Speaker 1: Hi, This is Fred Green of golf Smarter with the
penultimate episode of our annual Spring into Golf season with
the late Tony Manzoni. This is the continuation of our
conversation that started last week with Tony discussing taking your
game to the next level, one club at a time,
recorded back in June of twenty seventeen. Tony's book The
Loss Fundamental is available on Amazon and is DVD which
we converted to a private online link is also available
for twenty dollars or for free.
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Speaker 2: Oh there's more.
Speaker 1: This is part two of taking your game to the
next level, one club at a time with Tony Manzoni.
This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from
great golf minds to help you lower your score and
raise your golf IQ.
Speaker 2: There's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf
Smarter Podcast. Tony.
Speaker 3: Great to be back.
Speaker 2: It's good to have you again.
Speaker 1: Thank you for even though it's been a week since
we've recorded our last one.
Speaker 2: Usually when we do two part episodes, we'll.
Speaker 1: Record one right after the other, but you had to go,
so it's great that we can just go ahead and
pick this up. Before we started recording a moment ago,
we were talking about our excitement that the NBA Finals
is beginning tonight. Now, I know when people listen to this,
it's going to be old news, So I don't want
to talk about the teams and their chances and what's
going to happen. But you know, there's something about the
Warriors that is so interesting that there are two players,
Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, who are all Stars, and
Steph's a superstar, but they both grew up in an
NBA arena, right, both of their fathers played in the NBA.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And then you think about players like Ken Griffy Junior
who grew up in a major league dugout because his
dad played in the majors. And there's you know, other
baseball players as well. What kind of impact or do
you know of players on the PGA Tour whose fathers
were also players on the PGA Tour and what kind
of impact did it have on them in their play?
Speaker 3: Well, in some cases, if the the dads were great,
let's say like Nicholas, it's it's very difficult for the
sons too. They go in there with an anchor because
they've got to beat a record that's already been established.
So that's the downside. The upside to it a lot
of times is that because their dads were involved in
a sport, whether it's baseball or whatever, they have a
better comfort zone there, and they have a better understanding
of what's going to happen because they've been around it,
you know, all their youth. So you know, it's kind
of a two pronged thing there. One is one is
a little bit tough on you, and the other one
makes it a little bit easy here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could see how that, but that's if, in fact,
you do pursue the same line that your dad did.
You know, it's like a lot of a lot of
kids I can see just going, yeah, I want nothing
to do with that, because there's you know, I can't
match up to him, and I don't care.
Speaker 3: Well, that's true. I mean, you know, I was lucky
enough to know Frank Sinatra a bit and his son
was a tremendous singer. But you know, how are you
going to stand up to Frank?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it always seemed like Frank Junior was a junior.
He always just seemed like a bad copy of Frank
trying to do Frank. He never seemed like, you know,
at least I never knew him, And just what I
saw of him on television that he was just trying
to do Frank and it just wasn't.
Speaker 3: Working, you know. The truth being known, his his speaking voice,
it was exactly like Frank, so his singing voice was
going to be similar. He didn't have the pizazz and
the aura that Frank presented, and he didn't really have
the chops that Frank had either, but he sounded like
his dad. I remember when I used to I was
involved in the Celebrity the Celebrity event that Barbara Sinatra
put on for abused children, and one year Frank Junior
did the show. This was after his dad had passed,
and it was eerie. I mean you you would think
it was Frank Sinatra on stage until you saw him
and then the way he handled him. So he had
very unique the ways about him when he sang. He
did some really cool things. But his dad had, you know,
when his When Frank got on the stage, I don't
care who was up there previous. He just owned the thing.
He just had that. He just had that it thing,
you know, that's it because he could sing his butt off.
Speaker 1: And then talking about wayward sons, I have to do it.
Any comments about Tiger.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't the details. I do understand that
you should be you know, you can't mix prescription drugs.
But a bigger question is you worth seven hundred and
fifty million dollars? What are you driving from northern cals
to southern cal by yourself? Number one? And why do not?
Why not have a driver Florida? He was going, I
mean it was a long drive. He's going to Florida
or some someplace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said he was going home and he was
going in the opposite direction.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, I mean, you know, when you
look at the look at the videos that they're showing,
it's very incriminating. But you know, I know of people
that have had really bad reactions to drugs that are mixed.
So I think that I think the jury is still out,
But a lot of people like to make a big
deal out of it and make him look like a
bad guy. You know, he's got a lot of people
that don't like him, and that kind of comes with
the territory of being famous.
Speaker 1: But I think there's also a lot of people who
are going, oh, that's so sad.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think there's a lot of people feel bad. Yeah,
I mean, it's you know, with Tiger at one time
he could have run for president. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then after well, he came onto the scene.
Speaker 1: He kind of exploded onto the global stage at the
same time as Barack Obama, right, I mean a little
bit earlier, but at two thousand and eight, he was
at his pinnacle and here comes Barack.
Speaker 2: Obama and anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a debate on who was the
most recognizable person in the world at that moment.
Speaker 2: Was it Tiger was a Barack Obama?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I would have voted for Tiger, to
be honest with you. You know, he was bigger than
life there for a while, and unfortunately, because it was escapades,
he lost favor with everyone for a bit of a time.
And then little by little people start creeping back into
his camp, including sponsors. But there for a while he
was very disliked because he had this perfect marriage, kids,
the whole thing, and then he dumpster for you know,
for doing stupid things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my greatest fear in all of this that you know,
with all the surgeries that he's had, and he's had
multiple back surgeries, and if you've been following the Warriors,
you know about Steve Kerr, and he's now regrets the
surgeries that he had.
Speaker 2: He says, you should never do back surgery.
Speaker 1: And what Tiger's now had four Uh, my greatest fear
is that he's addicted to pain meds.
Speaker 3: That's that's a very good possibility, very good possibility. Sure,
Like you said, he's had so many operations. Uh, you know,
and I go back to I met Tiger a long
time ago, uh at at a tournament, on the celebrity tournament,
and he just happened to be there because there's a
lot of celebrities there.
Speaker 1: Was he a pro at this point? Was he still
a pro? Was he already a pro at this point?
Or was he still before that?
Speaker 3: No, it was before that. And the first thing I
noticed that he was very small bones for a guy
that hid it so far. He was out of college.
And you know, he could bench press three hundred pounds
when he weighed one hundred and fifty. So he's a
real strong guy, and he was very he could run
really fast too. But I noticed that he had his
hands are medium sized, but his wrists were very small,
and so his tendons and everything and were built for
that kind of a frame and then he started doing
all the weight training and heavy weight training and got
very big and it's still big, really, And I think
that that you know, you can put on a lot
of muscle about your structure is built for a certain
body type. And I think that's where a lot of
his injuries came from. It's just that he got so
heavy muscled, and I don't think his tendens could hold
up his knees and so far in the back. Everything
kind of fell apart because I did a tournament years
ago called Kids Kids, and I had Justin Leonard and Tiger.
Tiger just hit the drive on one of the holes.
Was like a pro am to raise money for children
that couldn't afford to play golf and so forth. And
I remember I was I was a fairly long hitter
at that time. And I got up on the hole
where it was a long drive contest, and I really
cracked when I was thinking, Man, nobody's catching that one.
And I got out there and I saw this little
flag but forty yards ahead of my ball. He said, well,
what the heck is that is all? That's where that
sixty year old kid hit it. And I mean, Tiger
must wait like you weighed about fifty pounds when I
when he was there, just skinnier the heck. But boy,
he could just move the ball. And I think he
hit it farther as an amateurs than he did as
a pro. Really, and he was he was skinny, he
was you know, big muscled people don't hit it long.
Davis Love is a perfect example of a long, lean
guy that hit it long, even even in his later years.
So I think he was taken, I think, And I'm
afraid that Rory McElroy's does this same thing. He got
into really heavy weight training, you know, way way back
when there was a guy the named Frank Stranahan, who
is he was a first bodybuilder golfer, and I just
don't think that the two match. I don't think they
go together.
Speaker 1: Interesting And then like jose Canseco was like the first
big weightlifter for baseball, and then the accusation of steroids
and then everybody else, and then he came out and said,
you know he and what's so interesting is he came
out and said he was going to do this book
that everybody's doing steroids, and everyone's chastised him and berated
him and pretty much blackballed him from the world of baseball,
and now that many years later, he was right, all wrong.
Speaker 2: He was the one that was right.
Speaker 3: You can't blame the athletes for trying to get an
edge when everybody else is doing the same thing. Absolutely,
and you know, no one's really said, no one's ever
been definitive about steroids and things like that, what they
can and cannot do, and if you don't abuse them,
and doctors prescribe them for guy's sake. So but the
problem is is that when you get into weight training
and you get into Okay, my arms is this big.
I want to get them bigger, and I want to
do this. You're in that arena where that stuff is
bandied about, and that's when you get that's when you're
you're you know, it's I think it's I think it's
like something that is like a drug almost. You want
to get bigger, you want to get stronger. You get
in the gym, you're press bench pressing so much, you
want to press more, and that stuff is available and
it kind of calls out to you, and that's when
that's when the mistakes started happening, and you start injecting
stuff and and doing more of it than you should
and then you pay the piper. That's why you see
so many football players dying so early. I really attributed
to a lot of that kind.
Speaker 2: Of stuff, steroids and pain medication.
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, yeah, you know when you're o d on
that stuff or when you do it too much in
your system eventually catches up with you.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to it. Our conversation started to be
last week. I wanted to continue this week because you
gave so much really valuable information. And what we're talking
about is taking your game to the next level, one
club at a time, and we're dissecting each of the
clubs in our bag to see what we can do
to improve our game and improve our ball striking and
lower our scores by focusing on practicing with each club
and what we can do. Last week, we talked about
the putter, the eight iron, chipping with an eight iron,
and the lob wedge and the sand wedge, and then
you know how how a ball releases when when you're chipping,
and how much it releases.
Speaker 2: So if you miss that, you've got to go back
to hear that. But let's talk now.
Speaker 1: Let's start again here, Well, let's start at the Sandwich,
we really didn't cover much of it. Tell me what
I need to do better with my sand wedge that
I'm not doing that's going to get the ball closer
to the hole.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the Sandwich is a marvelous club. Jean
sarah'son was the one that invented the thing, and it's
been primarily used for bunker shots and shots in and
around the green and hitting flop shots. But then with
the advent of higher lofted clubs being made with lob
wedge and so forth. In my estimation, and this is
just my opinion, and maybe I'm just a little old school,
because I am old. I like to hit all kinds
of shots with the Sandwich. I don't even carry it.
You know. I put a sixty degree in and it
befuddled me because I couldn't get the distance control that
I wanted. I expected more distance, and I came up
short a lot of shots. So I've learned that I've
gone back to the Sandwich. I've taken a little bounce
off of it so I could use it in the
fairways and I can open it up and hit that
lob shot. And really it's that that's what you should do.
When I got to know when I was with Callaway
and I got to know teaching Rodriguez a little bit
and listen to him. You know, he had about twenty
shots with the wedge. He could just do anything with it.
And then in subsequent talks with Lee Trevino, Lee Trevino,
he said, I could I could do brain surgery with
my wedge. You know. That's that is if you want
to play golf and shoot low numbers, you've got to
be a wizard with those short clubs, especially the sandwich
and pitching wedge and the shots around the green. But
the sandwich is a fantastic club, but you must make
sure that you have the correct bounce for what you're
trying to get done. And that's ah And and you know,
I love the Cleveland wedges. I love the the title
of Volky wedges. They seem to be whoever is doing
the design and seems to be a good player and
understands what they should be like, especially in the bounce area.
Speaker 1: Can you It's been discussed before, but there's still it's confusing.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by bounce?
Speaker 3: Well, bounce there's a you know, the flange on the
golf club. Well, if you take it to club and
turn it over, you'll see that a high bounce club,
the flange kind of sticks out a little bits.
Speaker 2: It's higher, I'm sorry. Flange is is the part that
touches the ground.
Speaker 3: Yes, so a high Uh. The idea of the flange
is that it penetrates the sand a little bit. It
goes into the sand a little bit, and that's what
put sand on the face of the club, and then
you hit the ball and the ball comes out soft.
So way back when I've got an Old Wizard wedge
by Johnny Rivolta, that's like anivil very heavy, big, big
flange on it. But it was primarily for the sand,
for the sand, but you also want to a sandwich
that you can use off the turf. And if you
have too much bounce on it and you're hitting off
a tight lie, you're gonna hear some some nifty little
skull shots that you don't you don't want. So I've
always believed that I want to I can get the
ball out of the bucker uh, And I don't need
I don't need that that the high loft of the bounce,
I don't need high A big, big bounce on it.
I can use a lower bounce, and I just opened
the thing up, and I feel like I want to
slide the club under the ball a little bit more.
I don't. I don't stick it in the sand so
much and explode it out. And I think in today's
world you see more of the sliders where they slide
the ball out a little bit. Uh you don't see
that too much chunk and run as as you did
way back when. Uh. So I like, I like my
sandwich to be a little bit more utility for me
where I can use it in the fairways, use it
off of a tied to lie, and use it in
the bunker, so that that little piece that comes down
it's kind of a V shape. That's that's what it
looks like when you're looking at the bounce, and the
more V the shape is, the bigger the bounce.
Speaker 1: Hard to say, Yeah, it's hard to explain without holding
a club up here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to explain with the words. You have
to see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Are you saying that it's easier to get.
Speaker 1: The ball to stop when you slide it under the
when you're in a bunker, or when you explode it up.
Speaker 3: To get the ball to stop. It has to do
with speed. The more speed you can generate and hit
and do it properly, the more spin you put on
the ball, the more you stop the ball. A lot
a lot of people like to hit so that it
releases a little bit and not too many guys are
trying to carry it to the hole and make it stop.
That's the conditions have to be perfect for that in
the sand. But you watch the guys today, they really
they have that blade really open with the sand shot,
and you know they just come from all to in
on it and slide that baby underneath. Venturrey used to
I when I when he was alive and I got
to play a little golf of them. I used to
watch him, and that's that was his things. I feel
as if there's a tee under the ball and try
to clip that tea and I hit a lot of
skull shots for a while until I got that feeling
where I could slide the thing underneath.
Speaker 1: You said, perfect conditions when the when the when your
ball's in the sand and under perfect conditions. For for me,
I'm a public course guy, right, I don't play the
country club that has fresh sand brought in every six months,
and so lots of times, especially after a harsh winter
like we had. You know, the sand the bunkers are
now hardly sand, they're almost mud or have turned into
hard you know, hard dirt.
Speaker 2: What are perfect conditions.
Speaker 3: Well, then you have to get a little you know,
when you have it really hard pan, you've got to
be steeper on the shot. You got to literally make
your own sand by hitting straight down into it and
digging a little bit that you you just that's what
that would be a condition where you're stuck with it
because if you try to pinch it off of a
hard pan, you run the risk of the club bouncing
because of the law of the bounce on the club
and it bounces into the ball when I mean you know,
the club head bounces into the ball and you hit
it the middle of the ball and skull it. So
in that case you got to get steeper with it.
The problem Muni places and places like that not only
is sometimes there's way too much sand and it's really soft,
because it's not it's not a silica sand, it's a
it's like a blow sand that you get it or
in the desert that's really much more difficult to get
it out and make it do what you wanted to do.
In that case, you're just trying to get it out
and hoping for the best. But if you look at
the tour, the bunkers are perfect and they and they
have kind of what they call a silica sand and
it's it's it's a tight sand in a way you
can slide the club under, but it's not arduous. Well,
you can't get the screw real heavy sand. It's very difficult.
Speaker 1: And when you look at the tour, you'll notice that
even if they hit wayward shots, they don't lose balls.
That's because there's people standing there watching where they land.
I mean, it would be so much nicer and we
play so much better if we didn't have to go
searching for a ball that we saw land and okay,
it's in the rough over there and you can't find
it anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very very seldom you see a lost ball on
tour because there's so many people watching. It happened occasionally,
but very seldom. And plus I think the average guy's
errant shot is a little bit more erranch than the pros.
But you're right, that's a that's a great thing and
you never never really lose a ball. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is there a difference of the way bunkers are prepared
or the type of sand that are in bunkers in
the fairway versus the green side bunkers.
Speaker 3: No, they're generally, you know, if they're using a silica
sand they're using all the bunkers typically muni courses, they're
using a heavier sand so it stays in there a
little bit more. But they don't use a different sand
for fairways than they do a green side generally.
Speaker 2: Okay, good, need to know that. How many how many
wages do you carry in your bag?
Speaker 3: A pitching legend sandwich?
Speaker 2: So what do you carry? Fourteen clubs?
Speaker 3: Sure? Then load up? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Where do you load up?
Speaker 3: I load up with the rescue clubs.
Speaker 2: How many do you carry?
Speaker 3: Let me see, I've got a driver three wood, five
wood three four five three four five rescue than six
seven eight nine pitching wood sandwich potter.
Speaker 1: So I carry driver forwood, then a high three hybrid
four hybrid and my irons are five six seven eight nine.
Speaker 2: Pitch gap sand lob.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I carry I'm more on on the wedge side because
to me it's you know, I I'll hit my four wood,
you know, my driver, I can hit the average like
two forty or two between two forty to fifty, but
the I can hit my foreward about two ten to
two twenty, and then my three hybrid I hit two hundred.
Speaker 2: And then one eighty five.
Speaker 1: So to me that I feel like I've got all
that covered that distance because I'm not going to go
beyond it.
Speaker 3: You know, each individual is different, and I tried the
gap wage for a while, but again it was confusing
for me. First of all, unless you're unless you really
play a lot and you're very skilled. The hardest part
is distance control. If I've got a ninety one yard shot,
it's really hard for me to hit at ninety one yards.
I remember the funny story the caddy said, Hogan said
to the caddy, how far is he' says it's ninety
six or ninety seventy? Says which one is it? Because
that's how immaculate Hogan was about playing the game. I mean,
he really could hit it within yards. But the average person,
even a guy's on tour, as you can see, they're
either short or long most of the time.
Speaker 1: So what's the difference in your distance between your pitching
wedge and your sand wedge on a full swing.
Speaker 3: You know, I had my set, my set set up
so that my sandwich is a little on the strong side,
so it's a little closer to my pitching wedge, so
there's no need for the gap. My sandwich is a
fifty four degree. A lot of them are fifty sixes
and so forth, right, So you know, I don't find it.
I've never had a problem. And I played for years
before there was gap wedges and sixty degree wedges, and
I did just fine. But you know, manufacturers put that
seat in your heads so you can buy more product.
You gotta have a have a gap wedge. You gotta
have a sixty degree. I mean, and I think Michelson
has a sixty four degree or something like that. I'd
be afraid I was going to hit myself in the
head with a thing, you know, So, but don't I
just don't see an eat for it.
Speaker 1: Well, I have like a thirty five yard difference between
my pitching wedge and my sand wedge, And to me,
that's like, why would I want a thirty five yard
gap there when it could be so many different shots
for me?
Speaker 2: As I'm getting.
Speaker 1: You know, from my approach shot, I can deal with
a twenty five yard distance between my long ones. But
on those short shots, but you can.
Speaker 3: You may be a pitching wedge is a little strong,
and your your sandwich is a little weak, but you
should be able to take a pitching wedge out and
hit it fifty sixty, seventy eighty. Now you should be
able to hit at all those distances. So I mean
for having six, they didn't have lob wedges or rescue.
I mean what am I trying to say? Gap wedges
for a long our, gap clubs for a long time. Uh,
and people were able to you know, that's called shot making,
and that gets back to these clubs. You know, the
great players like Hog him he would hit every club
in the bag and during a practice round twenty five times,
and he hit them different trajectories, left to right, right
to left, high and low. And he could stand out
there and with his whole set of clubs and hit
it and hit a green say out about one fifty
one sixty with every club in the bag, including the driver.
So he had the ability to speed it up or
slow it down and still make a legitimate swing. And
hit the ball flush. That's what's missing today. Everything is uh.
You know, I hit a seven and one seventy and
that's all I hit it. Well, you should be able
to hit it one twenty or one ten. Uh. If
if a person would take the clubs that they have
and practice with them and use them for different distances,
you'd be surprised they could literally eliminate some of the
clubs in their bag and still and still be able
to play without any problem.
Speaker 2: You're making a basic assumption that we practice.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many people complain about the
fact that they want to be more consistent, but they
never practice.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, oh man, if I was only more consistent, well,
what are you doing to work on that?
Speaker 3: Play golf world when best in the world, that's all
they do for a living is play golf.
Speaker 1: The keywords there, the keywords for a living. We all
have to do other things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why. I mean, you can't expect to to
play at the level that they play and not hit
the ball. A number of balls that they hit, I mean,
just not possible. It's just a comfort thing. It's a
mental thing. Really. Uh. When you've hit a lot of ball.
You're storing that in your subconscious mind, and the better
you hit it, the better picture you have in yourn't
subconscious mind. Average guy when he goes to play, he
doesn't I mean, he doesn't know what's going to happen
that day, probably within a twenty stroke period. Where the
turing pro, you know, if he has a bad day,
he's going to shoot seventy two or three or four.
The average guy who maybe averages let's just say eighty five,
he doesn't know if it's going to be one hundred
and twenty ninety five or maybe an eighty. And that's
because because you know, the golf clubs aren't his friends,
because he hasn't hung out with him enough.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things I talk about when someone asked,
you know, if I play for money, It's like, No,
I'm competing against too many things that I can't bring
money into the equation as well, because then I'll really
freak out. And one of the things that I feel
like I'm competing against is my golf clubs. I mean,
there's the terrain, there's the weather, there's my head, and
then a different club for every shot, different length, and
you know I'm competing against those two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's the game is we manifest a
lot of things, Like the thing when I have a
young lady that I teach. I'm not going to use
her name, but she she constantly talks to me about
the pressure. And you know, that's a that's something that
we we create because of doubt. There's no such thing
as pressure. I mean, the golf hold doesn't know anything
about pressure. The golf clubs don't know anything about pressure.
The player is the one that is putting a value
on the shot that doesn't need to be put on it.
You know, I got one hundred and fifty yard shot
to a green. I've got a club I select, and
if I make a decent swing, I should be able
to put it on that green. But now if I
don't get it on that green, I may lose the tournament.
Or if I hit in that bump or hitting the water,
these are all perceptions, and that's what as a coach,
that's what I'm always trying to explain to my players
that there is no such thing as pressure. When the
flag goes up, it's no different. The golf course didn't change,
the ball didn't change. The only thing that changes is
your mindset. See so in trying to be a good golfer,
you have to work on that aspect too. And of
course the more that you practice and the more good
shots that you see, the better chance you have of
having a good image as you stand up to that
ball getting ready to strike into a target.
Speaker 1: Was playing yesterday with some guys and one of them
drove the green with a flag in the back and
left himself.
Speaker 2: About a twelve foot putt for eagle.
Speaker 1: He had more pressure on him than the rest of
us did because we were, you know, putting for par
or bogie, and he was putty that all the pressure
was on him, not the three pot.
Speaker 3: Well, but to see, there you go, it's a twelve
foot putt, right, It hasn't changed. It's a twelve foot putt.
But it's how it's how we deal with it. If
it's a twelve foot putt for a triple bogie, the
chances are probably better to make it than if it's
a twelve foot putt for an eagle. And yet it's
still a twelve foot putt. But again it becomes you know,
it's it's there's a value associated with it and and
that's where we get into trouble in this game, if
you could. But we're but we have emotions and that
you know, it's easy for me to say that. But
we have emotions and and we we have pride, and
we have ego, and we have all these things that
we have to deal with. So, but there is no
such thing as pressure. That's a that's a manifestation of
our mind where we perceive things that are things. This
is more valuable than that. I want to be able
to tell her everybody Eagle as whole, and so you
know this, this becomes a more difficult than the twelve
foot putt is. But who knows that button? If I
if I knew how to press that button, we wouldn't
be talking, you know, I'd be in the Caribbean in
a big ship or something. You know. Yeah, that's the
constant dilemma that we all face as players. But I
mean the reality of it, there is no there is
no such thing as pressure. It's just perception. You know.
Speaker 1: Well, I would think that a twelve foot putt for eagle,
for an amateur, the guy's in his head going, I
gotta make this putt.
Speaker 2: I have to make this I have to make this pot.
Speaker 1: Well, he's doomed, right, But on the professional level, a
twelve foot putt for eagle to win, it's a difference.
I mean, you're saying, he's not going I have to
make this putt. I have to make this putt.
Speaker 3: Well, I think professionals have a little better idea of
what what is the percentage of makes with a twelve
foot poot on tour? And if I think, if you,
if you look at statistics, you know they don't make
every one of them for sure. I would probably say
that you've got maybe a forty percent chance of making it.
If you hit ten balls on the twelve foot putt,
you probably make six or or or four. But it's
a lot the percentage is a lot higher. And that's
another thing I tell my boys. Look, if you got
a twenty footer, know that that's that's a low number
percentage on tour to make for sure, So relax a
little bit, put a put a good rule on it.
And if you if you don't three putt it, if
you roll it up there close, you sometimes make it, bravo.
But if you don't make it and you get it
up by the whole, good job. And tapping the putt
go to the next hole. You've got to be realistic
about puts. I mean, I've had I've had boys on
my team that miss a fifty footter and you know,
they'll live it out and they'll go crazy. Is it
what you what? Are you insane? Do you think you're
gonna make a fifty footer every time?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: But that but.
Speaker 2: When you get that close. But I mean, like when
it lips out at from fifty feet, of course.
Speaker 1: You're going to like, oh I wish that would have
gone in, but you should laugh, could laugh.
Speaker 3: Holy Mack Holmes made that thing, you see. It's the
way you look at it, you know. Jordan Speed, I
mean he's like a wizard. I've never seen anybody make
long pusses many times as he does and when he misses.
But you can't fall apart at the seams as something
that's unrealistic. I mean you just can't. And I think
the better the better players handle it differently. They'll they'll
smile to themselves with a little wry smile. God almost
made that, But they're not beating themselves up because they
missed it. And I mean, you just have to be
a lunatic to think that. But young people, especially young people,
they think that everything is makeable and when you miss it, disappointment.
But not always. You know, if you've got a thirty
or forty footer and you're roll it up there a
couple of feet from the whole, good job and chapp
it and go to the next hole. But again, I
think that the unqualified player, the high handicap player, or
the mid handicap player, or even the scratch player, we
have a different view of things than the guy that's
on the tour playing.
Speaker 1: I think that you and you talk about young people
today and getting upset about missing fifty foot putts. You
probably don't play golf video games, do you, Tony, because
they make those all the time.
Speaker 3: No, I don't. I try to stay away from that
me too, because I have had a personality that that's
all I'd be doing.
Speaker 2: I want to get into the long irons.
Speaker 1: You talked about the seven iron and the different shots
that you can have with the seven iron. I know,
for me one of the shots that I like to
practice a lot. I'm about one hundred and forty five
with my seven iron. And the fact the fact that
you said one hundred and eighty just blows my mind.
Speaker 2: But so I'm about one hundred and forty five.
Speaker 1: But I also know that where I play, how often
I play, where I play, there's a lot of trees,
and so there a shot that I have to have
in my bag is to be able to punch it
back out to the fairway and keep it under the branches.
Speaker 2: And so for me, I can do.
Speaker 1: A seventy yard or one hundred yard shot with my
seven iron just letting it roll out, just you know,
punching it out, so that that is definitely one of
those shots that I practice. So let's talk about long
irons and other things you can do other than just
you know, being on the driving range and hit ball
after ball after ball, How far, how straight can I
hit it? What other things can I do to take
my game to the next level.
Speaker 3: Well, when it comes when it comes to a club
more than a six iron, when it comes to five, four,
three two, possibly one, the first thing I say is
take those clubs and throw them in the garbage and
go get yourself some rescue clubs that have the same numbers,
because it's a different world getting a three iron two
iron up in the air high enough to where when
it comes down on the green it's going to stay.
Is really difficult, takes a lot of strength, and it's
a much harder club to hit than if you get
a three rescue or a two rescue or whatever those
kinds of shots are. It's hard to have a lot
of shots with a long iron, you know, but you can.
You can do a little bit more with the rescue club.
The width of the bottom of the club, you can
get it out of higher grass. You can't do that
with a hozzled club like a two iron or three iron.
There's no way. But that's why the pros in the
past when they got the ball and heavy rough, they
had to use their forward or five wood. But now
that these rescue clubs are just unbelievable. But there's not
much you could do with those kinds of shots. There's
two hundred yard shots or one hundred and eight yard shots,
depending on how far you hit a ball. But for me,
I hit my three rescue about two hundred yards, sometimes
too ten. But that number two is what I'm selecting
because I always leave a little bit, a little bit
for error. But there's not much you can do with them.
Mean hopefully you can. You don't have too many of
those shots per around, really, because it would make a
long day.
Speaker 2: Yes it would. I'm just curious. Are you playing Tailor
made clubs?
Speaker 3: No? Actually, somebody turned me onto it's called called Xxio.
It's it's the Japanese brand carried by shricks On. And
they're expensive as hell, I will tell you that, but
they're the best clubs I've played in a long long time,
especially the rescue clubs. The Driver and the Farrow, the
three Would three Would has always been a tough club
for me off of a tight line, and these these clubs,
I don't know what it is about them, but it
gets the ball up in the air really easy. So
I'm at that age. Anything I can do to make
it easier, I'll go for it, right.
Speaker 1: No, the reason I was asking is because I think
that Taylor Made was one of the first to bring
out that club, and they called it a rescue club.
I think that's a brand name rescue, But they're actually
referred to as hybrids.
Speaker 2: Is that what a hybrid is?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Hybrid or like my exxiosis is U four U five?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: You know, everybody has her way, but that I like
res too, because that really describes it to me when
you put if I had to pull out a four
iron today, I would need to be rescued, believe me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing how it cuts through long grass like butter.
On those clubs, it really makes a huge difference.
Speaker 3: They put the CG on the golf club, center gravity
on the golf club. On these new clubs, it just
gets that ball up in the air really easy. And
you know that's what that's what you fight. As you
get older, you get slower, you get weaker. So the
shots is you could get up in the air like Nicholas.
You know they said that Nicholas could hit a one
iron the heights of an eight iron. Wow, what a
huge bandage that is. But it takes tremendous strengths to
do that, right.
Speaker 1: So let's move on to the what used to be
called fairway woods, and now they're called fairway drivers or
fairway metals because nobody makes a wood anymore.
Speaker 2: What do you use use them for?
Speaker 1: How many? You know you carry two of them? The
advantage of having multiple ones and you know what is
the best thing we can do to again take our
game to the next level with those clubs.
Speaker 3: Well, the farawayods are very important because they put you
on the par fives. They put you in a position
to where you can hit a somewhat easy third shot,
where it's in your sweet spot area where you let's
say your wedge or dine iron. The fairwayds are important,
and a lot of times it's best to use a
farrwood off the tee on a lot of holes. The
distance difference isn't that? Isn't that? Why? Now you know?
I have again with a lot of my players, I say, look,
this hole doesn't call for a drive. You don't need
that distance. You can put the ball in a position
where you have a fairly easy shot and then you
don't run the risk of you know, hiding in the
trees or whatever. But a lot of people are stuck
on that driver. They pull that driver out no matter
what the distance of the hole, or no matter matter
how narrow it is. So the fairway woods can be
used off the fairway, but they can also be used
off the tee. And I wouldn't hit I would I
would be using my treewood most of the time when
I was opting. When I said, okay, I'm not going
to use my driver on this hole. But there are
times that I watch on the tour where the guys
are using iron off the tee. Of course they hit
an iron a lot farther than the average player. But
the point is is that in managing yourself around the
golf course, you you have to look at the hole
and appraise, Okay, where do I want to hit it
or do not want to hit it? Okay? And then
what's the what's the club I can use to get
somewhere in that area? Because the woods are just to
set the hole up. You're not going to drive the green.
So twenty yards or whatever between the driver and the
three wood isn't that that's significant? But unfortunately everything is
stressed today about distance and not shot making. I think
a lot of play a lot of people that play
the game would be better off not using their driver
as much as they do and putting the ball in
play and then and then on the second shot on
a par five, for a lot of good players, they'd
be much smarter to hit an iron up there within
you know that sixty seventy yard range and then throw
that thing up on the green. Even Sam Steed, who
is a long driver in his Day said, if I
can't hit a high lofted club on the second shot
on a drive on a par five, I'll hit an
iron into my wedge area. That's the way you play
the game. But you know we're seduced by not on
a par five and two. You know when you're young
enough to do it, and the ball's coming in too low.
If it hits the green, it's going to go to
the back of the green, So you're going to be
looking at a long putt and now you've got to
try to two putt for that birdie. And if your
three putt, it really demoralizes you. Where if you not
get up there with a wedge, you got a good
chance to hit a ten to fifteen feet good chance
to make that putt. So it's just a different mindset.
And these are the things that you have to do
to keep the round going mentally. You don't want a
lot of up and downs emotionally, and you put yourself
in that position when you try to hit those I
hope I can get this on in two. You know,
that's where the ego gets involved, and that's what you
got to eliminate.
Speaker 1: I know that many times that if say on a
par five especially, you can really use strategy to your
advantage here because of that extra shot that you're given.
Speaker 2: So that if my.
Speaker 1: Drive on a par five is leaves me three hundred
yards out, instead of trying to pull out my fairway metal,
my forewood and try to get it, you know, listen
it's three hundred yards out and be able to reach it.
But then I'm gonna leave myself a sixty yard shot,
a forty yard shot.
Speaker 2: I'm not as comfortable with those.
Speaker 1: I'd rather take my nine iron and hit it twice,
then get close to the pin in three, then try
to get there in two and not and come up
short and then have that awkward distance in the middle there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no question about it. Those shots where you
say the thirty and forty yard shots, those are really
difficult shots. Even the crows, they're not easy shots. Time
you're having a you know, not take a full swing,
it becomes a little bit more difficult. And those little
tender wedges are tougher than heck. Yeah, So that you know,
you just watch watch the good players play and you
go to see that their strategy is a lot different
than the average guy. The average guy swinging from his
you know, from his toes to hit as far as
he can hit out every club, which is you know, borline.
I'm being a little nuts.
Speaker 1: And the same thing that what you had talked about
is using a fairway wood off the tee, fairway metal
fairway driver off the tee on holes that either have
narrow fairways or aren't as long. Again, I don't want
to get too close and make it a difficult second shot.
I want to be in the range of what I
think is a good shot for me, like one and ten,
one hundred and twenty five yard shot. I'm real confident
with those, far more than I am with a forty.
So I'll take that fairway wood off the tee.
Speaker 3: Sure. And even if sometimes look even if sometimes it's
a long hole, but there's a lot of problems that
the designer put on the hole. They put in a
lot of big fairway bunkers that are hard to get
out of. They put they put water, they put out
of bounds. It's still sometimes even though it's still a
long hole and you're not going to be able to
get on in two, you got to go ahead and
saw all that bitter pill and put that thing in play.
And then get hit another shot and keep it in
play and then trust your wedge, your putter. The worst
thing is gonna happen. You're gonna walk away with a bogie,
but you're going to eliminate that big number by trying
to stretch out because the hole is long without looking
at the factors that are involved at that in the designer,
you know, and he set that up for you to
come on, hit that driver body. That's what I want
you to do. Uh, you know, like it's like a
sucker pin. You use your head when you play right.
Speaker 2: You know what we call that, Tony, what's said, golf smarter.
Speaker 3: Golf smarter. That's exactly right. No, it's true. I mean
I think I think there's a hole in the Masters
that Hogan always purposely hit to the right of the
hole or right of the green, just at on the
fringe and then chipped up and putted. And they always said,
why do you do this? Because this hole if you
if you hit the wrong side of the green, it's
going to kick right into the water. So even the
great Hogan really mastered hitting the ball, he had a
strategy sometimes where he swallowed that bitter pill because he wanted.
He wanted to eliminate the big number, and you got
to do that when you play the game, and it's
like a chess game, it's not all about four. Sometimes
you have to have a little finesse.
Speaker 1: Let's wrap it up with the driver, and I'll start
with that one I have. I don't like to just
walk onto a golf course and tee off. I really need,
in my mind my metal preparation. I need an hour
to hit balls, to practice short game, a bunch of
shots in the short game, very few shots with a driver,
very few shots with.
Speaker 2: My long my fairway metal.
Speaker 1: But I'll spend a lot more time on short game
stuff when I'm warming up. But when I do take
out the driver, instead of taking full swings with it,
I'll try to swing so easy that I only hit
one hundred yards or one hundred and fifty, but try
to you know, at a specific target, right at it,
and that allows me to get a rhythm going and
put the ball, you know, a short distance and feel
more confident about taking a big swing after that. What
would you advise on driver for you know, again for
your warm up session or your practice session. That's going
to help your game keep the ball in the fairway.
Speaker 2: So critical with the.
Speaker 3: Driver, Well, you know the old saying, I want to
swing fast, but not hard with the driver. The driver
is a is a wonderful club, and it's it's and
used properly, it's a great tool, but it can be
your worst enemy if you're if you're thinking about distance.
Lee Trevino once was talking about playing with Nicholas and
how far Nicholas here it compared to everybody else, And
he says, so when I played with Nicholas, I would
try to try to hit the ball two hundred and
thirty yards off. And when I did that, I hit
it about two seventy's. And I tried to hit it
two seventy, I hit it two thirty. And you know,
that's just such great wisdom, because that's that's so much
the truth. How many times have we got up on
a par five and it's a long one, so we're
going to give it that extra and we throw it
from the top and we get a little steep with it,
we pop it straight up in the air like a wedge,
or we hit a way right or way left. There's
a speed that you have to get used to with
the driver, and A lot of it has to do
with defocusing on the ball, defocusing on any thought of
hitting and swinging from point A to point B in
a rhythm that you can keep your balance. If you
do that with the driver, you're going to keep the
ball in play most of the time. But most people,
you watch them, and they'll swing the driver a lot
harder than they do any club in their bag. That's
the problem with the driver because again the emphasis is
always on distance instead of direction and play that. To me,
the driver is the placement. It sets the hole up
for the next shot. It's not I'm going to hit
it into infinity because well no one does that. And
you know, and then you see Rory McElroy or some
of these guys that hit it pretty close to four
hundred yards and you know, we can't wait to get
to the tee to do that. Well, no, you're not
in their category and never will be. You know, you
have to play the game based on your game and
not anybody else's. And I highly recommend for anyone listening there,
find the speed that you can finish perfectly and hold
your follow through position where you're in balance. That's the
speed you should swing the driver and the better you
get and you can make it go a little faster
but still be unbalanced. But if you're falling all over
the place, you just winning too hard.
Speaker 1: Phenomenal tip. That is such a fabulous piece of advice.
Oh my god, I'm so happy with that.
Speaker 2: Thank you. That's great.
Speaker 1: I got to end here with a quick anecdote about
my round yesterday. I was playing with these three guys
that are actually around the same age as my younger son,
and one of them, my son wrestled in high school
for four years, and one of the guys that I
was playing with wrestled against my son's team, and so
he knew him. And so because I knew that the
kid wrestled, it allowed me to, you know, communicate with
him in a better level.
Speaker 2: But what I.
Speaker 1: Noticed in the first three holes four holes, he had
absolutely no hip turn on his swing, and his address
position was pretty much kind of slouchy, shoulders stand straight up,
so he really wasn't in a ready position, and he
wasn't doing anything, and.
Speaker 2: He couldn't get the ball off the ground.
Speaker 1: He was rolling it, he was duffing it, he was
missing it left and right. So I do not give
advice at swing advice on a golf course.
Speaker 2: I don't do that.
Speaker 1: And sometimes if I have an observation that might help
on a mental part or a strategic part, I'll do that,
but I'll stay away from swing mechanics, especially during a round.
But I said to the guy when I found out
that he wrestled, I said, where do you get Where
do you get all your power when you wrestle? And
he said in your hips?
Speaker 2: And I went, uh huh, and.
Speaker 1: He kind of looked at me, and I said, you
don't turn your hips when you're when you're hitting the
golf ball, and he.
Speaker 2: Went, oh, my right.
Speaker 1: I said, what's your ready position when you when you're wrestling?
And he immediately got into this very athletic position and
you know, like looking right at me, and I'm going,
uh huh, look at the way your position when you
you you start off the tee.
Speaker 2: And that point on.
Speaker 1: He played the best golf of his life and broke
one hundred for one of the I mean the second
or third time in his life. He was very you see,
and even at the end of the round he says,
that made that one tip about my hips made all
the difference for me.
Speaker 3: So you did something there that that good teachers are
able to do. You got him to relate to something
that he could that he does, uh, so that he
could it wasn't foreign to him. Uh And and that's it.
That was That was great. That was very astudent on
your part because a lot of people teach, but they're
more than they're more pontificating than teaching. Uh. And you
made him really relate to something that he does in
a different sport, but was germane to the sport he
was playing. So that was great, great, great stuff. You know,
I played with a lot of fellows that I teach,
uh and when we're out there playing, you know, they're
they're trying to show me how good they're doing and
so forth. And I understand all that because what I've
played with touring pros, I did the same darn thing.
But I try to stay away from quick tips other
than to say you might want to slow it down
a little bit, or you might you know, you might
want to widen your stance a bit. But I don't
get into too many swing tips because if if they
overemphasize that they're going to fall apart at the seams,
and then they're going to be looking at you as
that you ruin my day. They're not going to say it,
but they're going to feel it. So you have to
be you have to be careful with tips on the golf,
of course, But that was real smart on your part.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I was actually fishing for the compliment.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: That was because you got him to equate to something else,
but something that he's comfortable doing. So that's great stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the first teacher that I ever had in golf,
his first question, and this was huge for me.
Speaker 2: He says, first question was what sports did you play
as a kid?
Speaker 1: And from that point on he just made me, you know,
he put it in those terms, you know, of what
what sports that I played, and how I can translate
that into improving in my golf. And I always thought
that was an incredibly valuable tool because I all I
did was ask the kid a question. He fixed it
himself once he realized what it meant in relation to
his golf game.
Speaker 2: I didn't do a thing. I just made an observation
to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Well, I'll just tell you a real quick story.
One time I was inside the pro shop. I was
watching the guy in the range and he pull up
this beautiful set of Calloway clubs, beautiful bag. I mean,
he had invested a lot in product. He gets up
there and watching him and a pretty strong looking guy,
and he was slicing everything, I mean, just sad. And
I kept watching him, so I thought I can't handle
it anymore. So I went out and I said, let
me ask you something. Have you ever played baseball? He said, yeah,
I was a really good baseball player. I says, just
take a club and imagine that you're hitting a little pitch.
How would you how would you hit a low pitch?
And you know, he swung with a kind of a
baseball action, released his hands, released the clubhead, and I said, yeah,
that's that's pretty good. I said, now, why don't you
treat that golf ball like it's a low pitch? Just God,
and take a good baseball cut at And of course
he had a ball there with a little bit of
a draw, and he looked at me like, you know,
like God has spoken to him. So he little by
little by little, you can see he was now using
he was swinging the club in an emotion that he
was familiar with. And that's really as a boy when
I first caddied, I caddied so I could make enough
money to buy clothes for school, and I could play
baseball pretty good as a young kid. Like a lot
of young kids, we all played baseball, and that's what
i's Those were my first thoughts. She had a golf ball,
was just to hit the back of that ball with
a baseball with a kind of a baseball action, and
I could clomber the thing right off the bat. I
never I never sliced the ball when I started playing,
because I equated more to baseball. Now. If I had
been given some formal lessons, I'm sure I would have
sliced the heck out of the ball. So sometimes those
are the best lessons when you can open up a
guy's or a gal's mind to something that they have
done in their past when it comes to hit in
the golf, especially women. Gosh, I teach a lot of women,
and I talked to one, have you ever played baseball?
Have you played tennis? And then we try to use
a similar stroke and it works like magic.
Speaker 1: Well, Tony, I don't want to say, I don't want
to equate you with God, but there's something godlike now
let me finish my sentence. My friend, there is something
God like about great teachers, and you are.
Speaker 2: A great teacher.
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate you spending so much time with me.
Every time I call, thank you.
Speaker 3: Well. I listen. I love your show and I know
that the listeners to your podcast love your show, and
to be a small part of it is really an
honor for me. Believe me.