Speaker 1: Hi, This is Dwayne Dusky from Portland, Oregon, and I
Speaker 1: play at Glenn Deevere East and West Courses in Portland.
Speaker 1: This is Golf Smarter number.
Speaker 2: Four hundred and eighty six, published on April twenty eight,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 3: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 3: Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets old. Our
Speaker 3: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
Speaker 3: like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 1: If we're talking a distance wedge, which will I define
Speaker 1: us between forty yards and maybe your full swing of
Speaker 1: your pitching wage. So let's say one twenty five or whatever.
Speaker 1: You don't want a bigger gap than about twenty yards
Speaker 1: in there. So if I hit my pitching wedge to
Speaker 1: one twenty five, the next club I need to hit
Speaker 1: at least ninety five yards And if I can get
Speaker 1: those nice even spread like that, you can really learn
Speaker 1: to cover any yardage with appropriate spin in trajectory. The
Speaker 1: second would be the bounce options and the soul grind.
Speaker 1: The shape of the wedge you want to have a
Speaker 1: sand wedge with a lot of bounce on it. Bounce
Speaker 1: is the difference between the bottom back of the club
Speaker 1: and the soul to the leading edge, and degrees good
Speaker 1: sand wedge might have between ten and fourteen or fifteen
Speaker 1: degrees of bounce on it. If you have a more
Speaker 1: lofted club, like a fifty eight to fifty nine or sixty,
Speaker 1: you want that one to be low and bounced, so
Speaker 1: probably between four and seven, depending once again on your
Speaker 1: standard technique. With the techniques that I try to get
Speaker 1: people to use, you don't need much bounce because the
Speaker 1: swing's very shallow and you use it as you swing.
Speaker 1: If that's the case, and you have a high bounced
Speaker 1: sand wedge and a low bounce lob wedge, then you're
Speaker 1: really prepared for any turf condition because when the sand
Speaker 1: or grass is soft, the ball comes out slow and
Speaker 1: more bounce is better than less, so you can always
Speaker 1: use your sandwich. If, on the other hand, you're playing
Speaker 1: kind of tight, firm turf, you need more loft and
Speaker 1: less bounce, so you always have a choice. If you
Speaker 1: had that set.
Speaker 2: Makeup your short game solution. Mastering the Short Game from
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty yards and in with James Siekman.
Speaker 3: This is Golf Smarter Premium. Here's your host, Fred Green.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 1: James. Hey, Fred, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It's my pleasure because you've got a brand new book
Speaker 2: out just came out last Month's available on Amazon called
Speaker 2: Your Short Game Solution, Mastering the finesse game from one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty yards and in a favorite topic of
Speaker 2: the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think hopefully a favorite topic of anybody that
Speaker 1: wants to shoot a good score.
Speaker 2: And isn't that the case though? I mean, it really is.
Speaker 2: And I discovered I'm not a PGA professional. I just
Speaker 2: have the right equipment to do these recordings. And I
Speaker 2: love playing golf, but I'm a weekend player and don't
Speaker 2: have a ton of time to practice. But I recently
Speaker 2: discovered in the last year or so, how important the
Speaker 2: short game is. You discovered this a long time.
Speaker 1: Ago, Well, I did, because I mean I played professionally
Speaker 1: and I hit the ball beautifully, and you know, it
Speaker 1: just was a huge competitive disadvantage when I couldn't get
Speaker 1: the ball up and end couldn't kind of keep my
Speaker 1: momentum going in the round. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the short game is so important for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 1: But if you look at just look at statistically, the
Speaker 1: best players make the most birdies and so you think about, well,
Speaker 1: that means all of the best ball strikers then would
Speaker 1: be the best players. But you got to think about
Speaker 1: where you make your birdies percentage wise, and typically you're
Speaker 1: not making them on a two hundred and fifteen yard
Speaker 1: part three. You're not making on a four hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty five yard part four. You know you do that
Speaker 1: one in a while, but it's a bit of an outlier.
Speaker 1: The reality is you make your birdies on the par
Speaker 1: fives that you can't reach. You make them on the
Speaker 1: par fives that you can reach. You make them on
Speaker 1: the short part fours where you can happen to get
Speaker 1: the ball up there seventy yards from the green, And
Speaker 1: so that type of shot called a distance wedge is
Speaker 1: critical for making birdies, and making birdies is critical to
Speaker 1: being a good player. And of course if you make birdies.
Speaker 1: Another way to make birdies is to feel like you
Speaker 1: can shoot at pins. And if you have no confidence
Speaker 1: in your finesse, game around the greens, and you find
Speaker 1: yourself playing in the middle of the green and you know,
Speaker 1: having good shots that end up thirty feet or so.
Speaker 1: So it really is feeds on itself in so many
Speaker 1: different ways as far as just keeping momentum, being able
Speaker 1: to attack, take any advantage of the easy holes. And
Speaker 1: if you're not tidy with your wedge game from one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty yards at end, you really do not
Speaker 1: have a chance to compete.
Speaker 2: Right book, I loved the story on how you started
Speaker 2: figuring this out with your brother and being on tour
Speaker 2: and started videotaping on your own. Why did you give
Speaker 2: us a little history of your own game and how
Speaker 2: you got to understanding and becoming the guru that you
Speaker 2: are to seventy players.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of an interesting tale, you know. I
Speaker 1: played in college, I played nicely, turned pro afterwards and
Speaker 1: played those days. There was no such thing as a
Speaker 1: web dot com tour or a hoving tour. It was
Speaker 1: get all the way through tour school or play overseas
Speaker 1: or many tour events. So I went overseas and I
Speaker 1: played in Asian South America and did that for about
Speaker 1: five years, traveling around the world playing great experience, but
Speaker 1: it became very clear to me that everything that I
Speaker 1: was working hard on to improve was actually making me
Speaker 1: much worse. And I had a great touch around the
Speaker 1: green when I was a kid, but I had no
Speaker 1: thoughts either. I just kind of did it. And then
Speaker 1: as I started to get formal coaching, you know, I
Speaker 1: got much much worse. I quit, got married, and took
Speaker 1: a job working for Dave Hills, who's kind of a
Speaker 1: famous short game coach. After two or three years there,
Speaker 1: having an opportunity to kind of learn from him and
Speaker 1: dabbling a little bit more specifically in short game coaching,
Speaker 1: and an opportunity to start my own business. And one
Speaker 1: thing was very clear at that point, even after working
Speaker 1: teaching short game schools for three years, I had no
Speaker 1: clue what good technique was. I didn't know what worked
Speaker 1: and why. I just knew that the things that I
Speaker 1: was teaching in those schools and the things that I
Speaker 1: was taught when I was going through college and as
Speaker 1: a pro were not working. And they were not only
Speaker 1: not working for me, but they weren't helping for the
Speaker 1: people I was seeing. So I decided I need to
Speaker 1: go on a little bit of a journey or quest
Speaker 1: to try and figure this out, since I was just
Speaker 1: getting ready to open my own academy and my oldest brother,
Speaker 1: Tom's a PGA tour player before I was on tour
Speaker 1: for eleven years and was close friends with Seve among
Speaker 1: a lot of great players, and asked me to come
Speaker 1: caddy for him at the Players Championship. So I had
Speaker 1: a a kind of a unique opportunity to be around
Speaker 1: the best wedge player in the on the planet, as
Speaker 1: well as many others like Raymond Floyd and Corey Pavin,
Speaker 1: and I had a huge need to try and figure
Speaker 1: out what the heck, you know, what worked and why,
Speaker 1: because at this point I only knew what didn't work,
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I went and took video and
Speaker 1: I studied it just like a football coach would study
Speaker 1: a film of a of a of a game, and
Speaker 1: you know, kind of wiped the slate clean and just
Speaker 1: started my own my own theory. Since I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to teach, I thought the most logical thing would
Speaker 1: would be to study what they'd do and atually just
Speaker 1: teach what they do. And I found it to be
Speaker 1: amazingly opposite and completely different than anything I'd ever heard.
Speaker 2: That's what I found so fascinating is the epiphany that
Speaker 2: you had when you were doing this What was it
Speaker 2: that you discovered? Well before I asked ask that question,
Speaker 2: I just want to announce to the audience that we're
Speaker 2: live on periscope right now, and if the people watching
Speaker 2: on periscope have any questions that they want to submit
Speaker 2: to James while we're having this conversation, please tim up
Speaker 2: type them up on the screen and I'll try to
Speaker 2: get to them as I can. I already have one
Speaker 2: question that came in earlier today from Twitter when I
Speaker 2: announced that I was going to do this interview with you.
Speaker 2: But tell me about you know, when you went through
Speaker 2: the footage, James, what was it that you found? How
Speaker 2: were you able to get to the place where you're saying,
Speaker 2: you know, this is very different than anything we're teaching.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean so so. I mean it's different in
Speaker 1: every single facet. I mean I could run through and
Speaker 1: list seventy things that are completely opposite of what you
Speaker 1: should be doing in your full swing to generate power,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of just kind of came to
Speaker 1: the realization as the goals change and the goal becomes
Speaker 1: to be weak, to have a soft touch to control
Speaker 1: the speed instead of generated to use loft and bounce
Speaker 1: to the club. That the technique should change right along
Speaker 1: with the intent. And you know, I wasn't thinking this
Speaker 1: far ahead, but after a while I kind of I say, well,
Speaker 1: this makes sense to me. Now, why wouldn't it be different?
Speaker 1: But you know the first thing I noticed was that
Speaker 1: these great players Sebe Bellisteros, Raymond Floyd, what not, Corey
Speaker 1: Payment had a little reverse pivot in their backswing, which
Speaker 1: you know that they might start with their weight fairly even,
Speaker 1: which is another difference. I was taught to left and
Speaker 1: you put your hands ahead that they had to weight even,
Speaker 1: and they reversed weight shifted to add pressure in their
Speaker 1: left or lead leg a little bit, and the backswing,
Speaker 1: their head literally moved two or three inches towards the target,
Speaker 1: and then as they delivered the club, their head would
Speaker 1: stay forward. And if you think of a full swing
Speaker 1: or even a seventy yard shot, as you turn back
Speaker 1: behind the ball and swing your arms and turn your shoulders,
Speaker 1: you actually load pressure into your trail leg and your
Speaker 1: head typically moves three or four inches behind the ball
Speaker 1: as you deliver a lot of times to add especially
Speaker 1: with a driver, to hit up on it or at
Speaker 1: least hit a level. As you shift your weight your body,
Speaker 1: your upper body tilts back. So the entire motor pattern
Speaker 1: was different, not only with balance, but with the sequence
Speaker 1: of events, with the setup, with how they released the club,
Speaker 1: or the role of the of not the role the
Speaker 1: rotation of the arm movement. Everything about it was completely opposite.
Speaker 1: So I just started to just write down the common
Speaker 1: allies that Sevy had. He was my main guy that
Speaker 1: I studied because I had the most footage of him
Speaker 1: and he had the reputation of being the best. But
Speaker 1: Graymond Floyd and Corey Pave and my brother who was
Speaker 1: an amazing wedge player, and you know, I have Wayne
Speaker 1: Grady and Jody my lot of great players that I
Speaker 1: had this footage of, And I just thought, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't know what the heck I'm doing,
Speaker 1: so I guess I'll just write down what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and that's what I'll teach.
Speaker 2: And it's worked for you.
Speaker 1: It has it's you know, it not only worked for me,
Speaker 1: because now all of a sudden, it's like I started
Speaker 1: to rediscover some of the touch and feel I had
Speaker 1: when I was young, and I had no thoughts, but
Speaker 1: the students that I began to teach once again, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was working for Dave pel Squad, honestly, people
Speaker 1: were not getting leaving those schools improved in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Now on my own, I really started to see some
Speaker 1: major growth, you know, some excited phone calls and emails
Speaker 1: of people telling me how much better they were doing.
Speaker 1: And you know, at some point you need that confirmation
Speaker 1: as a coach that things are working.
Speaker 2: I'm fascinating you said they weren't improving at schools. Is
Speaker 2: that the nature of the schools themselves or it was
Speaker 2: what was being taught, because I've talked to so many
Speaker 2: people who've gone to golf schools and they feel so
Speaker 2: great after doing a long weekend or even up to
Speaker 2: five days in a school, and they go home and
Speaker 2: without somebody there to you know, keep correcting them and stuff,
Speaker 2: they don't remember much and very frustrated and feel like
Speaker 2: they spent money that didn't really turn their game around
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little bit of both, but I would
Speaker 1: say more than anything, it's just really bad information. And
Speaker 1: you get bad information on technique. That's bad enough, but
Speaker 1: Unfortunately those schools don't say this appropriately. I would say this.
Speaker 1: I am a coach. I'm not a teacher. So if
Speaker 1: you came to me and needed help and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to teach you to do this technique that technique,
Speaker 1: and we're going to perfect this movement, you could walk
Speaker 1: away with perfect movement. But Fred, but you won't be
Speaker 1: a better player because as a coach, I'm interested only
Speaker 1: in performance, and so you can improve technically to improve,
Speaker 1: but you can also make your training time more effective
Speaker 1: so that you develop skill, which is really what performance is,
Speaker 1: and that those skills have nothing to do with technique.
Speaker 1: They could be picking the right club, picking the right
Speaker 1: landing spot, adapting for upslopes and down slopes. What do
Speaker 1: I do? You know when the balls into the grain?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: So that type of stuff was just not being taught.
Speaker 1: And what's worse is that the technical information was poor.
Speaker 1: What's worse yet, is that when you're thinking about technique,
Speaker 1: the thoughts are internal. And so, Fred, if I could
Speaker 1: ask you, as a recreational player, what's the worst thing
Speaker 1: you could do on a golf course.
Speaker 2: The worst thing that I can do on the golf
Speaker 2: course is keep doing I keep repeating the mistakes over
Speaker 2: and over again.
Speaker 1: Well I would, I would argue that it's thinking too much. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you overthinking golf and you, you know, especially with internal thoughts,
Speaker 1: it's so harmful for your game. Great golf is not
Speaker 1: internal thoughts. It's external. You're you're you're picturing your you're
Speaker 1: feeling energy to the target, your you know, the thoughts
Speaker 1: live outside your body, not in Well, you go to
Speaker 1: this golf school, you learn this great technique. One hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the time is is focus. Uh, have internal thought.
Speaker 1: There's no mention of skill development, there's no mention of
Speaker 1: how to improvementally. And yeah, it's long and tiring, and
Speaker 1: you do this for three days, you get sent home
Speaker 1: and it's no wonder people weren't getting better because they're
Speaker 1: doing going about the process of improving all wrong. There
Speaker 1: has to be not just this technique that I discovered.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's great and it works, but more importantly,
Speaker 1: there has to be an approach to improving and an logical,
Speaker 1: simple way that you could spend a few minutes each
Speaker 1: day to get better, to not only improve your technique
Speaker 1: but your skill and the confidence of what great golf
Speaker 1: demands and that's really what coaches do that teachers do not.
Speaker 1: You know, they think about the whole picture as opposed
Speaker 1: to just some little technical tip.
Speaker 2: Oh that's amazing. Actually, I guess the answer to your
Speaker 2: question is that I'm actually struggling with right now with
Speaker 2: my putting, is I'm getting in my own way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's well. I got the putting book coming
Speaker 1: out next year, Fred, so we'll have to do this
Speaker 1: again in the year. Okay. But it's the same whether
Speaker 1: it's people getting their own way off the tea, they
Speaker 1: getting their own way when they chip, they get in
Speaker 1: their own way when they putt. But if I was
Speaker 1: going to share with you, that's such a multifaceted, interesting problem.
Speaker 1: And I do go into great detail on this next
Speaker 1: one about that very topic because that's I think a
Speaker 1: very common problem, that might be the most common problem.
Speaker 1: But if you're getting in your own way, there's two
Speaker 1: things happening. Once again, thoughts are internal. You're thinking about
Speaker 1: how to move the club. You're thinking about a position
Speaker 1: of your head or your arm, or the motor of
Speaker 1: your stroke, or what you want the club to do.
Speaker 1: And I would move your thoughts and train to try
Speaker 1: and think of external and kind of a subconscious reaction
Speaker 1: to what you picture. And the way I do that
Speaker 1: with my students is I separate training time by intent.
Speaker 1: So if the intent of training is to work on
Speaker 1: and improve your technique, then we eliminate the whole we
Speaker 1: put into open space and we think of only technique.
Speaker 1: Those are those internal thoughts, and we do it in
Speaker 1: a manner where there's some feedback whether we know we're
Speaker 1: doing it right or not. So might just create a
Speaker 1: simple workstation for your putting or for your wedge play
Speaker 1: or your bunker player or whatever, and it just might
Speaker 1: be some swings without the ball or certainly without a
Speaker 1: pin where we evaluate the technique. Then you just have
Speaker 1: to flush that completely and you have to think about skill.
Speaker 1: And so you do that through random practice instead of
Speaker 1: one ball after the other. In the same you scatterballs everywhere.
Speaker 1: You have all your clubs, and you go through an
Speaker 1: organized process to get yourself ready. And in the book,
Speaker 1: I talk about this process starting with assessment of the lie,
Speaker 1: the wind, the grain, all the factors that would influence it,
Speaker 1: choosing a club, choosing a trajectory, choosing a landing spot,
Speaker 1: visualizing the ball go in. So now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: as I visualize, the thoughts are external, Right, have my
Speaker 1: thought walking in clear and committed, taking a rehearsal swing,
Speaker 1: thinking of nothing more, that kind of energy to your picture,
Speaker 1: and then then reacting like you tied your shoe this morning, Fred,
Speaker 1: which is you don't know how you did that, you just.
Speaker 2: Did it, you think about it.
Speaker 1: You can take that approach to putting as well. When
Speaker 1: you're taking a rehearsal swing or you're over the ball,
Speaker 1: are you reacting to a vision or are you consciously
Speaker 1: trying to move the club a certain way? And that
Speaker 1: that's the definition of to some extent of getting in
Speaker 1: your own way, you know. So that's the pre shot
Speaker 1: kind of portion of that equation. There's also a post shot,
Speaker 1: a portion where the most important time in golf is
Speaker 1: what you do after a bad shot. What's the what
Speaker 1: do you what's the first five seconds you after a
Speaker 1: bad shot? How do you react? How do you respond? Well,
Speaker 1: the typical person, let's say you miss a short pot,
Speaker 1: you miss a two footers. If they get angry, they
Speaker 1: get frustrated, they get despondent, they go, oh, I can't pot,
Speaker 1: I'm horrible at this, you know, all the negative self talk, right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's certainly not making the next one easier, right that
Speaker 1: that your your self image is taking a big blow
Speaker 1: every time you say I can't do this, I'm no
Speaker 1: good at it, this is frustrating or just feeling that
Speaker 1: negative emotion. So that's not what champions do. Champ think
Speaker 1: about the results unemotionally and allow them to direct direct
Speaker 1: them in a positive way so they can do the
Speaker 1: next one better. So that's literally why I titled my
Speaker 1: book Your Short Game Solution, because as a coach, I
Speaker 1: ask the same question probably five hundred times a day,
Speaker 1: and I always asks, Okay, what's the solution of that? So, Fred,
Speaker 1: you missed this two footer? What's the solution? Well, it
Speaker 1: could be more break could be less energy, could be
Speaker 1: more commitment, could be I didn't quiet my eye and
Speaker 1: do my breathing or whatever it is that we're working on, right,
Speaker 1: and you say, well, next time, I'll just recommit and
Speaker 1: I'll do that foundational thing better. And so therefore you
Speaker 1: missed your two footer, but you've recommitted in a positive
Speaker 1: way to your plan, as opposed to missing your two
Speaker 1: footer and going wow, I suck. I can't put. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of little pitfalls mental pitfalls to to
Speaker 1: putting or performance in golf that people just don't quite
Speaker 1: get right. They just don't quite have the mental discipline
Speaker 1: or the knowledge to to kind of self coach in
Speaker 1: a positive way.
Speaker 2: You know, your your book. It's actually it's very hard
Speaker 2: to do in an audio podcast go over the book
Speaker 2: in detail because it's such a technical book and there
Speaker 2: are great drills in it. There's there's so much great
Speaker 2: information that it's the type of thing that you need
Speaker 2: to go over multiple times. But there are a couple
Speaker 2: of things in the book that I'd like to talk
Speaker 2: about and just get your you know, rough explanation on
Speaker 2: this and tease tease the audience to obviously go out
Speaker 2: and buy the book. And that Let's talk about the
Speaker 2: the choosing the correct wedges for for your your game.
Speaker 1: Right, so in your set makeup, you know, you're looking
Speaker 1: for some versatility and the bounce options, okay, and also
Speaker 1: kind of an even gaps total distance between your wedges.
Speaker 1: So let's just look at those two criteria. You know,
Speaker 1: if we're talking a distance wedge, which I define as
Speaker 1: like between forty yards and maybe your full swing and
Speaker 1: your pitching wage. So let's say one twenty five or whatever.
Speaker 1: You don't want a bigger gap than about twenty yards
Speaker 1: in there. So if I hit my pitching wedge one
Speaker 1: twenty five, the next club I need to hit at
Speaker 1: least ninety five yards, The next club I need to
Speaker 1: hit at least seventy five full. And if I can
Speaker 1: get those nice even spread like that, then through this
Speaker 1: distance wage system that I expound upon in the book,
Speaker 1: you can really learn to cover any yard which with
Speaker 1: appropriate spin and trajectory. Okay, so that's one criteria. The
Speaker 1: second would be the bounce options and the soul grind,
Speaker 1: the shape of the wedge. And I mean that's a
Speaker 1: book in itself, just kind of going to all the
Speaker 1: different detail there. But if I could just generalize it
Speaker 1: to this one point, I think it would be helpful
Speaker 1: for anybody listening. You want to have a sand wedge,
Speaker 1: your middle wedge, whether it's fifty four or fifty five,
Speaker 1: fifty six doesn't matter with a lot of bounce on it.
Speaker 1: Bounce is the difference between the bottom back of the
Speaker 1: club on the soul to the leading edge and degrees,
Speaker 1: So good sand wedge you might have between ten and
Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen degrees of bounce on it. If you
Speaker 1: have a more lofted club like a fifty eight to
Speaker 1: fifty nine or sixty, you want that one to be
Speaker 1: low and bounce between four and seven, depending once again
Speaker 1: on your standard technique. So with the techniques that I
Speaker 1: try and get people to use, you don't need much
Speaker 1: bounce because the swing is very shallow and you use
Speaker 1: it as you swing. So if that's the case and
Speaker 1: you have a high bounced sand wedge and a low
Speaker 1: bounce lob wedge, then you're really prepared for any turf
Speaker 1: condition because when the sand, the sand or grass is soft,
Speaker 1: kind of like it usually is in the Northeast or
Speaker 1: maybe up there in the northern California or whatever, you
Speaker 1: kind of soft conditions, the ball comes out slow and
Speaker 1: more bounce is better than less, So you can always
Speaker 1: use your sandwich perfect you need you need a little
Speaker 1: bit more energy, you need more bounce. If, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you're playing kind of tight, firm turf you
Speaker 1: get in a lot of places, whether it's exis or
Speaker 1: maybe it's just have a little bit of a drought
Speaker 1: going on the course or whatever, or firm sand sand
Speaker 1: that's been where it's rained and it's kind of packed
Speaker 1: in and baked. Then you need less bounce is more
Speaker 1: effective and the ball comes up fast or flies off,
Speaker 1: so you need more loft and less bounce. So you
Speaker 1: always have a choice if you had that set makeup awesome,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, I hope. I mean, no, it does.
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 4: Topic, Yeah, it is, but there was there was a
Speaker 4: line It's almost not a throwaway, but it was kind
Speaker 4: of buried in there that I also thought is actually
Speaker 4: perfect for what Golf Smarter is all about for this
Speaker 4: podcast and how we approach.
Speaker 2: Golf here, well, how I approach golf, and that is
Speaker 2: bad decisions versus bad shots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are certain conditions or trajectories that you might
Speaker 1: play based on the lie, and of course this is skill.
Speaker 1: Once again, this is not technique. It's a judgment. And
Speaker 1: so the most common one that I see is a
Speaker 1: ball laying into the grain on a tight lie. And
Speaker 1: in that case, a lot of people they may have
Speaker 1: their favorite club out, which is a lob wedge, and
Speaker 1: they might see a little lower shot with it because
Speaker 1: they have some green to work with, So they lean
Speaker 1: the shaft a little forward and they take this club.
Speaker 1: When you lean the shaft forward, you reduce the effective bounce,
Speaker 1: and he's sharpened the leading edge, which is just an
Speaker 1: awful thing to do into the grain, where if you
Speaker 1: hit just a little behind it with a sharp leading edge,
Speaker 1: it's just going to dig a trench. I mean, we
Speaker 1: all saw that. I think the listeners think back at
Speaker 1: Tiger the Hero World Challenge where he's into the grain
Speaker 1: on that sticky Bermuda and he's digging the leading edge
Speaker 1: in the ground, just duff and shot after shot. That
Speaker 1: is much about that certainly was technique in his case,
Speaker 1: but it's more about shot selection. So if you take
Speaker 1: your sand wedge and just just roll back the clock
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy pre lobledge and take your sand wedge,
Speaker 1: and we can hit the same trajectory shot as we
Speaker 1: did with the sixty by hitting a little higher than
Speaker 1: normal shot with that sandwich, and effectively you add bounce
Speaker 1: and soften the leading edge and it just works so
Speaker 1: much better. Now the problem is that skill development, that
Speaker 1: judgment element requires decision making and training. How are you
Speaker 1: supposed to learn that? How did I learn that? You know, Well,
Speaker 1: the way I learned it is that I trained properly
Speaker 1: by throwing balls everywhere, and you know, learning through experience
Speaker 1: of a bunch of different trials. But that's not what
Speaker 1: average golfer does they. I mean you, even at my
Speaker 1: own club. You think these people would have read the
Speaker 1: book and known better or whatever. But they go out
Speaker 1: to the sharcame area. They stand in the same spot
Speaker 1: for twenty minutes, and they'll hit ten shots to one pin,
Speaker 1: and they'll hit ten shots to the next pin, and they're
Speaker 1: all from the same lie, and they tee them up
Speaker 1: and it's just horrible practice for trying to develop skill
Speaker 1: and learn the little nuances of being a great player.
Speaker 2: And what would you walk up to them and have
Speaker 2: them do If.
Speaker 1: I would not, I would just say, you know what,
Speaker 1: the reality is, if they're not going to practice properly,
Speaker 1: they're better off just going to have a beer because
Speaker 1: they're probably doing more harm than good at that point. Interesting,
Speaker 1: think about it. When you're in a pile, you hit
Speaker 1: a bad shot, what do you do? Well? You think
Speaker 1: internally about what you did wrong, and then you fiddle
Speaker 1: and you try something new, and then you at some
Speaker 1: point you stay there long enough, you're going to hit
Speaker 1: a shot you don't like, you know, it's just there's
Speaker 1: no resiliency in it, there's no toughness in it, there's
Speaker 1: no skill development in it, and so they're just better
Speaker 1: off just like skipping all together.
Speaker 2: You mentioned Tiger and I'm That kind of leads into
Speaker 2: the question that did come across on Twitter today from
Speaker 2: Nick at Golf Progress. What did you see in Tiger's
Speaker 2: wedge play that was so radically different between Augusta and Phoenix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's just backtrack a little. Let's say what
Speaker 1: was so radically different between Phoenix and what he did
Speaker 1: in two thousand? Technique in two thousand, when he was
Speaker 1: at the top of his powers, there was spotless, very
Speaker 1: fundamentally sound that this technique in Phoenix and before was
Speaker 1: just absolutely awful. Everything awful. Know, the setup was bad,
Speaker 1: He's backing up in the middle of his motion. The
Speaker 1: backstriing was wrong, and he think, how could a person
Speaker 1: of that talent regressed that far? Uh? And the reality
Speaker 1: is only when you the only way to get that
Speaker 1: far is to work hard on the wrong things. So
Speaker 1: he got some bad information at some point, practiced it diligently,
Speaker 1: you know, wasn't quite getting what he wanted out of
Speaker 1: it and the whole thing regresses. And in this case,
Speaker 1: I know for a fact that the changes he was
Speaker 1: making in his backswing, with the way he moved his arms,
Speaker 1: and you know he's working on his full swing first
Speaker 1: with Haney and then with Sean Foley, that the arm movements,
Speaker 1: the motor patterns that he was working on hard or
Speaker 1: change that dramatically. He was. He just kind of crept
Speaker 1: into his finesca and he was literally moving his arms
Speaker 1: exactly the same way, and that ultimately ended up making
Speaker 1: him change his set up and the whole motor pattern.
Speaker 1: So that's very common mistake. The major premise of my
Speaker 1: book is that the full swing and short game are opposites.
Speaker 1: They're not the same, and if you use the same
Speaker 1: motor pattern for both, you'll only be good at one.
Speaker 1: You know, you just got to pick your one you
Speaker 1: want to be good at.
Speaker 2: I guess I was very I was very surprised when
Speaker 2: I came across that part in the book. Is like, wa, wait,
Speaker 2: completely different swings on your short game.
Speaker 1: Now, I should say I finished that comment. I guess sure.
Speaker 1: Tiger's new coach, Chris Como, a smart guy friend of mine,
Speaker 1: has a ton of knowledge and he inherited this issue
Speaker 1: with Tiger, he didn't create it. So I think the
Speaker 1: reality is I think that was a shocker as a
Speaker 1: coach when he shows up and he's working on full
Speaker 1: swing and to find out that his player can't ship.
Speaker 1: Kind of found that out after the fact, and then
Speaker 1: I think, given, you know, then Tiger takes a break
Speaker 1: and they sit there and they focused on that part
Speaker 1: of the game and worked it through. And I think
Speaker 1: now the difference that Augusta is just operating with good
Speaker 1: information and everything has changed. Like setup is completely different, backswing,
Speaker 1: arm movement patterns different, is balance, and the way he
Speaker 1: releases the club was completely different. So one technique interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've asked a number of different coaches that we've
Speaker 2: had on the show, if you had the chance to
Speaker 2: talk to Tiger for fifteen minutes or you know, if
Speaker 2: he called you and said would you help me? What
Speaker 2: would you do? And so many have said, just go
Speaker 2: back to what got you here in the first place,
Speaker 2: stop playing with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but how do you do that? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like putting the toothpaste back into the tube once you
Speaker 1: sweeze it out. It's just like it's impossible motor patterns
Speaker 1: have changed, your body, motor memories have changed. You know,
Speaker 1: everything's different. So you like the reality is that's why
Speaker 1: you got to have foundational beliefs. They need to be
Speaker 1: well defined. You got to have ways to train so
Speaker 1: that you never really degenerate or get lost and move
Speaker 1: away from them. And I think that's that's really what
Speaker 1: happened when he switched kind of coaches. He switched complete
Speaker 1: concepts of how to do it, and then at some
Speaker 1: point he didn't know. It was kind of like me
Speaker 1: when I was teacher. It's like, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's right, but I know that's wrong, you know, So.
Speaker 2: So tell us where where you're teaching now, and if
Speaker 2: people wanted to reach out and work with you, where
Speaker 2: they would go and how they would get in touch
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I have a golf academy in Omaha, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: Shadow Ridge Country Club. The easiest way to get a
Speaker 1: hold of me would pre to send me an email.
Speaker 1: Just go to my website JS golf Academy dot com,
Speaker 1: and there's a place where they can kind of see
Speaker 1: some tips and do all those sort of things, but
Speaker 1: also a place where they can contact me. I honestly,
Speaker 1: not here very often. I work in one on an
Speaker 1: airplane pretty much every week, working with tour players and
Speaker 1: doing different things. But I'm usually here, you know, two
Speaker 1: or three days a week, and you know, if they
Speaker 1: want too bad enough, we can certainly find a way
Speaker 1: to get together.
Speaker 2: How about giving us a quick tip right from the
Speaker 2: book again, it's your short game solution mastering the finesse
Speaker 2: game from one hundred and twenty yards and in how
Speaker 2: did you give us a quick tip from the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the key issues around the green, especially
Speaker 1: inside thirty yards, is to sequence your swing properly. And
Speaker 1: there is a power sequence where you start your downswing
Speaker 1: with your body some shift and some wire on your hands,
Speaker 1: move faster in the club and you get this little
Speaker 1: down cock so you get this little whip there. Well,
Speaker 1: the short game is opposite, so I call it a
Speaker 1: finesse sequence. And the easiest way to learn what the
Speaker 1: finest sequence is, which is essentially at the start of
Speaker 1: your down swinging the club moving faster than your arms
Speaker 1: at the start of the downsing so these angles are
Speaker 1: starting to be let out, is to chip with your
Speaker 1: trailarm only just in training. So I just pretend like essentially,
Speaker 1: like I have a ball in my hand which I'm
Speaker 1: gonna grab here, and if I was going to do
Speaker 1: a little underhanded toss, I wouldn't do it by starting
Speaker 1: my hips. I'd start my arm, the club would come out,
Speaker 1: and then I just release the club past my body
Speaker 1: to get this nice, gentle little toss there. And it's
Speaker 1: the same motion. And only think I'm gonna do differently
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna do it with the club in my hand,
Speaker 1: So just grip the club and the trail arm only
Speaker 1: set up to this normal I really like to level out,
Speaker 1: so I'd like to put my left hand kind of
Speaker 1: down on my thigh. Now I'm just gonna make a
Speaker 1: one handed swing. Just pretend I can do it a
Speaker 1: little five yard toss with my trail hand, and that
Speaker 1: gives you the perfect perfect sequences. You release the club
Speaker 1: past your body, and I get a lot of calls
Speaker 1: and or texts saying, well, I chip so beautifully one
Speaker 1: hand only doing your drill, but when I put my
Speaker 1: left hand on there, it's not quite as good. It's
Speaker 1: just the perfect drill that allows you the sequence your
Speaker 1: swing properly, release the club pastor body and nice soft
Speaker 1: touch around the greens.
Speaker 2: Fabulous tip. Thank you, and I'm just so impressed that
Speaker 2: you can hit balls around the house and not get
Speaker 2: in trouble.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I watch out found that's the only reason