Speaker 1: Hi. This is bj Barger from Alexandria, Virginia. In addition
to joining Fred on an awesome Golf Smarter adventure to Prague,
I'm a member of Laurel Hill Golf Club and I
play lots of golf with LPGA, Imateurs and American Singles Golf.
This is Golf Smarter.
Speaker 2: Number four hundred eighty eight, published on May twelve, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 4: First off, I never take a practice swing at the
golf ball. I would select a club. My practice wings
are behind the ball on the target line, and they
may not be full. I may take a full casual
practice swing rip on a tea box just to make
sure that I'm loose. When I set up to hit
a shot, I'm gonna tee it up, make sure my
feet you got a comfortable place to stand. Then I'm
gonna stand behind the ball. And this all takes just
a moment, and I'm going to look in where I
want my golf ball to start? Where's my start line
from there? It's why do I want my ball to curve?
If I'm gonna play a little fade or a draw,
I mean, I'm going to visualize that. So if I
wanted to start somewhere, that's one thing. I can aim
the face as best I can to start the ball there.
If I need to curve it, I need a clubhead
path go in a slightly different place than more my
face starts it, because you need a differential between face
and path the curve the ball. And as a golfer,
to become a good golfer, you have to learn how
to take conscious thought through the right experience and repetitions,
so it jumps the fence into subconscious. So that communication
isn't smoke signals, and it's not even old analog phone
that it's high speed fiber optic. Because when the communication
from brain to body become high speed fiber optic, now
people can say they're really not thinking about something because
their consciousness know they're thinking. It's so fast that they
look and react. That's rubbish. You play that way because
the consciousness one from slow calculated into some conscious look
and react behavior that's trained in.
Speaker 2: You can avoid golf lessons and save a lot of
money using the right training aids.
Speaker 3: With Martin Chuck, this is Golf Smarter Premium.
Speaker 2: Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf
Smarter Podcast. Martin, Hey, it's.
Speaker 4: Great to be back, Bretta. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: It's my pleasure. I really enjoy having you on the show,
and I want to talk to you about what's going on.
I've been seeing you on Revolution Golf a time. You've
been doing a lot of golf videos, a lot of
phenomenal instruction, thank you, and really helpful stuff. I mean,
I hate to admit it, but yeah, I'm watching you
on Revolution Golf because I'm getting some great tips.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: So doctor to me, what's going on with that?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I have a lot of fun with it.
It's a great platform, goes out to tons of people,
and you know, just that kind of exposure for me
is really exciting. I know that I've had a message
in the game of golf talk to me from some
great mentors, and it's just a pleasure for me. To
share that with people, you know, whether they're in the
United States, Canada, around the world, wherever.
Speaker 2: And but you're doing a lot of stuff. I mean,
how often are you doing are you doing new tips?
Speaker 4: You know? I'm usually on Relution Golf once a week,
sometimes twice. I'm on twice this week, will beyond tomorrow,
be on Friday, and then usually they kind of have
me plugged in on Tuesdays right now, which is plenty
because there's a blogging component, you know, we answer questions
and people have questions. So every day I'm kind of
dedicated to get online and answer questions in the blog
to anybody that wants to ask me questions. It keeps
me kind of busy, is it okay?
Speaker 2: If you answer questions.
Speaker 4: Here, that's why I'm here.
Speaker 2: But well, well, the reason I say it that way
is because right now we're broadcasting this live via video
on periscope, and so yeah, and so the audience looking
at you, hopefully they can hear you as well. I
know they can hear me, and I'm looking at my screen.
So if anybody who's watching via periscope wants to ask
a question of Martin, please go ahead and submit it
on the screen, I'll be able to see it and
I will ask him myself. But I have a couple
of questions I need.
Speaker 4: To ask too, firewaymen.
Speaker 2: Great, let's talk about your product line always. You're You're
beyond being an excellent golf instructor. You are a very
creative entrepreneur with non tech gadgets. But I mean it's
you know, like, there's so many things that need batteries
right now that you don't have to do that. You're
not creating, you know what.
Speaker 4: I'm just not very smart, Fred, So there requires any
kind of electronics or something techie. It's not coming from me,
I'm afraid.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about your last product, and I'm going
to embarrass you right here. You were supposed to send
me one of those inflatable balls. You did not, And
just recently I started remembering about and thinking keep your
arms together, keep your arms together. Yeah, So tell me
about that product and what the purpose of it is
and why it helps.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's called the smart ballont I called
it the smart ball because I couldn't come up with
a better name. But the basically it's an inflatable, tiny
beach ball. It's on the exterior. It's got kind of
a felt feel to it, so it kind of sticks
to your arms a little bit more effectively than just
a plastic beach ball. And then it's got a loop
for an attachment to an adjustable lanyard, and that of
course lander goes around your neck and then you can
buil the ball up. It's a six inch ball, and
that ball fits below your elbows, between your elbows and wrists,
and when you can manage that triangle of your forearms
while in your golf swing, a lot of good things happen.
So you know, there's been products out there in the past,
and you know, all I think I did was invents
a little bit better mouse trap, because there's been some
good products in the past, but the problem was if
you weren't good at it, the ball dropped and you'd
be chasing it around or you know. So I thought, well,
I'm going to make something that somebody can stuff in
their golf bag that's pretty durable, that they can blow
up when they want to use it, you know, deflate
when they don't put in their bag, and then it
goes between your forms or also you can use it
as a lot of people will use it under one
arm or the other, which is a you know, a
classic connection drill that coaches have been trying to get
people to do for years of their arms that don't
run off their bodies so much. So it's just a
simple thing, and you know, the poleasing thing about it
is it's been picked up by a lot of tour
players and it's been fun. Like Darren Clark, you know,
Ryder Cup captain major winner, sent me a video of
him using it, you know, at royal Port Rush, his
club in Northern Ireland, and it's on vine, you know,
which is another apvocant keep track to all these apps.
Nowadays there's there's Darren Clark using it, and then a
lovely gallon the LPGA tour Beatrice Riccari uses it. She's
been a great proponent of it, and then Charles Howell
uses it, and a bunch of tour players do it,
and honestly, I haven't reached out to get him away.
They've found it and they've ordered it and they they
use it. So you know, I'm monitored that they considered
a training aid worthy of use and I'm excited to
you know, help help out with that kind of level
of player. Want to get better.
Speaker 2: That was very subtle, Martin. But I feel like a
total scumbag right now saying why didn't I get my
smart ball on these people who are making millions on
the tour, you know, And I'm just I'm.
Speaker 4: Happy to send you one man in my oversight. Unfortunately,
you know how you get you get busy. Next thing,
you know, it's yeah, you're very busy.
Speaker 2: So so explain how it works and what it's supposed
to do, because I know that there's multiple functions for it.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, like I said, you know, you blow
it up. You put the lanyard around your neck, so
you've got the suggestible thing, and you kind of get
it fit for your personal body shape in height, and
then you kind of hold u between your forums and
if you can go back and make a back swing,
certainly in a pitching motion a three quarter shot, if
you can manage your arms, you're going to become a
pretty effective player in that aspect. If you're very flexible,
like a lot of the younger people and professionals are,
you know, you can take this and pretty much hit
full shots with it. So most players fred are stuck
with a whole mentality you know, you've got to keep
your head down, stay down, stay down, stay down. So
they've got that that's almost that infliction to such a
degree that their arms and their body don't work together.
And when that happens, their elbows separate too much, and
then they don't have a decent radius of their golf swing.
The combination of arms in club is a unit. Well,
the ball smart ball helps keep your forearms, sort it
together so that it's easier for you to maintain that
swinging radius and you'll have a little bit more success
and reliability hitting a golf ball.
Speaker 2: And when you don't inflate the ball.
Speaker 4: Oh, when you don't inflate the ball, you'll use it
under your left arm, between your left arm and pack
or right arm and pack. And when it's in there,
you've got the ability, you know, to feel some arm connection.
More so so it depends on what you you know,
what you need and what you want to work on.
You know, there's the whole idea of connection in a
golf swing made famous by Jimmy Ballard, you know, in
the late seventies and eighties. You know, it helps with
that feeling, the the awareness of forearms sting a in
a proximity to one another, made famous by Ben Hogan
in the fifties in his great book You know, So
it helps with elements that coaches have tried to get
people to understand for years, and it's it's just a
it's a simple product. I mean, it really is. It's
you know, like I said, I'm not very smart, and
therefore it's a pretty simple product. But I'm glad it
helps people.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be smart to make a great product.
Speaker 4: You're right, I'm an example.
Speaker 2: Why is it important to you know, the idea of
keeping under your arm like that so that your arm
doesn't sweat, swing out on your on your back swing.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, yeah, So why should improve a golf swing? Right?
Everybody falls in love with the target line, so they
always see the ball and they see the pin. They
want the ball to go A to B and that
makes perfect sense. But what we get sucked into as
golfers is we try to control the clubhead to make
it go down that line, and that defies the geometry
of a circle. So when you have anything like when
you have connection awareness, you realize pretty quickly that the
only thing successful can be a rotational motion that produces
a straight shot, you know, via good contact and trying
to guide something down the line actually destroys speed and
destroys control. So getting those things under check with something
like a connection connection exercise, whether it be just a
towel across your chest and you're holding with both arms,
you know, that tends to be kind of cumbersome and awkward,
whereas the smart ball, when it's deflated, feels it's a
thin little bladder really, and it fits in your arm
quite comfortably, and it's just again, it's a simple way
for you to practice. And when you relax and your
arm comes away, it doesn't fall on the ground. You're
not picking it up. It just kind of hangs from
the lanyard that's around your neck, as it does when
you're using it blown up between your forearms.
Speaker 2: That is such a cool idea. It is so simple
and it works so well.
Speaker 4: You wait for my next one coming soon.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, can you talk about it?
Speaker 4: Yes, I can. It's called the Sammy. You know, it's
called the Sammy.
Speaker 2: Because that's my middle name.
Speaker 4: There you go, but it's for my daughter Sammy. Samantha.
We Sammy, and it's an acronym for structural awareness motion instrument.
Speaker 2: I can't write that. I can't write that a structural
awareness awareness motion uh huh.
Speaker 4: Instrument aka Sammy. And the reason being is because she
goes to this clothing store and they have these chapsticks
on a badger real you know, the little zippy badgerils.
So the chapsticks she can put on her belt, she
can put on her chapsticks. She can let go of
it and zips back to her belt. And it made
me think of a George Newtson application for connection between
the butt of the club and the left hip bone.
Well for the right end of golfer. See, he didn't
and this is another thing, kind of going back to geometry.
He didn't want the hands chasing the target line. He
wanted the hands working on a concentric hand path. So
back up and in down to a low line, back
up and in. Well, well, my daughter said to me,
she said, hey, Daddy, you can do something with this
in golf. And it was a fleeting comment and a
fleeting thought, and then she ran off to go chase
the dog or something. I mean, it was literally that fast.
So I thought of myself, you know what I could,
So I grabbed her little Chino because she once she
gets onto something new, it's like, hey, what happened to that?
She didn't even think about it. So I kind of
took her little chapstick badge reel and modified it a bit,
and then I sent it off to my designer friends
and we made it into a multifunctional badge reel that
can connect to your thumb, to your belt, to your
to your to your placard on your shirt. Basically, if
you want to monitor your right elbow extension, your bending,
left arm, your how your hand path is, how the
the flippiness of the shaft relative to your hands. I mean,
we can connect this thing anywhere. So as an awareness device,
I've been testing it in my golf school for you know,
a couple of months now, and people love the thing because,
you know, for example, if you're a if you if
you flip it a little bit, Let's say you chip
and you know, you hit pitch shots and you're trying
to educate your hands, and you know you're trying to
have just really simple, solid, you know, impact hands that
are transported by pivot. Well, if you if you attach
the sammy to midway down the shaft and then attach
it via its little kind of gator clip to your
left shirt sleeve. Now you have this string running down
and it's pretty easy to see if that's strings, you know,
waving around inappropriately compared to what a good player is
going to do. So it's just a feedback device. If
you want to. You can use it on your left arm,
you can use it on your right arm, bisk, you
can attach it anywhere. The hardest thing for me to
do now with this product that's going to be coming
out about ninety days is to make the video short
enough because there's so many applications to use the thing.
So I'm excited about I think I've got one tour
player that uses it all the time, Buddy, I coach,
and you know it helps him with his backswing with
you know. So again it's just these little products that
come up with our you know, I teach every day
all day long, and so I'm always wondering, you know,
what can I do in the short term to inspire
some feeling for this person so that they've got something
to benchmark through their awareness for And thus, you know,
this new product is Sammy. And then I've got another
one come with Fred. I've got about three or four
things coming down the road here to add to the
touristri touristrik or product line.
Speaker 2: You while you must be exhausted, your brain must hurt.
Speaker 4: No again, they're all simple. There's they're really they're really
really simple stupid things that are you know that that
I'm glad to say to help people out. You know,
I've got I know this these sexy words. This one's
called the tour Striker Power Sleeve and it's another awareness device,
you know, for the left arm or right arm, depending
on what your issue is. And you know, it's just
a very simple little kind of tube deal that that
will help people understand, you know, what their left arm's doing.
You know, whether it's bending, whether it isn't, where it's bending,
where it isn't. And you know, so those products are
coming soon, so it'll be.
Speaker 2: Fun and we can find them beyond just online or
be on.
Speaker 4: Tours trigger dot com. You know that some of the
attorney leise and this and that is just being organized
and the web pages are being built and you know
again they're they're pos in place, good old China, and
the product will be available, you know, sooner, hopefully sooner
than later, but those things it takes a while for
customs and shipping and so forth.
Speaker 2: For those of us who are lucky enough right now
to be watching on periscope where I'm looking at you
via Skype, can you give me a visual right now
and explain what you're doing of what tourist trike a
power sleeve actually does?
Speaker 4: Can you? You know, so you get a golfer who
you know, they may not know me back up a bit.
They may not know whether they get a lot of
left double bend, you know. But more the most important
thing with the power sleeve is that when somebody tries
to keep their head down too long, typically you get
some kind of a chicken wing condition when your left
arm can't bend. Like I'm not saying that this isn't
a device that is on you to lock your left
arm straight. That's not the point of it. The point
is for you to feel the awareness of when you
bend it. A good swing, a left arm will eventually bend,
there's no question. But I want somebody to be able
to move their arms relative to their body and have
the awareness of where these issues happen. So if they
have that awareness, it's amazing. As we get older, you know,
I'll come back to the whole head down thing, because
that's to me, the biggest poison in golf is that
as we age. You know, I'm forty six. You know,
we don't have the same mobility we once had when
we were seven. So if I talked some keen seven
year old and I was a coach, and I said, okay,
young Martin, you keep your head down, son, and you
just keep your head down. That seven year old's got
the mobility to go and hit a golf ball, and
he's like a rubber band and he's gumby, and he
can have he can move the structure of his farms
and arms and body long enough to hit really good shots. Well,
use you age that mobility unless you work on it
every single day, Like say a tour player who hits
three hundred balls a day or two hundred balls a
day or five hundred balls a day and practices you
know seven, you know they're going to play five six
rounds a week depending on the week. They're going to
keep building in this mobility because they do it all
the time. Well, if you take a golf of twenty
five or thirty or forty or fifty. Good luck with
that mobility. Okay, So a better person to mimic to
play good golf is more like Anika Sorenstam, my personal
favorite golfer, because you know, she's basically not even looking
at a golf ball when she hits it. Now, I'm
not here to say don't look at a golf ball
when you hit it. I'm here to say, have the
awareness of a motion that can pass through a golf
ball and then not act like calipers on a break
disc and slow things down to where arms and club
and everything kind of lose the swinging rhythm. Well with
the power sleep you kind of it's a it's an
instant wareness. You know right away, you know where I
wear it all the time. I love it. You know
right away where the issue happens. And therefore you know
you can you can target the relaxation needed the you
can target when you need to kind of release your
eyes from the ground, which is basically follow the golf ball.
But once you have it on, it's easy for people
to go, oh boy, I feel a sudden tug here. Okay,
well I'm going to find that tug. I'm going to
ease up on that little hitchy part that clearly can't
be helping me. So once again, all my stuff is
there to provide a feedback for the person to learn
a little faster, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So let's see if we can work on this idea.
I have recently discovered for myself that if I slow
my swing down consciously, and whether it's slowing it down
or just making a smoother, you know, stroke through the ball,
like especially with my driver, I'm going, okay, I only
want to hit the ball one hundred and fifty yards
right when I go on the driving range, and I
can hit the ball regularly to twenty five two thirty,
And that's based on statistics I pull off of game golf,
not what's in my head, because of course I think
I hit it two seventy five.
Speaker 4: Of course you're right.
Speaker 2: But when I'm looking at the stats, like, okay, so
you hit it about two twenty five to two thirty,
that's fine. But when I'm on the driving range and
I'm like, okay, I want to hit the ball just
one hundred and fifty yards. I don't want to swing hard.
I'm also now, you know, picking a flag at one
fifty on the range and I'm a hit in the flag, right.
I mean, I'm hitting my targets. I'm getting a lot
more fairways. And to me, what I find happening is
the more fairways I hit, the more pars I'm getting
because I'm getting greens in regulation because I don't have
to be you know, try to be creative, right, how
can and I take that rhythm and slower rhythm with
all my clubs, and you know, because I can now
I'm getting a point like whoa. I really tried to
swing hard on that and the ball did not cooperate
at all. I'm finding just better ball flight. I'm finding
straighter shots. I'm hitting my targets better.
Speaker 4: Yep, you know, I tell you why. That's a great question.
I think one mentor I like to quote Ben Doyle,
and I'm not sure if he was the originator of
this comment. And he passed away this year, So a
lot of teaching pros out there are a great depth
of gratitude to Ben Doyle. He was the original golfing
machine instructor, as trained by Homer Kelly, and he used
to say, always eyes on the ball, mind in the hands. Well,
eyes in the ball, mind in the hands to me.
You know, to me, the ball's not going to go anywhere,
you know, just sitting there. And frankly, I don't really
stare at it. It's more like just a casual observation
from my eyes. But my inside feelings are really in
my hands that see. I don't ever ground the golf club.
Fred and my mentor George Newton taught us from the
kids and the influences when we were in a little
grippy junior golfers, to never ever rest the club in
the ground because he wanted us to establish a peaceful
grip pressure with the club in our hands, not a
grip pressure with the club on the ground. Because he
always said, both the clubs on the ground, at some
point you're going to snatch away, to grab that golf
club to take it back. So he always wanted us
mobile from the wrists with a club off the ground.
You know. Jack Nicholas is a good example, and Tiger Woods,
you know, the club doesn't really rest in the ground.
It's always a part of his body. And then from
there you have an awareness of mobility and the wrists. Well,
if you're always sensing grip pressure and risk awareness, it's
pretty tough to get really wonky as far as rhythm goes.
So the people that I come see me every week
at the golf school, a lot of them put it
on the ground. Put the club on the ground behind
the ball, aim to face for them, want the ball
to go, that's great. And then their first move is
like they're playing flue. Their hands kind of open to
a degree, they close to a degree in a way
they go. And so I call this the grip and go.
And the grip and go is troublesome because you can't
always grip and go. You don't always have a lie
that dictates that you can do that. The ball may
be sitting down in the rough, Well, you're not going
to stick the club down in the grass. You have
to hover it at some point. So to me, it's
best to hover it always. When I say hover it,
I'm not talking about a foot. I'm talking about you know,
three sixteenths of an inch, some negligible amount off the
ground to where your hands have a peaceful hold on
the grip. Yet you have mobility awareness in your wrists.
And that to me is how people can have a
rhythm awareness all the time because of their hand strength
and intension doesn't change much. Pretty tough not to have rhythm.
Speaker 2: You don't look at the ball.
Speaker 4: I look at it, but it doesn't matter to me, honestly.
I mean, I'm casually aware of it. Like I look.
People saying me, hey, Martin, where do you look? I
go down. And it's kind of a play on words
because the ball really means very little to me. When
I'm playing golf. I look at it, and you know,
there it is, and I set myself, I set the
face up where I want the ball to go. But
once I kind of look at it, and you know,
I look back at the ball, my brain isn't worried
about the ball at all. My brain's more worried about
how my personal body feels at the moment, what I
need in that swing, as far as what certain feels,
as far as trajectory, club path, my expectations of where
the ball's going to go. The visual of my of
the target is burned into my head, and that's what
I'm really That's where my brain's at the golf ball.
Nobody's going to come move it, so I don't have
to give it a great deal of attention.
Speaker 2: I sense a contradiction here. You sound like there's a
whole lot of stuff going on in your head before
you hit your ball.
Speaker 4: Well, let me walk you through what it would look
like if I was hitting a shot, if you were
in my brain. Okay, first off, I never take a
practice swing at the golf ball. You know, I would
select a club. My practice swings are behind the ball
on the target line, and they may not be full.
I may take a full, casual practice swing rip on
a tea box just to make sure that I'm loose. Now,
when I set up to hit a shot, I'm gonna
tee it up, you know, make sure my feet or
have a good place to stand or you know, in
the fairway. You don't have that luxury, but on a
tea box from tea to make sure I've got a
comfortable place to stand. Then I'm gonna stand behind the ball,
and this all takes just a moment, and I'm gonna look.
I'm going to see where my I want my golf
ball to start. What is where's my start line? And
then from there it's where's my how do I want
my ball to curve? Now, if I'm gonna play little
fade or a draw, I mean I'm going to visualize
that there's where my ball is starting. There is how
it's curving. So if I want it to start somewhere,
that's one thing. I can aim the face as best
I can to start the ball there. If I need
to curve it, I need a clubhead path go in
a slightly different place than more my face starts it
because you need a differential between face and path the
curve the ball. So you go, how technical is this? Well,
I mean, this is all blink stuff. It's like if
I typed you a note. You know, I don't even
know what I'm typing because in there it is there's
the note high Fred blah blah blah, Thanks, look forward
to seeing you again, Martin. While in there's a bunch
of subconscious stuff. It's only subconscious because I've trained it
in and as a golfer, to become a good golfer,
you have to learn how to take conscious thought through
the right experience and repetitions. So it jumps the fence
into subconscious. So that communication isn't like smoke signals okay,
and it's not Morse code, and it's not even old
analog phone that it's you know, high speed fiber optic,
because when the communication from brain to body become high
speed fiber optic, now people can say they're really not
thinking about something because their conscious doesn't know they're thinking.
It's so fast that they look they react, and then
they say, oh, it's just I just play golf because
I look and react. That's rubbish. You play that way
because you've trained that your speed of the conscious is
one from slow calculated into subconscious look and react behavior
that's trained in like learning how to type, So anyway
not to jump back to that. You know, set in,
I am the face where I want the ball to go,
and then from that moment the ball kind of goes
away because now I'm kind of in myself what do
I want to feel? Where's my balance going to go?
Now you can think, well, those are a lot of
swing thoughts, but not really. They're kind of gross motor
skill thoughts, and you know, I'm just trying to kind
of make this overall motion in some kind of balance
in a you know, the masses previous feelings of success,
and hopefully it's a good shot, and if it's not,
I go find it. I hit it again.
Speaker 2: And again and again. Well, at least I do. It
reminds me of when I was young and driving a
stick shift, and there are many times where I'm like,
how'd I get in third gear?
Speaker 4: Yeah? There you go? How'd you get from you know,
your driveway to the story? You even remember how you
got there?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Like what I mean? Oh yeah, I reached down. It's
like it's in third already?
Speaker 4: How did that happen?
Speaker 2: Even? Think about it?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Another thing that you said that that jumps out at me.
It's like, because I should be paying attention to this
because I learned from you so much. You don't rest
the club on the ground, Okay, I do, but I
can see you know, I'm really starting to focus on
finding the bottom of my swing arc lately, and so
I'm really kind of focused. And I hate using that
word because I'm focused on a target, but I really,
uh you know, look, send my eyes about an inch
in front of the ball, okay, so that I can,
you know, avoid hitting from hitting behind the ball. And
that's helped me a little bit, keeping my eyes you know,
off the ball, just in front of it. What about
your putter?
Speaker 4: You know, I try not to ground my putter either.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And now when I say because think about it. I
think the yips actually come from the people that have
a hard time putting. I really believe the yips come
from some sort of collision between conscious and subconscious, right.
I mean, you don't trust something, You don't trust your pace,
you don't trust your aim, and you know in that
in that lack of trust becomes you know, comes a flinch. Now,
if you are listening to this out there and you
do have a hard time putting and you don't trust
your stroke, I want you to tee up some golf
balls on the putting green. I know that sounds crazy,
but tee them up half an inch and then just
stroke them off of a high tee and hover the
putter there naturally, Because I think the ground plays a
role in this. I mean people that quote stub their putt,
you know that actually can hit the ground when they
pot accidentally they quote stub it. Well, you know there's
there's a there's a subconscious fear that let's take that
fear away. Now. I'm not saying that you hover the
putter or an inch off the ground and you pot.
That's not it. But we use the expression lady bug
at the golf school, meaning that in all shots. We
want to we want you to gently set the club
on the back of a ladybug that don't kill her,
just set it down there. So there's a dimension between
the bottom of the club and the grass, and it's
a little dimension, and you can tap her and you
can wake her up, but don't squish her. And then
from that radius, from that dimension you've established, go ahead
and putt, and go ahead and chip, and go ahead
and hit your shots. Now, if you watch me hit balls, read,
you wouldn't go well, Martin's covering the club because it's
a tiny dimension now if you looked really closely. And besides,
I'm not static either. I mean I'm not just standing there.
I'm always kind of moving around and moving my feet
and waggling and feeling rhythm before I initiate my swing
with rhythm, you know, And even in putting them ever
standing there statically, there's always a rhythm to it. I
look at react, I go with that look and react
is very specific. It's trained in. It's a it's something
I practice when I when I when I do practice now,
which isn't often, but it's I believe that the routine
and rhythm of the routine is a critical thing that
people really have to be aware of.
Speaker 2: Would a teacher look at you and say, you need
to quiet yourself down, you've got your moving too much,
or there's so much going on before you hit the ball.
Speaker 4: Maybe, but everybody's walking to their opinion. But I think
if the teacher watched me hit a ball, they'd probably say, hey, Martin,
you got a really good golf swing. You know. So,
I mean I'd say I'd say to the teacher, hey,
let's let's go play for five dollars.
Speaker 2: You know, and you're and you're fired, what do you do.
Speaker 4: For I think you know, I may be in this
in this interview. I'm not sure how that how it
comes across, right, But there you have to recognize, you
know where your brain's going. There's there's nothing really simple
about it until until your your brain body make it simple.
Like typing. I mean, I'd come back to that, or
playing a musical instrument. Some people make it look like
they're born with a trumpet in their hands. Well they
weren't good thing. I'd be painful for their mother. But
the point is, through tremendous practice, right, you become one
with something and not tremendous and it's the right kind
of practice. So off, it's the same way you become
one after, you know, with certain behaviors, whether they're good
or bad. And I see people that come to the golfschool,
they stand there rigidly over a golf ball. We teach
kind of a kind of a walk in pattern that's
rhythmical that I think the golf swing starts, you know,
way before you take it back. It starts me. You know.
I use this expression read, plan, do and review. So
there reading the plan part. You know, we walk up
to a shot, Well what do we have? You figure
your art as you're reading. Okay, you're looking at the
lie and then you're planning your strategy. Right you walk in.
There's the dow component. There's a swing part of it, right,
and the review component, which is a big part of
what George Newson taught us kids was you know, he
always called it the three second rule, meaning that we
couldn't get mad at herself for three seconds. We had
to kind of stand there for a moment trying to
have some feedback for what we just did, whether it
was good, bad, or indifferent, and then then possibly learn
from that swing rather than hitting you know, slumper shoulders
and throw club or whatever. Then he'd be upset with us.
So there's always a read plan doing a review at
any golf shot for a person that wants to play
high level golf or any kind of decent golf.
Speaker 2: It may not have been born with a golf club
in your hands, but right now it sure looks like
Steph Curry was born with a basketball in his hands.
There you go, boy, about as natural as it gets.
All Right, off of basketball for a second. I want
to promote, if I may, another one of your products,
because this is what puts you on the map, right
touris striker. Let's you know, I think that it's something
that you know, you may be tired of talking about it.
It's like, yeah, it's been around for a while, but
there's a lot of people who are still especially when
I have it out of the driving range with me,
that it's like, you know, you might want to look,
you want to try this thing. Tell us a little
bit about the history, tell us what the value of
a tourist striker.
Speaker 4: Yea, and the variation. I'm a big believer in intent.
If you have the right intent to do something and
you know there'll be more more success. So being a
teacher for many years, I've been teaching now for thirty years,
which is crazy, started when I was sixteen. And you know,
for a lot of teaching, a lot of teachers are
frustrated as our students because we try to convey a
message and sometimes that message is lost in the translation.
And what I found was that, you know, I find
a good player hits a shot and it's like wow, okay,
that sounds different. That produces a divot, you know, small
divt after impact and the ball kind of goes far
and they don't look like they're swinging that hard. And
you know what's the secret sauce there, Well, they they
move the golf club differently than the person who's having
you know, the hard time. Well, through teaching, I realized
that if I really well, I really don't need the
bottom couple of grooves on a golf club. And I'm
talking about the off a card path even And in fact,
if you're bored out of your mind, go to my
YouTube channel and posted a video I'm hitting a tour
striker off a card path and the ball's going airborne. Fine,
And because it's not about hitting down so much when golf,
everybody's down. When you swing at a golf ball, there's
going to be a down. You don't swing up at
a golf ball. I shouldn't say that. Some people do.
But every circle's got an element of down, every circle's
got an element of up. Well, in golf, since it's
an incline circular game, it's got it down and out,
and it's got it up and in. Well, if we
can get your down and out in the right place,
then you're going to play some pretty good golf. And
if we can get your down and out in the
right place, you know there's gonna be some element of
a clubhead trailing behind a handle a little bit. And
that is what's called for chafflin. So you know when
people are standing there trying to hoist the ball off
the ground because they think that they have to. It's
their job to get it up, and a normal golf
club can let them have some limited success doing that.
I decided to be mean and take away that limited
success because if somebody wants to hang back and hoist
a golf ball off the ground, they're never going to
get that amazing compressed feeling that good players get all
the time, and they're never going to get the distance
that they deserve for their you know, physical talents. So
by taking away the bottom grooves basically really right raising
the leading edge basically you know, more than almost an
inch off the ground, the players forced to learn how
to use the tool differently, and then forcing them to
do that it might inspire something, you know, for them
to think about how they move the club differently. And
that's the whole purpose of it, so that they have
for chaplain, so they can have you know, somewhat a
shallow downwards strike and they can strengthen the loft on
the face rather than weaken the strike loft. So I mean,
that's the whole genesis behind the Tour Striker. And it's
been a great it's been a great ride. I mean,
it's been hard to believe now. It's uh, you know,
it's been seven years since since that's been out, and
that's crazy. We've sold a lot of them all over
the world, and you know, and it's put me on
the map as a coach. Was just cool and it's fun.
Speaker 2: So you know, lucky, Yeah, well I understand the luck part,
but there's nobody more deserving I'm so happy for you
that it's such a success and it opens the doors
to allow you to introduce new products like Sammy and
with the bank swing. No the wait, wait, I got
a Tour Striker power sleeve. That's right, right, I wrote
something that I was going to ask about never got to.
Can you give us a quick tip on why we
slice the ball and how to fix it? And I
can see now that you're wearing my smartphone.
Speaker 4: Pall, Yeah, I didn't ship it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, that's that's why I didn't get mine. That's okay.
Sure is a quick tour striker, mister tours striker tip
to striker.
Speaker 4: Sure, so you know, you know I've got my tour striker.
Of course they've got a practice with my tour striker
in my golf room here. But I'm wearing the smart ball.
And once again, you know, early for those viewers that
want our listeners.
Speaker 5: Too, earlier we talked about if you can manage your arms,
frad you can hit a lot of really good shots, because.
Speaker 4: What happens is a lot of people, you know, in
their back.
Speaker 5: Swing there, they'll get a lot of elbow separation. And
I'm not going to say you can't play a very
good golf from there.
Speaker 4: You can, but you better get in a lot of
reps to build and the familiarity from taking your radius
from address, getting your elbows separated, and then getting to
impact on a good place. So if you have something
like a smartble, it really really helps. Now, the tip
I want to share with you guys today is mostly
you suffering out there. Suffer you know, slice the golf ball.
So a slice a shot that is something that goes
a path that gets over the top and wipes across
the tiret line is usually going to spin the ball
and create a slice. We all know that over the
top swing. That's nothing new. So how are we going
to fix that? Well, I want you to consider this.
When we stand erect and we bend over, we've got
a dress angle, a dressed body postured. I want you
out there to learn.
Speaker 5: How to turn your shoulders a little bit steeper, because
if you can get your lead shoulder down okay, and
not necessarily under your chin, because Rory McRoy swings his shoulder,
you know, and you have had lipstick on and get
his shoulder really really colored and lipstick. But the point
is most people take their back swing threat and they
turn their shoulders too.
Speaker 6: Flat, and then as soon as initiate some energy from
their body, their arms go out too much, and then
they react by swinging down too much, and that's how
they spin the ball in big slices over a lot
of holes.
Speaker 5: So if we learn how to get tipped over the
golf a little bit better and let our lead shoulder
work a little bit down.
Speaker 4: Which is not that easy if you're not used to
using your abs this way. From here, it's not even
gonna make sense to try to go over the top.
Speaker 5: You want to reroute those arms nicely to the golf ball,
and guess what, you won't slice it anymore.