Speaker 1: For members only. Golf Smarter number three hundred and forty six,
Speaker 1: published on August fourteen, twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 2: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
Speaker 2: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
Speaker 2: like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: Pay close attention to look at the back of the
Speaker 3: left hand in the last frame before impact, and the
Speaker 3: back of the left hand is facing straight to the camera,
Speaker 3: and the club is pointed straight backwards, maybe even a
Speaker 3: little upward. And then a frame or two later, the
Speaker 3: hand is only moved latterly toward the target about fifteen inches,
Speaker 3: But now the underside of the left wrist is facing
Speaker 3: toward the camera. So there's been a four hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty degree rotation of that left hand through impact the
Speaker 3: release we call it. And when that hand releases that way,
Speaker 3: look at what happened. The hand move laterally from six
Speaker 3: or eight inches behind the ball to six or eight
Speaker 3: inches in front of the ball, but the clubhead moved
Speaker 3: from three and a half feet behind the ball to
Speaker 3: three and a half feet ahead of the ball. So
Speaker 3: there's a tremendous magnification of power in that rotational move
Speaker 3: of the hand through impact. That's why tour players can
Speaker 3: hit it so far and look like they're not swinging
Speaker 3: hard at all, because the only thing moving fast is
Speaker 3: that rotational move of the hand, and that's where they're
Speaker 3: getting this tremendous magnification of power. It's the proper release,
Speaker 3: and you can go learn that by hitting pitch shots
Speaker 3: and rotating and releasing that because you're doing it in
Speaker 3: slow motion, and once you get the feel of that
Speaker 3: is the biggest epiphany, eye opener you will ever have
Speaker 3: in golf. You learn how to properly rotate your left
Speaker 3: arm through impact so that you get that magnification of power.
Speaker 3: I personally think that was Hogan's secret.
Speaker 1: The Secret of Scoring with Terry Kaylor of our new
Speaker 1: Shortcut Academy. This is Golf.
Speaker 2: Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers and golf professionals
Speaker 2: to help lower your score. It's worked for your host,
Speaker 2: Fred Green.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only.
Speaker 3: Terry, thank you for rhyth I'm glad to be back
Speaker 3: and continue to talk about the short game.
Speaker 1: Well, put on your slippers, buddy, because it seems like
Speaker 1: you and I are going to be spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time in this room together. I'm very excited about
Speaker 1: the questions that are coming in from the audience and
Speaker 1: you answering them on every Golf Smarter episode. And again,
Speaker 1: I just want to remind people that if you submit
Speaker 1: a question to Terry, he is going to answer it
Speaker 1: or one of his staff will answer it. But I
Speaker 1: want to pick up from where we left off on
Speaker 1: the last episode, and that you were talking about technique
Speaker 1: in short game and bringing up the names of different
Speaker 1: tour players. I want to just let you riff on that.
Speaker 1: I want to pick it up from there.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know we were talking about the LPGA and
Speaker 3: I had mentioned the Avon Masters and watching these ladies
Speaker 3: come in and they were throwing darts at the flags,
Speaker 3: they were hitting it all over the hole, they were
Speaker 3: making puts from everywhere. And you know, the LPGA player
Speaker 3: is not as strong as even the average amateur, much
Speaker 3: less the tour male tour counterpart. So what my whole
Speaker 3: point is is that you know, you you listeners out there.
Speaker 3: You're not going to learn how to hit three hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty yard drives like the tour players do. You're
Speaker 3: not going to learn how to hit one hundred ninety
Speaker 3: five yard five irons and six irons, and you don't
Speaker 3: want to. It's not the game you play. You're not
Speaker 3: teeing it up on these seventy five seventy six hundred
Speaker 3: yard golf courses that these guys are playing. But what
Speaker 3: you can do is to learn a sound fundamental technique.
Speaker 3: It's all technique that lets you hit really solid, accurate
Speaker 3: short iron shots and scoring shots to get the ball
Speaker 3: close to the hole when you're inside nine iron range
Speaker 3: or eight iron range. And so you know you're going
Speaker 3: to play the golf course if you think about your
Speaker 3: round of golf, and I alluded to this in the
Speaker 3: last interview an episode, if you're playing the right set
Speaker 3: of t's, you're going to play the golf course from
Speaker 3: you know, five six iron, seven iron range for half
Speaker 3: of the approaches and one or two three approaches at
Speaker 3: most are going to be you know, in the long
Speaker 3: club range and the bulk and the other approaches are
Speaker 3: going to be in the in the under nine iron
Speaker 3: range in nine iron eight iron are under and those
Speaker 3: are the holes that you should be able to take
Speaker 3: it to the golf course, whether that is breaking ninety
Speaker 3: or whether that's shooting par or breaking eighty or getting
Speaker 3: a career round. If you can learn a good, solid
Speaker 3: technique for getting the ball on the right trajectory so
Speaker 3: that it flies the right distance, making solid contact and
Speaker 3: hitting the ball on the green and closer and closer
Speaker 3: to the hole. When you have one of these short
Speaker 3: clubs in your hand, then your handicap will go down.
Speaker 3: It's inevitable. It has to go down if you're giving
Speaker 3: yourself par in birdie putts when you put that nine
Speaker 3: nine or less in your hand. It's just crucially important
Speaker 3: to enjoying the game and shooting better numbers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. You've mentioned before that you've been playing golf
Speaker 1: most of your life. Have you ever taken lessons?
Speaker 3: No, I've had dozens hundreds. Probably like to say, I
Speaker 3: don't remember life before golf. I literally my earliest memory
Speaker 3: of life is sitting on the ball pocket of my
Speaker 3: dad's burden golf bag on a bag boy golf cart
Speaker 3: and being able to hold the handle in my feet
Speaker 3: not touch the ground, so I don't know how little
Speaker 3: I was, but that's my earliest memory of life. But
Speaker 3: my dad was a good amateur player. And I grew
Speaker 3: up in the fifties in small town Texas, and every
Speaker 3: little nine hole course had a golf pro trying to
Speaker 3: make a living back then. And we had a pro
Speaker 3: that loved teaching kids, but mainly we were taught to
Speaker 3: get out there and just go play. And they didn't
Speaker 3: mess with our swings much until we were in our
Speaker 3: you know, early teens and getting a little more power.
Speaker 3: And I look at juniors and I kind of get
Speaker 3: off on this of you know, trying to grind on
Speaker 3: these four and five, six and eight year olds on
Speaker 3: techniques and fundamentals. It's like, just let them go have fun.
Speaker 3: Let them smack the golf ball. I mean, when you're
Speaker 3: six years old, the club can't get too far away
Speaker 3: from where it's supposed to be anyway. Just let that
Speaker 3: kid go have fun. I mean a friend of mine
Speaker 3: was telling me his ten year old daughter. The golf
Speaker 3: pro is trying to teach her how to trap the
Speaker 3: golf ball. This is a I mean granddaughter. This is
Speaker 3: a ten year old that's just taking up the game
Speaker 3: and the god pro is trying to teach her how
Speaker 3: to trap an iron shot. It's like, really really, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not picking on this golf bro, but you know,
Speaker 3: let this kid just go smack it and have some fun.
Speaker 3: And they don't need to be digging divots at that
Speaker 3: age anyway, because they don't have the strength to get
Speaker 3: the club out of the dirt. Just smack the gop
Speaker 3: ball and make it go that way. And I think that,
Speaker 3: you know, I watched the high school kids in our town,
Speaker 3: and I think they hit too many rangeballs. They don't
Speaker 3: play enough golf. And you know, we were kids. I
Speaker 3: mean we slung the bag over our shoulder and with
Speaker 3: our four, six, eight ten clubs as we you know,
Speaker 3: we put more clubs in our bag as we graduated.
Speaker 3: And I think you put that little kid out there
Speaker 3: and give them a three wood and a five iron
Speaker 3: and a pitching wedge and a putter and let them
Speaker 3: go and then they can add some other irons as
Speaker 3: their gaps get a little bigger. But you know, let
Speaker 3: them go learn how to make the golf ball do
Speaker 3: what they want to do. They'll figure it out. Kids
Speaker 3: are very resourceful.
Speaker 1: Just listen when you and I were kids. We used
Speaker 1: to go to the school grounds of the park and
Speaker 1: wait a few minutes and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you had a pickup game for baseball with full set
Speaker 1: of teams. Right it was. It wasn't little league where
Speaker 1: you get you know, you have to stand and right
Speaker 1: field for two hours so you can get one at back.
Speaker 3: You know. And that's the thing. I mean, golf is
Speaker 3: fun because you know, I mean you take the Little
Speaker 3: League and my golf professional whose son is a very
Speaker 3: good baseball player and golfer, but he's really drawn to
Speaker 3: the baseball thing. And you know, he was, you know,
Speaker 3: talking about what's the appeal of little league to kids?
Speaker 3: You know, I mean they go out there, the kids
Speaker 3: in right field, he may not make a play for
Speaker 3: three games and he gets three at bats. It is
Speaker 3: not the action that keeps them in baseball, So what
Speaker 3: is it. It's the team aspect. I think they've got
Speaker 3: to be part of something bigger than themselves. And I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm getting off of our short game thing, but I
Speaker 3: think golf could take a tip from that and get
Speaker 3: these kids playing scrambles where they're part of a team
Speaker 3: and everybody hits every shot and they cheer each other on,
Speaker 3: and and you're you know, you're you're glad that you
Speaker 3: got the best player in the league on your team.
Speaker 3: And if Susie can't quite hit it as far as
Speaker 3: everybody else will, then come on, Susie, you can do this.
Speaker 3: You can do this, and kids cheer each other on.
Speaker 3: And I meanway, but we're talking about the short game.
Speaker 3: We're trying to talk about your listeners. And probably not
Speaker 3: a lot of seven year olds listening out there, but
Speaker 3: if there are you kids, forget the rains, just go
Speaker 3: play golf and learn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, I listened. There are parents of seven year olds.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that Jeff Mangum and I
Speaker 1: have talked about is getting it. Of course we're going
Speaker 1: to be sidetracked here, but the and getting kids started
Speaker 1: in golf. Just take them to the putting green free
Speaker 1: and if you can get them to put it in
Speaker 1: the hole and fall in love with putting it in
Speaker 1: the hole, the rest of the game will fall into place.
Speaker 1: But get that hard part out of the way and kids,
Speaker 1: kids can get putting so much better than trying to
Speaker 1: hit the ball off a tee or off the grass.
Speaker 1: Get it in the air.
Speaker 3: I really think that the game has to be taught,
Speaker 3: whether you're teaching a five year old or a forty
Speaker 3: five year old, the game has to be learned from
Speaker 3: the hole backwards. Because when you learn how to roll
Speaker 3: the ball across a green six feet ten feet, twenty
Speaker 3: feet thirty feet and make it do what you want
Speaker 3: it to do, everything's happening slow. You get the feel
Speaker 3: of ball face impact, you get the feel of how
Speaker 3: the ball propels off of the clubhead, and you can
Speaker 3: move from there to chipping in there to pitching. And
Speaker 3: I really believe if you're going to try to teach
Speaker 3: somebody to play golf and you're trying to teach them
Speaker 3: a full swing before you've taught them how to chip
Speaker 3: you or spinning your wheels, you cannot learn this game
Speaker 3: from the tee forward. You've got to learn this game
Speaker 3: from the hole backward to learn This is where the
Speaker 3: fundamentals is short game, And we're going to talk about
Speaker 3: the fundamentals day if we ever get around to it.
Speaker 3: That the fundamentals are that if you mean take driver's in,
Speaker 3: you don't teach a kid to drive by pulling out
Speaker 3: onto the freeway and say let's go mag rump that
Speaker 3: thing up to seventy and let's get after it. You
Speaker 3: teach him to drive in a Walmart parking lot. You
Speaker 3: teach him to how that car handles, how it feels
Speaker 3: in a turn, how it feels in a breaking, how
Speaker 3: it feels in an acceleration. And that's really the way
Speaker 3: we need to teach golf. We need to teach you
Speaker 3: how this feels when you're hitting a little shot that's
Speaker 3: going to fly ten yards or that's going to roll
Speaker 3: ten feet to start with. And then we're going to
Speaker 3: teach you how it feels to fly that ball ten yards.
Speaker 3: And then we're going to teach you how it feels
Speaker 3: to fly that ball, you know, fifty yards, and then
Speaker 3: we're going to teach you how it feels to make
Speaker 3: a full swing. But if you don't know how to
Speaker 3: make a golf swing from you know, hands going back
Speaker 3: wastehimeh to hands going through waste time, that's exactly what's
Speaker 3: happening in a full swing. Well, if you can't get
Speaker 3: it right from waste time to waste time, you've got
Speaker 3: no chance of getting it right from behind your head
Speaker 3: to behind your head. And so the beauty of the
Speaker 3: short game is if you work on your short irons,
Speaker 3: and you work on your wedge play and your scoring
Speaker 3: club play, and your pitches and your chips, the release
Speaker 3: through impact is exactly like is happening with the driver,
Speaker 3: but it's happening slower. It's happening that you can learn that.
Speaker 3: You can feel that because you're moving your hands and
Speaker 3: your clubhead through the ball at fifteen miles an hour,
Speaker 3: twenty miles an hour instead of eighty or ninety or
Speaker 3: one hundred. You know, it's just like in a car
Speaker 3: when you get out on a freeway, things are happening fast,
Speaker 3: and that car can get away from you in a hurry. Well,
Speaker 3: the same thing with the driver. That driver can get
Speaker 3: away from you in a hurry. Little errors at one
Speaker 3: hundred miles an hour become very big errors, but a
Speaker 3: little error at fifteen miles an hour doesn't put anybody
Speaker 3: in the morgue. And I mean and from the golf
Speaker 3: is the same way. If you will learn how the
Speaker 3: club releases through impact, how your bodycore and the club
Speaker 3: engage together, how your weight shifts, if you will learn
Speaker 3: that on these little short shots where it's all happening
Speaker 3: in slow motion, you can learn that you can process,
Speaker 3: that you can you can act and react, and then
Speaker 3: you can work to get your speed up. And that's
Speaker 3: what I'm a big believer that what is happening at
Speaker 3: that magic moment of the club a foot before impact
Speaker 3: to a foot after impact, the same thing happens in
Speaker 3: a pit shot that's going twenty yards, that happens in
Speaker 3: the drive that's going two fifty exact same thing is
Speaker 3: happening through the impact none. It's the moment of truth
Speaker 3: and it's the exact same thing. Learn it in slow
Speaker 3: motion your whole game. You will do more for your
Speaker 3: driving by learning how to hit good nine irons than
Speaker 3: anything else you can do.
Speaker 1: So the challenge would be, and we're going to issue
Speaker 1: this challenge right now, is the next half dozen times
Speaker 1: you go to the driving range, leave your driver, your hybrids,
Speaker 1: and your fairway woods in the car, and just take
Speaker 1: mostly your scoring clubs. Just work on those, and you
Speaker 1: were going to see a greater impact on your scoring
Speaker 1: than if you just walked out to the driving range
Speaker 1: and pulled out your driver immediately.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the thing is and nobody's going to
Speaker 3: leave there driving the car for read Come on, this
Speaker 3: is twenty twelve and everybody wants to hit it three hundred.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you what kock off, smarter listeners, if you.
Speaker 3: Will go out there and spend two thirds of your
Speaker 3: practice session working on short pitches and chips, and then
Speaker 3: into short iron shots and then into middle iron shots,
Speaker 3: and finish off that session when your last ten balls,
Speaker 3: pull your driver out, smash five or six of them,
Speaker 3: and then go back and hit a couple of nine
Speaker 3: iron shots and finish that practice session with a couple
Speaker 3: of short pitches. You know, one of the things that
Speaker 3: I always like to tell people and has beencome a
Speaker 3: pattern of mind when I'm doing it. And there's a
Speaker 3: difference between a practice session and a pre round warm up.
Speaker 3: When you're going into pre round warm up, you're getting
Speaker 3: the feel of the ball off the club, you get
Speaker 3: the feel of your tempo, getting the feel of what
Speaker 3: the ball is doing today. You're just getting ready for
Speaker 3: the first tea. You're not trying to learn anything out there.
Speaker 3: You're just seeing who came with you today, which swing
Speaker 3: came along today, and how are you to hit it.
Speaker 3: But what I always encourage people to do is, you know,
Speaker 3: work in your pre round warm up. You know, hit
Speaker 3: a few half wedges, hit a few, you know, three
Speaker 3: quarter wedges, it's some short irons, hit a few, seven irons,
Speaker 3: hit a few five irons, Hit a couple of hybrids,
Speaker 3: a couple of fairry woods. You know, beat three or
Speaker 3: four or five drivers. Do you get a couple that's like, Man,
Speaker 3: that's where I really want it to be. And then
Speaker 3: save those four or five golf balls and go back
Speaker 3: and hit those last four or five balls before you
Speaker 3: go to the putting green or to the first tee.
Speaker 3: Hit five, four or five little different little pitch shots
Speaker 3: and chip shots, because in the first or second hole
Speaker 3: you're going to have a pitcher chip shot and you
Speaker 3: don't want it to be boy, I don't remember the
Speaker 3: last time I hit one of these. That's the whole
Speaker 3: idea of a pre round warm up is is re
Speaker 3: experience all the different kinds of shots you might have
Speaker 3: to hit that day, at least the basics, you know,
Speaker 3: middle iron, short irons, hybrids, fairy woods, drivers, and some
Speaker 3: chips and pitches. You know, get the feel of those,
Speaker 3: so they're refreshed in your memory bank. You've hit a
Speaker 3: million of them, you know how, but refresh that before
Speaker 3: you go to the ta, so you don't get to that
Speaker 3: first chip shot of the day and go, oh wow,
Speaker 3: I don't remember the last time I hit one of these.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, you know, yeah, I just hit it. I
Speaker 3: just hit a couple of these really solid on the
Speaker 3: on the practice s green twenty minutes ago or the
Speaker 3: practice range.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, you have more confidence in it exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know how to do it, but you forget.
Speaker 3: I mean it's like bunker play. You have trouble with bunkers.
Speaker 3: You go into practice bunker maybe get the pro or
Speaker 3: friend to take you out. You work on it. You
Speaker 3: get to where you're really hitting good bunker shots, and
Speaker 3: then you know, it's three weeks before you get in
Speaker 3: a bunker and you go, oh, man, I'm scared of bunkers.
Speaker 3: Well the last time you were in when you're hitting
Speaker 3: it good, And you know, I think that's also a
Speaker 3: good thing, is if you have very little time to
Speaker 3: warm up, go hit a few bunker shots, because good
Speaker 3: slow tempo really works in the bunkers and it will
Speaker 3: infect into the rest of your game. And nobody swings
Speaker 3: a golf club too slow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true, that's true. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I love to practice, you know, especially pre round is
Speaker 1: let me take a swing or two and not much,
Speaker 1: just a swing or two pretending I'm under a tree. Yep, right,
Speaker 1: just take the hybrid and not try to take a
Speaker 1: full swing in it, but just get give me forty
Speaker 1: fifty yards so that I can get it out of
Speaker 1: the trees back onto the fairway. Because I still believe
Speaker 1: you never follow a bad shot with a stupid shot.
Speaker 1: So just get yourself back and play.
Speaker 3: Yes, And that's fun, you know, to go out on
Speaker 3: the range. Yes, instead of just seeing how far you
Speaker 3: hit it. Now I'm going to hit this little you know,
Speaker 3: cut five iron of this little kind of knock down
Speaker 3: pourn out under the trees, or this little flop shot,
Speaker 3: you know, and hit different shots. So anyway, we were
Speaker 3: going to talk about the fundamental. To me, there's like,
Speaker 3: you know, the thing that anybody can learn is some
Speaker 3: basic core fundamentals of what makes for a good short
Speaker 3: term technique.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna let you go. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: fundamentals and what makes a good short iron technique.
Speaker 3: So I have a I have a nine five percent
Speaker 3: finished manuscript called The Secrets of Scoring, and in the
Speaker 3: secrets of scoring. What I'm trying to do is break
Speaker 3: down the core fundamentals of you know, scoring club technique,
Speaker 3: those swings you make with your short clubs. So let's
Speaker 3: start with this whole thing about power. And I talked
Speaker 3: about Ben Hogan and his yardages last week. Go out
Speaker 3: and and all your your listeners. I always tell people,
Speaker 3: every golfer has three yardages with every club, and that's
Speaker 3: how far you think you hit it, how far you
Speaker 3: wish you hit it, and how far you really hit it.
Speaker 3: And you know most golfers are you know, well, I
Speaker 3: hit a nine or one hundred and fifty five one time,
Speaker 3: so therefore that's my nine iron range. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: I talked about Ben Hogan last week about his his
Speaker 3: yardages and he had twenty yards in reserve with every iron.
Speaker 3: Now that was Ben Hogan and that was then. But
Speaker 3: I think it would be a good exercise for most
Speaker 3: golfers is to go out on a on a hole
Speaker 3: on the course where that you know, if you can
Speaker 3: get out there late in the afternoon and hit you know,
Speaker 3: go to a place that you know, hey, this is
Speaker 3: a textbook niner. And for me to that green and
Speaker 3: you know, one forty one, twenty eight, whatever your number is,
Speaker 3: go shoot it with your that flag that you think
Speaker 3: is your textbook nine iron range, and hit five nine
Speaker 3: iron shots and see where they go. See if they're
Speaker 3: all around that flag or if they're all over the lot.
Speaker 3: And then take five more balls and hit that nine
Speaker 3: iron to the front of the green, fit ten to
Speaker 3: twelve yards short of that flag, and just troddle back
Speaker 3: to hit those five next five balls to the front
Speaker 3: of the green right online with the flag, but the
Speaker 3: front of the green, and you will probably find that
Speaker 3: those five are grouped better than the first five you hit.
Speaker 3: And you will probably find that the first five you
Speaker 3: hit that let's say you're nine iron range is one
Speaker 3: thirty five and that's what you think it is. You
Speaker 3: will probably find that the first five you hit are
Speaker 3: pretty widely scattered, and four of the five of them
Speaker 3: are not pen high, They're not that far. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's be realistic, guys, And like I said last week,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter how far you hit a nine iron,
Speaker 3: but can you hit one that far every time? And
Speaker 3: if you're nine ron again that hits a nine iron
Speaker 3: one twenty seven and knows how to hit it, one
Speaker 3: twenty seven will smoke you when you're nine iron and
Speaker 3: goes anywhere from one thirty five to one forty five.
Speaker 3: He will kill you when short range because he knows
Speaker 3: one twenty seven is my number and that's a nine iron.
Speaker 3: Nobody would give me extra bonus points if I did
Speaker 3: that with a pitching wedge. Nobody's going to take away
Speaker 3: points if I did that with an eight iron. The
Speaker 3: fact is I'm here in the middle of the fairway,
Speaker 3: it's one twenty seven to the flag, and all that
Speaker 3: matters is do I know how to hit a shot
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty seven yards every time with reliability?
Speaker 3: That is the only question. Now what I do it with?
Speaker 3: But can I do that? I'm one hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: five from the flag, I'm one hundred and twelve from
Speaker 3: the flag, I'm one hundred and nine, whatever the number is,
Speaker 3: the only thing that mounts is do you have a
Speaker 3: club and a swing that you can put together that
Speaker 3: will make the ball go that far reliably and consistently.
Speaker 3: And that's how golf has played. I mean, Luke Donald
Speaker 3: is like one hundred and eighty fifth and driving distance
Speaker 3: and he's you know, just right back and forth number
Speaker 3: one in the world. Okay, he doesn't hit it as
Speaker 3: far as those guys, but when he's one fifty two,
Speaker 3: he knows how to hit it one fifty two and
Speaker 3: he's not going to hit it one sixty five this
Speaker 3: time and one forty one the next time. He doesn't
Speaker 3: do that. So the way you do that is you
Speaker 3: simplify and you take away moving parts. And you know,
Speaker 3: everybody got enamored with Sergio Garcia and this big lag
Speaker 3: that he had. Whatever, But to me, if your listeners,
Speaker 3: and I mean, he's endorsed by another company, but go
Speaker 3: on YouTube and watch video after video after video of
Speaker 3: Steve Stricker. He's got the most simple swing move. It
Speaker 3: looks like there's one moving part and that's his body core.
Speaker 3: He's not hinging his hands, he's not flopping the club around.
Speaker 3: He is back and through with his body core. And
Speaker 3: as you watch these these videos of Steve Stricker, watch
Speaker 3: the relationship between his hands and the front of his sternum,
Speaker 3: and his club rotates back and his whole body rotates
Speaker 3: back in one piece. And when his when his sternum
Speaker 3: his face away from the target, his hands are out
Speaker 3: in front of him, and when he comes through, his
Speaker 3: hands are in front of him, and when he rotates
Speaker 3: through impact and this sternam is facing the target, his
Speaker 3: hands right in front of him, and the relationship between
Speaker 3: his hands and his sternam does not change dramatically. It's
Speaker 3: a very simple, one piece move. And I will tell
Speaker 3: you why this is so important. The closer we get.
Speaker 3: If you think about your posture and your stance and
Speaker 3: the golf swing. Your feet are planted on the ground,
Speaker 3: so they can't move. They can't move closer and further
Speaker 3: from the ball. They can't move up and down. They're
Speaker 3: planting on the ground, so they are the most stable
Speaker 3: thing in your golf swing. But you can stand in
Speaker 3: one spot and you can make your hands go in
Speaker 3: a six foot circle. You can put your hands anywhere
Speaker 3: you want to put them. Right. Are you following me here?
Speaker 3: I'm with you, okay. So then you move up to
Speaker 3: your hips. Your hips can rotate back and through, but
Speaker 3: they can't move very far off of that stable base
Speaker 3: that you have with your feet, or you will lose
Speaker 3: your balance if you go up from your his to
Speaker 3: your And I would ask everyone of you guys, get
Speaker 3: out of your chairs and stand up and get in
Speaker 3: this kind of basic golf posture, bent overlook at the hips,
Speaker 3: your knees flexed, and put your finger right on your sternum,
Speaker 3: right on your button on your shirt, and push backwards
Speaker 3: and then push against your finger forward. You cannot move
Speaker 3: the center of your body more than a half an
Speaker 3: inch before you can feel yourself out of balance. So
Speaker 3: what if you could connect your hands with your sternum consistently,
Speaker 3: then you could not move impact more than a half
Speaker 3: an inch. You couldn't hit one in the hostle, you
Speaker 3: couldn't hit one out on the toe, you couldn't hit
Speaker 3: one high or low on the clubhed because your sternum
Speaker 3: cannot move more than half an inch without you falling
Speaker 3: out of balance. So if you think about controlling your
Speaker 3: golfswing from that body core, and you learn to just
Speaker 3: rotate your body core, and I'm one drill I love
Speaker 3: is to stand up and get in golf posture and
Speaker 3: just cross your arms over your chest and put a
Speaker 3: hand in the front of each shoulder and just rotate
Speaker 3: where your sternum face is backward, and rotate where your
Speaker 3: sternum faces forward and your weight's over your left foot,
Speaker 3: and you will find you can do that over and
Speaker 3: over and over without losing your balance. It's a great
Speaker 3: drill to learn how to rotate your body core. That's so,
Speaker 3: that's a fundamental. If you control the gosswing of your
Speaker 3: body core, it can't get very far out of whack.
Speaker 1: I'm standing up, My hands are on my shoulders, Okay.
Speaker 3: So you can feel of this back and through rotation,
Speaker 3: and you rotate back and you and you feel the
Speaker 3: weight in the inside of your right foot, and you
Speaker 3: rotate through and you feel your weight go all the
Speaker 3: way over on your left side. Where you finish with
Speaker 3: all your weight on your left side, you're sternum facing
Speaker 3: down the target line, your hands crossed, and you can
Speaker 3: do that back and forth and groove that. Okay, groove that,
Speaker 3: and now you have a core driven golf swing. Fundamental
Speaker 3: number one, you've got to control the gosswing with the
Speaker 3: body core. Okay. Fundamental number two you have to have
Speaker 3: a proper grip on the golf club. And you can
Speaker 3: go read excerpts of Ben Hogan's book. And the grip
Speaker 3: is not a personal thing. The grip is a sound fundamental.
Speaker 3: It's just like you know, some people like to drive
Speaker 3: the car from the passenger seat. Some people like to
Speaker 3: drive the car from the back seat. Some people like
Speaker 3: to drive their car from the roof of the This
Speaker 3: is not a personal thing. You drive the car from
Speaker 3: the driver's seat with your hands properly on the wheel.
Speaker 3: That's the way you drive. And there is one technically
Speaker 3: sound way to hold a golf club. Now you can
Speaker 3: choose the interlock grip, or the overlap grip, or the
Speaker 3: full finger grip. Not baseball, but the club runs under
Speaker 3: the pad of the left hand left heel, the heel
Speaker 3: of the left hand and way into the fingers under
Speaker 3: the pad at the base of the fingers. Nine golfers
Speaker 3: have the club way too much up in the palm.
Speaker 1: Of their hands. Right the grip or just death grip,
Speaker 1: huh get it?
Speaker 3: And you well, they're just holding onto it like a
Speaker 3: ham sandwich is. A guy once said, you know, hold
Speaker 3: the club in your fingertips, and you cannot a golf
Speaker 3: club too lightly. Your body will not let you hold
Speaker 3: it so light that it flies out of your hand.
Speaker 3: And the other fundamental of the grip is the golf
Speaker 3: swing is a pull motion with for right handed players
Speaker 3: this is a left sided.
Speaker 1: Action.
Speaker 3: Here was an analogy that I'll tell you in the
Speaker 3: golf swing. You have a hinging point at your shoulder.
Speaker 3: You have a hinging point at your wrist. You should
Speaker 3: not have a hinging point at your elbow. But you
Speaker 3: have hinging points in this connection between your body and
Speaker 3: the clubhead. Correct, yep. So let's call it a rope, okay,
Speaker 3: or a chain. It's a chain with three links. The
Speaker 3: club is a link, your arms are a link. The
Speaker 3: body's a link. Okay. If you are trying to hit
Speaker 3: the club with your right hand, you were pushing a chain. Okay,
Speaker 3: go push a chain. See how far you can push
Speaker 3: a chain. Pull a chain to make a chain move right,
Speaker 3: like pushing a rope. Go in your yard and get
Speaker 3: you a ten feet piece of rope. See how far
Speaker 3: you can push it. You can't push a rope. You
Speaker 3: got to pull a rope. And this hinging connection between
Speaker 3: the clubhead and your body is a flexible connection. It
Speaker 3: has to be pulled. And what happens when you pull
Speaker 3: a rope or a chain. You look behind you and
Speaker 3: it's dead straight, and if you turn, it makes a
Speaker 3: turn and it's dead straight again. And that's what happens
Speaker 3: in the golfswing. If you learn how to pull the
Speaker 3: club through with the muscles of your lead side, your
Speaker 3: left side. For a right handed player, that club has
Speaker 3: got to go and you have a nice relaxed grip
Speaker 3: on it where it can hinge naturally. That club has
Speaker 3: got to go in like that rope. It's got to
Speaker 3: go pretty much in the same place every time. But
Speaker 3: if you're trying to hit it with your right hand,
Speaker 3: if you're trying to dominate the clubhead with your right hand,
Speaker 3: which is the natural thing to do. We're all right handed.
Speaker 3: We got this little striking implement three feet from our hand.
Speaker 3: We got this little golf ball. We got to make
Speaker 3: that golf ball move with that striking surface. That's why
Speaker 3: people can't break one hundred or ninety, because you can't
Speaker 3: do that. And if you want an illustration of that,
Speaker 3: this is another illustration. Take your golf club and tape
Speaker 3: a sharpie to the end of your golf club. Now
Speaker 3: take another sharpie and go over to a wall or
Speaker 3: a flip chart and sign your name with a sharpie.
Speaker 3: And then step away and pick up that golf club
Speaker 3: with the sharpy tape to the end, and try to
Speaker 3: sign your name from that thirty inches away that your
Speaker 3: hand now is from that sharpie. That thirty inches is
Speaker 3: an error magnifier, and you will sign your name that
Speaker 3: looked like you did when you were seven, because that's
Speaker 3: an error magnifier. I mean, it's a great illustration of
Speaker 3: you cannot get the club face on the ball with
Speaker 3: your right hand. It is physically impossible to do that
Speaker 3: with any consistency. And those that try the hardest shoot
Speaker 3: nineties and hundreds. Those that are willing to learn how
Speaker 3: to pull the golf club through impact. I mean, don't
Speaker 3: get me wrong, guys, it's still a difficult game. But
Speaker 3: it's difficult enough if you're trying to learn how to
Speaker 3: do it right. It's just really impossible if you're trying
Speaker 3: to learn how to do it wrong. I mean, how
Speaker 3: many people are out there listening, And how many people
Speaker 3: do you know that have played golf their whole life?
Speaker 3: One in two days a week. They practiced like crazy,
Speaker 3: and they're still shooting in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Okay, it's the masses.
Speaker 3: It's the masses. Why do you think that is. It's
Speaker 3: not because you don't put in the time. It's because
Speaker 3: you're doing it wrong. You cannot push this rope. You
Speaker 3: cannot push this chain through impact. You've got to pull
Speaker 3: it through impact. Second fundamental, it's a left side dominated game.
Speaker 3: Third fundamental, you can't hold the club too lightly. Okay.
Speaker 3: And another thing that I think has golfer so screwed up,
Speaker 3: and that is this pounding and pounding and pounding that
Speaker 3: we've had. You got to accelerate through the ball. You
Speaker 3: got to accelerate through the ball. You decelerated, well, most
Speaker 3: people didn't really decelerate. You just really don't. If you
Speaker 3: clocked the clubhead speed at the beginning of the backswing,
Speaker 3: it's all. It would be pretty physically impossible to have
Speaker 3: more club hits bet at the start of the backswing
Speaker 3: than it impact. What you did is you changed your
Speaker 3: rate of acceleration. You jumped at it too hard from
Speaker 3: the backswing. If you have a car moving four miles
Speaker 3: an hour and you give it a little gas and
Speaker 3: it speads up to five, it's still accelerating. Correct. It
Speaker 3: doesn't have to go from four to forty to be acceleration.
Speaker 3: Four to five is acceleration. So what this accelerate through
Speaker 3: the ball. If you go out and watch your friends
Speaker 3: and watch the average amateur golfer. He's taking a short
Speaker 3: backswing and he's really jabbing hard at the ball to
Speaker 3: try to get enough clubheadspeed to make it go. Well,
Speaker 3: there's not enough swing there to have a nice leisurely acceleration,
Speaker 3: and so therefore you get these short jabby strokes. But
Speaker 3: if you will will just go out and hit pitch
Speaker 3: shots little you know, take your gap wedge or your sandwich.
Speaker 3: Go out and hit little pitch shots and just practice
Speaker 3: seeing how slow you can really move the golf club
Speaker 3: and still make the ball go right. It's really pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: I mean just I mean, you can go into essentially
Speaker 3: slow motion back and slow motion through and the ball
Speaker 3: will still come off the clubhead with some zip. It's
Speaker 3: pretty amazing actually, but you know, gets slower with it.
Speaker 3: One of the things I like to do is I
Speaker 3: use the analogy of house painting and playing a golf
Speaker 3: hole and around a golf is like painting a house.
Speaker 3: So you have your power tools. The painter has the
Speaker 3: sprayer and he comes in man, he gets the sprayer
Speaker 3: or the power roller and he is just laying the
Speaker 3: paint down on those big wall areas, just laying the
Speaker 3: paint down, and then the other guy over here is
Speaker 3: using a three to six inch trim brush or cut
Speaker 3: in brush, and he's cutting in windows and doors. He
Speaker 3: works slower than that guy. He's the middle iron player, okay.
Speaker 3: And then the guy that comes in at the end
Speaker 3: is the trim guy, and he works with a little
Speaker 3: one and a half two inch trim brush, little angle
Speaker 3: trim brush, and he works meticulously slow. And you know what,
Speaker 3: his work determines whether or not that paint job looks
Speaker 3: worth a dam or not. It doesn't really matter how
Speaker 3: good a job the spray guy did, or even the
Speaker 3: cut in guy, because the trim guy can ruin a
Speaker 3: round of golf, I mean a house painting job. Okay.
Speaker 3: So you go hit a decent drive down there. Okay,
Speaker 3: it got a little bit in the rough, but it
Speaker 3: really had any trouble. And you got a six iron
Speaker 3: to the green. You hit a six iron, You pulled
Speaker 3: it a little bit, but it's off the left side
Speaker 3: of the green. It's on the safe side. And then
Speaker 3: you chunk a chip, skull a chip in three punchs
Speaker 3: and you got a seven and you go, how the
Speaker 3: hell did I do that? Because your trim brushes you
Speaker 3: were working too fast and not particulous enough. Your trim
Speaker 3: brushes are your scoring clubs, and that they determine what
Speaker 3: your round of golf looks like when you're through.
Speaker 1: Absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 3: Now, thank you mister Furick for giving us a prime
Speaker 3: example of that. On Sunday, Jim Furick chopped up the
Speaker 3: last hole with his trim brushes. He was not in
Speaker 3: real trouble after a second shot he had a bogie
Speaker 3: to tie a part of win. I mean, you know
Speaker 3: you would. And again I'm not knocking Jim Ferick. I
Speaker 3: mean these are pressure pack situations. All your self doubts
Speaker 3: and your demons and all those things you know are
Speaker 3: right in front of you now. But you know he
Speaker 3: tried to get cute or whatever, and he just said,
Speaker 3: you know, anywhere on the green, I'm going to tuput
Speaker 3: for a bogie. I'm going to be in a playoff
Speaker 3: at worst. I am not going to get cute with this.
Speaker 3: I Am not going to lose god urnament by trying
Speaker 3: to get cute. But he did, and and you know
Speaker 3: that happens to all of us. I mean, how often
Speaker 3: you guys, know, all you listeners out there, and you
Speaker 3: know you get you hit a decent driving a decent
Speaker 3: secord shot, and then you just chop the hole up
Speaker 3: with your short clubs. I mean it's just maddening. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, Okay, I hit a two hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: yard drive within fifteen yards of where I wanted it,
Speaker 3: and I can't hit a thirty foot pitch shot within
Speaker 3: fifteen yards of where I want it. I mean really,
Speaker 3: I mean think about that. So that's where that practice
Speaker 3: comes in. The good technique, you know, you know, get
Speaker 3: your your body core in control, learn how to grip
Speaker 3: the club lighter, keep it in your And one of
Speaker 3: the secret I call it the secret fundamentals is I
Speaker 3: never read anything about it. When you look at the
Speaker 3: golf magazines and when you watch golf on TV, when
Speaker 3: they have a camera angle where you're looking straight at
Speaker 3: the guy from his target or straight at the target
Speaker 3: from behind the guy and he's hitting a short club.
Speaker 3: Look at his hand position. Look how close his hands are.
Speaker 3: His arms are hanging straight in hers, hanging straight from
Speaker 3: the shoulders down right off of the thighs. They look
Speaker 3: almost crowded over the ball. But when they rotate back
Speaker 3: and through those hands go exactly back through that same position,
Speaker 3: and the clubhead goes back through the same position. They
Speaker 3: make good crisp contact and the ball goes where it's
Speaker 3: supposed to go. There's not a straight line between the
Speaker 3: left arm and the clubhead and the golf swing. There's
Speaker 3: an angle farm there because the way you're holding the
Speaker 3: golf club under the heel pad of your left hand,
Speaker 3: you can't get the shaft in your arm in a
Speaker 3: straight line. When you're looking from behind and there's a rotation,
Speaker 3: the hands are not unhinging through impact, they're rotating. If
Speaker 3: you're looking at swing sequence photos and you're looking straight on,
Speaker 3: pay close attention to the to look at the back
Speaker 3: of the left hand and the last frame before impact,
Speaker 3: and the back of the left hand is facing straight
Speaker 3: to the camera, and the club is pointed straight backwards,
Speaker 3: maybe even a little upward, okay. And then a frame
Speaker 3: or two later, the hand is only moved latterly toward
Speaker 3: the target about fifteen inches. But now the underside of
Speaker 3: the left wrist is facing toward the camera. So there's
Speaker 3: been a full hundred and eighty degree rotation of that
Speaker 3: left hand through impact. The release we call it. And
Speaker 3: when that hand releases that way, look at what happened.
Speaker 3: The hand moved laterally from six or eight inches behind
Speaker 3: the ball to six or eight inches in front the ball,
Speaker 3: but the club head moved. You know, let's say a
Speaker 3: thirty six inch golf club. Let's take a forty inch club.
Speaker 3: The club has moved from three and a half feet
Speaker 3: behind the ball to three and a half feet ahead
Speaker 3: of the ball. So there's a tremendous magnification of power
Speaker 3: in that rotational move of the hand through impact. That's
Speaker 3: why tour players can hit it so far and look
Speaker 3: like they're not swinging hard at all, because the only
Speaker 3: thing moving fast is that rotational move of the hand,
Speaker 3: and that's where they're getting this tremendous magnification of power.
Speaker 3: It's a proper release, and you can go learn that
Speaker 3: by hitting pitch shots and rotating and releasing that because
Speaker 3: you're doing it in slow motion. And once you get
Speaker 3: the feel of that is the biggest epiphany, eye opener
Speaker 3: you will ever have in golf if you learn how
Speaker 3: to properly rotate your left side, your left arm through
Speaker 3: impact so that you get that magnification of power. I
Speaker 3: personally think that was Hogan's secret.
Speaker 1: Here we go, somebody Who's found Hogan's secret.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but as everybody claims to, Hogan didn't
Speaker 3: even talk about it. He talked per onation and supernation.
Speaker 3: He kind of came close to talking about it. But
Speaker 3: if you go read the last thirty years of golf magazines,
Speaker 3: you won't the pen articles if that many written about
Speaker 3: the proper release through impact. People still think you cock
Speaker 3: the risks and uncock the risks, and that's really not
Speaker 3: what you do in golf swing. That is not I mean,
Speaker 3: it's happening a little bit, but that's not the move
Speaker 3: you're trying to get. That's just a resulting move caused
Speaker 3: by a centrifugal force.
Speaker 1: What I find so interesting is that so much of
Speaker 1: what you said we may have heard before, but it's
Speaker 1: so good to be reminded of this these points. And
Speaker 1: it's not like we're talking about, you know, technical with mechanics.
Speaker 1: You know, you focus more on technique and just proper
Speaker 1: ways of doing things, and it's so easy to forget
Speaker 1: it once you get involved in your game, and these
Speaker 1: are so critically important. So thank you for that. And
Speaker 1: I find it absolutely fascinating that you are not, as
Speaker 1: far as I know you're not a PGA certified instructor,
Speaker 1: yet you are a passionate golf professional who manufactures scoring clubs.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's the thing I you know, I had
Speaker 3: a you know, I write a blog and I write
Speaker 3: twice a week and a half for five years. I
Speaker 3: think I'm up to well over over a thousand articles.
Speaker 1: Now I think he's promoted the wedge guy.
Speaker 3: Wedgsguy dot com and you find it on the score
Speaker 3: Golf website. But I write twice a week and I write.
Speaker 3: People ask me about things. I write things just you know,
Speaker 3: I observe in the on the tour event or observed
Speaker 3: watching golfers player, just things that strike me. And I'm
Speaker 3: kind of all over the lot. But I mainly focused.
Speaker 3: But I had somebody asked me say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: you talk about, you know, the short game all the
Speaker 3: time because you sell wedges, and actually we don't sell wedges,
Speaker 3: we sell scoring clubs. But my answer and was no,
Speaker 3: I built scoring clubs because I talk about the short
Speaker 3: game all the time, and because I'm so focused on scoring.
Speaker 3: Because I'm five seven and I was in high school
Speaker 3: at one hundred and twenty pounds and I was not
Speaker 3: going to hit it with the big guys, and I
Speaker 3: was going to My dad was five nine, little guy,
Speaker 3: and he was the best amateur golf in our town.
Speaker 3: And you know, he was hitting seven irons in the
Speaker 3: greens and all the big hitters were hitting wedges and
Speaker 3: he was just killing them because between that his old
Speaker 3: putter called Mandrake, he would just he would, you know,
Speaker 3: he made pars and birdies because he didn't hit it
Speaker 3: in trouble. And I learned that if you're going to score,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have to do it with your short gloves
Speaker 3: because I'm not going to be chipping on par fives.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be hitting you know, full swing wedges
Speaker 3: and nine irons on par fives on my third shot,
Speaker 3: and I'm not going to be And I learned how
Speaker 3: to strike the ball solid, and I learned how to
Speaker 3: get it up and down because that's the way I
Speaker 3: was going to compete with guys that could hit it
Speaker 3: twenty thirty forty yards past me. I still play with
Speaker 3: guys that can hit it, you know, because most of
Speaker 3: the guys I play with are you know, young guys
Speaker 3: from their thirties to forties and their big guys, and
Speaker 3: you know, we had out there, and I'm respectfully long
Speaker 3: from my size, but I'm not a long hitter like
Speaker 3: some of these guys. Well, you know, if I've got
Speaker 3: a guy and I'm playing a par five and this
Speaker 3: guy's going to be hitting foreign to that green on
Speaker 3: his second shot, and I know I'm going to be
Speaker 3: hitting six iron to left up to wedge range, then
Speaker 3: you know, I better be really good with that with
Speaker 3: that scoring club. I better be really good from eighty
Speaker 3: two yards and seventy eight yards one hundred and five yards,
Speaker 3: and I am. And it's about technique and it's about
Speaker 3: learned skills, and you do not. I think one of
Speaker 3: the things that's great is just to be, you know,
Speaker 3: always have a ball upon the green. When that long
Speaker 3: hitter gets to his shot and he's got that wedge
Speaker 3: in hand, he goes, This guy is just killing me
Speaker 3: with these six and seven and five urns into the green.
Speaker 3: He's twenty and twenty five feet fifteen feet all day long,
Speaker 3: and you'll kill that guy because you know he's he's
Speaker 3: always looking at a ball on the green, and you know,
Speaker 3: whether you're playing and most club golf and amateur golf,
Speaker 3: most of us play match play golf, and we keep
Speaker 3: our scores for a handicap, but we play match play.
Speaker 3: But you can learn good solid technique that will keep
Speaker 3: your short arms and your approach shots and your scoring
Speaker 3: club shots you know, around the hole and around the green,
Speaker 3: keep you out of trouble. Learn how to chip you know,
Speaker 3: and practice your putting, and you're a match for anybody.
Speaker 3: I don't care how far they hit it. I mean,
Speaker 3: Luke Donald used him. He was a perfect example, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean Zach Johnson. I wrote a blog post about
Speaker 3: Zak Johnson when he won the Masters, and was that
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven or eight, And Zack Johnson, short
Speaker 3: not a long hitter, went into Augusta with the game
Speaker 3: plan of he was not going to go for any
Speaker 3: par five and two and go back, and you read
Speaker 3: that in the archives. But he made a decision going in,
Speaker 3: and he practiced his wedge play, and he made a
Speaker 3: decision he was not going to go for a par
Speaker 3: five and two. And everybody bombited at the par fives
Speaker 3: and two is one of the fun things about Augusta,
Speaker 3: right on things we like watching the Masters. He scored
Speaker 3: the par fives better than anybody in the field that week.
Speaker 3: Better than anybody, never hit even tried to go for
Speaker 3: one and two, never left himself even a chip shot
Speaker 3: or a short pitch. He left himself good full swing,
Speaker 3: blob wedges and sand wedges into those greens, and he
Speaker 3: dialed it in and he played the sixteen par fives
Speaker 3: fourteen under or thirteen under.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you when I played par fives, I
Speaker 1: rarely ever go for it and too because I just
Speaker 1: I can't reach. So what I try to do is,
Speaker 1: you know, I look at my GPS and say, okay,
Speaker 1: I need to get to one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: yards to the pin, you know, which is my forty
Speaker 1: two degree score golf, you know, forty one sixty one,
Speaker 1: my forty two degree, And that to me, it's like
Speaker 1: it just it just makes me more confident if I
Speaker 1: know that I can get to that spot on my
Speaker 1: second shot to put it in a position to get
Speaker 1: close to the hole. Because to me, again, it's all
Speaker 1: about turning three shots into two, right, right, And.
Speaker 3: I mean if you will go and you know, the
Speaker 3: whole premise behind the score forty one sixty one is
Speaker 3: to have the entire short end of your set all
Speaker 3: be alike and you don't have a nine and a
Speaker 3: pitch that looked like a six iron and then a
Speaker 3: sand and a gap and a lob that might even
Speaker 3: not look alike. And the gaps are all off, and
Speaker 3: the clubs are designed totally different. They launched them all differently,
Speaker 3: the shast different. You know what the whole concept behind
Speaker 3: score forty one sixty one is, you have this synchronized
Speaker 3: set of scoring tools that are four degree gaps or
Speaker 3: three degree gaps or five degree gaps, whatever's right for you,
Speaker 3: but that you know inside, you know that first scoring
Speaker 3: club in your case, that's you're forty two. With me,
Speaker 3: I actually, I believe it or not. I actually have
Speaker 3: some that are little tweaked, and I have a forty
Speaker 3: one that I reground a bottom and I tweaked it
Speaker 3: down to thirty nine. So I carry six scoring clubs
Speaker 3: at thirty nine, forty three, forty seven, fifty one, fifty five,
Speaker 3: and fifty eight. And I know that inside that that
Speaker 3: forty one degree gop club with that forty one, which
Speaker 3: is really thirty nine, that's my that's my one thirty
Speaker 3: eight club. At a normal full swing, it's one thirty eight.
Speaker 3: And that I know from one thirty eight all the
Speaker 3: way down to seventy, that I can take a metered
Speaker 3: full swing with my hands in a certain position on
Speaker 3: a grip, and I feel like And I'm an amateur player, guys,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm a two three anticapper and at best,
Speaker 3: and as I don't get to play as much, and
Speaker 3: I'm older than I used to be, but I know,
Speaker 3: at least I feel like I know inside one point
Speaker 3: thirty eight I can, and even further out, even all
Speaker 3: out in the six iron range. My game is all
Speaker 3: about I know how to hit it that far, however
Speaker 3: far that is. And if I if I lay up
Speaker 3: and this is one oh three, I've got a one
Speaker 3: oh five shot that's only six feet behind the hole.
Speaker 3: That'll work. If I hit it to ninety seven, I
Speaker 3: got a ninety five shot that's only six feet short
Speaker 3: of the hole, and that'll work. And I know in
Speaker 3: my in my head, in my heart, I believe that
Speaker 3: I can dial it into two to three yard increments
Speaker 3: anywhere from seventy all the way out to one fifty
Speaker 3: one to fifty five, and then I let the increments
Speaker 3: get bigger, because I mean, as I mentioned last week,
Speaker 3: thirty feet longer, short, with that five iron is a
Speaker 3: great shot. I mean sure, I love to, you know,
Speaker 3: swing those five irons from one seventy one to seventy
Speaker 3: two and knock them in two feet. And I do
Speaker 3: it occasionally, but I'm not expecting that thirty fe longer
Speaker 3: start from one seventy five. You know, I'll take it
Speaker 3: all day long. And so with every tour player, how.
Speaker 1: Does all this information that you have in your head
Speaker 1: about technique and that you're helping us with, how does
Speaker 1: that translate into the design of clubs?
Speaker 3: Well, the way the way it translated I mentioned while ago,
Speaker 3: I'm such a stickler for the short game, and I
Speaker 3: backed away about three years ago. And I've designed wedges,
Speaker 3: I've designed drivers, I've designed iron I've designed over one
Speaker 3: hundred putters. But you know, I watch golfers struggle with
Speaker 3: their scoring clubs. And what I watch golfers happen is
Speaker 3: they can't keep the ball trajectory out of the clouds.
Speaker 3: You know, good players can hit those driving nine iron
Speaker 3: and wedge shots and they know how, and they have
Speaker 3: a good, good knee action and thing, but they're fighting
Speaker 3: the golf club. If you think about the design of
Speaker 3: a wedge and I talked about Hogan last week. Wedges
Speaker 3: haven't changed and in the way they look in fifty
Speaker 3: sixty years, they have all the weight along the soul
Speaker 3: of the golf club. Hogan said that a maximum sand
Speaker 3: wedge was forty yards. That's because he knew with all
Speaker 3: of that weight low, that's what made it a good
Speaker 3: bunker club and a good club for pitching the ball.
Speaker 3: But that made it horrible full swing golf club because
Speaker 3: you know, it loads the shaft too much. It's going
Speaker 3: to launch ball higher if you think about it. We
Speaker 3: put the weight low in our five and six iron
Speaker 3: cavity backs, so the ball will go up in the air. Well,
Speaker 3: when I get to that nine and pitch, I've got
Speaker 3: forty two to forty five degrees loft, it's going in
Speaker 3: the air. I don't need all the weight low. So
Speaker 3: what I know works, and it's indisputable. A thicker face
Speaker 3: makes the ball go more consistently on the same path
Speaker 3: in the same distance. A higher center of gravity makes
Speaker 3: the ball drive off the club lower. So you know
Speaker 3: people talk about, you know, a low launch driver, will
Speaker 3: they get the weight up high on that driver, Well,
Speaker 3: you know, you don't really need a low launch driver.
Speaker 3: We're trying to get the ball in the air. But
Speaker 3: I want that nine at pitch and gap and sand,
Speaker 3: the fifty one to fifty three, whatever you carry out there.
Speaker 3: I want those balls to fly on a consistent trajectory
Speaker 3: because the only way you know how far the ball
Speaker 3: is going is if it leaves the club the same
Speaker 3: way every time. Hogan was a big stickler for that.
Speaker 3: If you don't know the trajectory the ball's going to
Speaker 3: leave on, then you really don't know how far it's
Speaker 3: going to go. And I would tell your listeners every
Speaker 3: one of you has hit that shot and it's like, ooh,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to get on this gap wedge a
Speaker 3: little bit. So you swing a little extra hard at
Speaker 3: that gap wedge. The ball goes higher and it comes
Speaker 3: up on the front of the green. You're going, God,
Speaker 3: I thought I caught that really solid. Well you did,
Speaker 3: But the increased clubhead speed with that low centegravity makes
Speaker 3: the ball go higher, not further. And if you want
Speaker 3: to hit that club further, actually come back off of
Speaker 3: it a little bit, keep their trajectory down, and the
Speaker 3: ball is expending more energy going forward than it is
Speaker 3: going upward. I mean, if you have ball speed of
Speaker 3: one hundred miles an hour off the golf club, Okay,
Speaker 3: if that ball is going straight up, it's not going
Speaker 3: to go as far as if it's going out at
Speaker 3: a thirty degree angle. I mean, it's got one hundred
Speaker 3: mile hour balls, But where is the speed going. It's
Speaker 3: going up, not out. And so you know, if you
Speaker 3: want to get really consistent with your short clubs, you
Speaker 3: have to have better trajectories. And yet we're dealing with
Speaker 3: clubs that are given to us that have all the
Speaker 3: weight low, which makes it go too high. They have
Speaker 3: a real stiff shaft that we can't load. That gives
Speaker 3: us no feel. The club is not designed for what
Speaker 3: we're trying to do. And I said, you know, why
Speaker 3: the hell is that? Why have we been sitting here
Speaker 3: looking at the exact same wedge designs for fifty years
Speaker 3: when drivers and irons and t's and shoes and balls
Speaker 3: and fairways and hybrids that don't look anything like they
Speaker 3: did fifty years ago. But I mean, and I'll pick on,
Speaker 3: I'll use a brand name, Cleveland Golf, the number one
Speaker 3: wedge company out there. They talk about their big deal
Speaker 3: for twenty twelve was the five eighty eight forged that
Speaker 3: was the fifth wedge Roger Cleveland design who was introduced
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty eight. And all you're going to do
Speaker 3: is forge that club and you're going to tell me
Speaker 3: this is new. I mean, Cleveland's I hear is not
Speaker 3: doing well. I don't want to pick on them. Their
Speaker 3: lawyers are probably all call me for saying this, but
Speaker 3: the fact that.
Speaker 1: Sorry, it's a members only show, I don't think they're.
Speaker 3: Lord Taylor, Made and Cowway and anybody in golf could
Speaker 3: not get away with bringing a new driver to market
Speaker 3: saying this is a replica of what we made in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight. They'd be laughed out of the golf shop.
Speaker 3: But why is it a good thing to recreate a
Speaker 3: wedge from nineteen eighty eight? Really, twenty four year old
Speaker 3: design technology is the best you can do for my
Speaker 3: short game? That angered me, and I said, you know,
Speaker 3: we can do better. I mean I started this three
Speaker 3: years ago. But you know, if you treat your scoring clubs,
Speaker 3: I mean, here's the other thing. I'm on a roll. Sorry,
Speaker 3: you got a nine in a pitch that were designed
Speaker 3: to look like a six iron, and they got the
Speaker 3: stiffest chaft in the set and these are your feel irons.
Speaker 3: That doesn't make any sense. Then you take a break
Speaker 3: and you go to this this wedge, your first wedge,
Speaker 3: which was picked out because you've always played a fifty
Speaker 3: two to fifty six to sixty so you have one. Well,
Speaker 3: when you got that, you were playing a forty eight
Speaker 3: degree pitching wedge. Your new peak club has got forty
Speaker 3: five degrees. You got a big, massive gap there, and
Speaker 3: you got a Cleveland gap wedge and a bokey sand
Speaker 3: wedge and a and a callaway lobweed somebody gave you
Speaker 3: got this total mish mash right in the middle of
Speaker 3: money range. Why why would you go buy a sandwich?
Speaker 3: You don't go buy a seven iron. Why would you
Speaker 3: buy a mismatch and a mish mash of golf clubs
Speaker 3: to try to dissect the golf course? Why wouldn't you want.
Speaker 1: A because they're an advertising is so good?
Speaker 3: Terry, come on, well, because that's the way we've always
Speaker 3: done it, and nobody's telling you different.
Speaker 1: But I am.
Speaker 3: But guys, I'll tell you. You know, if you spend
Speaker 3: as much time and attention on the scoring clubs and
Speaker 3: picking out the right ones and trying them and testing
Speaker 3: them and getting the shafts right as you do with
Speaker 3: the driver. And you can buy a set of two
Speaker 3: or three scoring clubs for what you pay for one driver.
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm just saying, move your money to
Speaker 3: where the action is. And you know they don't call
Speaker 3: the four iron the money club, but the wedges and
Speaker 3: butters are your money clubs. And I don't. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think wedges are old hat. I mean hybrids are
Speaker 3: new hat. Nobody wants to a two iron or a
Speaker 3: three iron in their bag anymore, even the tour player
Speaker 3: reg rarely carry them because this thing called a hybrid
Speaker 3: is just stupid easy to hit, because it was designed
Speaker 3: to optimize ball flight off of an eighteen twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four degree golf club. That's what hybrids came from. They
Speaker 3: didn't say, if this works that good on here, why
Speaker 3: don't we make a driver look like a hybrid. No,
Speaker 3: we know this big four hundred and sixty c seat
Speaker 3: thing with a deep face that works better at nine
Speaker 3: to ten and eleven degrees loft, and then this other
Speaker 3: club called a fairway metal. It looks it works better
Speaker 3: when the lofts get into the thirteen to seventeen eighteen
Speaker 3: degree range. And then this thing called a hybrid It
Speaker 3: works better when lofts are you know, eighteen nineteen up
Speaker 3: to about twenty four degrees, maybe even twenty five or
Speaker 3: six for some players who have trouble getting the ball airborne.
Speaker 3: And then this thing called a cavity back iron design.
Speaker 3: It works better from the mid twenties to the mid
Speaker 3: thirties or a high thirty degree loft. But this thing
Speaker 3: called wedges does not work that well in a high
Speaker 3: loft golf club. When because we use wedges as full
Speaker 3: swing clubs now, they didn't. They weren't used that way
Speaker 3: when they were invented. And yet we change the way
Speaker 3: we use them, and we didn't, and we didn't change
Speaker 3: the way they were built. Look at putters, Okay, putters
Speaker 3: were always little blades that were pretty light. Because we
Speaker 3: were putting on greens that were slow and bumping. You
Speaker 3: had to wrap the golf ball and used a risty stroke.
Speaker 3: But as greens became faster, the technique became more of
Speaker 3: an arms and shoulders technique, and we moved the shaft
Speaker 3: to the center of the putter. The ping answer more
Speaker 3: copies of that and probably every golf from of planet.
Speaker 3: Is that a ping answer or look alike. And then
Speaker 3: we found this thing called face balancing with the zebra
Speaker 3: and some of these the center shaft that's came out.
Speaker 3: Now you look at the most common putters out there,
Speaker 3: these big branding iron looking things, because greens are still
Speaker 3: faster putting strokes are still more arms and shoulders driven,
Speaker 3: and so the equipment is adapting. And yet these thing
Speaker 3: called wedges are the same exact things we've been carrying
Speaker 3: for forty fifty years. It's absurd. It's just in a
Speaker 3: technologically driven industry. I think it's absurd awesome. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I'll get a little on myself.
Speaker 1: Well listen, and I'm gonna we're gonna start wrapping this up.
Speaker 1: But I do want to give you your fair shake
Speaker 1: on answering this question, and because you kind of brought
Speaker 1: it up. But with your clubs, how do we know
Speaker 1: which one is right for us? And do we get
Speaker 1: to try that? I mean, what's the deal with you guys?
Speaker 3: Okay, So we're offering a very interesting thing. We make
Speaker 3: twenty one golf clubs from forty one to sixty one degrees,
Speaker 3: make every single law and The reason we did that
Speaker 3: is because all your listeners out there have some of
Speaker 3: them have nine iron and peak clubs with forty and
Speaker 3: forty five degrees or forty and forty four, or thirty
Speaker 3: nine and forty three or forty three and forty seven.
Speaker 3: There are no standards in our industry, so that club
Speaker 3: with a P on the bottom can be anything. We
Speaker 3: created a process called score fit. It's a little exercise
Speaker 3: you go through on our website. You load your irons
Speaker 3: in the database and it comes out with your prescription
Speaker 3: of losts of what's going to give you consistent distance
Speaker 3: gapping based on the irons you play. And my contention
Speaker 3: is if you're five through eight iron are probably fine,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, if you unless you just hate
Speaker 3: those irons and you and they're pretty new, they're probably fine.
Speaker 3: What you're trying for is you're trying to get the
Speaker 3: ball closer to the hole. And so what we do
Speaker 3: is we blend the right lofts to mesh into those
Speaker 3: middle irons. We put the right shaft in there to
Speaker 3: give you is what I call a seamless transition and
Speaker 3: weight and flex so that you have a similar feel
Speaker 3: throughout your set. And then but our shafts are designed
Speaker 3: specifically for the scoring end of the set. You can
Speaker 3: go through our score fit process. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: You can call and talk to us. We have some
Speaker 3: great short game specialists that can counsel you right through
Speaker 3: what ought to happen, how you ought to be carrying it.
Speaker 3: And we're not trying to sell more clubs than you need.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you've got a short hitter, you can
Speaker 3: probably get away with five degree gaps. Four degree gaps
Speaker 3: work for most people. The key is to have those
Speaker 3: gaps consistent so that and then what we did is
Speaker 3: we built the in our twenty one degree range of lofts,
Speaker 3: there are seven distinctly different head designs. So the head
Speaker 3: actually morphs a little bit, if you will, as loss
Speaker 3: increase or decrease, so that the weight management is optimized
Speaker 3: for that narrow three degree range of loss. So the
Speaker 3: head design that's on the forty one, two and three
Speaker 3: is a little different than the one that's on the
Speaker 3: forty four, five and six, and that's a little different
Speaker 3: than the forty seven, eight and nine, and it morph
Speaker 3: says it goes up to the high loft globe, so
Speaker 3: that we actually dissected those and created seven head designs
Speaker 3: to optimize ballflight with each club in the set, rather
Speaker 3: than say they all have to look alike.
Speaker 1: And so if I order one of these clubs from
Speaker 1: you just to try it out as opposed to doing
Speaker 1: a full set, and it doesn't work for me, I
Speaker 1: don't like it, what's my next step.
Speaker 3: Well, we have two things. We have a free trial program.
Speaker 3: We'll build one of your set, send it out to
Speaker 3: you for thirty days and let you hit it, let
Speaker 3: you see the feel, the performance, and then we can
Speaker 3: fill in the rest of your set. If you don't
Speaker 3: like it, you send it back, or you can say
Speaker 3: you know, I know I'm going to like these, and
Speaker 3: we can build a set of two or three, or
Speaker 3: four or five for you, and if you don't like them,
Speaker 3: you send them back and we'll go buy you anything
Speaker 3: else in the market you think you'd like better.
Speaker 1: Wow. Well, listen, Terry, what's really exciting is you're coming
Speaker 1: back for the next episode. Yeah, we're going to be
Speaker 1: here for a while, right, We're going to launch our
Speaker 1: short game Academy. So I want to remind everybody again,
Speaker 1: clearly Terry knows more about our golf game than we do.
Speaker 1: And he has opinions on every question that's answered, and
Speaker 1: what's wrong with that? He could be right wrong. Listen,
Speaker 1: as we say about a friend of mine, always sure
Speaker 1: sometimes right there you go.
Speaker 3: Well, my opinion is I'll always give you something to
Speaker 3: think about and try right exactly. And I mean my
Speaker 3: goal is to help golfers play better golf. And I
Speaker 3: think that you know what we're doing with our equipment
Speaker 3: company is that we're a small company. We have no
Speaker 3: delusions of becoming a giant.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: We can build sets of clubs for a few thousand
Speaker 3: golfers a year, and that's the way we do it.
Speaker 3: Our whole procedure is modeled off of the old tour
Speaker 3: room at Hogan when I was there, and we build
Speaker 3: clubs one set at a time. We do not have
Speaker 3: stock golf clubs. Every order we do is a custom order. Wow,
Speaker 3: even if you want standard standard, last standard, lost standard grip,
Speaker 3: you're going to still get it built custom, right next
Speaker 3: to the guy that wanted, you know, a half inch long,
Speaker 3: two degrees flat, and two raps on the under the grip.
Speaker 3: They're all built custom. That's why I think golf clubs
Speaker 3: ought to be built. We take great pride in what
Speaker 3: we do is and great craftsmen in there building them
Speaker 3: and like the product. So you know, it's just a
Speaker 3: it's a passion, it's a love of mind. We have
Speaker 3: no delusions of slaying any giants. But what we do
Speaker 3: have great dreams of helping people build better golf games.
Speaker 3: And we get emails and phone calls every day that
Speaker 3: we're doing that, and that's that's the gratifying thing.
Speaker 1: Terry. We'll talk to you on the next episode. Thanks
Speaker 1: again for this is awesome. I've got three pages of notes.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And because there's things I have friends I
Speaker 1: have to go. You know what, you have to listen
Speaker 1: to this episode because he's talking to you specifically. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting. Okay, so much of that is so valuable,
Speaker 1: but he's not. You're not given lessons, but you're reminding
Speaker 1: us of things that we constantly forget.
Speaker 3: Right, So thanks Bud Well, thank you. I look forward
Speaker 3: to the next episode and starting to answer reader questions
Speaker 3: or listener questions and hopefully we can help improve the
Speaker 3: short games out there.
Speaker 1: H