Speaker 1: Hi, This is Gary EMUs from Sale Morgan and I
play at Creekside Golf Course. This is Golf Smarter number
ninety seven eight.
Speaker 2: Could you go out and play golf and make a
commitment to being a great playing partner? And it sounds whimsical,
tree hugging it up and all the rest of it.
You know, the win win with that is that you
go out and if you're intending to be a great
playing partner, you're probably going to be a little bit
less selfish and self absorbed, a bit more self less.
And if we're self less, perhaps we're not so much
in our own head trying to figure everything out to
the nth degree. As we're going around, we're a little
bit more engaged with other people. My experience is when
people have experimented with that as a commitment, they generally
play better. And the worst thing that happens with that,
fred you actually enjoy the round more because you do
genuinely engage with other people.
Speaker 1: Make a commitment to being a great playing partner. The
benefits will amaze you. With Carl Morris, this is Golf Smarter,
sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to
help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf
Smarter podcast. Carl.
Speaker 2: Hello, Fred, it's wonderful to see you and great to
be back. Always enjoy our conversations.
Speaker 1: Always enjoy the conversations. Always learn so much from you.
And I was looking back, this is at least the
fifth time that you've been on. The first time was
back and we've been doing this since twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Wow, wow, it was as many times as I'm a
repeater Fender.
Speaker 1: Then y as you are. But also I don't know
if it started after we started doing this, But you
started your own podcast that's doing quite well, and you've
been You've got a lot of episodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think I'm way behind you, Fred, But
I've done about six and a half years now, which
is which is not a bad effort. I think, as
we were saying before we started, there's an awful lot
of people who start podcast, but to keep to that
commitment weekly is a fair ol task to stick to,
isn't it. But I don't know about you. I've got
to the point now where I would feel incredibly guilty
if I didn't do the things that I needed to
do to put it out week but week by week
and above anything else, right, I just genuinely enjoy doing
what we're doing here because I mean I'm a coach
first and foremost, but I mean that's quite a lonely
place to be at times. You know, you just go
about your own business and you see your own clients,
but to share ideas with other people, I just find
that it's a wonderful hobby.
Speaker 1: Really well, I'm very flattered by looking down the list
of people that you've featured on your podcast called The
Mind Caddy, which I think is an incredible name, and
there's a lot of folks that we've shared.
Speaker 2: I think Jim Waldron is probably the one who's been
on most of many of your shows, and it was
a guy called Justin Tango. I don't know who's been
who's been on your podcast, but if you haven't had
him on, he's a wonderful coach in Asia. And he
actually introduced me to to Jim and we've really we
really hit it off. We've become kindred spirits. Really. I
can sit and talk with Jim with Jim and then
two always disappears very very quickly.
Speaker 1: Very quickly, and Justin was on here, and I think
I was the one that introduced them.
Speaker 2: The Jim Waldron was it really really?
Speaker 1: I think so right, But that doesn't matter. But Jane's story,
John Sherman, Raymond Pryor, Scott Fassett, Fred Shoemaker, Gary Nick.
Of course, what you bring him wherever you go, I
would love to hear. You know, when I first started
approaching Fred Shoemaker to be on the podcast, he'd never
heard of podcasting and he didn't know what we were doing.
And he did a couple with me, but then he
was like, man, I'm not so I was so excited
to see that he was on your show. Share with
me if you will. Some of the teachings that Fred
is doing now, were, you know, versus fifteen eighteen years
ago when I had him. I'm sure it's advanced because
he's so thoughtful.
Speaker 2: I think Fred, eventually we'll go down and we'll look back.
As Fred had been one of, if not the most
influential coach in golf in the past twenty twenty five years.
I really don't think he's been given the mainstream credit
that he fully deserves, maybe because he's never been particularly
interested in being on tour and working with tour players
and things like that. He plays very much to the
beat of his own drum. But you know, funnily enough,
he was on last week's podcast on my podcast a
week before last, and I look forward to him with
a like like us. We sort of have an annual conversation.
It's a bit like it's a bit like Thanksgiving or
Christmas or whatever. It comes around once a year, and
he's gracious enough to come on. His wife, Joe, is
a lovely person. She facilitates that. But every time I
listen to Fred, every time I do a podcast with him,
I generally play it back three or four more times,
which I don't really do with too many other guests,
because there's so many wonderful insights there, and he is
such a deep thinker. I think for me, one of
the big things that has influenced my thinking is Spread's
idea that when you go out on the golf course
is how does the golf course occur to you? Does
the golf course occur to you as a place of
opportunity or is it a place of threat? And I
think for most people we've fallen into the trap of
the golf course unfortunately becoming a place of threat. And
if the golf courses occurring to you as a threat,
there's going to be a physiological response to that. So
you know, we can be trying to do all kinds
of things in our swing and work on all kinds
of stuff, but we're if we're physiologically threatened by the
environment called golf, we're probably not going to perform at
our best. And no amount of breathing techniques and things
like that, whilst they all have the value and the place,
it really is understanding how you are perceiving that environment,
how you're perceiving the game of golf, which I think
then lends itself to that key question that we probably
don't ask enough as golfers. Why do we play? Why
is it that we do this thing called golf? And
I think when I ask players that question you very
often they'll answer it. And I realized that the answer
is not their genuine answer, It's an answer that's been
given to them by other people. And when you press
them two or three levels down and you really get
to the root of white people play golf. I think
if you can tap into that, you can then create
something that you can go out and make a commitment
to you when you actually play golf, and I think
that's one of the roots to change the perception of
golf from being a threat to an opportunity.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, regarding his wife, Joe, the irony
of this is just too overwhelming for me. That my
wife's name is Joanne. I call her Joe, so it's
Fred and Joe, which is the same that he has.
And strangely enough, I don't know if you know, mister Rogers,
mister he was a TV he did kids shows for
decades in the United States, and his wife was Joanne
as well. Okay, that's enough of that. But just recently,
and boy must have come from the deepest part of
my mind with Fred Schumaker, but just recently I realized
that and came up with the idea of that the
tea box is a meeting place of uncertainty and the
green is a meeting place of hope, and that everything
in between is like, Okay, I'll see you there.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, at least i'll see you on the green
or I'll see you at the tea box, but everything
in the middle is like you're on your own. But yeah,
a meeting place of uncertainty is because when you step
up to the t it's like, where am I supposed
to go? What am I supposed to do? Which club
am I supposed to hit? I'm not sure I'm not
hitting this club. Well today I'm feeling oh, I'm feeling confident,
but there's that bunker in the middle. So definitely there's
a lot of uncertainty when you step up to the tee.
But when you're stepping up on the green, the putting green,
it's like, I hope I can do this. I think
I can do this. I want to do this, and
I'll know if not, I'll get close. Right, It's a
meeting place of hope.
Speaker 2: But I think the points on that really is to
me so relevant that when we can eventually and I
say eventually, make peace with the chaos and uncertainty, that
golf will always bring a great paradox kicks in that
when we're okay with the uncertainty, it tends to settle down.
I think most of us we start playing golf in
the early days, and you know, we we go out
there and we play and we're not creating too many
expectations certainly, if we play as a kid, we're just
we want to whack a golf ball and play. But
I think for most people that comes a point whereby
there's a sense of identity on the line when you
go and play golf, and a sense of your self worth,
and all those things tend to kick in, and then
what we tend to try and do is protect ourselves
from the feelings that bad shots give us. And the
search to protect ourselves from those feelings then tends to
fall into a couple of categories, the main one being technique.
That if I can just get the right technique, if
I can just be given the silver bullet, if somebody
can bestow me with the wisdom of putting my club
in a certain place, or swinging in a certain way,
or moving my body in a certain way, surely that
will protect me from poor golf. Well, I'm not sure
if any of your listeners can ring in and say
they've reached that promised land, But my experience is that
it's a fruitless search. Not saying you shouldn't work on
developing your skills, obviously that's a big part of it,
but nothing will ever protect us from hitting poor shots.
But actually, if we can get to the stage where
we can develop an acceptance for all outcomes, to me,
that is the genuine foundation of confidence. You know, Raymond
Pryor has been on both I shows, who's a great psychologist.
He talks about stable confidence, and you know, essentially stable
confidence only emerges from a willingness to accept the variety
of outcome.
Speaker 1: You mentioned about the acceptance of results, which is so hard.
Now we're talking. We're here to talk to amateur golfers,
to recreational golfers who definitely want to get better, they
definitely want to learn more, but there's this acceptance of Okay,
so I'm not going to be playing on the tour. Okay,
I may not win my club championship, but I still
want to enjoy the game. And what we have a
difficult time accepting as recreational golfers is that we make
bad shots and you get upset with ourselves. But then
if you watch the game at the highest level, you
see that they make mistakes as well, but they get
out of it. They don't carry it with them. It's
the acceptance of the results and then working from there
and their skill set as such. And let's not forget
that they do this seven days a week, ten hours
a day, okay, six days a week. Give them one
day off, but because they're traveling. But all golfers make
bad shots, no matter how good your your skills are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think when you begin to understand that, Freddie,
the acceptance isn't in any way resignation. We're not We're
not saying, for one minute, be happy, you know, We're
not saying for one minute stand there knocking out of
bounds and grin and say, well, it's a lovely day
and I'm glad to be alive, And that would be
insulting people's intelligence. It's a it's a willingness to embrace
the fact that the game is inherently incredibly difficult. You know,
when we're talking about impact, you know, if you're going
to knock it thirty forty yards off line, off the tea,
we're talking about a club face that's probably three degrees
closed at ninety five one hundred miles an hour. That
is infinitesimal degrees of difference between down the middle and
in the water or in the trees. But I think
then it comes into an area I've looked at an
awful lot these last few years is to really understand
that if you're going to get the best out of
your golfing experience, it's about focusing on devel up in
certain skills and then being able to access those skills
out on the golf course. Now, what does that mean?
Well to me, there's a big difference between focusing on
a skill and focusing on a form or a function
in the sense that most people get drawn into how
does the backswing look? Or is it too flat? Is
it too upright? Am I doing this with my hips right?
So we get drawn into the esthetics of the swing.
Now we can argue then endlessly about what is correct,
what is right, whose model's best, whose theory is best?
But ultimately, what is the only thing that we know
for certain that supplies information to the golf ball as
to what to do well? It's the golf club at
impact is the only thing that supplies the information to
the ball. The ball doesn't know whether you're in a
good mood or bad mood, whether you've been nice to
your wife, or you've been a good person, or you
anxious or calm or whatever. The only thing that the
golf board responds to is the physics and geometry of impact.
So surely we should be spending more time developing the
skill of influencing impact now, you know, shout out to
a friend and colleague, Adam Young John Sherman, who's been
on my show, who shares sort of similar ideas on
this that you know, if you are focusing your attention
on developing the skills and impact, I believe, then you're
at what I call the scene of the crime. You're
actually investigating what's gone on. You're not in the I
don't know. In the States, we have the board game
called Cludo where there's a murder in a house and
it's in different rooms, and you know, the murders in
the library with a dagger by whoever it is. You
need to be in the right room to study the crime,
and I think the right room to study the crime
for golf is impact. And you know the guys and
lady listening this winter time. Even if you if you
did something that sounds so simple, but you set off
on the quest to develop the skill of a centered strike.
As obvious as it sounds, just hitting more golf shops,
hitting more balls out the middle of the club would
transform your experience because flashing on out the middle of
the club just feels inherently good. And yet I would
I would guess an awful lot of people tuning in
are putting their attention almost anywhere other than impact, and
their attention is on almost everything other than what the
golf club is doing to influence impact, because there's so
much out there about how the body should move and
how the risks should move. I'm not saying that's not
a factor, but if you're not, if you're not clear
on your impact conditions, you're not developing skill. You're focusing
on form, right.
Speaker 1: But isn't the form get you to that moment of impact?
Speaker 2: Well, that's one route you can work on the form.
My experience has been years ago when I sort of
coached the swing full time, I would get a lot
of players who look better in the swing but didn't
improve because they didn't improve their impact conditions. However, when
you start using one of the most powerful mental forces
of all, which is intention, If I have an intention,
so for instance, we're talking about center strike, if I
know that I'm hitting the ball off the toe regularly,
that's my pattern, and I do some practice where I
intentionally hit the ball off the heel as a result
of that intention. The genius of my body, which has
got up in my body, everybody's body, the genius of
the body, which has got a few billion years of
evolution behind it. It's amazing how the body organizes movement
around an intention. So does the form improve as a
result of intention, sometimes not always. But what does improve
as a result of intention is your impact conditions. And
if your impact conditions improve, it's as simple as this.
If your impact conditions improve, you will be a better golfer.
It's it's it's it's as simple as that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, intention is huge. I've always like to keep that
forefront of my mind. Is what's my intent on the
next shot? Which I always believe is the hardest shot
in golf, is the next one?
Speaker 2: I think linking two forces Fred Gary Nicol and myself
who wrote the Lost Art Books. We probably mentioned it
last time, but I think it burns repeating. The big
three of the mental game for us is intention, attention,
and attitude. So what is it what is it that
you in tend to do? And again, back to where
we've been so far in this conversation, my intention is
to hit it more towards the heel. Okay, well, word,
do I need to place my attention? Well, I could
place my attention on my right elbow, or my left paper,
or my right knee or whatever. That's probably not been
no influence impact that much. But if I place my
attention on the club, now I can with my attention
that I can influence my intention. And then what attitude
do I bring to that? Do I bring an attitude
of perfectionism or do I bring an attitude of curiosity.
Speaker 1: Or fear or fear?
Speaker 2: You know, curiosity is a great antidote to fear if
I can be curious about what actually happens as opposed
to being scared of what's going on. Because see, the
problem is spread is when you're on the golf course
and the ball isn't doing what you like, which is
most of the time for most of us, is that
the questquestion that we asked straight away is what did
I do wrong? And if the question what did I
do wrong? Triggers endless search is in terms of technique,
I'm literally always going to be all over the place
based on lots of opinions. But if I hit a
shot offline and I asked the question, what did I
do wrong? Was the club face open or closed? Did
I hit it out the middle or did heated out
of the toe? What was the interaction with the ground?
You know those those big three. You know, every shot,
every shot that you hit that you don't like, will
be down probably to one, not probably will be down
to one of those three factors. And I think, if
the explanation that we give to when a ball goes
offline is more and closed for one of a better word,
if it's not, if it's not all over the place,
if it's not with lots of different opinions. If if
I can keep my attention on three possible things that
cause golf balls to go off line, I'm now playing
a much simpler game. I'm now able to deal with
the variety of outcomes. My acceptance levels improve, and I
start to influence the things that really matter. So I
start to play a game where I developed a bit
more resiliency, and perhaps more importantly, the big skill is adaptability.
Is that can I notice what's happening and then adapt
to that. I said, I was with a young guy
this afternoon. I coach at a lovely golf course in
the mid part of England called Delamere Forest. It's a
beautiful golf course. It's it's almost a spiritual experience going
playing golf around there. It's a wonderful location of anybody
ever against the chance. But we were out there today
and we were, you know, we were talking about these
these these concepts, and he really grasped the idea of
simplifying his explanations of what actually happened out on the
golf course, and he said, he said, I can feel
a sense of calm that I'm not lost in an
endless search to try to find a solution that doesn't
seem to have a solution. I can keep my eye
on a couple of things that I can work with.
Speaker 1: Coming back to intention, attention and attitude. So good, so simple.
I know that you know, I'm well aware that the
bottom of the golf swing, the golf swing is a circle.
The bottom of the swing should be in front of
the ball. So many people don't grasp that is the
low point. The low point of your swing is in
front of the ball. So if you're a right handed golfer,
it's on the left side of the ball. So for me,
where I put my attention is focusing on the ground
in front of the ball. Yeah, And so my intention
is to make contact with the ball then hit the
ground after that, and I try to keep a good
attitude about it. But it makes so much more sense.
But if I'm thinking about my left arm, my left wrist,
you know where my right elbow is, and all these
things are in my mind on a regular basis, but
I try to block them out during the swing. I
know about them. I'll take a practice swing and I'll
concentrate on those things. But when I want, when I
walk up to the ball, those things are not what
I'm thinking about are focusing on because if you think
about your body parts when you're making your swing, you're
shaking your head. Good luck, just good luck, good luck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean just we started with Fred, and I'm
sure we'll mention Fred a few more times. But I
remember it's twenty five years ago. I went to his
school in Carmel and one of the first things that
he he got me to do was to see if
I could make a golf swing where I did say
something that sounds so simple. He said, can you make
a golf swing where you keep your attention on the
club all the way through the swing. You would think
that would be the easiest thing in the world. You know,
if we grab a pen, you would think we could
keep our attention on the pen, or if we were
sewing using a knife or whatever, we could do that.
But I all those years ago, I started it's a
few shots, and I realized. First of all, I realized
I'd probably never made a golf swing for twenty years
were at some level, I wasn't telling myself how to
move a certain part of my body. Twenty odd years,
every golf swing I'd ever made, I was trying to
tell myself to move in a certain way based on
the latest information or the latest theory or whatever. So
this idea of making a golf swing where I just
placed my attention on this golf club and see if
I could keep it there through the through the swing,
it was just kind of like wow. First of all,
it was difficult because my mind was pinging around all
over the place. But then I started to realize that,
my God, if I could keep my attention there, surely
then I can influence what it does. And again, for
all the folks listening, would I would recommend that they
try that basic exus I go to the range and
maybe for the first time in your life, get a
bucket of fifty balls, get a seven iron or a
five iron or whatever doesn't matter, the club really and
hit some shots. Well, you don't do anything in your
golf swing. You're not trying to do anything. You're literally
not trying to fix anything. All you're going to do
is place your attention on the club and see if
you can observe it, see if you can stay with
it for the duration of your swing, and see what
that experience is actually like. And for most people it's
it's a completely different route go down because if you
if you can't pay attention to the thing that's going
to influence the ball, surely our attention is in the
wrong place. Now, I know a lot of coaches were
listening say, oh, you've got to move your body in
a certain way, You've got to put force into the
ground and all those things. I get all of that,
and I'm not saying that doesn't have an influence, but
come back to it. For most people, the quickest route
to start to get some enjoyment out of this game
is to take care of those three factors and impact
were the club's pointing where you hitting on the club
and your interaction with the ground. You know, you just
said about about the low point. The other thing that
we've got a capacity to is imagine things. So you know,
if I was on the range with you and you said,
I'm struggling with my low point, the low points behind
the ball, what we could we could maybe place a
team front of the ball, or a coin or something
like that. And so Fred, can you collect the ball
and the tea? Now, obviously if you collect the ball
and the tea, that's going to move the low point
a little bit further forward. Now you can imagine that
when you're on the golf course, you could you could
see an imaginary coin or a tea or whatever. So
utilizing the power of imagination as well alongside intention and attention.
You know, these are wonderful things that we have the
capacity to do. But because we're so much inclined to
just focus on information that other people have given us,
we dule the imagination. We don't use our imagination the body.
You know, think about all the physiological responses that we've
all experienced when we've been dreaming at night, which is
a wonderful use of imagination. And you wake up in
a cold sweat because you've imagine that something terrible is
about to happen and the body is physiologically responding to that.
That's the power of imagination. But you know, could we
use our imagination in a way on the golf course
that actually helps us create more clarity with the intention?
Speaker 1: You said, the golf ball doesn't know if you're in
a good mood or a bad mood. No, you you
know that maybe you're playing partners know that I have
found that for me, it's my you know, we both
talked to Jane's story many times and her or her
desire to get us all to meditate, and it's not
something that I I'm most comfortable meditation. My meditation is
on the golf course. Is walking a golf course. And
I'll go out maybe even once a week where I'm
not calling my friends and I'm not seeing if i
can play with anybody. I'll just meet a couple of
people on the on the you know, at the first
tea box. But I can use my walk on a
golf course as my meditation. And you know, when if
I have the ability to go out when things are
not going well or i'm not happy about something. I
find that I can get into a better mood by
playing golf, which is kind of counter into it because
of the frustration that golf presents to us. But it
doesn't matter. The frustration is going to be there. It's
just being able to walk and spend those hours enjoying
my time, enjoying being outside.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting you bring up meditation. I mean,
I've always struggled with I know all the research. I've
known a Buddhist teacher for many years. You know, it
comes and contributes to my mind. Fact of course, I
firmly believe it is a very beneficial thing to do.
But for me sitting in you know, to cliche it,
sitting cross legged on a cushion doesn't really work for me.
What does work for me when I try and do
it every day is you've just said, is to go
outside and place my attention on the feeling of my
feet on the ground as I'm walking along, and that
becomes my mantra that I just I just tune into
the feeling of my feet. Of course, my mind goes
somewhere else, but I can bring it back. But I
think that's one of the most beneficial things that a
golfer could do, especially in the winter time. You can
work on your golf away from the golf course by
doing walking meditation, you know, because we also ignore the
fact that when we're playing, and I know a lot
in the States is on cards, but if you walk
in the golf course, you know, ninety percent of golf
isn't golf, you.
Speaker 1: Know, more than ninety more than ninety.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably ninety nine percent is the actual time of
activity within the game of golf is a fraction of
the four and a half five hours that you take.
So I think the ability to notice your thoughts and
notice you getting off time and you're back in the
past or projecting into the future just simp Bringing your
attention to the feeling of your feet as you're walking
in between shots, I think is a great discipline, and
I also think what it does help as well. I
think it you know, rhythm, we've all experienced when we're
playing well. We tend to feel a certain rhythm in
our game, a certain rhythm in our movements. I think
those rhythms can often be dictated how we're moving between shorts,
and I think when you do walk in meditation, you
tend to fall into a more personally effective rhythm of
movement that then can transfer into your golf swings. But
what we were saying before Fred about going to the
range and placing your attention on the club head, that
is meditation for me, because you know, ultimately, what is meditation,
it's deciding to pay attention to something on purpose, non judgmentally.
You know, you sit and notice your breath, or you
notice a candle or a mantra or whatever it is.
That's the same principle what just said with the club
So I think, you know, all these things kind of
tie together in many ways that produce a set of
areas of exploration that I think can be fascinating. Yes,
you'll probably play better golf, but there's more benefits in
the rest of your life. I mean, my god. You
know we were saying before we started that we're living
in an incredibly chaotic world. We're living in a very
very unstable world, and actually, if you go too deep
into it, a pretty frightening place that there's so many
things potentially could happen or might happen, that golf should
be a sanctuary. The time on the golf course should
be a time away from all that crap and nonsense
that were being fed all the time, and all the misinformation,
all that kind of stuff and the overlord of information.
Golf should be a sanctuary for that. But if you're
taking a busy mind onto the golf course and just
feeding it more and more information and more and more thoughts,
it's not a sanctuary. It's a hell. So you're not
getting away from the nonsense in the world. You're bringing
it with you to the golf course.
Speaker 1: With so many of the people that I've had on
the program talking about getting yourself in the right attitude
and the right mindset, we get to flow state. And
anytime that conversation comes up about flow state, which is
I think we're going. No one's talking about their mechanics.
That's never the topic when flow state. When someone's talking
about the round they had that just everything worked that day.
We have to remember that we have made all those
shots before. You know, just because you've done it twice
on one round, it's not a time to start changing
what you do. Just get into your mind and tap
into the place where you've been and stop trying to
change things all because this is how golf works. It's
not going to be the same every time, and you're
not going to improve with every round.
Speaker 2: But I also think that ties in as well. Fred,
It's the same thing in terms of the mental game
as well. You know, WHI Whilst the flow state is
great and nice and wonderful, I think very often people
can fall into the trap of trying to get into
the flow state, whereby there trying to control the thoughts,
They're trying to control their experience. They're trying to control
their emotions so much that it becomes a full time
job trying to do all of that. Now my understanding,
you know, probably twenty years ago, when I first started
with all this, I would I would give people a
lot of techniques to try and control the thinking. I'm
completely the opposite of that now because I do understand,
you know, I have no idea what I'm going to
think next. I mean, this thing inside between my years
comes up with the most random nonsense most of the time.
But what I would say is now I've got a
little bit better with not so much trying to change
my thoughts, but the relationship to those thoughts. And I
think to understand when you go and play golf. You know,
from day to day, we're different, we have different triggers,
we've interacted with people differently. To go out on the
golf course and feel that you have to be in
a perfect state, it's probably the biggest block to that state. Whereby,
if you can go out and you can realize everybody
listening to this has had this experience whereby they've felt great,
they've seen the shot, they've done everything perfectly before the shot,
they're convinced it's going to be a good shot, and
they hit its sideways. They've also conversely had the experience
whereby they're pretty uncomfortable, they might feel a little bit nervous,
they're not even certain of what they're trying to do
with the shot, but they've still managed to pull off
a good shot. So what I'm getting at, it's a
bit of a paradox, really is that don't think that
everything has to be perfect for you to take a good
golf shot. It's amazing how efficient the body is following
through an intention. If that is what you then bring
to the shot eventually, So you know, don't get hung
up on trying to be perfect mentally anymore that you
should get up hung up on trying to be perfect.
Speaker 1: Technically, there is no perfect in golf or life, right,
There is no perfect. So often we'll talk about We'll
have fitness people on and we'll talk about aging and
playing golf and how your body reacts and what you
need to do to keep your body in golf shape
the best you can. But what we don't talk about yet,
and I really want to throw it to you, is
aging and the impact on your mindset. I mean, I
was playing yesterday with two gentlemen that were from out
of town, and we had a fine time. Didn't talk
much because they were heavy their own game and they're,
you know, from a different part of the country. But
they were in town to play golf and they wanted
to know another golf course, and so I gave them
a suggestion. I said, oh, but you know, there's this
other course. I could not come up with the name
of it, and I play there at least once a month,
and I was like just completely drawing a blank. And
I'm attributing to that to oh, okay, I'm getting close
to seventy years old. My next birthday, I'm seventy years old.
Names are not going to be flowing through my head
as regularly as they used to be. But how does
the aging process impact your mindset on golf or does it?
Speaker 2: I think one of the things I don't believe I've
ever had Ellen Langer on your show. Well, you must
get her on Ellen Langer, but I think she wrote
written numerous books on in a Mindful Life, and she's
talked so much about how we can get drawn into
the power of story. That you know, if you can't
remember something and you say, oh, I know the name
of that golf course, why can't I remember it? And
the story kicks in I can't remember it because I'm seventy,
then that can almost become a self fulfilling prophecy. There
have been a lot of occasion spread when you were
twenty thirty, forty fifty, and sixty when you couldn't remember stuff,
but the story doesn't necessarily kick in. Then that that's
due to the aging process. Now, I'm not saying there's
not declined for us all, which clearly there is, but
I think we've got to be very careful of not
creating that self fulfilling prophecy of a story. But I
think that's why golf back to our sanctuary idea. I
think that's why golf doesn't promote itself enough to the
older generation of how important it is, not just from
a physical perspective, but from a cognitive perspective. That if
you if you look at golf, if you go out
on the golf course and see that golf is between
sixty five and ninety five separate puzzles to solve, that
in itself is a wonderful way of going out on
the golf course, staying present to each shot and enjoying
the opportunity. And you know, puzzles and quizzes are popular
the world over, but nobody would sit there with a
crossword and if they couldn't get seven across, get really
annoyed with themselves and call themselves an idiot and throw
the paper down and throw the pen away and storm
off somewhere else. They would just go and try and
solve the next puzzle and see if they could get
a little bit closer to it. So I think when
you start to look at the frame of reference that golf,
you go out there and it's a wonderful puzzle to solve,
that is a great creature of creator of curiosity. And
I think then really understanding how important other people are.
And I know it's a cliche to say it, but
you know, can you genuinely enjoy and engage in some
conversations that you perhaps wouldn't maybe ordinarily go towards? Golf
provides that environment, doesn't it. And I think to see
that preciousness of opportunity when you go and play golf
of a genuinely interesting conversation with somebody. Not not always
everybody's up for that, but it's a medium where it
can come out. You know. I've had some amazing conversations
walking with clients on a golf course that have gone
far away from their golf and trying to hate it straight.
And that is the wonderful nature of the game if
we actually are open to that, to that potential adventure.
Speaker 1: So frequently my wife like, would you guys talk about
on the golf course today? It's like our last shot
the Actually, no, you don't talk about anything. I'm sure
we do. That's not what the focus is. We're talking
about our last shot in our next shot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and sometimes not sometimes my experiences, the
more we actually are prepared to be I know, one
of the things that Fred said that he years ago
said this idea about could you go out and play
golf and make a commitment to being a great playing partner.
And it sounds whimsy, cold, tree hugging and all the
rest of.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, Well we're both from California, but yeah,
that sounds awesome.
Speaker 2: You know, make a commitment to be a great playing partner. Now,
the win win with that is that you go out
and if you're intending to be a great playing partner,
you're probably going to be a little bit less selfish
and self absorbed, a bit more self less. And if
we're self less, perhaps we're not so much in our
own head trying to figure everything out to the nth
degree as we're going around, we're a little bit more
engaged with other people. My experience is when people have
experimented with that as a commitment, it's not always the case,
but they generally play better because they're not so weighted
down by their own self reference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes total sense.
Speaker 2: I love that. And the worst thing that happens with that, Fred,
you actually enjoy the round more because you do genuinely
engage with other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great concept, great idea. You were going to on
any New Books podcast taking up enough of your time?
Speaker 2: Gary and myself, Gary Nichol and myself we wrote the
Lost Art series and we made a promise to ourselves
that when we've done the third one, that that was
going to be it wasn't going to be a turn
out to be Rocky four, five and six or whatever.
So we kind of feel like we kind of felt
like we said all we need to say for a while.
So I've not got anything planned in the in the
in the immediate future, but I am really interested in
these ideas that we've talked about today about skills and
developing skills and then being able to access those skills.
And I think overall, if I've got a mission in
go for it is to try and simplify things todayn
to some some workable concepts. Not I look back for
in my career. I look back in the early days,
and it was it was well meaning, but the but
the sole purpose of my coaching in the early days
was to sound clever and and to and to and
to throw big words at people and show the people
how much knowledge I've got about the game. And I
think almost every coach probably has to go through that
at some point where there's there's a little bit of
ego kicking in. I'm not saying I don't have an
ego now, because everybody has an ego to some degree,
but I genuinely feel that as I hopefully I've got
a little bit better at this, I don't help everybody, obviously,
but as I've got a little bit more competent this,
at this, I am willing to say less and and
and being willing to say less I found is actually
very very productive.
Speaker 1: And then you started a podcast, and.
Speaker 2: Then I started a podcast, and people probably listening to that,
I say, what rubbish's talking. He's waffled away for an
hour there, but hopefully they get the drift of what
I'm actually going after. In terms of the actual interaction
with clients. It's trying can I simplify down to such
a point where the attention settles in one or two
key areas that do start to produce results. And I
firmly believe when you understand these things, you don't have
to wait for months and working on extensive swing changes
and complicated moves. You can start to tap into that
innate genius that we all have and enjoy the experience
of go for More.
Speaker 1: Well, I truly appreciate the fact that you're doing a
show that really has focused on the mental part of
the game. That was one of the initial intentions of
this show. That's why we came up with a name
Golf Smarter, is to focus on the mental aspects of
it and strategic But my I, you know, you're nine
hundred and seventy eight episodes. I can't talk about the
same thing over and over, so I try to cover
a wide variety of topics in golf. But I really
am happy that you are focused on getting people like
Fred Shoemaker and Jim Waldron and Jane's story, John Sherman,
Scott Fassett and the Martin Chuck is he Justice, all
these people that we've had on but you really focus
on And that's part of what I love about podcasting
is that if there is a part that is two
tent too danse for you to absorb, pause, go back,
listen to it again, listen to it multiple times, and
you've got a podcast that commands that attention. Congratulations and
thank you.
Speaker 2: Thanks for It's always great, always great to chat with you.
You every time I see you, Ali, It goes by
but you never look at any old would advert for
the Californian lifestyle. So I said, that was great to
chat with him. H