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