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