Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number three hundred and eighty six, published on
Speaker 1: May twenty eight, twenty thirteen.
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Speaker 3: A fellow teammate of mine recently who in the PGA appear,
Speaker 3: and he came out to watch a friend of mine play.
Speaker 3: We're playing for Simmons, and we handed him a Persimmons
Speaker 3: driver to hit a shot, and he hit it about
Speaker 3: two hundred and ten yards. I mean, he just couldn't
Speaker 3: hit it at all. But with the modern driver that's
Speaker 3: ten ounces or eleven ounces and it's forty six inches
Speaker 3: long and has a giant titanium head on it, he
Speaker 3: can just sort of slap at it with his hands
Speaker 3: and get one hundred and five miles an hour of
Speaker 3: club hits. Bee knocked the thing out there two hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty yards.
Speaker 1: And you don't like this.
Speaker 3: No, I don't like this. It's dumbing down. The game.
Speaker 3: The thing that's been eliminated from the game has been
Speaker 3: having to hit long irons, and that's how golf courses
Speaker 3: are designed. But they're great architects designed these courses and
Speaker 3: they said, there's ten par fours on a golf course.
Speaker 3: So the golf course is designed to have typically three
Speaker 3: long par fours meaning two three and four iron for
Speaker 3: appro chat, and then they're going to have four mid
Speaker 3: range five six and seven irons for a pro schot
Speaker 3: and then three short part fours eight nine oher edge.
Speaker 3: So the reason that they do that is to test
Speaker 3: the skill set of the professional player, the top amateur
Speaker 3: player on a professional championship course. The player has to
Speaker 3: show their ability to play long irons, mid irons, and
Speaker 3: short irons. That's golf.
Speaker 1: Today's equipment could be hurting your game with John Lagerts
Speaker 1: of this is.
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers and golf
Speaker 2: professionals to help lower your score. It's worked for your host.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Speaker 3: John, Thanks for having me out.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming out to a studio here and
Speaker 1: staring out at uh at the Marine Country Club and
Speaker 1: talking about taking a little walk on the fairway there.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful. It's a beautiful place.
Speaker 1: Idiots. You know what I recently discovered. And I've been
Speaker 1: asking a lot of people and I'm no one's ever
Speaker 1: done this, And I'll ask you, have you ever walked
Speaker 1: on a golf course barefooted?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: That was part of my training at one point actually,
Speaker 3: how so, Yeah, I was working with I had a
Speaker 3: mental teacher that we were working that side of when
Speaker 3: I was on tour, and he had never played golf before,
Speaker 3: but he felt that it was important for me to
Speaker 3: experience getting more grounded while I was playing. And he
Speaker 3: was kind of more of a spiritualist in a sense,
Speaker 3: so interesting, and he would we'd go out t off
Speaker 3: at six in the morning. He just walk around with
Speaker 3: me and play barefoot. And he wanted me to.
Speaker 1: Oh he wanted you to play barefoot?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, he wanted me to feel connection to the
Speaker 3: earth that way as I was walking.
Speaker 1: And it was that a valuable lesson for you, because
Speaker 1: I just found it's like just walking out on the
Speaker 1: on the on a fairway, it's luxurious. I mean the grass,
Speaker 1: it's yeah.
Speaker 3: I meaning to do this when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: My dad had nice lawns around the house, so you know,
Speaker 3: I would walk around barefoot. So it brought that back
Speaker 3: to me. And yeah, it's it helped me feel something
Speaker 3: maybe that I wasn't really tuning into before. And I
Speaker 3: think later on, when I started getting more technical with
Speaker 3: my swing and that sort of thing, I started to
Speaker 3: understand ground pressures and ground forces and and Bradley and
Speaker 3: I spent a lot of time working on those concepts
Speaker 3: with the ABS students or Advanced Ball Striking students.
Speaker 1: And that is your that's your.
Speaker 3: Academy, our website, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Advanced ball Striking dot com.
Speaker 3: Spall Striking dot com.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm fascinated. So you were working with a
Speaker 1: mental coach during the process or before you got into
Speaker 1: heavy part of your mechanics. I mean, where did you
Speaker 1: go first with that?
Speaker 3: When I came I came out of as a youth.
Speaker 3: I was one of the early prodigies of a book
Speaker 3: called The Golfing Machine.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are familiar with that, sure show
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 3: And I did that for all through junior golf, college golf,
Speaker 3: and then my first year as a professional playing on
Speaker 3: the Australian Tour. But I quickly realized that that technique
Speaker 3: that I was being taught wasn't going to cut it
Speaker 3: at that level the guys that were the great players
Speaker 3: of that time. This was sort of at the end
Speaker 3: of the personmon age. I got to play against you know,
Speaker 3: Greg Norman, Nick Faldo, you know, these guys in the
Speaker 3: late eighties when you were still hitting per Simon.
Speaker 1: And and they playing in the Australia.
Speaker 3: And yeah, playing in the Australian Open, and you know,
Speaker 3: the PGA down there, and I was just a young
Speaker 3: rookie and you know, standing on the driving range and
Speaker 3: listening to the sound of contact, impact of what these
Speaker 3: guys were doing compared with the little golf machine swing
Speaker 3: that I had that was all kind of based on
Speaker 3: kind of a hand throw centrifugal force, kind of a
Speaker 3: swinging what we would call a swinging technique, wasn't I
Speaker 3: could tell that wasn't really going to cut it. So
Speaker 3: I had to make some changes if I wanted to
Speaker 3: win on, you know, at that level. So I just
Speaker 3: went home and I went back to my teacher and said,
Speaker 3: I don't think this is going to work. Although I
Speaker 3: was a pretty good player, I mean I was making
Speaker 3: cuts and that sort of thing. But I mean I
Speaker 3: was a long ways away from being able to win,
Speaker 3: you know, to go that low on those courses down
Speaker 3: there that were tight long, you know, really tough greens
Speaker 3: are super fast. I mean, it was just much more
Speaker 3: difficult than a lot of the stuff that was going
Speaker 3: on over here.
Speaker 1: So it sounds interesting that you're saying that getting to
Speaker 1: the tour and winning on the tour are different beasts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, because in college golf, you know, I I
Speaker 3: won a couple of times at the you know, collegiate levels,
Speaker 3: and All American that sort of thing. Okay, Yeah, And
Speaker 3: we had a really good team and Kevin and Kevin
Speaker 3: Sutherland a lot of people might know that name from
Speaker 3: the PJ twos on the team with me and his
Speaker 3: younger brother David who played on the PGA Tour, and
Speaker 3: Tim loss a lot was another good player, and so
Speaker 3: myself and another guy named Doug Harper, and that was
Speaker 3: we had five All Americans on our team. We went
Speaker 3: to the NC to a championship, so you know, you
Speaker 3: don't see that very often.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, the difference of
Speaker 1: getting on the tour and succeeding.
Speaker 3: And winning on yeah, so being able to win at
Speaker 3: the college level and being able to win at the
Speaker 3: pro level. I mean it was a big, you know,
Speaker 3: big leap. In college, you could shoot maybe three or
Speaker 3: four under and win a tournament, you know, and on
Speaker 3: you know, to of course, let's say like Pasa Tiempo
Speaker 3: or something here would be like a world class per
Speaker 3: simon track. You go down to Australia and now you're
Speaker 3: playing that caliber course like you Alster mckensey layouts and
Speaker 3: set up for tournament conditions with tight pharaoh's and long
Speaker 3: ruff or you know, fast, super fast greens, and guys
Speaker 3: are shooting you know, twelve under or fourteen under on
Speaker 3: courses that are you know, just feel like they're impossible
Speaker 3: to shoot those kind of scores. I remember playing in
Speaker 3: the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne and you know, Greg
Speaker 3: Norman shoots back to back sixty six's and I just thought,
Speaker 3: I thought to myself, I mean, there's not even six
Speaker 3: birdies out there, you know. If the greens were so
Speaker 3: fast and it's windy and it was just so hard.
Speaker 3: I mean I shot up pair of seventy threes or
Speaker 3: something and played really well. I mean made the cut by,
Speaker 3: you know, four or five shots easily. I played really
Speaker 3: good and I'm and I'm seeing a pair of sixty
Speaker 3: six is up there, going wow, that's that's another level.
Speaker 3: That's something that's and what is it? I mean, how yeah,
Speaker 3: well what you know, so that kind of that kind
Speaker 3: of golf. You know, Peter Senior another great player that
Speaker 3: was winning down there, and I mean these guys, it
Speaker 3: was just a different sound when they struck the ball.
Speaker 3: But that sound is being created by something, by something
Speaker 3: in physics, you know, it's something different is happening. And
Speaker 3: I had a high speed camera, a ten thousand shutter
Speaker 3: frame camera at the time, and which was not everybody
Speaker 3: had those back then, and I would I would set
Speaker 3: it up in front of myself and then behind me
Speaker 3: might be a guy like Peter Senior or somebody, and
Speaker 3: then they didn't know that I was kind of filming them,
Speaker 3: you know, like see like I'd get out of the way,
Speaker 3: like you know, go change clubs or something. And but
Speaker 3: I I put together some nice footage and also got
Speaker 3: some great footage of Mo Norman up in Canada when
Speaker 3: I played up there, and he let me film them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I read that on the website, and you
Speaker 1: said that you promised him you'd never show it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I still have. Like, I mean, I'll show
Speaker 3: it to people, but I'm I'm not going to post
Speaker 3: it on YouTube and all that stuff. It's just something special,
Speaker 3: you know. But anyway, yeah, getting back to that, So
Speaker 3: I started to study what was going on, and I
Speaker 3: could see what was happening with the shaftlex and these
Speaker 3: guys were holding shaft flex all the way to impact.
Speaker 3: And there's a difference between a guy that's timing the
Speaker 3: shaft into impact. They are, in other words, they are
Speaker 3: trying to time the straightening of the shaft so in
Speaker 3: other words, it flexes a transition and then it starts
Speaker 3: to unflex and you're trying to time it so that
Speaker 3: the shaft ends up straight at impact. And that's what
Speaker 3: we call swinging technique, and that's what most people do.
Speaker 3: But they're really great strikers, you know, you're Ben Hogan,
Speaker 3: people like that that are holding shaft flex all the
Speaker 3: way to impact. And again, you can't get confused by
Speaker 3: looking at power Golf and seing that where the pictures
Speaker 3: in the nineteen forty eight book, or where the shaft
Speaker 3: is flexing the wrong direction that we had to do
Speaker 3: with the camera lenses at that time. There's a distortion
Speaker 3: of rolling shutter and that sort of thing. It's a
Speaker 3: that those are not accurate and people are still confused
Speaker 3: by that to this day. But that actually wasn't happening.
Speaker 3: It was actually the shaft was actually flexing the other
Speaker 3: direction because of the camera, so it would be flexing back,
Speaker 3: not forward. You couldn't hit the ball of the shaft.
Speaker 3: But history it was so that book's still there are
Speaker 3: still confuses people to this day, and I still get
Speaker 3: questions on that on the site. But anyway, so yeah,
Speaker 3: I really realized that that was one of the things
Speaker 3: that was causing the ball to sound differently because when
Speaker 3: the energy is held in the shaft and you've got
Speaker 3: a pre stressed club shaft coming into impact, that's stored energy.
Speaker 3: In other words, what happens is the club head it
Speaker 3: doesn't decelerate as much from the forces of impact as
Speaker 3: it would if the shaft has already lost it. It's
Speaker 3: stored energy and it's just straight and now it's just
Speaker 3: a momentum strike. It's the momentum of the clubhead, of
Speaker 3: the weight of the clubhead and that's how most people
Speaker 3: play golf, but there's a different way of doing it
Speaker 3: that these great strikers have figured out, and that's how
Speaker 3: to hold shaffles all the way to impact. And that's
Speaker 3: basically the core direction that the advanced ball striking moves
Speaker 3: the students towards. We show the students how to do that,
Speaker 3: and it's a little bit of work.
Speaker 1: But once you yeah, it sounds like it's a lot
Speaker 1: of work.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends. It depends on the player if it's
Speaker 3: already a good player.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like you know, like Brad Hughes, you know, came to
Speaker 3: me and we had known each other from playing on
Speaker 3: the tour, but he'd come across some of my thoughts
Speaker 3: on the game on a website that I'd been involved with,
Speaker 3: and he contacted me and just said, you know, I
Speaker 3: want to come up and visit you. And so we
Speaker 3: just he came up here and we spent a week
Speaker 3: together and it didn't really take long for him to
Speaker 3: get him back to striking the ball well again because
Speaker 3: he had a lot of the the core things there.
Speaker 3: We just need to get as muscle strength back up
Speaker 3: because the lightweight gear that everybody's playing, it's it's like
Speaker 3: swing cancer. It slowly kills your swing over time because
Speaker 3: you lose the muscle tone. It's just like going to
Speaker 3: the gym. If you in the preciminage, guys were swinging
Speaker 3: you know, fourteen, fifteen, even sixteen ounce drivers, and now
Speaker 3: everybody's got a ten eleven ounce driver. So right away,
Speaker 3: oh wow, I hit this really far. It's light and
Speaker 3: it has a big head, and I don't have to
Speaker 3: worry about, you know, missing the ball again. Swing as
Speaker 3: hard as I want at it, and I get all
Speaker 3: this speed. I can hit it a mile. But over time,
Speaker 3: your muscles lose a little bit of their tone because
Speaker 3: you're not swinging a heavier club. So it's just like
Speaker 3: going to the gym and working out, and then you
Speaker 3: don't work out for a year, Well you don't. All
Speaker 3: of a sudden you're not as strong as you were,
Speaker 3: so you need to the heavier gear. People don't like
Speaker 3: it at first, like, oh it's too heavy, it's shafts
Speaker 3: are too stiff. But if you practice with it and
Speaker 3: train with it, it's just like going to the gym.
Speaker 3: You get stronger. And if you look at the great
Speaker 3: ball strikers, they're all pretty strong, like certainly in the forums,
Speaker 3: and you see these big forearms, and it's putting forearm rotation,
Speaker 3: adding that into the equation in a big way actively,
Speaker 3: so you're actively striking it with forearm rotation. I mean,
Speaker 3: Hogan talked about this and five lessons and briefly, but
Speaker 3: it's there. But why why do all these great strikers
Speaker 3: have big forearms if it wasn't necessary, you know, if
Speaker 3: it's just a passive throw of the hands and the
Speaker 3: impact like you know most people are teaching, then you
Speaker 3: wouldn't see that. But I don't think it's a coincidence
Speaker 3: that you see all these you know Snead and Hogan
Speaker 3: and Nelson and George Knudsen and you know Moe and Peterson,
Speaker 3: you know Norman, like all these guys had you know, guns,
Speaker 3: Tom Watson, right, I mean you had strong forearms, you know,
Speaker 3: Nicholas Palmer, you know where do I stop? Right?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Trevino even right. You don't see too many people with thin,
Speaker 3: little weak forearms being great ball strikers.
Speaker 1: Today. You're seeing guys in phenomenal golf shape or just
Speaker 1: phenomenal shape. Yeah, Tiger's led the way on that. It
Speaker 1: seems like he's a completely different body than the old
Speaker 1: school players.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then you know you have a guy like Cabrera, right,
Speaker 3: just one of the Masters. There's a guy, doesn't you know,
Speaker 3: It doesn't look like he walked out of the fitness van. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so there's something else going on there. And to be honestly,
Speaker 3: that's the first time, you know, in the last well
Speaker 3: since I started following golf a little bit again, that's
Speaker 3: the first time I've seen a guy really hit it
Speaker 3: good coming down the stretch hmm, you know, and hitting
Speaker 3: it straight and hitting it stiff and look like he
Speaker 3: really had control over it. I mean, this year's Masters,
Speaker 3: that was really impressive of what Cabrera did, I thought,
Speaker 3: But he looks like a guy that just walked out
Speaker 3: of the sixties. Like, yeah, I feel like I can
Speaker 3: hand him. I could hand him a set of per
Speaker 3: Simmon and little blades and he just go and wipe
Speaker 3: everybody out. I mean, I think he'd win a lot
Speaker 3: more if it was if golf was played back in
Speaker 3: the old way.
Speaker 1: You you come off kind of like a throwback you.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were talking about sound recording a little
Speaker 1: while ago before we started this interview, and you're talking
Speaker 1: about tubes and listening to vinyl, and now you're talking
Speaker 1: about per Simmons and you're not that old of a guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're much longer than I am. But you
Speaker 1: seem to have this love of the way it used
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 3: Well, it's what I have is a love for quality.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: So if quality is better now than I love that.
Speaker 3: I mean I'm not a throwback. I just like quality.
Speaker 3: I mean, we talked a little bit about music, but
Speaker 3: you know, I think anyone that knows music understands the
Speaker 3: vinyl records sound better than digital recording. I mean, you
Speaker 3: can go on and on about that. That's a whole
Speaker 3: other com So is.
Speaker 1: The quality of golf, And that's a multiple question. Is
Speaker 1: quality of golf or is it quality of golf equipment?
Speaker 1: Or is it quality of golflers.
Speaker 3: The quality of ball striking, I would say, okay, And
Speaker 3: here's how you tell. Like, if you take a modern player, Well,
Speaker 3: you can't dig these guys out of the grave and
Speaker 3: see how they would do with the modern gear. That's
Speaker 3: not possible. But you can hand the modern players the
Speaker 3: old gear and see how they would do, and I
Speaker 3: would say that they don't do nearly as well as
Speaker 3: the players in the past, because it's a different game
Speaker 3: because it's a different equipment. So if you hand a
Speaker 3: modern player a set of Persimmon woods and a blot
Speaker 3: of golf ball that spins at a much higher rate,
Speaker 3: so it's much more difficult, difficult to control. If you're
Speaker 3: not playing well, it's easier to access tight pin placements
Speaker 3: and that sort of thing. If you're really good and
Speaker 3: you can control the spin of the ball, you can
Speaker 3: hit it into the green and spin it left or
Speaker 3: spin it right, and a lot of this has been
Speaker 3: a lot as the shot making being able to curve
Speaker 3: the ball where the golf ball holds its curvature all
Speaker 3: the way into the green. So basically what's happening now
Speaker 3: is the ball goes up, it curves to the apex
Speaker 3: and falls straight down, and you don't have the ball
Speaker 3: curving nearly as much as in the Blotta age. So
Speaker 3: I would say that the players now are not as
Speaker 3: good because every time I've handed you know, a young
Speaker 3: player of per Simons, say try and hit this, they
Speaker 3: can't even hit it at all. I mean, a fellow
Speaker 3: teammate of mine recently who is a you know in
Speaker 3: the PGA up here and he came out to watch
Speaker 3: a friend of mine play. We're playing Per Simmons, and
Speaker 3: we handed him a personmon driver to hit a shot,
Speaker 3: and he hit it about two hundred and ten yards.
Speaker 3: I mean, he just couldn't hit it at all. But
Speaker 3: with a modern driver that's ten ounces or eleven ounces
Speaker 3: and it's forty six inches long and has a giant
Speaker 3: titanium head on it, can just sort of slap at
Speaker 3: it with his hands and get one hundred and five
Speaker 3: miles an hour a club hit speed, knock the thing
Speaker 3: out there two hundred and eighty yards.
Speaker 1: And you don't like this.
Speaker 3: But with a persimmon, no, I don't like this because
Speaker 3: it's dumbing down the game. In other words, if you're
Speaker 3: if you're a great ball striker, then you should be
Speaker 3: able to do it the old way. You should be
Speaker 3: able to do it that way. And now if you
Speaker 3: if you take the modern gear and add that into it,
Speaker 3: then then that's a whole nother argument. But I want
Speaker 3: to see that a guy can still do it the
Speaker 3: old way. He's not using it as a crutch or
Speaker 3: as a handicap. When you watch, you know, some of
Speaker 3: the old footage. I mean some of those Shells matches
Speaker 3: are great to watch because you can see what those
Speaker 3: guys were doing back then. And you know, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of really impressive stuff. I mean, people have seen
Speaker 3: the Hogan and Sneed match. Of course, that's great stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, but the thing that's been eliminated
Speaker 3: from the game has been the long iron play. You know,
Speaker 3: having to hit long irons, and that's how golf courses
Speaker 3: were designed, right, So the great architects designed these courses
Speaker 3: and they said, okay, we're going to have we're going
Speaker 3: to have there's ten par fours on a golf course, right,
Speaker 3: typically par seventy two, you know, so the par fours
Speaker 3: of the heart of the golf course. So the golf
Speaker 3: course is designed to have typically three long par fours
Speaker 3: meaning two three and four iron for approach shot, okay,
Speaker 3: and then they're going to have four mid range five
Speaker 3: six and seven irons for approach shot, and then three
Speaker 3: short par fours eight nine oer wedge. So the reason
Speaker 3: that they do that is to test the skill set
Speaker 3: of the player, of the professional player, the top amateur
Speaker 3: player on a professional championship course, the player has to
Speaker 3: show their ability to play long irons, mid irons and
Speaker 3: short irons.
Speaker 1: That's golf, but today it's driver wedge. Well on the.
Speaker 3: Tour, yes, of course. You know what's happening now is
Speaker 3: the players are not being properly tested, so they're hitting
Speaker 3: I'm seeing guys hit mid irons into.
Speaker 1: Par fives right crazy.
Speaker 3: So what are they doing on par fours? Well, even
Speaker 3: the longest par fours they're hitting. I mean, guys are
Speaker 3: still hitting short irons and even the longest par fours
Speaker 3: at times a lot of mid irons. But to me,
Speaker 3: the great thing about the great ball strikers of the
Speaker 3: past was their ability to play two irons, three irons,
Speaker 3: one iron from the fairway into a par four and
Speaker 3: be able to shape a ball into the green and
Speaker 3: hold it on a green that was designed to accept
Speaker 3: that kind of a shot. And when I look at
Speaker 3: the Masters, which we just saw recently here, and if
Speaker 3: you look at the AT's say ten and eleven, those
Speaker 3: are you know the famous holes, Well those were those
Speaker 3: are long par fours that were meant to accept long
Speaker 3: iron shots, which means a lower trajectory. So in the
Speaker 3: old days, the guys were kind of bumping them into
Speaker 3: that green like they'd hid into the front part of
Speaker 3: the green. They'd skip, But you didn't see a guy
Speaker 3: backing the ball up on the green. I mean it
Speaker 3: would it would. It would come in and it would
Speaker 3: land and then it would kick forward. And you were
Speaker 3: coming into those holes with a lower trajectory shot. Now
Speaker 3: I'm seeing guys coming in with eight irons that are
Speaker 3: just throwing it at the flag and stopping the ball
Speaker 3: on the green, you know, backing them up on the green.
Speaker 3: That's not how the hole was designed. I mean, Jones
Speaker 3: and McKenzie would be spinning in their graves if they
Speaker 3: knew that that was going on. They would not be
Speaker 3: happy about that. And it's disrespectful to the game. Wow,
Speaker 3: it's disrespectful to the game. It's disrespectful to the history
Speaker 3: of the game. And what it does is it makes
Speaker 3: the It trivializes the efforts of the great players of
Speaker 3: the past, you know, and they look back and they say, oh,
Speaker 3: the old footage or whatever. But the other thing about
Speaker 3: the masters is those greens were never meant to be
Speaker 3: that that fast either. I don't think could the undulating
Speaker 3: of the slope, undulations of the slope the greens. If
Speaker 3: you go back and look at the old footage they
Speaker 3: they were putting like a public course of slow greens
Speaker 3: or something, and that's how it was designed really to
Speaker 3: play that way. So it's kind of turned into something else.
Speaker 3: But what happens when you do that, is it when
Speaker 3: you change the game, you change the rules or the
Speaker 3: equipment rules or their requirements for equipment. Then the past
Speaker 3: is now no longer relevant. Really, it just becomes, you know,
Speaker 3: a novelty of the past. And I think that's sad.
Speaker 3: You know, Geen Saracen knocked his famous forward in from
Speaker 3: two hundred and thirty four yards or some about two
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty yards forward, and up until maybe the
Speaker 3: end of the eighties, guys were still hitting forwards or
Speaker 3: those that length of a shot into say the fifteenth
Speaker 3: that Augusta. But now I'm seeing guys hitting mid irons
Speaker 3: in there, right, you know? So that too that he
Speaker 3: made knocking it in the cup with a forwood. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's he did that in the thirties.
Speaker 1: In watching the Masters, the fourteen year old kid who
Speaker 1: doesn't have a ton of power but kind of hung
Speaker 1: on there. Did you is it? Did you?
Speaker 3: I'm angry about it?
Speaker 1: Tell me? Oh, I love this well.
Speaker 3: I mean a fourteen year old kid. I mean you
Speaker 3: have to remember three years ago he was eleven, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, golf traditionally has been a game that takes
Speaker 3: years and years to learn how to play. And when
Speaker 3: you dumb the game down with a giant headed driver
Speaker 3: that you know, is like a frying pan or a
Speaker 3: toaster on a stick, so there's no there's no precision
Speaker 3: needed to strike an insert on a per simon, for instance.
Speaker 3: The game's been dumbed down to the point to we're
Speaker 3: a fourteen year old that just swings hard at it
Speaker 3: can hit the ball out there far enough on the
Speaker 3: tour now to just kind of contend or whatever.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, if I can interpret this, that today's
Speaker 1: equipment is removing a lot of the skill that is
Speaker 1: required for competitive golf.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely it is, and dumbing it down and making
Speaker 3: it easier doesn't make the game better. It's just like
Speaker 3: playing chess or playing checkers. You know, you're playing on
Speaker 3: the same board, but one has chess pieces that have
Speaker 3: a very sophisticated game, a very old traditional game. I
Speaker 3: think the one change they made was the castling move,
Speaker 3: Like back in the late eighteen hundreds or something, and
Speaker 3: that was very controversial at the time, but that was like,
Speaker 3: that was it. But that game is still being played
Speaker 3: the same. So if you go to checkers, then that's
Speaker 3: a different you know, it's just kind of a dumbed
Speaker 3: down version of a chest in a way, like you
Speaker 3: just you know, you have black and red checkers right
Speaker 3: that skip over each other, So you know, it's it's
Speaker 3: the dumbing the game down. And that's what the mentality
Speaker 3: has been over the last twenty years. Like I think
Speaker 3: these the people that are running the game or haters,
Speaker 3: they hate golf, they're angry.
Speaker 1: It's today running the game that you're talking about, the us.
Speaker 3: USGA, the RNA, the equipment companies, the people that are
Speaker 3: that are in control of what happens out there at
Speaker 3: the club level, at the professional level, these are people
Speaker 3: that are hackers. They hate golf. It's too difficult for them,
Speaker 3: and the idea that inventing a club where they can
Speaker 3: propel the ball farther it's very selfish. They're thinking for
Speaker 3: themselves and they're not thinking about the implications of what's
Speaker 3: happening at the professional level. Now, if you hand these
Speaker 3: same clubs to the pros that's great for amateurs to
Speaker 3: be able to hit the ball next to forty yard,
Speaker 3: it's fine. I have no problem with that. At the
Speaker 3: club level, people can do what they want. If they
Speaker 3: want to ride around on tricycles, that's fine, okay, But
Speaker 3: I don't want to see the crafts. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: want to see tricycle racing. At the pro level. You know,
Speaker 3: you got to be on two wheels, you know, go
Speaker 3: back to persimmon and blades, get back on two wheels again.
Speaker 3: You know, let's see some skill. You know, everybody's got
Speaker 3: these crutches, they got this extra you know, long putters
Speaker 3: and all this stuff going on cavity backs, all this
Speaker 3: stuff to a ball that flies ten percent farther than
Speaker 3: maybe fifteen percent, far farther than it used to. So
Speaker 3: the classic sixty eight hundred yard course has to be
Speaker 3: close to eight thousand yards, So the courses aren't long
Speaker 3: enough and doesn't really make sense to have eight thousand
Speaker 3: yard golf courses. I mean, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I don't think no, because well, the eight thousand yard
Speaker 1: golf courses are playing into their hand. I mean, these
Speaker 1: guys are hitting farther and farther so they make the
Speaker 1: courses longer to make it look good on television. I
Speaker 1: get a sense that you may be an advocate for bifurcation.
Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah. And because the USGA is not going to change.
Speaker 3: I mean they're like a it's like an ocean liner
Speaker 3: out there. That's okay, we need you to make a
Speaker 3: U turn. It's like it's going to take a long time.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not there. They're trying to the grooves thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, that was silly.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like the USGA is hiding behind you know,
Speaker 1: the protect the integrity of the game, but yet the game.
Speaker 1: You know, there are two different things going on. We
Speaker 1: got the tour and we've got the rest of us right,
Speaker 1: and it's like the USGA. I would hope, in trying
Speaker 1: to grow the game is going to make it more
Speaker 1: enjoyable for the rest of us. Or should everything be
Speaker 1: focused around the elite scratch players And when ninety plus
Speaker 1: percent of the people don't even break one hundred, what
Speaker 1: should we do about those rules? And who's it for?
Speaker 1: Should we let those people?
Speaker 3: I think at the club level, I mean I have
Speaker 3: no problem with the frying pan drivers and all that
Speaker 3: people want to hit that stuff. I mean, at the
Speaker 3: club level, I don't think it should be banned, long putters, whatever,
Speaker 3: it's a whatever they want to do. But at the
Speaker 3: pro lem because I'm a professional played on the tour
Speaker 3: speaking from that perspective, and the thing is that most
Speaker 3: people they watched the pros because they derive inspiration from
Speaker 3: that from the professionals. They watch professional they go, wow,
Speaker 3: that's really great. I want to be like that, or
Speaker 3: they relate to this player or that player. You know,
Speaker 3: in the era that I played, you had you know,
Speaker 3: Greg Norman. They could drive a person in three hundred yards,
Speaker 3: and then you had Corey Paven they could drive a
Speaker 3: person in about two hundred and twenty five yards. But
Speaker 3: yet Corey Paven could just maneuver the ball around the
Speaker 3: golf course on a good a good week and beat
Speaker 3: a guy like Greg Norman, which is really impressive. And see,
Speaker 3: we don't have that kind of diversity anymore. Maybe there
Speaker 3: might be a short hitter that can do well on
Speaker 3: a couple courses, you know, but for the most part,
Speaker 3: the tour doesn't play tight golf courses anymore. And in
Speaker 3: the US Open, they don't really have US Open roff anymore.
Speaker 3: I mean I played in you know, a few USGA
Speaker 3: events where the rough was like over your ankles and
Speaker 3: if you hit it, if you hit it into the rough,
Speaker 3: you just wedged out basically, and it was it was
Speaker 3: about a half a shot penalty. And you know, when
Speaker 3: Rory won the US Open, I mean, that was great
Speaker 3: golf that he played, sure, but there was just a
Speaker 3: typical PGA Tour event set up. You know, there was
Speaker 3: no rough to spe a little bit of rough, but
Speaker 3: I was watching him spin the ball back from the rough,
Speaker 3: and we know they say that the course was wet
Speaker 3: and you know, and then they had a lot of
Speaker 3: rain and this sort of thing. But the course definitely
Speaker 3: what they should have done is grown the rough really long,
Speaker 3: and they can always cut it right. They can always
Speaker 3: cut it back if they need to. But to me,
Speaker 3: that was a disgrace to see seventeen under as the
Speaker 3: US Open record, because eight under par was the record
Speaker 3: for what how many thirty years or Hogan and Nicholas
Speaker 3: and Hogan set the record, then Nicholas came along and
Speaker 3: then Tiger, you know, played some of the greatest golf
Speaker 3: ever right at Pebble Beach and then broke the records
Speaker 3: at twelve under. And now you have a guy that
Speaker 3: comes along, she's seventeen under. But the course wasn't set
Speaker 3: up like a US Open. It's not fair. If you
Speaker 3: look at the footage from when Hogan wanted Olympic Club,
Speaker 3: when he won Olympic Club, but when he lost at
Speaker 3: Olympic Club, I would say, yeah, but he you know
Speaker 3: that the rough was like almost to his knees. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's like pitching out with a wedge on eighteen. He
Speaker 3: hooked it in the left rough, foot slipped or whatever,
Speaker 3: and you hit in the left rough. And if you
Speaker 3: look at the photos of that, I mean that stuff's like,
Speaker 3: you know, way up over his ankles, right right, you
Speaker 3: know you see that bushes. Yeah, you don't see that anymore.
Speaker 3: So the tour and the US g and all, they
Speaker 3: want the guys to shoot low. They want the scores
Speaker 3: to be low. They think, you know, people are impressed
Speaker 3: by that, But I'm impressed by seeing the golf course.
Speaker 3: Like I like to stick up for the course itself,
Speaker 3: you know, And I want to stick up for the golfer,
Speaker 3: stick up for the course itself, and and I like
Speaker 3: to stick up for the ball strikers, the guys that
Speaker 3: can hit it straight. So how can you be if
Speaker 3: you're a straight hitter of the golf, Well, how can
Speaker 3: you be rewarded if there's no penalty for guys that
Speaker 3: hit a crookeet right?
Speaker 1: Well, for I need to uh wrap this up for
Speaker 1: for this episode. Could you stick around because I want
Speaker 1: to continue because you know the reason you and I
Speaker 1: are doing this is I got an email from Golf
Speaker 1: Smarter listener John Pappus and he said that you and
Speaker 1: your Aussie partner Bradley Hughes are both big on learning
Speaker 1: the swing from impact backwards and I want to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking about that, what that means
Speaker 1: and how we can institute that in our lives, how
Speaker 1: you approach it. Also, he says you have very unique
Speaker 1: perspective on today's light equipment and huge driver heads, which
Speaker 1: we've touched on. Yeah, and then and again he says
Speaker 1: from two thousand that he says that you've said that
Speaker 1: from two thousand onward that the pro swings who deteriorated
Speaker 1: number of fairways hit has gotten worse and lighter equipment
Speaker 1: is hurt.
Speaker 3: So they handed Brent Sedeker, Per Simmon and Blades. Okay,
Speaker 3: he's top three in the world.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: A few years ago, handed per Simon and Blade sent
Speaker 3: him out to Hilton and he shot eighty So what
Speaker 3: does that say. It says something. I mean, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: had he worked with them a little bit, obviously would
Speaker 3: shoot eighty. He might shoot seventy two or three. But
Speaker 3: I don't think he's just going to necessarily go out
Speaker 3: there and shoot sixty six. That's what those things.
Speaker 1: There's a difference, all right, So we can pursue this
Speaker 1: further on the next episode. You stick around, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, and I appreciate you coming out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.