Speaker 1: Hey, this is Mike Carry from much I had sheet Porta,
I play at the link, sit point and beach. This
is GOP smurdering number nine nine zero. And I think
this is a big part because of podcasting. Now we
get wisdom talked about a little bit more that we
maybe have over the last ten twenty thirty years, you know,
the last twenty years. It's all about where you have lessons.
You do this, you hit these numbers, you do this
on track, man, you hit this line on a video screen.
To be honest, for some people, it works. For most
they don't have time to really change anything fundamentally, and
so you can have this great lesson, but you know,
after you've hit your bucket of balls, you're probably not
going to hit another bucket of balls correctly until you
see the next lesson. And so people, I think, get
frustrated and they're paying all this money for a swing lesson.
And yeah, my numbers look better and this line looks
better on the screen. But I keep shooting the same score,
and I keep hitting the same shots, and I keep
making the same mistakes. There's a lot more podcasts involved
with wisdom and experience and filling fives into fours. A
different approach to be able to help you score better.
Speaker 2: Meet the course, not yourself. Written by one of the
PGA tours older rookies, Gary Christian. This is Golf Smarter,
sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to
help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
There's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Speaker 1: Gary Well, thank you so much. Fred, great to be
with you. Look forward to having a nice chat.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to as well, because I truly enjoyed
the book, but we'll talk about that later. I want
to talk about your fascinating history in the golf world.
You've done so many different things, but what's got to
start the conversation is that you were the oldest rookie
ever in the PGA Tour.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I was one of the oldest, let's
say true rookies, never having played a PGA Tour until
I was forty years old. So you'll see a lot
of people you know sneak in and make a US
open every now and again. That counts that you played
appreciator event or Monday qualified And yes I was on
the not overly accelerated path to the PGA Tour. So
it was it was quite the journey to have a
lot of you know, dead ends and going backwards, to
go forwards and go sideways, and we finally made it.
So great journey. A lot of the time, the journeys,
I think more fun than the actual destination.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it is you learn a lot more from the
journey than you do from the destination, I think, especially
in golf exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it makes you the person that
you are. It forms your character. So the ability to
have the tenas the and the perseverance and the resilience
that you showed in your golf career then translates to
life as well. So I think that's the great thing
about golf. I had so many parallels to life, and
it is in many respects a metaphor for life.
Speaker 2: Right right, So you must have hit so many roadblocks
along the way. What was that your drive kept going
that you just knew that you had the ability to
get there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, I mean, you know, the roadblocks I had,
you know, just always had was not being a particularly
imposing physical specimen, you know, maybe not having the finances
that could help me to do whatever I needed to
do when I needed to do it, and you know,
a talent level that was obviously a very high talent level.
But when you threw me in against some other players
and some other college players and many tour players there,
you know there was only one person that was going
to make the two and it wasn't me. And so
you always of battling and and it just I always
had the ability to win. I think just because I
was just naturally a tough personality. I always say I
hated losing more than I enjoyed winning, and you learn
a lot from that, and but you know, it takes
a lot out of you. So you know, it's funny
now that I don't really enjoy competing that much in
many respects. I think I used up my reserves of
energy and emotional and energy to be able to get
where I got to. So you know, now when my
son beats me a ping pong, I don't solve for
half an hour like I used to. So that's kind
of nice. It makes you a little bit better human
being as well, which is even better. But yeah, I
always had the belief in myself that I had something
of what it would take to get to the highest level,
and we just were trying to put our finger on
what was that little bit of glue that would put
the final pieces together that would allow everything to work.
You know, you can be you know, maybe undersized, maybe
under talented, maybe under financed, maybe under coached, but if
you have one thing that kind of puts everything together
to give you what it is you do have, but
has everything working together at the same time, like everyone's
put in the same direction, you can achieve great things.
And that's what I think I did with the mental
side of the game to dedicate myself to that to
be able to push me over the edge. You see
a lot of incredibly talented players with amazing swings, amazing
you know, coaching, but they don't have that thing that
allows it to happen when they need it to happen.
And you know, it's almost like it's almost like the
game's too easy for them, and they kind of overlook
certain other things that I would never have overlooked, and
you know, I would just be jealous of kind of
I could just have that talent or that swing or
that bank balance to be able to go and see
who I want when I want and try and improve constantly.
You know, I could have done some really great things
with that, and I would have been a rookie at
thirty or not forty.
Speaker 2: So in that journey you must have played a lot.
Let me ask you this first. What year was it
when you were forty that you made it onto the tour?
What were we talking?
Speaker 1: That was twenty eleven. So I'm on myland Classic on
the Cornferry to and I've had a good year up
to that stage, and that win put me comfortably inside
the top twenty five on the points list or the
moneylist back back then. But it was special because it
was in Pittsburgh. Arnold Palmer was the honorary tournament chairman,
and so there was just something. I'm a student of
the game, a student of history, and to have that
connection with what I had just achieved. And someone took
a photo of me making my six inch part to
get my PGA Tour card and win the tournament, and
they sent it to me. I sent it to mister
Palmer and he signed it like he does. He did,
you know, for so many people. So it's just that special,
special memento that They've got a lot of special things,
but that's certainly one of the more important ones.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, so when we're talking about twenty eleven, there
were probably a lot in those years that you were
competing at that level before you made it to the
PGA Tour. There must have been a lot of young
players coming up that were just walking right by you
and getting onto the tour. Were there players that you're going,
I'm better than him? Why am I not going there?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean there's been nine here. There were plenty
of players that you know, you knew were very good players.
We were obviously to make you live in at the game.
You're all very good players, and it's just a fine
it's such a fine line. You know, for that person
that finished hundredth on the one hundred and first on
the corn free to have lost their card, they were
just as good of a player as the guy that
finished in the top twenty five and got their card.
That's the final line of the nature of professional golf.
And you know, you look at it, it may come
down to you know, one nine holes and might come
down to one hole, but you know, you've just got
to just got to maintain that belief. And you know,
I didn't really worry too much about that the young
guns coming through and taking taking my spots on the
PGA Tour because I knew I was going to get
there eventually, and I just, you know, as as I
played the years on the corn Free Tourt, I got
more comfortable with the courses. I got more comfortable being
in contention. And you just have to use prior experience
to be able to perform better when you get an
opportunity the next time. And that was always my goal.
Whatever happened, I always learned something from the experience, whether
it was good or bad, and then applied that the
next time. You know, I'd vow to not make that mistake.
The next time, I would I would sit back after that.
I was very good about looking at things objectively. I
didn't take things emotionally. So, you know, you may go
into the tournament in the final group or two with
a chance to win a Corn Forrery Tour event, which
may may or may not get a PGA Tour card,
and you end up not playing great. You know, a
lot of people it will crush them. Because of the
resilience I had, I was just able to kind of
sit back, say, hey, you know, I try my best.
You know, things didn't work out that day. Now let's
go over that round. Let's see what I could have
done better. You know, maybe in course management, maybe in
decision making, you know, but usually the most of the
most of the answers were in you know, maybe deviating
from my routine, getting distracted, get in a little bit
taken by the situation, and then you kind of say, okay,
next time. You know, My goal was to try and play,
you know, in effect, play a little bit like an
emotionless robot, even though I'm an outgoing, friendly guy in
between shots, That's what I am. But when I get
when I was getting into the shots, my job was
to take everything out of play, every distraction, every thought
of score, every thought of position, every thought of what if,
and say, I'm going to dedicate myself to giving myself
the best chance to make the best decision on this shot,
to visualize this shot as clearly as possible, to feel
exactly what it is I'm trying to do with this swing,
and then to get set up and then connect to
the target and let it go, and then whatever happens happens.
But what I could do is I could look myself
in the mirror after that shot and say, hey, I
did anything I could do. I cannot do anything more
than this, and sometimes go it's a hard game. And
sometimes sometimes is a degree out and that past two
degrees out and the ball goes twenty yards offline. That's
just part of the game. And I worked really hard
on that, and I would grade myself on how I
perform my routine, and I would try and get seventy
five percent of shots hit, whether they were drives, iron shots,
chips or puts as an a as grade in it
as an ad man, I did everything right there. It's
impossible to do for one hundred percent of the shots,
but seventy five percent was kind of my checklist. And
I'll go through my yardage book at the end on
my pin sheet and our grade every shot, and at
the end, I was saying, man, that was a good
round of golf today. I got seventy eight percent of
routines done to my liking.
Speaker 2: You mentioned being emotionless when you're playing, even though you're
an outgoing guy. At what stage of your development as
a golfer from I'm sure you started as a very
young age, started playing through the time that you finally
made it to the Tour and beyond that, what was
the point in that development that you realized how or
learned how to be emotionless while you're playing golf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's when I dedicated myself to the
mental side of the game. In twenty oh four, I'd
failed again at second stage of qualifying school and I
had a five drive back home, and you know, I'm
looking forward to blawing on the Mini Tours. But yet
another year, at thirty four years old or thirty three
years old or whatever, I had a wife and a
newborn son, and you know, obviously what I was doing
wasn't working. Because it was working well enough to make
money on the Mini Tours, which is almost impossible, and
to win events every single year, but it just wasn't
enough to get over that hump of getting through second
stage of qualifying school. So when I dedicated myself to that,
I was able to see a different path, see a
path where to be in control of one's mental makeup,
one's emotional makeup, the ability to react positivetively not negatively,
to talk kindly to yourself, all of these things that
we see in every gold psychology book we read. But
what brought life to it was reading the Eight Traits
of Champion Golfers by Graham and John Stabler, and I
just kind of just threw myself into it. And the
more I read of that, the more of these little
vignettes would come out to help me on the golf course.
And it wasn't theory. It was it was practical, practical advice.
You do this, this will happen. You do this differently,
this will happen differently. And that's what I wanted. I
just wanted a roadmap. And to that point I didn't
have a roadmap. I was kind of a little bit
lost in exactly what it is I needed to do.
And this helped just focus me a little bit more
to instead of, you know, trying lots of different things
and wasting energy kind of as I said, going forwards
and then saying, well that doesn't work, let's back out
this space and go to another another tunnel and see
if that works. This now was was what it is
that I needed, and that was that gave me the
ability to be way more efficient in the time spent
with preparation to play golf at the highest levels. As
I said, I had family commitments where I didn't need
to be out of the house for eight hours a day,
and so I cut back on my physical practice and
spend more time at home. But I would go to
a quiet spot and really work hard in developing the
skills necessary to be able to translate that on the
golf course of visualization and relaxation and just awareness, awareness
of how it is you're thinking. You know, we are
not very mindful of what's going on. We're not mindful
of what we're eating. I eat too quickly, I don't
maybe listen the way I should do. I don't open
my senses, and all of a sudden, when you become mindful,
you're suddenly aware of God tell you what my body
is extremely tight here, or I'm now very aware of
these very poor messages I'm telling myself. And I used
to do that. You know, I would get frustrated playing
go if I wouldn't show out and break clubs or
throw clubs or custs or anything. But there was that inward,
in a conversation between me and myself about how unacceptable
that was and how poor that was and how much
I sucked. And you can't be doing that to yourself,
and you flip it around and if your parents had
said the same thing to you that you were saying
to yourself, it wouldn't be a very healthy relationship. So,
you know, I've always been a positive guy, but I
could just you know, I was seventy five percent positive.
I had to get one hundred percent positive. So everything
that I did, every situation that I faced, I framed
it as positively as possible. I could go on top one,
but I could say to myself, you know what, man,
your routine felt pretty good there, or you had the
right club, or can't wait to hit this next shot
and see if we can hit a great shot and
then another great shot and make part on this whole.
I did that in a PGA two event in Memphis.
It was just a shot out of the blue, like
a pool top that went about one hundred yards. I
hit three with thirty forty yard short of the green,
pitched onto two feet and made part. But if I'd
have got in my own way of telling myself how
bad that was, and you know, telling myself, I'm a
PGA tour plan, I've just topped a ball and look
at all those people watching. How embarrassing is that? I
can't believe I'm a pros just done that. My mind
just went immediately to let's frame this as positive as possible.
Let's get onto the next shot. They said a great
shot here, and they said another great shot. And that's
what I did.
Speaker 2: What a great lesson. And many of those are in
the book. And again we are going to get to
the book. I'm just more fascinated about your development right now.
Speaker 1: I think I think that's why the book is so powerful,
is because it is actually based in a realistic, actual
things that happen. And you know, I like to think
that things are taught better or easier or people understand
things when it's based in things that happen everyday life.
And I think that's a powerful way. You know, when
you had teachers at school who could turn a very
boring history lesson into something that came alive, where you
put yourself in that battle or in that courtroom drama
or whatever it was in that you know, you know,
congressional meeting, whatever it was. When I heard those kinds
of stories, I just lived at I was there. I imagined,
I could you know, vividly imagine being you know, somewhere
two hundred years ago. And I think that's the secret
to good teaching, good write, in, good broadcast, in whatever
it is. You've got to allow that person to experience
what it is they experience and then help them change
that experience.
Speaker 2: Are you self taught in all of all your development
or did you have a variety of instructors from the
beginning all the way through.
Speaker 1: Well, I was self taught until I was twenty six.
With a golf swing. My dad was a genius without
knowing it. He he as a kid, would have me
I was a six and we would hit balls and
he would put a stick on the other side of
the ball and would tell me just to make the
divot after the stick, you know, And as a six
year old kid, you don't ask why, You just say, okay,
I'll do that then, because my dad told me to
do it, so it must be right. And that gave
me a hundred lessons without him knowing it. It gave
me a steady head, It gave me a good pivot,
It gave me a flat left wrist to impact. He
gave me weight transition. It did everything that you needed
to do to hit the ball consistently. So I've never
ever worried about making good contact with the ball because
of that lesson when I was six. But you know
I got through you know, junior golfert whatever level I
played in England, I earned a scholarship to Auburn. Being
self taught, which in many respects was, you know, maybe
put me a little bit behind other people. But I
think what I gained from it was I own my swing.
I owned the DNA of my swing, so I was
able to correct things way quicker than other people because
I could correct things on the course because in effect,
I was my own coach, whereas other players with way
better swings than me, as soon as they hit one
bad shot, you know, if mister coach isn't there, they
don't know how to go to Plan B or how
to correct when things go wrong. And so I knew
that obviously I had to finally get a coach, and
so when I was twenty six, I started working with
a great coach called Wayne Flint, top one hundred instruct
who lived close to where I lived in Birmingham, and
that helped refine what it was I did already, but
it didn't change the DNA of the swing. So I
still had the belief and the feel and the understanding
of the swing, but we just in effect knocked off
the rough edges and with the golf psychology. I read
a load of books, they didn't really speak to me,
you know, Bob Rotello. I enjoyed those books, but it
didn't feel like it was tailored to me. It was,
you know, some lovely little anecdotes that I could get
stuff from, but I needed something that was more for me,
a personalized touch, and that's where Deborah Graham and John
Stables book spoke to me. So then I started working
with them on a one to one basis and that
just helped solidify what I knew already. So it was
kind of the same kind of thing with the swing
and the mental side of the game. I was basically
self taught and then had the experts come in and
just knocked the rough edges off and just help the
understanding a little further.
Speaker 2: Excellent. So what was harder getting to the tour or
staying on the tour?
Speaker 1: Well, in many respects, I feel a bit like Jim Brown.
Injury took my career before I really got a chance
to enjoy it. So you certainly get into the tour
was the hardest thing. Yeah, when I was playing it
was top one twenty five would keep their card. I'll
be honest, I don't think I had to play that
well to keep my card. I earned my card on
the corn for it to a play at a level
I would call an A or an A minors to
finish in the top twenty five, I finished ninth. And
I played my rookie year on the PGA Tour. I
made the FedEx Cup playoffs. I had six or seven
top twenties, top ten, So I played, you know, had
some good results, and I mean I would grade myself
a B minors, maybe even a C plus. And I finished,
you know, and got on the FedEx Cup playoffs. If
I'd have played the way I'd played the previous year,
I would have finished top seventy, I think pretty comfortably. So,
you know, on the tour, you just it suited my
game because it was about minimizing mistakes, and I tended
to keep the ball in play. I tended to hit
a lot of greens, and I tended not to beat myself,
which would be a good name for a bookouldn't it.
So that was the kind of the secret of playing
on the on the PGA Tour, you just you know,
everyone thinks you got to go super low out there.
You don't. You just go, you shoot four rounds on
the par You're going to make a fortune every year.
And it was just I was unfortunate in that my game.
You know, Yes, the course is a little bit harder,
and it maybe highlighted a few of my weaknesses a
little bit more than it did on the corn for
a tour, But on the corn for a too, I
was top twenty and part in on the tour, I
was outside the top one hundred. And that was basically
the difference between playing four good rounds five weeks in
that year to play in three good rounds five weeks
a year. And if you had played four good rounds,
I would have had five top tens and finished in
the top seventy pretty comfortably.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that I think this is a lesson for
every golfer at every level, from beginner all the way through.
But you know, everyone when you ask someone are you
are you pretty good golfer? Andy? And I'll tell you no, no, no,
I suck. I'm terrible. But everyone is going to say that.
And here we have somebody who made it to the
PGA Tour saying, yeah, I was a C plus B minus. Right.
Even the best in the world will tell you no,
you know. I mean, I've been telling people I'm not good,
but I'm not that bad.
Speaker 1: It goes back to those fine lines. You know. The
difference between a B minus year and an A minus
year is tiny, It's minuscule, but that's the difference between
finishing barely inside the FedEx Cup playoff spots and finishing
well inside or finishing well outside. It is just it's
so competitive out there, and you just you can't have weaknesses.
That's that's the thing that kind of stands out to
me the most. On the PGA too. Any weaknesses is
magnified there because the penalty for a lack of skill
and a department is just a little bit higher than
it is anywhere else, and you get found out. And
when you're playing against the top one hundred and fifty
in the world, that basically, you know, that's a recipe
for getting run over. So I was glad that what
I was so glad I never had that overarching dream
and goal of I have to play on the PGA Tour.
My goal was to improve, to see how good I
could get and wherever that took me, I would be delighted. So,
you know, to go from being a part time player
because I had a full time job in England. I'm
one of the few PGA Tour players who's ever had
a job as well. So I left school at eighteen
and worked full time in the pensions field for two
years just outside London, and I was playing twice a
week and everyone was playing seven days a week. So
you know it is to go from there to playing
college goal for Auburn. What a massive jump that was,
What an amazing journey that was. And if I'd have
finished there and that was the limit to how good
I could get, then I could have probably laid my
head on the pillow and been fine about it. But
then to go from there and be able to play
on the mini tours and win thirty times, that's a
pretty good career right there for someone who started where
I started from. And then to go to the corn
Free Tour and win two times there, that's an amazing story.
To go from working as a pensions administrator to win
in twice on the corn Free Tour and then to
be a rookie make the Fedexcat Playoffs as a forty
year old and play with tiger woods at the Barclays.
That kind of puts the cherry on the top to
know where you went from and where you finished that.
But again, it was always just that I just want
to see how good I can get, and I was
glad to see that that was a PGA Tour level
and to be one of the best players in the world.
Speaker 2: Man, congratulations on that. I'm fascinated. Do you think that
it could ever happen again that a forty year old
could make it to the tour as a rookie.
Speaker 1: I find it highly highly unlikely. It's just the standard
of golf is so high. I was very lucky that
I got right at the end of the PGA Tour,
being obviously the best tour of the world, obviously incredible
selection of players, but it was you know, there was
that pathway through the corn free tour where you could
use experience and you could, you know, kind of pay
your dues, kind of like the old fashioned way of things,
how things used to be. You would kind of learn
how to fail for many many years on the on
the mini tours and whatever, and then all of a
sudden you would hit it just right and get through
qualifying school and get on the PGA two and may
or may not have a career, long term career, but
it was possible to do. Now you got PGA two
university where these university college students graduates the accelerated program.
These guys are, they're in their teens or their early twenties,
and they're the equivalent of thirty year old players that
the the tools they have behind them. You know, they
when you think of what I did, I was self
taught to I was twenty six. Not one player is
self taught. I didn't get into goal psychology till I
was thirty three. Basically every single top college player will
have a psychologist. Basically every top college player has a
PGA to a team behind them as a teenager. And
that's the difference. So they are they are so far
and above what people from the previous generation were at
their age that they are. You know, they're they're just incredible,
incredible athletes and incredible players that have this amazing talent,
but with that maturity added in. You throw that in
with you know, players in how bigger, stronger, more powerful
at you know, twenty five years old players they hit
in it three hundred and forty yards and they're just
playing pitch and park golf courses all the way, all
year long. You know, forty year olds tend to hit
it a little bit shorter than a twenty five year old.
So you know, the way I look at the best
way to explain it is through my experience of playing
at the highest levels. I hit the ball, let's say
two hundred and eighty five yards, I get paired with
Rory McElroy, I get I have to give him forty
yards on every single hole where we hit driver. Now,
over one round, I might have one of those days
with my seven irons where I just have that incredible
ball striking round and they have a load of birdie
chances with the seven nine, maybe two rounds, I might
be able to stay in hang in there by doing
having some incredible ball striking. But over the course of
four rounds, a forty yard head start is gonna catch
up with you, and you get no chance to compete
without just having basically playing a perfect four days of
golf ever free. And that's the difference. And that's where
it's not just Rory who does that. It's one hundred players.
The PGA tour and so that's that's the hardest thing
to compete again. So you know, I'm very proud that
I think I will be certainly, if not the last,
very close to the last kind of story that that
I think we can we can relate to. You know,
I'm in every man we call a guy that did
the best with what he had and didn't have the
resources to do it any more than I was capable
of doing. And I made it to live a dream.
And you know, we will strive for that, don't we.
We go through college and we we we try and
get a job that will allow us to fulfill a dream.
Some people start their own business because they have a dream.
A lot of people fail, there's a few that succeed.
And that's kind of kind of how I feel in
that my dream, you know, came came to fruition. There's
a hundred others whose dream just got was the roadkill
on on mini tours where they invested a ton of
money and time and effort and sweat equity, and at
the end of it, they lost a load of money.
And you know they didn't They're thirty years old and
they're still driving a car. Put together with duct tape.
And that's kind of how I was until I figured
out how to be successful. It was such a fine
line once again.
Speaker 2: And you were saying that you pretty much stopped had
to stop playing because your body rebelled against you.
Speaker 1: Well, I just had a freak injury. Yeah. I always
say I do some public speaking about my journey, and
you know, using the life lessons and lessons in business.
It's a very close parallel. But I always always get
to kick. They always get a kick when I say
the TV show The Bachelor ended my PGA tour career.
Now I wasn't on it and got divorced or anything,
but my wife and I would watch The Bachelor religiously
because we all love a train wreck. And so playing
in the Canadian Open, I just started playing really well
on the tour my next my second year, my sophomore year.
And I don't like the heat, and this was one
of those perfect weeks in Canada. It was seventy degrees
and you know, I just wanted to just get some
fresh air in my body. And so I had dinner
and I was going to go back to the hotel
and watch The Bachelor, and I guess text backs and
falls with my wife, and I said, you know what,
I think I'm gonna I'll watch it on DVR when
I get home. I'm going to go for a walk,
and so I had an ice cream. I walked to
a place called Bronte Harbor, which is on Lake Ontario,
and I was just walking around through the woods and
I walked over these rocks that were kind of like
an embankment around the lake, and I slipped off the
last rock and I paw my ACL mcl maniscus all
at the same time. So my knee kneecap was jiggling
at the spot that it shouldn't have jiggled, and that
was basically I had had it repaired, and I tore
it again in the corn Free Tour playoffs at that time,
trying to get my tour car back, which you trying
to get back, Yeah, so I was. I was around
and four holes away from getting it back. I played
really well for two rounds and then I got I
got in a bunk with a massive steep face and
hit it and I couldn't hold my balance and as
I started falling back, I just heard it snap and
swelled up like a grapefruit. And I I tried to
gut it out the next day, and I think if
I could have shot seventy one the last round, I
could have got my tour I would have got my
tour card back. And I think I shot seventy seven,
but hobbled around on a tour in acl and you
do what you have to do. And I had it
repaired again and tore it again, and then I had
it repaired again. So there was actually a special moment.
This last year, I covered the PGA Tour event, the
Canadian Open for PGA two Alive, and it was at
Hamilton Golf and Country Club where I actually had my
my loan top ten on the tour. So it was
a special moment for me anyway to do that. But
on the way back to the airport, I drove back
to Bronte Harbor and I wanted to just go back
to see if I could remember where it happened. And
it was a it was a cathartic moment, but it
was one that just just gave me goosebumps, just to
you know, to be there and see the rock and
remember being enough heat a crumpled heap on the floor
and just right there sitting there saying, well, that's the
dream over, and what do I do next? I remember
vividly saying that, well, I'm not going to be playing
golf anymore? What do I do now? And so it
was it was special to see that. And then funnily enough,
I flew over it on the way back home as well,
so I saw it from a different angle. So it
just it was almost like, you know, it's almost like
a it's sort of like almost like the Hollywood ending
the wrong way, but still something that you got something
out of and you framed it the right way and
you said, Okay, well here's the next challenge. What do
I do now? And I've always been good about kind
of moving on.
Speaker 2: Well, were you emotionless about what do I have to
do next now that I know that my competitive play
is over? Or did it take you a while to
pick yourself up and figure something out?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It was surprisingly quick. As I said, I move
on quickly. And I've talked to other players who were pissed.
They were pissed at life that thinks, yeah, where they
couldn't play anymore. And I guess one of the reasons
was I just knew I couldn't play to the level
that I was capable of playing that, So why get
upset about it? You know, now move on and throw
all of that energy that you threw into playing on
the PGA two and get into the PGA two and
having a fifteen year journey to get there. Well, now
let's throw some energy into the next stage of things.
And I wanted to get into broadcast and in my fifties,
not in my forties, and I always felt like I
was going to be good at it. I always enjoy
talking to the media. I always enjoyed giving thoughtful answers,
and so it was it was fortunately was able to
make that transition through Sky Sports in the UK where
they needed a British voice that had actually played the
PGA Tour or their talent played on the dp World Tour,
so I could add a different angle because I'd actually
played the golf courses. So that was that was very,
very fortunate to have been able to do that. I
got to go home, I got to spend time with
my mom and dad and my brother and my friends,
and it was almost like, you know, I got a
spiritual side to matters when you know, I thought, this
is this was my next path. This is the I
couldn't do anything about it. And I remember a lot
of that was from I had, you know, I played
a few weeks before that, The Travelers, and I played
Ricky Founder, who that time was one of the top
ten in the world, and I matched him shot for shot.
I played unbelievable. I think he shot sixty six. I
shot sixty seven in the last round. We were one
of the PGA two a Live ats feature groups, one
of the first ones they ever did, and so it
was a pretty special day. But I remember I told
about two three footers on seventeen and eighteen. They went in,
but it didn't feel real comfortable. And I remember, you know,
I finished top twenty. I think top twenty five had
a nice check and I got a flight that night
and I was sitting on the tarmac and my part
rate was still one hundred and twenty or so. And
this was three hours after i'd hold those parts, and
I said to myself, Man, I don't know, I don't
know if I want to do this anymore. I don't
like the way it makes me feel physically. And then
there you go. Two three weeks later, that was the
end of that. That matters would take it out in
my hand. So when you understand that you could, I
think you can move on quicker in your next path.
Your next part of the journey is I wouldn't know,
maybe it's not pre ordained, but you're now guided to
the next step of the journey.
Speaker 2: And part of the next step of your journey was
writing a book, which I would love to talk about
for a while now. First of all, you got me
on the title was beat the Courus, not yourself. And
what I really enjoyed about this book, and I just
finished it the other night. I definitely made it all
the way through and took lots of notes throughout the
book is that many times when you that I've listened.
I've read so many golf books over the years of
doing this podcast and talking to various authors, especially books
about the mental game. There you mentioned earlier anecdotal, they're
you know, telling you how to how you know, they're
really how to books on how to work your mental game,
how to prepare yourself, how to work your pre shot
routine and your post shot routine, how to get yourself
out of a death spiral in your head. What I
really enjoyed about this book and made it so relatable,
and is why I was compelled to finish it is
that it's a story. It's a novel, I guess, about
a player who is a very good young player but
struggling with his head and finally gets some coaching, and
as he's going through it, you're going through it with him,
so you feel what he's feeling, as opposed to being
told what to feel. I really enjoyed that approach on
the book, and I highly recommend it for anybody who
likes reading about the Metal game, who likes discussing the
Metal game. I think the book is really good and
it's not a hard read and it's not really long.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's very kind of you, as I said
it just I've read, you know, obviously throwing myself into
the mental side of the game. I read, you know,
dozens of books, and you know, with someone like me
who is preordained to want to get information out of
the book, there was a lot of books that I
read that were just not very good. I would just
read and say, when am I going to get to
something that's going to help me? Because I know a
lot of this anyway, but I need something. I need
something to justify this twenty dollars and you know you
can finally find, you know, a chapter or something. They
would say, Okay, I can take something from that. But
that's someone who is one hundred percent all in on
the mental side of the game. If you're someone who's
being pushed, dragging and screaming to the mental side of
the games, you don't want to do it anyway, because
you'd rather hit balls, and you'd rather get a new driver,
and you'd rather get a new partter and more coaching.
You know, you want to give them a reason to
want to read and get something out of it and
want to keep going beyond the first page and the
second page and the third page. And so I think
a story helps to do that because you know, as
human we can we gravitate to emotion, and we gravitate
to experiences, and we gravitate to putting ourselves in the
position of a character. And so I wrote this originally
for teenage competitive golfers to help them because they the
tendency is the last thing they go to try and
get better at. It is the mental side of the game,
and most of them don't bother with it. And so
it actually it kind of dovetails nicely and with the
PGA coaching man or the ADM, which says about fifteen
sixteen kids, you know, if they want to be competitive,
should get a foundation in the mental side of the game.
And so the character, the main character, Jack, obviously reflected that. So,
you know, I thought originally it was kind of a
niche book because teenage golfers and golf psychology. I can
search all day and I'm not going to find too
many books about that, or certainly not too many books
that are worth a read. And so then I started thinking, well,
I've taught a number of junior golfers, and you know,
they're tough to teach because they are you know, they're
finding out about themselves, and they're emotional, and you know,
maybe they don't listen very well.
Speaker 2: And they know they know anything exactly.
Speaker 1: They travel all these tournaments, their parents take them, Their
parents spend a ton of money, and their parents desperately
want to see them do well. Their parents put pressure
on them, and as a result, sometimes there's a little
bit of friction between teenage athletes and parents. And so
I thought, well, parents should read this book because parents
will actually now understand what their kids are going through.
These kids aren't trying to make a double bogie with
a wedge to piss you off. They're trying their hardest.
But when they're not mentally and emotionally focused and in
the right spot and understand any kind of plan of
what it is they're trying to do, they're going to
make mistake after mistake after mistake. And so I would
talk to and they would be pissed at their kids
by they would say, hey, look, I'm spend all this
money on lessons. Why is it he keeps making these
dumb double bogies? And I said, well, you know, I've
been trying to help him with the mental side of
the game, or I've been trying to help him with
the preparation side of the game, and he doesn't want
to listen and he doesn't apply it. I try my hardest,
but if he can hear it from you as well
as me, that may help him or her be a
little bit more focused on how they go about the game.
And more importantly, it gives the parent a little bit
more empathy of what their kid is going through, because,
as I said, the kid wants desperately to please their parents.
And you know, when things go wrong and they don't
know why things are going wrong, it can get so frustrated.
And when the hormones are raging and you're trying to
get through school and you maybe got a boyfriend or
a girlfriend, you know, there's a lot of stuff going
on up there. And so I think this really helps
that relationship as well. And so you know, there was
a chapter in the book with a you know, as juniors,
they've all experienced this, they've played badly. They've got to
get in the car and their dad's driving or their
mum's driving, and you get that horrible, uncomfortable, silent journey
back home because the kids in the back simmering about
he shot eighty five again, the parents in the front
thinking I've just given up another half a day to
watch this and I've spent all this money on lessons,
and the two kind of talk, and you know, the
kid Jack gets everything off his chest. The parent shows
some empathy and shows and says, why don't we try
this path with this wise older pro that I think
can help you. And so now you've got teenagers, now
you've got their parents. But these lessons also pertain to
anyone with a pencil in the hand, whether it's a
dog fight at the weekend once a month, whether it's
a club championship, whether it's playing in the little corporate
day or a scramb or whatever it is. We can
do better when we go out and play with a
pencil on our hand. And you know, we work really
hard during the week and we want to desperately do
well and perform well. We're r on the golf course.
But when we beat ourselves at all times, it makes
it so hard. And so a lot of people I teach.
I teach a lot of successful businessmen and business women,
and I say, look, if you run your business the
way you run your golf game, you go bankrupt. You
have no plan. You've got to have a business plan
in whatever limited time that you have. We understand you
don't have time to practice hundreds and hundreds of balls
a week. So we've got to use the game that
you have and set yourself up for the most successful
the most success you can possibly have. And it basically
all starts from before you ever moved the golf club.
If you can give yourself that great business plan before
you move the golf club, you've got a chance for
success based on whatever level of talent that you have.
Speaker 2: So this character, this older character that's in the book,
Charlie Right, he's got wisdom beyond his years, and you're
able to bring it through in the book in so
many different ways. Who is he patterned after?
Speaker 1: Well, there may or may not be a handsome young
englishman at the end of it with an American actions book.
It was what I really enjoyed was I got to
play every character. I was a junior golf for once.
I was a parent dealing with disappointments from my kids
playing soccer and basketball. I was a or I am
a coach who has thirty years of experience around golf.
I volunteered to be a college coach for three months
just to learn a little bit more about how to
deal with kids and what they go through and what
they experienced. So I got to experience every single character.
The only character I wasn't was the nick, the antagonist,
the one that was a little bit too for his boot.
So exactly, yeah, I was even you know, Matt, He's
best friend. You know, you've just got to have those
those relationships, those close relationships with people. But I think
there's I want to say there is. And I think
this is a big part because of podcasting, where now
we get wisdom talked about a little bit more than
we that we maybe have over the last ten twenty
thirty years, you know, to get better, you know, the
last twenty years. It's all about where you have lessons.
You do this, you hit these numbers, you do this
on track, man, you hit this line on a video screen,
and you know, to be honest, for some people it works.
For most they don't have time to really change anything fundamentally,
and so you can have this great lesson, but you know,
after you've hit your bucket of ball, you're probably not
going to hit another bucket of balls correctly until you
see the next lesson. And so people, I think get
frustrated and they're paying always money for a swing lesson.
And you know, yeah, my numbers look better and this
line looks better on the screen, But I keep shooting
the same score, and I keep hitting the same shots,
and I keep making the same mistakes. And so now
there's a lot more podcast involved with wisdom and an
experience and turning fives into fours and a different approach
to be able to help you score better. You know,
the short game, the chipping, the put in. If you
want low hanging fruit and you want a swing lesson,
you want a lesson that's the lowest hanging fruit you
can possibly have. You just get good fundamentals chipping, you're
going to shave a tonne straps of your twenty handicapper.
I find it really hard to get someone to commit
to that. They want swing lessons, so they hit seven
fairways with their driver, hit two in the trees, and
they want to hit none in the trees. Well, you know,
if there are a fifteen handicapper and they hit none
in the trees instead of two in the trees in
the big scheme of things, they're probably going to screw
up the next shot and the chip in the part
and they're going to shoot the same And so why
not if you're going to miss fifteen greens, learn how
to chip and part and so, ye know, just by
using just common sense. And you know, we call it analytics,
but it's just common sense of if you miss a
load of greens and you don't chip very well, or
you're leaving a lot of you're leaving a lot on
the table. You if you have forty parts every round
and you only hit four greens, you're leaving a lot
on the table there. And so we can look at
things differently that you know, we can I like to
do playing lessons where I like to see someone on
the golf course and you know, most.
Speaker 2: Swing decision making.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Yeah, most coaches spent swing coaches spend an hour
on the on the range and they see the student
hit it great, and then it's almost like, well, there
you go. I've done my job. It's all up to you.
Now you've got to get on golf course. You've got
to have.
Speaker 2: Right because if you're giving a playing lesson at the range,
you're either hitting off of a mat or off of grass.
But there's no uneven lies you're doing. You're not you know,
you don't have any trees in your way. You're just
looking at flags. So there's so many more elements. I mean,
part of a major part of what I've been trying
to do with golf smarter is to become a smarter
golfer in the mental game. And we talked to a
lot of mental coaches in a wide variety of you know,
from mindfulness to brain functionality, right, and it seems to
be our wheelhouse, although I do like to cover, you know,
an eclectic mix of golf stories and golf people, but
it really we really have focused on on the mental
side of the game. And one of the lines is
that you have in your book that really jumped at
me because I've not read it anywhere else, but we've
been saying it on the podcast forever, and my audience
right now, if they've been listening a while, they know
where I'm headed with this because I learned it from
a listener and been saying it. Not only do I
say it for every round I play, but I've been
saying it on the show hundreds of times. We say,
never follow a bad shot with a stupid shot, but
you enhanced that for me in a way I never
really realized. And on page fifty six, at least off
the pdf that I was reading, the worst thing you
can do is follow up a poor shot with a
dumb shot, trying to make up for the previous one.
That was in AHA moment for me.
Speaker 1: Well, what again, It's that common sense, isn't it It is?
You know, we just we try and do too much.
We try and do more than maybe our talent levels
are capable of, I think is the worst thing you
can look at on a scorecard. If you're fifteen par
isn't part pars bogie. And so you know, I like
to I like to talk to players, and I say,
I think dogfight points are the greatest way of playing
golf because you see the value of a point. So
if you're a fifteen handicap and you don't have a
very high quota, you know you can maybe finding three
or four holes where in the past you would have
played a dumb shot with a three would out of
the rough trying to get it on the green, and
you learn that, you know, maybe a five iron and
then pitching on from forty yards maybe an easy way
to make a point. What happens is we get in
a cycle of and that's what I'm talking about in
the book of is just the cycle of you know,
the way a round of golf unfolds or shots unfolds.
So you have a shot, you know, I want you
to have a nice, productive athletic routine. So if you
do that athletic routine, the chance says, ah, you're going
to hit a decent shot. And then after you've hit
that shot, you can kind of pack yourself in the back,
or you can say, oh, that wasn't very good, and
then you can objectively look at it and say, what
could I have done better? You know, maybe I didn't
have the right club there, and I really should have
hit the seven instead of the eight. Okay, well, there's
a little reminder for the next time I'm in that situation.
And then you spend the next four minutes walking to
the next shot, and you're in a good mental space,
and you know, you enjoy talking with your playing partner.
You're looking at the trees and the houses and the
birds and then whatever else. And then as a result,
you're in a good headspace for the next shot. You
produce a good routine, you hit a decent shot, and
so the cycle continues. The cycle also continues the wrong way,
where you don't have a routine, or if you have
a routine, you don't do it very well. You hit
an awful shot, you tell yourself how much you suck.
Then you stew about it for that five minutes to
the next shot. You're trying to figure out all these
swing thoughts and all these things that one coach told
you five years ago. Another coach told you last week.
Speaker 2: And then a video that you saw this morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, that YouTube thing you'd pulled up, you know,
all of those things, and then you get to the
next shot, Well, your mind is in you know, is
complete disarray. It's like fireworks going off up there, all
the distractions, which means then you can't focus on the
next shot. You then hit another bad shot, and then
that cycle continues as well. So what I'm trying to
do is, in as practical simple terms as possible, is
help that player with those steps. And number one, it
comes from how do you practice? If you have time
to practice, you know, learn from what it is you practice,
and learn from what it is you can do on
the practice range, because if you if you if you
try and hit a shot that you don't try on
the practice range, you shouldn't be hitting that shot because
you don't know if you hit it or not.
Speaker 2: Just because you say it on TV doesn't mean you
can't do it.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, you might have seen Rory McElroy
hit a punch cut with a seven nine into a
thirty mile hour wind in the Irish Open, but you're
a fifteen handicap who's never tried to hit a punch
cut and they're like, and you might lay the st
over it instead of just hitting the shot and then
you know, chipping it on from short with the green.
What was what really brought that to my mind, to
the forefront of my mind when I when I did
that volunteer coaching for a local college, I had a
kid that was was showing a bit of promise, was
paying attention, and he got to a tooment, was playing
really well, and he got to the seventeenth I think,
a part three, and I was following it on golfstat
and he was two or three under power I think,
and he makes a six on the path three. And
I called him after I said, man, what a great
round of golf. What happened on that path three? He'said, oh, man,
it was you know, you know, it was a thirty
mile hour wind into me and it was a path three,
and you know I had to hit that punch drawer
in there because you know, the wind was coming you know,
into left or right really hard. And I said, you know,
you've never tried to hit that shot before, have you?
He said, no, no, but but it was the shot
that it called for. I remember distinctly said that was
the shot that it called for. But if you don't
know how even the start of how to hit that shot,
and you pull that out in the talent when you're
playing great man, it's not a good it's not a
good idea. So we pulled it straight out of bounds
and made a triple and it just we're in an
unbelievable round with one poor decision. And so we got
on the range that next week and I just said, look,
you hit this beautiful, solid drawer every single time you
hit this great shot. It's a strong shot. You know
you have you can take the spin off because you
hit it so strongly through the wind. You didn't need
to try and hit that shot. And then the next
time we had a big wind, we went on the
practice range, went straight into the wind. I said, just
hit your shot and it was amazing, went through the wind.
And he said, yeah, and I see the validity now.
I think you were right. But there's so many just
simple lessons there that you know, if you read it,
you will put yourself in the positions that Jack faces,
and you will see yourself and you will see the
decisions you make, and you will see the decisions he makes.
And say, ah, yes, I know exactly what he's going through.
I can't wait to read the rest of this book
because I know we're going to get the secret to
what to do next. And you get that, and then
you see him put it into practice in the big
tournament at the end of the book, and then a
college coach comes up to him, congratulates him and tells
him that's exactly the kind of things he's looking for
when he's recruiting. So it kind of puts a nice
bow in it at the end.
Speaker 2: YEP, it does. I'm going to read off a couple
of the lines that jumped out to me and I'll
just it's just to reinforce to somebody that they should
go out and buy this book, that this is the
kind of topics that you cover that we've been covering
for years on the podcast. And I just felt so
supported on this this one. Play the course, not the competition,
really important note message, right because we're like so worried
about oh my god, they just birdied the hole and
I boge, you, what am I going to do now?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Stay in the moment and just win this shot. Don't
worry about the score. Don't worry that you need to
get a part in this whole just win this shot.
I love that.
Speaker 1: We were actually originally going to call the book win
the next shot. Wow, Okay, I mean that that was
a great lesson in that. But again it goes back
to if you've got a productive routine, what it does.
It focuses the mind on exactly what it is you're
trying to do. And it also kind of acts as
a bit of a force field around your mind and
you from all those distractions of score and what else
other people are doing. And you know what it would
mean if I had a good result here all of
those things we're always facing, and if we're a fifteen handicapper,
we're facing you know, my buddy's laughing at me because
I've just top one. You know, we want to get
our mind one hundred percent focus on the next shot
as well as we possibly can.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a high recommendation my part for this book.
I really enjoyed it. Again. It's called Beat the Course,
Not Yourself by Gary Christian and you can also go
to Gary's website which is Gary christiangolf dot com. Gary,
this is a blast. Thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 1: Man, I really enjoyed it, and yeah, the book self published,
so it's on Amazon. So if you search, I can't
believe I said Amazon, Amazon, I would call it in England.
So the course not yourself on Amazon for the price
of a sleeve of golf balls. It will be it
will certainly last longer than the sleeve of golf balls,
and it will give you that game plan. It will
give you a game plan of practice, how to talk
to yourself, how to have a routine, how to put
it into practice. And that's ultimately what we want. We
want to take it from the practice range or the
indoor hidden map to the golf course. That's why we practice,
that's why we hit balls indoors, because we want it
to work on the course.