Speaker 1: Ah, I'm Sam what you've seeing from Fort Worth, Texas
Speaker 1: and I play at Merivus to Country Club.
Speaker 2: This is Golf.
Speaker 3: Smarter number four hundred and sixty.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 2: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
Speaker 2: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
Speaker 2: like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 1: If in that shot you took the second or two
Speaker 1: or five seconds to figure out I'm really going to
Speaker 1: hit a seven iron, and you're not ambivalent, you make
Speaker 1: your best choice. You have met the first criteria of
Speaker 1: the shot. The next criteria is to make sure you
Speaker 1: sort of feel the shot. How's it going to feel
Speaker 1: if you're put right? You know, when we put we
Speaker 1: kind of walk halfway and this is the feel of it.
Speaker 1: And then you get in and hit it. And it's
Speaker 1: that simple. And if you do those three things regardless
Speaker 1: of the result, because we're only concerned with everything that
Speaker 1: happens before the ball leaves the club face, because after
Speaker 1: it leaves the club face, there's not a lot we
Speaker 1: can do. But if you do those three things, that
Speaker 1: SHOT's a one for one. If you don't do all
Speaker 1: of those three things, you do not get the point,
Speaker 1: and it's a zero for one. And again that's independent
Speaker 1: of the result. You got one hundred shots, only fifty
Speaker 1: of them did you do it? The other fifty you
Speaker 1: were smoking cigars chatting. If you apply this very simple concept,
Speaker 1: it's hard not to increase your percentage to sixty or
Speaker 1: even more maybe, and that really will have a huge
Speaker 1: impact in the average golfer.
Speaker 3: Mastering Golf's Mental Game with author doctor Michael T. Larden.
Speaker 3: This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back to the Golf Smarter Podcast. Michael, Hi, Fred,
Speaker 3: how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing great. Nice to be here. Fred.
Speaker 4: It's great to have you back on the show. Your
Speaker 4: first book, who was many years ago?
Speaker 1: Right, two thousand and eight now hard to believe?
Speaker 4: Wow, Well, congratulations you've gone through a lot in that
Speaker 4: time and professionally as well. But you have a new book,
Speaker 4: Mastering Golf's Mental Game, the Ultimate Guide to better en
Speaker 4: course performance and lower scores. Michael, I have a shelf
Speaker 4: full of metal game books. Is why should I be
Speaker 4: getting rid of all of them to keep yours.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know about getting rid of them all.
Speaker 1: But this book is really designed to be a little
Speaker 1: bit different, and it's modeled next to a very famous
Speaker 1: book called Feeling Good by David Burns, which is a
Speaker 1: psychology book and if you ever go to all the
Speaker 1: outpatient clinics, it's sort of a bible in the model
Speaker 1: is like this. That Feeling Good book is actually a
Speaker 1: workbook where you look at pieces of your mindset and
Speaker 1: then you get to rate it and then you get
Speaker 1: to reframe it. So if you get through the book,
Speaker 1: you end up it's hard not to get better. And
Speaker 1: this book is really set up for you to interact
Speaker 1: with the book. It has drills, it has ways in
Speaker 1: which you can find out I'm strong in motivation, but
Speaker 1: I'm weak in emotional control. And if that's the case,
Speaker 1: these are exercises to get you better. So it's really
Speaker 1: meant to be a hands on book to help you improve.
Speaker 4: Well, it's clear that that's the case because you have
Speaker 4: homework assignments, you have tests in it, which I found
Speaker 4: to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: And that is that.
Speaker 4: The format of the other book is it give you
Speaker 4: a little assignments as the across the board.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the famous Feeling Good book is like that.
Speaker 1: And really this book comes from you know, I get
Speaker 1: calls all the time to work with various players of
Speaker 1: various levels, and I don't have the time to do that.
Speaker 1: I can barely work with the tour players that I
Speaker 1: work with, and so at the university, I teach a
Speaker 1: curriculum for sports psychology, if you will, And really, this
Speaker 1: book is a compilation of the curriculum I teach the
Speaker 1: medical students and the residents who are interested in sports psychology.
Speaker 3: I see, And where do you teach.
Speaker 1: I'm at UCSD, the University of California, San Diego. I'm
Speaker 1: a professor there.
Speaker 3: Good science school, right, very.
Speaker 1: Good neuroscience, tremendous neuroscience.
Speaker 4: Well that's good to know because I have a nephew
Speaker 4: who went there and majored in neuroscience. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Now he's a professional musician.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's a smart he's a smart guy.
Speaker 3: He's the smartest drummer in on the stage.
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I'm going through because I dog eared a
Speaker 4: whole lot of stuff in this book, and I don't
Speaker 4: even know where to get started. On picking apart which
Speaker 4: parts are so important. But again, this podcast is more
Speaker 4: about how do we get the average golfer better?
Speaker 3: So you know, let's go there, let's just go there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, sure, Well here's the main thrust of it.
Speaker 1: And it's the same for the tour player as it
Speaker 1: is for the average golfer. And I really think it
Speaker 1: probably benefits the average golfer more. And what I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean this everybody that plays sport, especially in golf,
Speaker 1: it's human nature to become result oriented. I just need
Speaker 1: a par on the last hole to break ninety or
Speaker 1: break eighty, or you say to yourself, gosh, how did
Speaker 1: I make that triple bogie on the last hole that
Speaker 1: leaks into the next hole and you play poorly. So
Speaker 1: we have to accept that we are result oriented people,
Speaker 1: human beings are. That's one piece. Now, if you read
Speaker 1: all the sports psychology books on your shelf, and mind's
Speaker 1: bre probably up there too, my old one. And what
Speaker 1: you hear the sports psychologists talk about very consistently is
Speaker 1: that the golfer or the athlete really has to focus
Speaker 1: on the process. Now what do we mean by process?
Speaker 1: We mean what are the components of hitting each shot?
Speaker 1: So I've come up with this term called pre shot pyramid,
Speaker 1: which is very simple and it kind of has three parts,
Speaker 1: and it goes like this. Every shot you have to calculate.
Speaker 1: You know, if it's a putt, the breaks over here,
Speaker 1: the speed is such and such. If it's a driver,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to cut it off the left
Speaker 1: tree or an iron, I need to hit it one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five yards. So you make some calculation
Speaker 1: and in a very general way, we call that the
Speaker 1: left brain. If you don't make that calculation, you're probably
Speaker 1: not going to do well. But after that is a
Speaker 1: really important part. You make your calculation, and it's important
Speaker 1: you just don't go up and hit it. It's important
Speaker 1: that you use your right brain and you either visualize
Speaker 1: the shot. That's like Aaron Baddeley, he sort of closes
Speaker 1: his eyes and sees the shot, or you feel it kinesthetically.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is, let's say you're
Speaker 1: going to hit a draw or a hook, you sort
Speaker 1: of reverse, I mean you rehearse, you know, your hands
Speaker 1: turning over. Conversely, if you're going to hit a slice,
Speaker 1: you would kind of maybe rehearse holding on and if
Speaker 1: you look at the good players, David Duval, Tiger Woods, Phil,
Speaker 1: many of them. Phil has a lot of visual stuff,
Speaker 1: but many of them really they have the feel of
Speaker 1: the shot. And then after that, ideally you just step
Speaker 1: in and hit the shot with instinct. So we go
Speaker 1: left brain, think about it, right brain, feel it, step
Speaker 1: in and hit it. And those are the three components
Speaker 1: of the pre shot pyramid for all shots. Now, why
Speaker 1: that's important, Fred is because we ask the golfer to
Speaker 1: rape his process, and that means, let's say on the
Speaker 1: first hole, I hit a great drive right down the middle,
Speaker 1: but I didn't really take the time to decide where
Speaker 1: I wanted to hit it. I sort of got lucky,
Speaker 1: so I didn't go through the left brain part one.
Speaker 1: So even though I hit it two hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: yards down the middle, I do not get a point
Speaker 1: for that shot because I didn't get through the process.
Speaker 1: Now conversely, I might hit my second shot and I
Speaker 1: might you know, think about it, well, rehearse it and
Speaker 1: hit it, and I even could hit it out of bounds.
Speaker 1: But if I went through that process, I get a
Speaker 1: one for one. And so what we get is the
Speaker 1: golfer starts to pay attention to rating as process and
Speaker 1: that satiates the human nature to sort of rate how
Speaker 1: you're doing. But what you've done is you've turned your
Speaker 1: attention to the right thing, which is I don't want
Speaker 1: to worry about the double bogie behind me or the
Speaker 1: birdie I need. What I'm really focused on is just
Speaker 1: doing these opponents that lead to a good shot. So
Speaker 1: we sort of trick the golfer into being process oriented
Speaker 1: while he's rating himself. And that's sort of the trick
Speaker 1: of it. And let's say you shoot one hundred that day.
Speaker 1: Then you look back and you say, of those hundred shots, well,
Speaker 1: sixty of them, I really did my pre shot pyramid,
Speaker 1: So you'd get a sixty percent that day. And what
Speaker 1: we found is the average golfers around fifty to sixty percent,
Speaker 1: where the tour players are in the ninety percent tile range.
Speaker 1: And if we can help you, you know, stay on
Speaker 1: task with a few more shots, you're going to end
Speaker 1: up scoring a lot better.
Speaker 4: You'll get higher scores on your pyramid and lower scores
Speaker 4: on your card.
Speaker 1: Exactly. That's exactly right, friend. So that's kind of the trick,
Speaker 1: the big overarching principle, and you.
Speaker 4: Have various components to your pre shot pyramid. It's not
Speaker 4: just the planning and the concentration. It starts low. I
Speaker 4: really like the you had attitude, motivation, control, optimization, concentration
Speaker 4: and then planning.
Speaker 3: Why that order, well.
Speaker 1: I mean we start with you know things like you know,
Speaker 1: do you have the right attitude? And really that chapter
Speaker 1: it's derived from a woman Carol Dweck at Stanford who's
Speaker 1: a very famous psychologist, and she has articulated a concept
Speaker 1: called mindset. And over thirty five years she studied successful
Speaker 1: people in sport, art, politics, and she studied people who
Speaker 1: were not. And what she has found and she's published
Speaker 1: academic papers in addition to a popular book called Mindset,
Speaker 1: is that successful people they view an obstacle as a challenge,
Speaker 1: They take criticism as something that they can learn from
Speaker 1: where they and they see other people's success as inspiring.
Speaker 1: Where people with a fixed mindset, not a flexible mindset,
Speaker 1: they see obstacles as intimidating or other people's success is intimidating.
Speaker 1: And so in that chapter in particular, we teach you
Speaker 1: that concept the mindset of very successful people and then
Speaker 1: those who are not. And then we ask you to
Speaker 1: rate yourself and find out where you are on that continuum,
Speaker 1: and then we actually give questions and drills to help
Speaker 1: you move to a more flexible mindset, a more adaptive mindset.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of chapter one that sort of sets
Speaker 1: the stage, you know. Then we talk about motivation. Why
Speaker 1: do you play? And if your motivation decreases, sort of
Speaker 1: getting connected with falling in love with the game, and
Speaker 1: we call that internal motivation. And so we give you
Speaker 1: concepts and again we go through what I think are
Speaker 1: the really important things, which are, you know, what's your attitude?
Speaker 1: How do you stay motivated? Then how do you deal
Speaker 1: with emotion positive and negative? If we make a double
Speaker 1: legal we want to be you know, a little fist pump,
Speaker 1: but be relatively cool because we have a hole after that.
Speaker 1: Or you have you know, negative thoughts, don't hit it
Speaker 1: in the water, and we look at you know, when
Speaker 1: those thoughts come up. These are techniques to turn your
Speaker 1: attention to what is going to be best for you
Speaker 1: rather than let your mind drift there. And then we
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, how to put this whole thing
Speaker 1: together in a cohesive plan. When we talked about the
Speaker 1: mental scorecard a minute ago, that's really the application on
Speaker 1: the course where the first part of the book that
Speaker 1: we're talking about now, that sort of sets the ground
Speaker 1: stage for you know, the components that very good athletes
Speaker 1: and very good golfers need to have to perform.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm fascinated about the motivation part. I'm sure that
Speaker 4: you have discovered a wide range of answers on motivation,
Speaker 4: going from amateurs to tour players. But I'm curious about
Speaker 4: amateurs and recreational players. What you hear, what's the vast
Speaker 4: difference of motivations they have to play golf.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a great question. And if your motivation is,
Speaker 1: you know, to smoke cigars with your buddies and have
Speaker 1: a cocktail at the turn. If that's your motivation, just
Speaker 1: to fratnize and have fun, well that's one thing. And
Speaker 1: you probably aren't buying this book because you're less concerned
Speaker 1: about scoring well. But let's say your motive.
Speaker 4: I think those guys are more concerned about scoring well
Speaker 4: with the cart girl. But that's a whole different conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one. I don't have the expertise, and I
Speaker 1: don't even want to go there.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, I'm sorry I did, But maybe.
Speaker 1: When I before I was married, younger, three kids ago.
Speaker 1: But anyhow, so yeah, I mean the average guy. You know,
Speaker 1: they generally play golf because they love it. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. And then what happens is, you know,
Speaker 1: they get in the Saturday morning games with their buddies
Speaker 1: and they start to you know, compare themselves to their buddy,
Speaker 1: and their motivation changes from really enjoying the game making
Speaker 1: good shots to you know, how do I stack up
Speaker 1: against my friends? And it takes a lot of the
Speaker 1: fun out of it. Sometimes if their mindset, if you will,
Speaker 1: in competition is unhealthy. So what we try to do
Speaker 1: is we try to identify if your motivation stays pure,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, I play for the joy of
Speaker 1: it and I love concentrating and competing. That's healthy versus
Speaker 1: you know, you start to get scared and intimidated, and
Speaker 1: then you start to let's say a negative cognition, which
Speaker 1: is a fancy way of saying negative thought, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not bad putter well or I can't putt.
Speaker 1: You know, words like can't aren't words sports that colleg
Speaker 1: loogists or sports psychiatrists like myself use. So we we
Speaker 1: really kind of take a look and we try to
Speaker 1: reconnect you with enjoying the game, and then we build
Speaker 1: some armor around you to deal in the competitive environment
Speaker 1: so you can still have fun and concentrate on what's important,
Speaker 1: which is having fun.
Speaker 4: The motivation for somebody who and like for myself, my
Speaker 4: motivating I want to get better, right, I want to
Speaker 4: get better at golf.
Speaker 3: I want to improve.
Speaker 4: Is that a motivation that could become a problem.
Speaker 1: Well, no, that's.
Speaker 4: Great, I mean because that's results oriented, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yes, and no, I mean the goal is
Speaker 1: you want to improve. So then I'd say, well what
Speaker 1: does that mean? And you'd say, well, I want to
Speaker 1: break eighty And I'd say, okay, that's a result goal. Okay,
Speaker 1: what is the what is the process to break eighty? Well,
Speaker 1: the process to break eighty is, you know, make a
Speaker 1: lot of pars and a few bogies and maybe throwing
Speaker 1: a birdie. And then I'd say, well, how do you
Speaker 1: do that? And it will always distill down to well,
Speaker 1: I have to hit quality shots, and so that's the process.
Speaker 1: Goal is to hit better quality shots. And that's where
Speaker 1: we come back to the pre shot pyramid. Now, let's
Speaker 1: say your problem is in the short game we'd obviously
Speaker 1: spend more focus over there, but we still use that
Speaker 1: pre shot pyramid as a process goal. And then over
Speaker 1: here we have the result goal of improving the short game,
Speaker 1: and the overarching result goal would be to break eighty.
Speaker 1: So there's actually in the goal setting chapter. I think
Speaker 1: that's underplanning. We use a matrix where we ask you
Speaker 1: to define what's your result goal, and then we ask
Speaker 1: you to define, well, how are you going to get there?
Speaker 1: And that's the process, and so we actually keep tally
Speaker 1: of both things so you make sure you have a
Speaker 1: a good healthy balance.
Speaker 4: Passion seems to be a huge motivation for a lot
Speaker 4: of golfers.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's the beauty of the average golfer because
Speaker 1: passion they play. Most average golfers play with this what
Speaker 1: we call internal motivation. And I use a analogy of
Speaker 1: premium gas versus low octane. So premium gas would be yeah,
Speaker 1: I play for the love of it. Low octane gas
Speaker 1: would be, gosh, I need to make the cut to
Speaker 1: pay the rent this week. So the tour players, they
Speaker 1: actually paradoxically have at times more problems with motivation because
Speaker 1: they get burned out and then their golf, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't just play for fun like we do. They
Speaker 1: have to do golf outings and there's a business aspect
Speaker 1: and that can sort of burn them out. And we
Speaker 1: see that all the time, and then we, you know,
Speaker 1: we try to reconnect them with their youth when they
Speaker 1: played golf and they had fun, because if you're not
Speaker 1: having fun, it's very hard to play well.
Speaker 4: There is a great example in the book of a
Speaker 4: young phenom who comes up and hits the tour while
Speaker 4: he's still in high school. Didn't you share that story
Speaker 4: about how his motivation was.
Speaker 3: It seemed like it was derailed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now we're talking about Ty Tryon, who really is
Speaker 1: a heck of a good kid. And I think he's
Speaker 1: almost thirty now, but when he was I think sixteen,
Speaker 1: right or seventeen.
Speaker 3: Think he said seventeen in the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seventeen. He actually earned a fully exempt card on
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour, which I think, to this date is
Speaker 1: the youngest player my brother. I was cattying in for
Speaker 1: my brother, ironically behind him, and we watched him get
Speaker 1: his card, and that year my brother also got his card.
Speaker 1: But the next year Ty came to visit me, and
Speaker 1: you know, he was a junior in high high school
Speaker 1: or maybe a senior at that time, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was very tough because you know, he wanted to
Speaker 1: have fun like normal high school kids. But the next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, he had contracts with Nike, IMG was his agency,
Speaker 1: and Red Bull, and he had all these corporate responsibilities.
Speaker 1: So now you take a high school kid who really
Speaker 1: just wants to have some fun and loves golf, and
Speaker 1: you put him on a private jet and he flew
Speaker 1: around with Tiger a lot, and that was big business.
Speaker 1: And I think that would be you know, very hard
Speaker 1: at seventeen years old to go through that process, and
Speaker 1: it made golf less fun. I mean, we've heard about
Speaker 1: Michelle Wee talking about those kinds of things in the
Speaker 1: media and you know, now she's playing great and won
Speaker 1: a US Open, but she also talks about how she's reconnected,
Speaker 1: you know, to the passion of golf. And she's another
Speaker 1: example of a very young phenom who when she had
Speaker 1: to deal with everything that comes with being a female,
Speaker 1: that sort of derailed a lot of her passion. We
Speaker 1: saw that with Rory McIlroy. You know, he he wins
Speaker 1: his major, you know, he blows the Masters, but then
Speaker 1: he comes and wins his major and becomes you know,
Speaker 1: this phenom, and then he has a dip in the
Speaker 1: level of his game because he has to integrate, you know,
Speaker 1: being under the microscope of the media and all this
Speaker 1: other stuff. And it probably wasn't that fun. I mean,
Speaker 1: people think, oh gosh, it to be super fun to
Speaker 1: be famous. I think, like Andy Warhol in reverse, maybe
Speaker 1: for five minutes it's super fun, but it's but after
Speaker 1: a while it's pretty tiring not to be able to
Speaker 1: be a normal person. And that's a tough challenge for
Speaker 1: many of the high profile athletes. So you know, how
Speaker 1: do we reconnect them with the reason they fell in
Speaker 1: love with golf? That's really the goal, and keep that
Speaker 1: connection strong.
Speaker 4: I thought Rory fell apart because he went to different clubs.
Speaker 3: The Nikes never mind, so he.
Speaker 1: Got well there's more than that conjecture, but certainly that
Speaker 1: was part of it. Yeah, you know, breaking up with
Speaker 1: a girlfriend and being under the spotlight of the media,
Speaker 1: and I think there were a lot of things that
Speaker 1: were a lot of new challenges and and if Rory
Speaker 1: didn't play well, I'm sure Nike wouldn't have come to him,
Speaker 1: you know, with a very lucrative contract. So that's all
Speaker 1: part and parcel.
Speaker 4: And I frequently am asking questions about these young phenoms
Speaker 4: that are coming up and if they can you know,
Speaker 4: because golf is so mental, and even on the tour
Speaker 4: it's got to be so mental, especially the stress of
Speaker 4: a Sunday, that how can these kids handle this kind
Speaker 4: of pressure and still you know it's not just hitting
Speaker 4: the ball farther than everybody.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know they you know, it's a
Speaker 1: little like training Navy seals, you know, the really good
Speaker 1: ones really learned to you know, how to how to
Speaker 1: deal with that pressure and get a playbook if you will,
Speaker 1: and I like, I like in my book to that
Speaker 1: you know, it really has answers and suggestions. You know,
Speaker 1: we go out and play golf and you know number
Speaker 1: sixteen at my course has a lot of water on
Speaker 1: the left, and you know ninety percent of the people
Speaker 1: up there are aiming to the right and having really struggling.
Speaker 1: Very few of them. You know, know what an anchor
Speaker 1: thought is in ways to deal with our human nature
Speaker 1: when our mind drips. So recently I had a web
Speaker 1: dot com player, Camillo Betedetto, really a fine player, come
Speaker 1: visit with me, and you know, he, like many players,
Speaker 1: you know, had had good concentration, but really didn't have
Speaker 1: kind of a playbook. So in certain situations, you know,
Speaker 1: on the seventeenth or eighteenth hole, you know, to make
Speaker 1: a cut or win an event, you know, what do
Speaker 1: I do when when these thoughts come up? So I
Speaker 1: think at almost every level, you know, we know a
Speaker 1: lot about the golf swing. Most players know how to
Speaker 1: do that, but most most players don't know how to
Speaker 1: think in certain sitution situations. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: main goals of the book to really teach some of
Speaker 1: those parents.
Speaker 3: There are so many distractions on the tour.
Speaker 4: They go along with that level of competition, you know,
Speaker 4: from the corporate outings, but then you've got just the
Speaker 4: travel alone and the food, and the people who want
Speaker 4: your time, and the women who want to go to
Speaker 4: your room, and there's just so many different things that
Speaker 4: can be distractions. How is it possible that these guys
Speaker 4: are able to eliminate those thoughts once they step up
Speaker 4: to the tea box, And how can we get a
Speaker 4: shred of that to distract what's going on in our lives,
Speaker 4: which you know, we it's great if we can get
Speaker 4: time to go out to the golf course because there
Speaker 4: are so many distractions and we don't get time to practice.
Speaker 3: We just want to go out and play because there's
Speaker 3: so so many things in our way. How are we
Speaker 3: able to do that? How can we get rid of
Speaker 3: all that?
Speaker 1: Well, they're kind of two questions in there. But to
Speaker 1: talk about us a regular golfer, you know, I suggest
Speaker 1: for people to say, hey, you know, you have a
Speaker 1: very busy work life. I know for me, I'm a physician,
Speaker 1: and when I go to golf, I look at it
Speaker 1: as my sanctuary. And that's what I encourage people. Let's
Speaker 1: turn off the darn cell phone, you know, let's look
Speaker 1: at the beauty of the golf course and for a
Speaker 1: few hours, you know, let's really honor this experience. I
Speaker 1: think for for a lot of average golfers, that's very,
Speaker 1: very refreshing. Now they don't have all the distractions of
Speaker 1: the tour player. Now taking a look at the tour player.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can remember one of the guys I've
Speaker 1: worked with. I won't mention his name, but it was
Speaker 1: in the final group on Sunday at Riviera at Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Open, and on Saturday night I met him and
Speaker 1: he's on his third cocktail, and you know, we have
Speaker 1: to go through the metabolism of alcohol, and that's not
Speaker 1: really a very good thing because you're going to have
Speaker 1: some alcohol, you know when you tee off tomorrow and
Speaker 1: your blood. So needless to say that particular golfer, he
Speaker 1: really struggled and you know, autographs and let me get
Speaker 1: you another drink. Now we take other golfers, you know
Speaker 1: that have been very successful. You know, you don't see
Speaker 1: Steve Stricker doing that too much. You don't see Jim Furick.
Speaker 1: You certainly didn't see Tiger, so I think you know
Speaker 1: many of them have.
Speaker 4: Oh boy, yeah, come on, Tiger was seen. He was
Speaker 4: seeing it a lot of bars and places.
Speaker 3: But he made I've been drinking but.
Speaker 1: He was, yeah, well we'll go there too much. But
Speaker 1: on Saturday night, I would say he's very very disciplined.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can tell you a great Tiger story
Speaker 1: about Matt Gogel. They were playing in Florida and Matt
Speaker 1: went off the back nine and Tiger the front, and
Speaker 1: long story short, it was an arduous day and at
Speaker 1: the end of the day and Matt had to do
Speaker 1: a lot of local media Tiger did all the international media,
Speaker 1: and the end of the day, Matt meets his wife
Speaker 1: at the bar having a beer, and he's so exhausted
Speaker 1: and his wife is all bright eyed and he says, whoa,
Speaker 1: you look in great spirits? Where were you? And she said, well,
Speaker 1: I just came back from the gym. And he goes, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: what was that like? And he goes, well, next to
Speaker 1: me for forty five minutes, Tiger was running sprints and
Speaker 1: Matt just shook his head because Tiger had just had
Speaker 1: the same eight hours prior as Matt did, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, playing in bad weather on and off, super tired.
Speaker 1: And the difference is Matt, like most guys you know,
Speaker 1: wanted to go relax a little bit, and you know,
Speaker 1: Tiger goes to the gym. So I don't think in
Speaker 1: any way Tiger's work ethic is every question, and I
Speaker 1: don't really know him to compromise, you know, himself right
Speaker 1: before something very important now outside of the golf world,
Speaker 1: and what he does in other domains is really beyond
Speaker 1: the scope of this conversation.
Speaker 3: Fred, Okay, I'll buy into that. I'm fascinated.
Speaker 4: You mentioned a lot of players and Tiger is just
Speaker 4: a one, you know, he's one name that makes sense.
Speaker 4: But of the other players you mentioned Phil, tell me
Speaker 4: about your relationship with Phil, and we're talking about Michelson
Speaker 4: of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well it's funny because you know, about eight years
Speaker 1: ago I was helping Tim Micholson as a coach for
Speaker 1: the USD golf team. Here. Now Tim's in Arizona.
Speaker 3: That's Phil's brother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tim Micholson. Sure, And and I used to play
Speaker 1: a lot of table tennis when I was young. I
Speaker 1: played competitively and Japan and Europe, and long story short,
Speaker 1: Phil likes cable tennis and a lot of the tour
Speaker 1: players love table tennis. They actually fly in a ping
Speaker 1: pong table to the President's Cup. And Tim had said
Speaker 1: to me, hey, Doc, you know my brother. Christmas is
Speaker 1: coming up, and you know, I want to get my
Speaker 1: brother something good. But he has everything and everything he
Speaker 1: doesn't have that he wants, he just buys. But he
Speaker 1: loves table tennis and he thinks his serve is really
Speaker 1: good and he can beat me. But I know he's
Speaker 1: not that good. So would you come and play with him,
Speaker 1: you know, give him a lesson and that would be
Speaker 1: his Christmas present. So I said sure, and then, needless
Speaker 1: to say, a month or so later, I was actually
Speaker 1: helping Na cating with the Chargers and I was going
Speaker 1: down to the stadium. I got a call to meet
Speaker 1: Phil and it was very funny. I was in blue
Speaker 1: jeans and I started to think, well, maybe he's a
Speaker 1: really good player. I mean, he's number five in the
Speaker 1: world of golf. And then I pulled up to the
Speaker 1: gate at the bridges and before I said anything, the
Speaker 1: gate man said are you here for? Are you doctor Lardon?
Speaker 1: Are you here for the match? And I go, guy's
Speaker 1: getting scared. And they brought me into a private gym and
Speaker 1: it's like a little basketball court. The stands and somebody
Speaker 1: greeted me. And then the next thing I know, Phil
Speaker 1: came with a little entourage of folks, many of which
Speaker 1: were worked for Callaway or Tailor Made. Their factories are
Speaker 1: near here. And the next thing you know, he and
Speaker 1: I are playing table tennis and he gives the serve,
Speaker 1: and needless to say, the serve, if you're a professional
Speaker 1: table tennis player, is an easy serve to you know,
Speaker 1: loop kill and I did that and Phil said wow,
Speaker 1: And then I serve some and when we serve we
Speaker 1: throw the ball up high. It's called the high toss,
Speaker 1: and the ball comes out, you know, pretty fast, fifty
Speaker 1: miles an hour with a big curve and kind of
Speaker 1: curved around Phil's racket. And he said, wow, if you
Speaker 1: can teach me that, I'll teach you the short game.
Speaker 1: And I laughed. I said, it's too late for me.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could help my brother. And then I started
Speaker 1: playing them in a chair and giving them nine points
Speaker 1: to eleven playing in a chair, teaching him footwork in fact,
Speaker 1: and we had that interaction and that was quite fun.
Speaker 1: And then right before the Houston Open in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: he engaged me to help him with golf and we
Speaker 1: had a really good session and that's where the Mental
Speaker 1: scorecard was named that day at the Bridges, and then
Speaker 1: he won that week in the Houston Open. So that's
Speaker 1: where it started. And it's been very fun to work
Speaker 1: with Phil. He's very bright and curious and soaks up
Speaker 1: information and his talent is, you know, legendary. So we've
Speaker 1: had a nice relationship.
Speaker 3: And in the book you talk about.
Speaker 4: Mindset of growth versus fixed and Phil fit into that
Speaker 4: very well versus a lot of other players. Can we
Speaker 4: cover that for just a moment because I thought that
Speaker 4: was really fascinating. I found myself on the growth side.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, that's good, Fred, that's good. That's where we
Speaker 1: want to be. And I think an important thing is
Speaker 1: if you have a fixed mindset, you can actually learn
Speaker 1: to transform it into a growth mindset. And whether we're
Speaker 1: talking about sport of golf as we are now or
Speaker 1: really in life, the concepts are very important. So example,
Speaker 1: if you kind of want to use Phil, Phil loves
Speaker 1: when Tiger plays so rather than being threatened. And if
Speaker 1: we think back to Tiger's heyday, there used to be
Speaker 1: the Tiger effect. There was a great article in Sports
Speaker 1: Illustrated and that showed and this was some years back
Speaker 1: before two thousand and eight that when he played, the
Speaker 1: rest of the field actually shot like almost a shot worse.
Speaker 1: And what does that tell us? That tells us cumulatively
Speaker 1: the rest of the field, you know, was intimidated by
Speaker 1: Tiger and didn't play as well. In contrast, Phil and
Speaker 1: many other great players, they are inspired when Tiger's out there.
Speaker 1: And actually Phil has a very favorable head to head
Speaker 1: record against Tiger. It gets them pumped up. You know,
Speaker 1: he wants that a little like Federer and Nadell and
Speaker 1: Jovachak and tennis. They have a wonderful growth mindset, those guys.
Speaker 1: So it's a really important concept.
Speaker 4: You're kind of downplaying your level of achievement in table tennis.
Speaker 4: Let's give us a background on that and how you
Speaker 4: found yourself in the zone. And now that we're able
Speaker 4: to give it to all of us.
Speaker 1: To make a long story short, when I was young,
Speaker 1: I got involved. The Chinese table tennis team came to
Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden in nineteen seventy two. Nixon and table
Speaker 1: tennis diplomacy and those that are our age or my
Speaker 1: age at least might remember that. But fast forward, I
Speaker 1: got involved. It was the second it is the second
Speaker 1: largest sport in the world. Participation at the Olympics in China.
Speaker 1: It was actually watched more than the finals of the soccer,
Speaker 1: if you can believe. But neither here nor there. I
Speaker 1: ended up being trained in Japan by the world champion
Speaker 1: over there, and I came home and I was in
Speaker 1: the finals of the United States Junior Championships and it
Speaker 1: was a three out of five And when we started,
Speaker 1: I was in the zone where the ball that moves
Speaker 1: at ninety miles an hour started to come in slow motion.
Speaker 1: I could see it as big as an egg. And
Speaker 1: I won the first couple of games handily. And then
Speaker 1: at the break where you go to the other side
Speaker 1: of the table, one of the coaches had said, and
Speaker 1: the winner was going to get their name on all
Speaker 1: these table tennis rackets distributed in Hermann's Sporting Goods stores.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they have them anymore, but kind
Speaker 1: of like golf smith a big change. That was a
Speaker 1: big deal, and the coach said something like, oh, this
Speaker 1: will be an amazing upset. I think I was seated
Speaker 1: twelve and I was playing the perennial best player, multiple
Speaker 1: national champion, uh. And the next thing, you know, I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have my name on all these rackets.
Speaker 1: I'll be the national champion. As soon as that happened,
Speaker 1: I lost the next three and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: It spawned my career as a sport you know, sport
Speaker 1: psychology doctor.
Speaker 4: But you said that table tennis was the second world's
Speaker 4: most popular participation sport. I've got three or four in
Speaker 4: my head that could be first.
Speaker 3: What's first?
Speaker 1: Uh, soccer?
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, and actually there's some data now that table
Speaker 5: tennis may even rival it. But really, Yeah, Matt Matt Rudy,
Speaker 5: the Golf Digest writer who helped me with my book,
Speaker 5: he researched to find table tennis number one, But I'm
Speaker 5: I'm not one hundred percent sure, so I say number two.
Speaker 5: But when I was young, I played in the German
Speaker 5: the German Professional League.
Speaker 1: I lived in Sweden. The Swedes are great players. They
Speaker 1: beat the Chinese and have won the Worlds a couple
Speaker 1: of times. So outside of America, it's a lot more
Speaker 1: than you think. In fact, Freddie Jacobson, who is the
Speaker 1: Swedish golfer, when he comes to Tory Pines, he and
Speaker 1: I always have these great matches and we have a
Speaker 1: lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Well that's awesome. Oh that's so cool.
Speaker 4: So let's talk about the scorecard and a little more
Speaker 4: to wrap this up and making it a motivation to
Speaker 4: purchase the book, which we will have available in our
Speaker 4: Golfers mart In our book section, along with your first
Speaker 4: book as well.
Speaker 3: We'll have them both. But I'm curious when you say
Speaker 3: a number of shots that.
Speaker 4: Qualify in the middle scorecard system, what do you mean
Speaker 4: by that qualify?
Speaker 1: Well, if if in that shot you you took the
Speaker 1: second or two or five seconds to figure out I'm
Speaker 1: really going to hit a seven iron, and you're not ambivalent.
Speaker 1: You make your best choice. You have met the first
Speaker 1: criteria of the shot. The next criteria is, you know,
Speaker 1: to make sure you sort of feel the shot. You know,
Speaker 1: how's it going to feel if you put right? You Now,
Speaker 1: when we put we kind of walk halfway and this
Speaker 1: is the feel of it. That's the feeling part. And
Speaker 1: then you get in and hit it. And it's that simple.
Speaker 1: And if you do those three things regardless of the result,
Speaker 1: because we're only concerned with everything that happens before the
Speaker 1: ball leaves the club face, because after it leaves the
Speaker 1: club face, there's not a lot we can do. But
Speaker 1: if you do those three things, that SHOT's a one
Speaker 1: for one. Now, if you don't do all of those
Speaker 1: three things, you do not get the point, and it's
Speaker 1: a zero for one. And again that's independent of the result.
Speaker 1: So you got one hundred shots, you know, only fifty
Speaker 1: of them did you do it? The other fifty you
Speaker 1: were smoking cigars, chatting. If you apply this very simple concept,
Speaker 1: it's hard not to, you know, increase your percentage to
Speaker 1: sixty or even more maybe, and that really will have
Speaker 1: a huge impact in the average golfer, you know, the
Speaker 1: tour players, the margins are so thin, but for the
Speaker 1: average guy. We just have an email that came in
Speaker 1: and we're going to get it posted on Amazon. And
Speaker 1: the guy thanked me. He said, I'm a twelve handicapper.
Speaker 1: And I went out and I shot seventy three, my
Speaker 1: lowest round ever. And I didn't even know I shot
Speaker 1: seventy three as I was focusing on, you know, your
Speaker 1: pre shot pyramid. But my mental scorecard was what eighty
Speaker 1: percent or something, he said. So that's a great case
Speaker 1: in point. And we do give real examples. There's one
Speaker 1: in the book of a web dot com player, Scott Fawcett,
Speaker 1: who went from a club player to making theweb dot
Speaker 1: com and almost a full tour card, you know, and
Speaker 1: he was one of these guys that is into statistics,
Speaker 1: and when we started, he went from sixty percent to
Speaker 1: ninety percent, and sure enough, his level of play, you know,
Speaker 1: was dramatically better. So to give you just a little
Speaker 1: that's the application piece, and that's part two. And I
Speaker 1: think that in and of itself would have a tremendous
Speaker 1: impact on the average golfer.
Speaker 4: I recently played with a friend of a friend. I
Speaker 4: went out with a friend of mine. He brought a
Speaker 4: friend with him, and his friend is a three or
Speaker 4: a four.
Speaker 3: I'm excellent golfer.
Speaker 4: And afterwards he said to me, well, you know, you're
Speaker 4: a pretty good player. You know, you didn't have your intention,
Speaker 4: wasn't there for every shot? And that kind of like
Speaker 4: a bit a bit bit what wow? And that really
Speaker 4: had an impact on the way I approach each shot.
Speaker 3: Now, I was kind of taken aback by that, but
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's probably a great observation. And I think of
Speaker 1: like the tour players, they're great at hitting really hard
Speaker 1: shots because they'd really concentrate. And I mean, I think
Speaker 1: of my work with Rich Beam over a decade or so.
Speaker 1: Give him a really hard shot and you know, he
Speaker 1: was impressive. The ones that I worried more about for
Speaker 1: him was, you know, a nine iron with a you know,
Speaker 1: just an easy pin at one hundred and thirty yards
Speaker 1: because sometimes the easy shot it's easy to space out.
Speaker 1: And at tour level, all you need is one bad
Speaker 1: shot and you can miss a cut. So I think
Speaker 1: that happens a lot you know, with average guys, it's
Speaker 1: more than one shot, it's more than a nine iron,
Speaker 1: and even good players, even three or four handicappers. So
Speaker 1: it teaches us just like we want to make a
Speaker 1: good swing, we want to have a good mental framework
Speaker 1: for each shot when we play. Now what we do
Speaker 1: between the shots we talk about it in the book.
Speaker 1: You relax your attention. You know, you can't grind and
Speaker 1: concentrate for five hours straight. That's suboptimal. So you pulse
Speaker 1: your concentration. And Jack Nicholas would talk about concentration with
Speaker 1: the metaphor of an accordion. So the accordion squeezes in
Speaker 1: as you do your pre shot and hit the ball,
Speaker 1: and then once you've the balls left your club face,
Speaker 1: you relax and you know, feel the grass, look at
Speaker 1: the trees, and as that next ball comes towards you,
Speaker 1: we start to get our attentional focus. We do our
Speaker 1: calculations our left brain, our right brain until we hit
Speaker 1: the ball shot again, and then we relax again. So
Speaker 1: concentration is something that you know, you have to know
Speaker 1: how to work with and if you don't, and minds
Speaker 1: of muscle, so you have to practice it to get better,
Speaker 1: and you have to have good habits, and I think
Speaker 1: the book really helps, you know, teach people these good
Speaker 1: mental habits.
Speaker 4: And on the top of the pre shot pyramid two
Speaker 4: words here and one inside of the other, the now
Speaker 4: the no mind.
Speaker 1: Well that is a love. Yeah, that's a triple on tondra. Okay,
Speaker 1: so no is spelled ken a k n ow, which
Speaker 1: is really to no knowledge. So if you have the knowledge,
Speaker 1: you use no mind and no mind. You just look
Speaker 1: at the n O in there, which is we don't
Speaker 1: want to be thinking when we're hitting the ball. We
Speaker 1: want to hit with no mind. We want to hit
Speaker 1: with instinct if we can. Now we say that if
Speaker 1: you can't get that bad thought out of your head,
Speaker 1: you can use an anchor thought. An example, Billy Casper
Speaker 1: used to talk about just finish high. Now that's a
Speaker 1: non technical thought when you're a golfer. Finish high doesn't
Speaker 1: really take you know, any of the mental energy reserve.
Speaker 1: But what it does is it keeps you from thinking
Speaker 1: about the water. Now we're in the zone, we just
Speaker 1: hit it. We don't even think at all. But sometimes
Speaker 1: we're in a tough situation and we need an anchor thought.
Speaker 1: So but the ideal state is not to be thinking.
Speaker 1: That's no mind. And then buried in the know is
Speaker 1: the word now. And you want to be in the present.
Speaker 1: You want to be the power of now. So you
Speaker 1: want to have knowledge. You don't want to be thinking
Speaker 1: when you're hitting it. And that's the There's an old
Speaker 1: saying those who know do not think, and those who
Speaker 1: think do not know. So that's how we stay immersed
Speaker 1: in the present. And that is the top of the pyramid.
Speaker 1: You know, just hit it, don't get too cerebral.
Speaker 3: Awesome again.
Speaker 4: The book is called Mastering Golf's Mental Game, Your Ultimate
Speaker 4: Guide to better on course performance and lower scores by
Speaker 4: the table tennis Wizard. He's a ping pung wizard, must be.
Speaker 4: We're gonna rewrite the words to that song for you, right,
Speaker 4: doctor Michael T.
Speaker 1: Larden.
Speaker 4: Mike, thanks so much for coming back on the show.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate it. And best of luck. I'm sure
Speaker 4: you're gonna be selling a couple of copies of the
Speaker 4: Golf Smarter Community.
Speaker 1: Great and Fred, thanks very much. I love your podcast
Speaker 1: and as always, it's great chatting with you.