Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: This is Fred Green of golf Smarter with the eighth
appearance that Tony Manzoni made on golf Smarter number four
hundred and fifty six that was recorded back in September
of twenty fourteen. This is the first of two consecutive
episodes from that month, as we're getting close to the
end of our annual series as we spring back into
golf season with Tony Manzoni. Tony's book The Lost Fundamental,
One Simple Move Better Golf Forever is available on Amazon
in paperback and on kindle format, and the DVD that
he created, which we converted to a private link online,
is also available when you write to me. For the
most comprehensive information ever collected on Tony, please go to
Golfsmarter dot com. If you'd like access to that video,
please write to me directly golf Smarter Podcast at gmail
dot com, or just click on the Heyfred button when
you visit Golfsmarter dot com.
Speaker 3: For members only. Golf Smarter number five four one hundred
and fifty six published on September thirty, twenty fourteen. You're
headed address Hitting behind the Ball in More Part one
with Tony Mantoni. This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back to
the Golf Smarter podcast. Tony, Hey, Fred, how are you.
I'm doing fine. It's nice to have you back on
the show. I apologize immediately for the banging, but there's
some construction being done outside my office, so if it
sounds like someone's knocking to get in, I'm not answering
the door.
Speaker 1: All right, you got it.
Speaker 3: All things going down there in Palm Desert, I get.
It's amazing, continues to be amazing. This is what your
ninth appearance on Golf Smarter, and every time you're on
there's this just a tremendous reaction to your work and
purchases of your book and your video The Lost Fundamental.
It's fabulous.
Speaker 4: Well that really pleases me to hear, obviously, and hopefully
this ninth podcast will generate more interest.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well again, the book is called The Loss Fundamental.
It's also the name of a DVD, and it's only
available on Golf Smarter website because your site's not working properly.
But maybe we'll get that fixed too. And we're still
to those of you who are not in the United States,
we apologize, but we're still trying to figure out how
to make both the book and the video available as
a digital download. At this point it's not, but as
soon as it is, we'll let you know. So we're
working on that. So how's the team doing down to
College of the Desert.
Speaker 1: Well, this is a rebuilding period for us.
Speaker 4: Last year's team primarily broke off to other colleges and
so forth, and that's always problemly to your schools.
Speaker 1: You can't build a dynasty.
Speaker 4: But that being said, we did win our twenty eighth
conference championship in a row.
Speaker 3: Then you have to dynasty.
Speaker 4: It is a little crazy, and I think that we've
got a shot at twenty nine. I brought in a
bunch of boys that are freshmen, but they're good players.
They just need guidance like always, and that's my job.
So you know, we have high hopes again, Fred.
Speaker 3: Yeah, awesome. How is it Tony? Now you're dealing with
kids that are eighteen nineteen years old primarily correct?
Speaker 1: That's correct?
Speaker 3: And how you're not close to that age, you're probably
closer to their grandparents' age. How's your communication? Well, well,
I'm trying to be nice.
Speaker 4: Age is a number to me, it always has been. Yeah,
you're right, but I've been lucky enough to stay current
with everything that I can. I try to stay current
with music. It doesn't please me as much as Frank Sinatra,
but I still stay current with it. And I try
to keep myself at their level and try to understand
what they're going through, what their peer pressure.
Speaker 1: Is, and so forth.
Speaker 4: Because if I'm going to be an effective a teacher
and I am a teacher, I've got to understand where
they're coming from. And then we kind of meet in
the middle, somewhere.
Speaker 3: In middle. So that would be the Beatles. If that's
the middle, we're going from the forties to twenty twenties.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean just.
Speaker 4: The things that they do recreationally that I didn't do,
and the things that they strive for that I didn't
strive for.
Speaker 1: You know, the PGA Tour, for instance, it was a
very very small faction.
Speaker 4: I didn't have any dreams of being I wanted to
play competitive golf. But you can become a zillionaire playing
professional golf. At when I played now, I mean, you know,
first price, when I played a lot of terms, five
thousand dollars for his prize, and you know, everything today
is pretty close to a million or more, and there
was no endorsement because golf really wasn't an important sport
on television. It is now. I've been watching the Ryder
Cup and it's just it's amazing. It's like the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Actually, the last episode that we did, Neil Sagabell,
author of The Drawing the Dunes, he was talking about
golf in nineteen sixty nine. The book is about the
nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup and the concession, and he
talks about the money to be earned even in the
late sixties, how little it was and how difficult it
was for American players to go and play in overseas
because it just didn't pay. I mean, it cost you
money to do it. Even if you won, you probably
didn't make very much money because of the expenses. So
you know, the money is dramatically changed, and that's got
to be things to television.
Speaker 4: Oh, you know, people like Arnold Palmer kind of created
the interest for television to want to put golf on TV.
I mean, you know, he was really kind of the
driving force, as did in modern day Tiger Woods. But
I can remember we hosted two PGA events at the club.
Speaker 1: I was at the Almaden.
Speaker 4: Open and we had everybody there, and I mean I'm
talking about Venturre, Tony Lima, I mean the best names
in golf and first prizes it was five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So things have changed dramatically.
Speaker 4: And what they make and residuals nowadays from sponsors and
so forth. It's just staggering and become If you can
make it to the tour in last even a couple
of years, you're a multi millionaire.
Speaker 3: And that's crazy, right right, Yeah, and the expenses went
up too. Yeah. I'm fascinated about the team concept. When
you're doing a college team like this, how similar is
it to team competition like we're experiencing the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the chemistry and camaradity is a big
portion of playing golf team wise. When we're out there playing,
our egos get involved sometimes and sometimes when we're having
a bad day, we just let strokes get away from us.
Speaker 1: We just cavalier with that.
Speaker 4: And as I have to really really impress my students
is that sometimes we're going to be forced to keep
their score and sometimes they could take an eighty and
maybe keep it at seventy six or seven or they
can let it go to eighty five. You just can't.
You can't waste strokes. You have to always believe that
your score is going to count. You can never say, well,
somebody else will pick up the slack because when we
play in community college golf, we play.
Speaker 1: Six player.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, six players, and we keep five scores,
so we can drop one.
Speaker 1: But you never know who's going to get dropped when
you're out there.
Speaker 4: Beating balls, and you can't assume that, God, I'm having
a bad day, somebody else had picked up the slack
for me, because lots of times you're incorrect.
Speaker 3: So the scoring is a conglomerate of all the scores.
It is a team sport in that way. Yes, yes,
how's the scoring done?
Speaker 4: Well, it's the total of five scores, and you know
that number, whatever that number may be, is goes against
the other teams. We're always trying to get for five players,
we're always trying to get somewhere near.
Speaker 1: Par, which is very difficult. You know.
Speaker 4: Sure, usually the number one, two, and three man will
shoot near power, sometimes even under. But it's the four
and fifth, four, five and six players that make or
break you, because somebody can shoot sixty six or sixty.
Speaker 1: Eight, But if you have to keep an eighty, that
takes care of that sixty eight.
Speaker 4: So we're we have to as a coach, I know
that when all the conference championships we won, and all
the state championships we won, our bottom three were the
driving force, not the top three.
Speaker 3: Kind of like the starting rotation of a baseball team.
It's your one, two, and three guys that are going
to carry the team, and you hope for the best
for number four and five, or even your batting lineup
for that matter. Right, So, do you only play one
round of golf?
Speaker 4: Well, in some cases. In some cases, we play two
rounds of golf when we play. When we play conference
championship or regionals or state championship, you play thirty six
holes that day, and they're carrying their bags and the
weather gets pretty warm at that period of time. So
you know, it's a physical challenge on top of a
mental challenge, which golf is consistently right.
Speaker 3: Right, So when you're playing two rounds, is it a
conglomeration of all ten scores or is it two separate rounds.
Speaker 4: In the conference championship, it's two different contest in the Regionals.
It's thirty six holes, so it's a total of all
your scores for thirty six holes.
Speaker 3: And it's best ball. It's best scoring. It's not match
play or anything or four ball any of the.
Speaker 1: Other other games. It's metal play, right, right.
Speaker 3: Have you ever been involved in any type of competition
that's similar to the Ryder Cup?
Speaker 1: No, I have not. I have not.
Speaker 4: I think probably everyone that's ever played golf professionally probably
dreams of that.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: I've played some match play competition, but nothing like that,
nothing that lasted three days and a bunch of different
kinds of game, from match play, stroke play to partners.
I've never been involved with that, but but it sure
would be nice.
Speaker 3: It would be a lot of fun. Oh yeah, yeah.
But I'm just fascinated about the team concept on playing
and the mental part of the team concept and how
somebody can coach that.
Speaker 4: Well, that's really the challenge, you know, when we play
regular tournaments, whether they're PGA Tour or sectional tournaments, professional,
when you're playing if you miss a putt, no one's
going to clap. In the Ryder Cup, you've got two
groups of people out there, those that are with you
and those that are against you, so that's an additional,
additional challenge.
Speaker 1: And then on top of it, you're playing.
Speaker 4: For your country and some of those rounds where you know,
you hit the T shot and then the other fellow
plays where you hit that T shot. From now you
have that pressure also got to put another fairly. I
don't want to.
Speaker 1: Put my friend Bob in the weeds. So it's so.
Speaker 4: Different than typical competition, and especially with the pride of
being an American and winning and you know, we're big
underdogs right now, but we're holding our own I'm very
proud of the guys.
Speaker 3: Well, by the time that people get a chance to
hear this, the whole thing will be over. So we
really have no idea what's going on. We're recording this
on the Friday of the Ryder Cup twenty fourteen Ryder Cup.
If someone's listening later, Hi, welcome. Let's change channels here
a little bit and let's get into your wheelhouse, which
is swing mechanics, ball striking, the loss fundamental. You know,
there's so many different things and it may to you
just come back to the same thing over and over,
but there's things that I see that go wrong or
I suffer from or see my playing part and suffer
from that. I want to pick your brain about and
I want to start that with people who are continually
hitting behind the ball. I mean, you'll see a divot
that is three to four maybe five inches behind the ball,
even with their especially with their driver. What do you
have to help us out with that?
Speaker 1: It's a really easy answer, believe it or not.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you think so.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 4: What's happening is that they're not transferring their weight as
the first move of the downswing. What they're doing is
they're dropping the club down to the ball. The old
adage about staying behind the ball, that's true in its falls.
Speaker 1: You have to drive through the ball.
Speaker 4: And if you're a right handed golfer, your right shoulder
and your right hip have to go past that ball.
So imagine the ball was a line, and when you
set up to the golf ball, half of your bodies
behind the line and half of your body's forward of
the line, with your head being in the.
Speaker 1: Center on the dolls wing, You've got.
Speaker 4: To get that part that's behind the ball forward of
the ball in a rotational move. And when you hit
behind the ball, it's because you are.
Speaker 1: Behind the ball at impact, and.
Speaker 4: You can't be You've got to be moving through it.
You know when they say stay behind it when you
hit it. That's a millisecond, but you have to be
moving through it now. In the past, years gone by,
or your head went backwards because we swung and we
finished in what we call a C position, and everybody
got a bad back from that. Yes, your head stayed back.
But you watch today's players. First of all, they don't
finish with their hands high. They finish with their hands low,
and that's because they're turning their body and rotating their
core to the left of the target. So the width
of the swing is increased from impact to finish. Big change.
And you can see that this has happened on the tour.
Everyone is talking about it. And I knowed it because
like my new boys that came in and I sit
and I talked to them about the golf swing. And
there's two ways to do this. You can be an
arm player. You can be a body player. They all say, oh, no, Coach,
we're body players. So I'm finding that I don't have
to I don't have to prove my point anymore. They
already know that because they watch the mcilroys and the
Coochers and all these players that in some fashion are
more rotary than sliding through the ball.
Speaker 3: So on setup your head. Should your body be a
little angled behind the ball or should you be completely upright?
Speaker 1: I believe you should be centered to the golf ball.
I don't want my head behind the ball.
Speaker 4: There's an old same You want to stand above the ball,
but not behind it.
Speaker 1: Your head's like a bowling ball. And wait, and you.
Speaker 4: Know you've got to get to the left side, So
why put more weight on the right side to start it?
Speaker 1: Just you know, it's.
Speaker 4: Unless you're a neuia of or somebody like that that
can move quickly to the left, you're gonna either have
to slide or something to get over there. And then
that opens up another Pandora's box of bad shots. By
staying centered to the ball and not being so tilty.
Speaker 1: With the shoulders.
Speaker 4: Although some people teach that, and I'm not saying it's wrong,
get me. I want to be clear on that. It's
just harder to do. You know, you can shift your
weight to the right and then shift it back to
the left, and if you can time that move prior
to impact, you're going to be just fine. But I
don't think very many people can do that nor have
the time to do that in a sense of practice.
So what I feel is what I think I saw
with Ben Hogan, the changes he made. He centered himself
more to the ball at address, and then his lef
lef side he turned level left. His left shoulder didn't
go up, it went around. And if you keep the
left arm connected to the body, you block the rotation
of the arms so that you square the club by
the turn of the body instead of the rotation of
the arms, and.
Speaker 1: You're playoff of really one axis.
Speaker 4: Getting back to hitting behind the ball, what happens is
that we fixate on the ball so much and instead
of thinking about where we're going with the golf club,
and our body has to go because it is going
to go more forward than it was at address and
it's turning. So most people when they topped the ball
or hit behind the ball, that's because their focus is
too much on impact. Impact is happening, and it's not
something that you can just stand there and wait for.
You've got to be moving athletically, just like everything when
you throw a ball, when you hit tennis ball, when
you throw a punch, everything is moving forward in some form.
In golf, that forwardness can't be on a line. It
has to be a rotational move. So when I tell
my people, get you've got to get to the left side,
and your way should be at least at impact eight
on that left foot.
Speaker 1: The right foot should just be driving forward.
Speaker 4: But most people, when they hit behind the ball, it's
just that they get anxious from the top and they
hit down on it too much and they don't transfer
their weight. And that's the same thing with a thin shot.
It's the same exact thing.
Speaker 3: Too focused on impact. You just said, well, I find
that I'll play better when I'm focused more on playing
the course than playing the ball. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 4: Again, in my teachings, especially with my boys that are
going to be in competition, I tell them when we practice,
you have to pick out a you have to go
through a pre shot routine.
Speaker 1: When you're practicing, you have.
Speaker 4: To pick out a really tight target so that you
get yourself used to visually your target being very small.
Those things are very important in practicing. And then you
have to you have to use the ball as a
point of reference. To move through, but not as something
to hint, because if you're thinking hitting, you're going to
anticipate impact. And if you anticipate impact, your hands are
going to tighten it impact, your arms are going to
pull back a little bit, and you're either going.
Speaker 1: To thin it or you're going to top it. But
more importantly, you're going to stay behind it. And that's
not good.
Speaker 3: And that was actually I was going to get to
the concept of you know, topping the ball, of hitting
where it's just going to roll because you've just I
guess you're glancing the club over the top part of
the ball. You're not making solid contact, and it's just
going to be a worm burner is just going to
be rolling on the ground.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and incorrectly it's diagnosed you looked up, and I
don't believe anybody looks up. I think that when they
tighten up their body, their shoulders hunch up a little bit,
their arms pull back towards them. But what is the
core reason for that. The core reason is that they're
trying to hit the ball and the club head is.
Speaker 1: Moving too fast.
Speaker 4: You know, there was an old saying good players says,
where the ball is bad players.
Speaker 1: Stare at it. And I think that's really a true statement.
I like that.
Speaker 3: Good players sense where the ball is right, and bad
players stare at the ball stare Oh man, great, I'm
writing this one down. Sense Okay, what about you know
when your rotation, your movement, how how important is it
to keep your lower body still? Try to keep that
from swaying back and forth? Where does that fall in?
Speaker 4: Well, when you set to the ball, I believe, and
everyone has their own opinion on it, this is mine.
I believe that you set up with the ball so
that your right hip is aligned on the inside of
your right foot, on the d step of the foot.
Speaker 1: That creates a kind of a brace. The first move of.
Speaker 4: The swing is it's a combination of your arms and
shoulders working somewhat together. I like to take the club
back because I'm right handed. I like to take it
back with my right side. I don't buy into turn
your left shoulder to your chin. I've never bought that
because it makes you move to the right a little bit.
Speaker 1: When you pull your right shoulder back, your right shoulder.
Speaker 4: Is really going behind your neck kind of towards the target.
Speaker 1: And for those of you that have a limited turn.
Speaker 4: If you work on turning your right shoulder behind your neck,
you're going to find that you're going to increase your
shoulder turn twenty percent when I try. You know, when
I try to illustrate turning from my left side, I
can't make as much turn as when I pull my
right shoulder back.
Speaker 1: By pulling my right shoulder back.
Speaker 4: And also it also stops the feeling of moving back
to the right foot, so I can stay inside that brace.
Speaker 1: And in fact, as I turn.
Speaker 4: The right shoulder back, my hip is going to respond
back also, and the inclination of my right foot because
my hip is on the inside of the instep of
my right shoe, the inclination is going.
Speaker 1: To steep in a bit.
Speaker 4: And if you look at all the great players that
lasted a long time, you'll look at the right The
right leg is not perpendicular.
Speaker 1: The right leg is steep.
Speaker 3: What do you find to be the most common flaw
that you have to help correct?
Speaker 4: Moving moving back from the ball, the head, moving with
the shoulder turn. I have a PE class and I
did the College of Favor this year. They didn't have
an instructor, so there's about thirty five people in the class.
And most of them never hit a golf ball.
Speaker 1: So but a lot of young boys that are, you know,
they've played baseball and so forth. So I teach them
to grip in a group, you know, a group setting.
Obviously it's not going to be perfect, but we get close.
And then I watched them hit the balls.
Speaker 4: Individually, and the first thing initially is that they're they're
reaching back for power, they're swaying off that right sead.
And then when they hit the ball, the majority of
their weights on the right foot and the ball slices
or they top it, and I have to get up
and I say, look, I'm an old guy. Look at
a little effort I make, and I can hit the
seven hundred and sixty yards and I go ahead and bang.
Speaker 1: The ball out there, and they look at me like,
how do you do that?
Speaker 4: But once they understand that they have to be centered
to the ball and then through the ball, then all
of a sudden, you watch these kids whack a ball
out there. It's crazy how far they can hit it.
So I know one thing I've heard more and more
Turing Pross saying, I want to take the timing out
of my game, and I want to take the compensations.
Speaker 1: Out of my game.
Speaker 4: I want to be able to even when my feet
are in the fire, because I'm playing for something I
dearly want. I want to still be able to play
well when you're timing the rotation of the golf club
with your hands and forearms. That's a heck of a
lot harder under pressure than rotating your body and keeping
your arm connected to the body.
Speaker 1: Is it easy to do.
Speaker 4: No, it's hard because it goes against your natural instincts.
But once you get it, I promise you that you'll
not only hit the ball farther because you'll hit a
square them all more often, but your shot dispersion is
going to be much narrower. You're going to have a
lot less side spin on the ball, so when you
push it, you won't push it with a cut or
pull it with a draw. And that's you know, that's
what happens to everybody. And the better you are as
a player, the more you fight the draw or the hook.
Speaker 1: When you first.
Speaker 4: Start out, it's a slice for everybody for a while,
but if you're focusing on playing the game under pressure,
you need something to block that hook without making a
block move in a sense, So you need something that
traps that club square. And this is the only way
that I know how. And I know that there's a
couple of players out on tour that maybe are reluctant
to do this, but if they did it, they would
hit some fairways every now and then.
Speaker 3: Come on, name names.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not going to name any name.
Speaker 3: They're not listening. I promise. Who would you think does that?
Speaker 1: Well? I think I think anybody that's an armed player.
Speaker 4: I think Phil who is probably one of the most
talented players that's ever played the game when it comes
to all the kind Zashasi his he's got a terrible
record of driving the ball in play. And so it
does Tiger, I mean, and it blows my mind that
Tiger doesn't because the guy's are golfing genius. Also, he
knows he doesn't need anybody to teach him to play golf.
I think that's probably the biggest problem is he's ever had,
you know. I think Butch did him a favor by
shortening his swing a little bit. But Tiger knows how
to play. And when you get too conscious of how
to do something, when you're purposely trying to do something,
you get awkward.
Speaker 1: Everybody does.
Speaker 4: I think if Tiger would go woodshed, and I think
he's kind of inclined. He's been saying things like, I
may not hire somebody, I may go out there and
figure it out myself.
Speaker 1: If he would do that like Hogan did and all the.
Speaker 4: Great players where you own your own swing, because how
they can instruct or feel what you're feeling, I mean,
it's not possible. So you can lead them to you
can lead them to some dynamic moves, or you can say, hey,
you're swaying or you're doing this. But when you get
to be Tiger Woods, come on, guy is one of
the greatest players of all time. But once you get doubt,
you lose that mojo, you lose that feeling that you're
going to win, and then you start questioning everything, every
move you make, and you've got somebody barking on instructions.
That's a road to nowhere as far as I'm concerned,