn,
and then once they're trying to turn, then their bodies
out of position and then they've got to somehow get
back into the right position to hit it. So you know,
you've really for the right hand or it's going to
feel like their left sides a little bit higher than
their right side, and that being you know, if you
take your grip, if you, if you, if you've got
you know, obviously we're all if we're a right hand,
you've got your left hand on top, you've got your
right hand on the bottom. So the left side's got
to be a little bit higher. To me, you can't
really set up in that sort of static, very straight
looking bodies which most people tend to have. You know,
like we talked about the start, you know, it's it's
got to be a simpler way of doing it. And
I just feel the way it's traditional way golf's tour
is that it's people have to move a lot hit
the ball, and that's why the game is so difficult
because they're trying to because they've got to move a lot.
It's very hard to coordinate it all and hit it straight.
Speaker 2: I'll get nasty letters if I don't ask this question.
We talked about your your attempts and your time on
various tours.
Speaker 4: What's the most amount of success that you had.
Speaker 3: How did you do well? You know, I didn't really
have a lot of success on the main Tours. You know,
I played, I played, I played, you know, I played
most of the major events in Australia. I think I
made one cut down there. I played a lot on
the secondary tours in Australia, pro am tours as well. Yeah,
I probably won about I don't know, eight or ten
events on the on the secondary tour with the pro ams,
you know, I mean, I love playing golf, and you know,
I probably, like most instructors, were all failed players. You know,
we all we all got into golf and we want
to be tour pros. But there's only very small percentage
of guys that actually probably two or three percent of
guys that make a living out of it.
Speaker 2: And even for somebody with that kind of game and
that kind of confidence, you still struggle to make the cut.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, with golf, I mean, you know the thing
when I was playing, I was playing in the mid
nineties to sort of the early two thousands, and we'd
play like the Australian Open and Greg Norman would be
there or you know, obviously there's a lot of top
Australian players that now play on the PGA Tour, and
those guys would play all year on the Nationwide Tour
or the now it's theweb dot Com Tour or the
PGA Tour, and you know they're probably playing twenty to
thirty weeks a year, and then you're coming back and
they're playing the Australian Tour and you know they might
come down play three or four events, and if you
play well enough, you might get a chance to play
four or five events throughout the Australian summer. And it's
pretty hard to compete with those guys if they're playing
every week four round tournaments. You're just playing one two
day events. But you know, when you get to those
those televised events. The big thing I think the amateurs
don't realizes how much how much tougher the golf courses play.
They play a lot firmer, they play a lot faster,
The rough's a lot deeper. You know you're going to
find that if you're off a little bit, it gets
everything gets amplified, right Whereas if we went out and
played here today or at Peacock Gap, you're going to
find the conditions are a lot softer. The greens are
probably a lot slower than what they would be if
you're playing a too event on TV. So you know
you find if you if you hit a straight shot,
it tends you tend to get penalized a lot more
for it.
Speaker 4: Fascinating. I love it.
Speaker 2: Let's wrap it up with the helpful tip up based
on today's conversation.
Speaker 3: Okay, well fred a really simple tip that I would
try and give people. When people are over the ball,
they tend to move a lot, They tend to try
and shift their weight. They tend to they just tend
to overrotate because it all feels like power. It feels
like they can hit a long way. Simplest tip by
try and give people would be to get your seven nine,
hut yourself on the driving range, put your feet together
and just try and hit a few shots with your
feet together. What that's going to do, It's going to
synchronize everything up a little bit more. It's going to
make everything work together a little bit more. As I
said before, people tend to move about a lot, and
when they move about a lot, it tends to make
it really complicated and it makes it hard to repeat