Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number three hundred and seventy one, published on
February nineteen, twenty thirteen, and on today's score Zone Short
Game Academy, The Wedge Guy is going to answer two
questions focused on setting goals for your short game.
Speaker 2: Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast, Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: We don't play honors here, we never have. We play
hit when ready. If you're ready to hit, gall we'll
go over how much she said Fred Go ahead, j
d Bo.
Speaker 4: You get on the green.
Speaker 3: We line our pods up, We put and we try
to put out if we can. We're not on someone's line,
we try to go ahead and haul it.
Speaker 4: It saves way more time.
Speaker 3: All the marking and stuff takes a lot longer to
do as well.
Speaker 5: You know, shoot the r each foum and go drop
it off.
Speaker 6: You go to your ball, he.
Speaker 3: Hits, he walks up, you're hit and he's up. To
the cart ready to go again. Those things are huge.
The other thing is we.
Speaker 5: Don't ever mark the car until we get to the
next hole.
Speaker 3: Whoever's gonna be off last will mark the scores bright times.
Speaker 5: He's done marking them, it's his turn to hit.
Speaker 3: We ask people, what do you think your thing is
that you do that makes you play faster?
Speaker 4: And then came up with a lot of pece.
Speaker 3: That's where we got a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Where the pros go to practice the Palms Golf Club
with Dsburger.
Speaker 4: This is Golf.
Speaker 2: Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers and golf professionals
to help lower your score. It's worked for your host,
Fred Green.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 5: JD Well, Thanks Fred, it's a real honor to be
here on your show. Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a greater honor to be at your golf course.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that I say your golf course, because
it really is.
Speaker 4: The poems is really your golf course, isn't it? How
did this?
Speaker 1: I mean, this has got an amazing story, and there's
a one hundred stories that we have to tell in
this place.
Speaker 4: Let's start with the starting of.
Speaker 3: It, Well, I've been in the golf business my entire life,
so I've probably worked every facet of the business from
daily feed, very exclusive, private to you know, Monic Kay
one of the top three resorts in the world, to
be a VP at PGUS and La Keith the Resort Club,
and I just felt like I'd done all these things
for everybody else. It'd be kind of nice to do
something on my own and then I could do everything
that I always wanted to do that you get turned
down periodically.
Speaker 4: So the Palms came.
Speaker 3: Into existence through and it was kind of a long shot.
Fouled a piece of property, went to the landowners and said,
you know, I have this great plan and you'll make
a lot of money, but I can't pay you, you know,
till the back end of the project. And I just
kind of said, check my my reputation, not you'll find
him a man of my word, et cetera. But anyhow,
long story short, that's kind of how it started. And
I got with Saft Freddy Couples, and I said to Freddie,
had I really need a favor, you know, helped you
when he played his first tournament, his putter broke and
I gave them one. They didn't make those anymore specific
pink putter, and I had one, so I gave it
to him and he won like three million dollars playing it.
So I said, I need a little help from you, Freddie,
And so I said, I need you to be part
of this design team, and you know, I need you
to cut me a break, which he did and anyhow
ended up turned out great for him. He did real
well and we did extremely well.
Speaker 4: And how did you know fred Couples ahead of that.
Speaker 3: I met him when he first turned pro at the
Queen Mary Open. He was playing a practice round. We
played a practice round together, Freddie and Larry Benson, who
was the club pro there, was one of my best friends.
And this kid shows up, you know, out of the
University of Houston and wants to play golf and he says,
how can I play in this tournament? We said, well,
this is you know, for pros only.
Speaker 5: You'd have to be a pro.
Speaker 4: And he said, well then I guess I'll turn pro.
Speaker 3: And he turned pro and a couple of weeks later
he went to Q School and went all the way
through Q school, got his card and the.
Speaker 5: Rest is history.
Speaker 1: So you wanted him to be part of your design
team or just lend his name.
Speaker 4: No, I want him to be part of the whole
design team.
Speaker 3: And you know, plus naturally his name was terrific because
I mean you look at it and there's only certain
names that you can use that have any.
Speaker 4: Possess to them, and uh, his his, he was one.
Speaker 3: And the fact that you know I had I knew
him and had a friendship there, and his agent in
Roach was a wonderful person and easy to work.
Speaker 5: With, and that added to everything.
Speaker 3: So and Brian Curley was the true architect, and he
and Freddie then collaborated together and uh, you know they
were willing to, you know, do what I was looking
to do. And then everybody had their input in it.
That's what's kind of unique and different when you say everybody,
Brian Curley, Freddie Couples.
Speaker 4: And myself I thought on the design. Yeah, I wanted an.
Speaker 3: Old style, back East type of golf course where you
could play the ball on the ground. Freddie wanted to
have some riviera, some Augusta places that he loved to
play in there. And Brian Curley, you know, being a
Northern Kelp guy, hey really wanted to have a little
of that Monterey Peninsula.
Speaker 5: So you just played the chorus. Fifteen's a short three
par and sixteens.
Speaker 3: Along three par fifteen sixteen, you know, the cypress thing.
So we all put our little feedback in those first
five holes in the Mesquite. We when Freddy went to
play the President's cop, I said, Freddie, you know you
could do some pictures and we can make those first
five holes like Royal Melbourne and flashed those you know,
bunkers right up into the Mesquite. And that's how that
kind of came about. And Freddie wanted everybody to be
able to hit a driver on every hole if you
so desired, so that was another thing that kind of
came into it. Brian wanted the George Thomas style bunkering
that he loved, and so he had that. The only
thing I asked was that they would be a flat bottom.
So no matter how high the lip is, if you
have a flat bottom, it's relatively easy to get out,
not necessarily get closed, but relatively easy to get out
of the green complexes. You know, Brian did a magnificent
job there in what he did with that. Those green
surrounds are as good as you'll see anywhere. I mean
there's shades of August, the Oakmont, Pinehurst, you name it,
they're there. And so when you miss a green, the
tour players, a lot of tour players will come in.
They say, it's one of the few places you have
like five different options.
Speaker 5: You know, you can put it, you.
Speaker 3: Can use a rescue, you can chip and run it,
you can pitch it, or you can flop it. So
it gives you a lot of options. The average player
probably the eighteen handicappers, so he probably puts.
Speaker 5: Almost every one of them up the hill.
Speaker 7: From there handicap and take you well, even though we
have such a low handicap, you know, we have two
hundred and seventy eight single digit players here.
Speaker 3: Wow, and is that like versus one of the lowest
in the in the country naturally, And how many members
do you have? We have four hundred and fifteen, four
one five and two hundred and seventy eight of them
are single digit players, single digit players. And at one time,
at the peak when they were they were rating the
top players clubs in the country. You know, fifty one
of our players were pluses. Well, so we're all getting
older now, So I mean that's faded a little bit.
We're still number one players club in California, but we're
probably still top five in the country. I mean, at
one time we were at number one.
Speaker 4: But that was never a goal I wanted to have.
Speaker 3: You said, that wasn't a goal to be the number
one players club or anything like that. The thing was
is I wanted to have good players, you know, and
I wanted a good players club that exceeded my expectation.
Speaker 4: But I really built it as much.
Speaker 3: I wanted a place where myself and all of my
friends we could all grow old together.
Speaker 4: You want, but not a boys club.
Speaker 1: You wanted just a place to go hang out in
the bar, but not a not an exclusive boys.
Speaker 3: Club, and we have we have fifty two women members,
and so it's kind of like a men's club with women.
Speaker 4: Right now.
Speaker 1: No, I want to backtrack, just to touch but I
want to get back into this part of it. But
that's not even what we're going to talk about. And
I want to talk about pace of play, because this
is remarkable, this course. But you said you had a
business plan that you took to the landowner, and what
was specifically.
Speaker 4: What did you pitch them on?
Speaker 1: What was your idea on why this golf course was
going to be unique and special.
Speaker 3: Well, first I thought I was on crazy. There was
already one hundred some golf courses here. But I said,
I'm a niche type of person, you know, having worked
for Lawrence Rockefeller, he was big on niches. He used
to always say when I was at Monique, just remember JD.
Speaker 5: We're for the fortunate few. We're not for everybody.
Speaker 3: So that was my thought. I'm not going to be
for everybody, but I'm going to be for the fortunate
few that this is what they want. So I told
them we're going to be an old style golf club,
no tea times, fast play, where walking is embraced, so
teas and greens will be close together.
Speaker 5: Okay, we're not going.
Speaker 3: To be about, you know, the parties and all that
kind of stuff. It's going to be an open tee
so you're never blocked out. We're going to have two
tournaments only it's gonna be a stroke playing a match play,
and you still can play in the afternoons on those days,
so you never blocked out. So when you show up
at the club, you can play and you know there's
going to be fast play because the teas and greens
are close together. So what I did to ensure the
face of play the first year or two, I would
put right on on the card if a person was
taking a card, if they were teeing off at eight o'clock,
I'd write eight o'clock, nine to fifty, right, and then
eleven fifty. And that meant that you're teed off at eight,
you need to be at the turn at nine to
fifty because the front nine takes like an iron fifty
minutes to play max, and the back nine's longer, so
it'll take two hours to play. And so three hours
and fifty minutes became the max that you were allowed. Okay,
And then we ended up with the average rounds being
about foursomes that were like three hours and thirty to
three hours and thirty two minutes, okay, threesomes or three
hours or less. Club Championship Okay, we played threesomes or
twosomes and the rounds are three and a half hours
or less every round. Now, guys, the first time they
played in our Club Championship, when they get in, they
say can.
Speaker 5: I use your office, They get on the phone, they
call their.
Speaker 3: Buddy, and now say, you're not going to believe this,
you know, unlike our place where we played in five
hours plus in the club, I just played a club
championship and I played in three hours, three hours and
thirty minutes, and you're putting everything out the whole bit,
you know it was it was pretty awesome. So once
everybody knew that you met business and you were for
real on it, it really worked. Plus, you know, one
in seven or is a split te so we know
that you need to be and at iron fifteen minutes,
you need to be t and off of number seven.
So when they come off of six, we'll just walk
over and say, you know, you need to pick up
the pace a little bit, mister Jones, and in a
way you go with it.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: It's very nice of you not to say, mister Green,
I have to worry about that you were in good shape.
Speaker 3: But that's kind of the way that came about Fred
and so then it became a culture. Now this is
one of the cute stories. I'm playing on a Saturday
and Lee Trevino, George Archer and myself and Johnny Pott.
We're teeing off of number one and four ladies go
out with the push carts in front of us, and
Lee looks at me and says, j D, what are
you doing to us?
Speaker 5: I said, Lee, we won't catch him. I can promise
you that. Oh come on, j D, I can't go
Leah's right, So.
Speaker 3: You know, they tee off and we go, and within
three holes they got in their walking stride. We finished
around in three hours and thirty minutes and we never
caught them. Well after that, Lee became my biggest spokesperson because.
Speaker 5: One he said, this golf.
Speaker 3: Course is phenomenal because you can grow old on it.
And I said, well, what do you mean by that
lead He said, well, you can play your ball on
the ground. You can bump and run it in if
you want. You can run it up on five pars,
going for it in two.
Speaker 5: He says.
Speaker 3: You know, as you get older, you don't hit the
ball as high, so with your greens down on the
ground all school and openings, you can bump and run
it in there. But he said, the surrounds, you know,
the green complexes, create all the resistance of scoring you'd
ever want. He says, at the same time, all the
pros said you could play a major here, You could
play the open whatever if it wasn't that you're in
a desert where it'd be one hundred and ten degrees.
Speaker 5: At that time.
Speaker 3: And then he's over at the hotel and working out
in the gym, and he's telling everybody, you can't believe it.
I just played the pumps and these four ladies went
out in front of us, and we played in three
hours and thirty minutes and we.
Speaker 4: Never caught them.
Speaker 3: So it became like, you know, you can't believe how
fast as ladies play at the pumps. So it became
a thing where it's the only club I know that
the guys will actually tell the ladies, you know, if
you want to go ahead and tee it up and go,
because they know that they're going to walk and go
and get it done. So that's telling you that our
lady members are serious type golfers and serious type players.
Speaker 5: So it's been kind of fun to happen.
Speaker 4: Then, oh yeah, I'm a big believer.
Speaker 3: I'm a big, big believer Fred that this slow play
is hurting the game more than anything else.
Speaker 5: So you know.
Speaker 3: Everybody talks about we need six hole courses all this,
well we have that first six holes comes right back
to the clubhouse right.
Speaker 5: Well, after the guys played that game of ours.
Speaker 3: The nine handicap or lesque game, they settle their bets
and they redraw teams and they go play what they
call the East Six, and then they all gather behind
six and they heckle each other, coming in the last
all right, and all balls, kind of the.
Speaker 5: Last hall, and the winning team takes all well.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of young guys at work that
come right after work just to play the East Six
Monday through Friday, and so they get some golfing. So
you know, we've been very very lucky that way. I mean,
average age is forty seven, so you know we're still
have a pretty young group.
Speaker 1: I'm really curious about your rules for pay to play.
This is a This is a I don't want to
say that it's an exclusive club because PGA West is
right around the corner, and that's incredibly exclusive. Expensive to
live there, expensive to play there. You have private equity
club memberships here, but it's not outrageously priced for what's
going on.
Speaker 4: In private clubs today. But you don't have social things.
Speaker 1: You don't have a swimming pool or a tennis court,
so or parties and things this is a golf club.
Speaker 4: Part of your initial idea.
Speaker 3: Correct, Fred, It's you know, being.
Speaker 4: A single member membership club.
Speaker 3: You know, we play about eighteen thousand rounds a year,
eighteen and change, and you know that creates a nice
ambience to the course. So we have no tea time,
so you can put your name in and you're out
in thirty minutes or less. And you know, you experienced
it today with your friends and that's just the right
amount of time to warm up and get ready to go.
Speaker 4: And so it's worked well.
Speaker 6: I'm in.
Speaker 3: Our initiation fee currently is twenty thousand dollars. We've always
been in the thirties as a big believer that we
didn't We wanted us to be truly an additional club
for most people. There's probably one hundred of our members
it's their primary club, but the rest of them belong
to other places. And you know, I felt like that
initiation fee, if you kept it reasonable in the wholl bit,
it made it a.
Speaker 5: Lot easier to be that additional club.
Speaker 3: And the other thing is, I mean what happens is
it really fed my niche because it's kind of like
the higher the price to higher the handicap to higher
the age normally. Okay, so by having a lower price
the initiation fee. You know, our low was forty two
years old was the average age, excuse me.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 3: Our handicap six point nine was our average index was
our lowest and our highest is probably right around nine
that we've ever been. So you know, our average indexes
has been pretty low. So we've attracted good players. The
pace of play has met a lot. The good practice
facilities big.
Speaker 5: They hit a.
Speaker 4: Lot of balls.
Speaker 3: When you leave tonight, it'll be dark and you'll hear
guys hitting balls in the dark.
Speaker 5: I mean, they're that fanatical about their game.
Speaker 1: So guys and women and even the fifty you have,
these are very serious players. And because it's not like
there's a husband and wife on a Saturday afternoon, you know,
the people, if you're going.
Speaker 4: To join, you're in into it. And even the women
they're like, I want to get out there.
Speaker 3: So this morning they were there. They all walked and
you know, they were done in no time. And they
have their little games that they do, and we're known
for games.
Speaker 5: We have a lot of games.
Speaker 3: It's very easy access into the games, and I think
that's a unique thing about the place. So many places
I get clickie shit, and so there's nothing wrong with
any of that. That's why there's all the different opportunities
in different type clubs that there are out there. We
happen to be this one little niche. I like to
think that this niche.
Speaker 5: Of ours is very small. But it's not shrinking.
Speaker 4: Oh that's good, that's well. The other is shrinking.
Speaker 1: You have this These are your place mats for your
for your bar, and it talks about some of the
members without giving names here, but I'm just going to
run through a couple and this is the kind of
people that are staying that that belonged to the poems.
Speaker 4: And it was.
Speaker 1: Because of what you led me up to this before
we played, and you were telling me and you were
showing me some of your trophy cases. And you've got
amazing memorabilia that your members just say here, put this
up in here, memori of our members.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of your members.
Speaker 1: You have six Master's titles, a US Open title, British
two British Open titles, UH one hundred and twenty one
PGA Tour victories, twenty four LPGA Tour wins, four Presidents,
Cup captains, a writer, Cup Captain, and he just goes
on and on and on the type of people that
play here.
Speaker 8: One of the unique things fred is right behind me
is a picture of Holli Stacy and my wife and
my daughter and myself from last May when she got
inducted into World Golf Hall of Fame, and Freddie's going
in this May, so that'll be that'll make four of
our members that are in the World Golf Hall.
Speaker 4: Of Fame, the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: And congratulations you just were recently inducted into the Southern
California PGA Hall of Fame. Yeah, correct, congratulations, that's really impressive.
Speaker 3: And we have Theme Beam and Arnold Palmer, Freddy Couples
and Holli Stacy. So it's as pretty unique and special
in its own rights.
Speaker 4: So yeah, you're right, it's pretty fun. It really is.
Speaker 1: But so when we get back to the conversation of
pace of play, hopefully there are other course designers, course managers,
you know, companies that are coming to you saying how do.
Speaker 4: You do it?
Speaker 1: Because the pace of play really is an issue for
so many people, especially who play public courses weekend golf.
It's so difficult to get around it seems like in
under five hours, it's impossible.
Speaker 4: But you have.
Speaker 1: A sheet here and that you simple ways to quicken
your pace of play. And I guess this is something
that you get to every member, and it's like every
new member and is like you probably give them tests
and have them committed to memory.
Speaker 3: Well no, not really, I don't go that's strong one,
but you know, we do give that to them. And
I have taken a few people off periodically it seemed
that they might have struggled with the pace of play,
and then all of a sudden they realize, God, I
never am ready to play, is what it is.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I never have my glove on, I never have my yard.
I can get all those things before it's my turn
to go, you know, and.
Speaker 4: Just little things.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Really, And it's amazing because I played with two friends
today and when none of us played very well today.
We were all struggling because we're all working on swing
mechanics right now, but we're all struggling. But we came
in and we all barely broke a hundred. But we
came in at three hours and fifty minutes. I was
I was just shocked because I felt like we were,
you know, holding people up, you know, but we didn't
spend a lot of time looking for balls. I didn't
lose a single ball today. Actually went on eighteen. I
put one in the creek, but it was in right there.
It was three inches deep, so that I even reminded
my friends who were in a cart.
Speaker 4: I didn't see anybody walking today, Well they walked in
the morning I had. I had.
Speaker 3: Six guys walk today and uh seven ladies. So I
had fifteen people walk today.
Speaker 1: Out of how many rounds today. Because do most people
just take the cards? Well you have you think you
promote the walking.
Speaker 4: Our plays walking. Yeah, it's not. It's not a hilly course.
Speaker 5: I mean, easy to walk. It's just that the convenience,
you know, the carts are included in your douce.
Speaker 3: Yeah, guys will take the card as well, you know,
but it just depends if you have If you're the
only one walking, then it doesn't work. If there's if
there's more than one walking in your group, then they walk.
Speaker 5: That's what you find.
Speaker 3: So what you'll see is that all of a sudden
someone will say I'm going to take a card today
and then the other guys said, well, there I'm going
to ride to.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to walk.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you probably.
Speaker 3: We probably average you know, about fifteen to sixteen walkers
per day twenty max.
Speaker 1: Let's go over a couple of these rules, because I
think that everybody should know them, you know, whether they're
playing here or not. They should really make this part
of their round of golf and it would help everybody.
And my friends were in one cart and I was
in the other, and I kept reminding them of the
one that you had was don't sit here waiting for
your friend to hit the ball and then go to
your ball, drop him off, and even if you're not
driving the cart, drop him off at his ball, and
then drive up to your ball and play ready golf.
I mean, bottom line, play ready golf. It don't have
to worry about honors, You don't have to worry. Everyone's
going to get to play. So let's talk about some
of the rules that you have and some of the
reminders that you want to share with everybody about about
how to pick up their pace of play.
Speaker 4: And they're enjoyment without rushing. I never felt rushed.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, they riding a cart properly is huge.
We don't play honors here. We never have we play
hit when ready. If you're ready to hit, Gala look
over her emotions said, Fred, you care if I go
go go ahead, JD Boom, I'll.
Speaker 5: Hit you get on the green. You know.
Speaker 3: We line our pots up, we put we try to
put out. If we can't, if we're not on someone's line,
we try to go ahead and hould it. It saves,
we know, way more time when you do that. All
the marking and stuff takes a lot longer to do as.
Speaker 5: Well, you know.
Speaker 3: And like you said that dropping the person off and
having the clubs, you know, shoot the yardage for him
and go drop it off. You go to your ball,
he hits, he walks up, you're hitting, he's up to
the cart ready to go again.
Speaker 5: And I mean those.
Speaker 3: Things are huge. The other thing is, you know, marking
the scorecard. That's why hitting, you know, we don't ever
mark the car until we get to the next hole.
You know, the next hole, whoever is, whoever's gonna bee
off last, will mark the scores. Everybody else hits. Then
by the time he's done marking them, it's his turn
to hit. So we do a lot of little things
like that.
Speaker 5: That's just a few of them.
Speaker 3: I mean you could pick some more off of there
that might be of interest to you.
Speaker 5: Specifically.
Speaker 3: But what we tried to do was get players and
say what we asked people what was, what do you
think your thing is that you do that makes you
play faster?
Speaker 5: And that came up with a lot of these. That's
where we got a lot of them.
Speaker 3: Wasn't just you know me, It was you know, gathering
info from your people that play fast. So, hey, what
do you do well? I don't do this, you know,
I don't mark my score. What's the guy's putting the
score down? Get off the green so the other guy
can hit, you know, mark the score the next tea box.
I mean little things that eventually think and you know
that's why walking, you know, you even play quicker because
you can do your talking and telling your stories while
you're walking down the fairway, as opposed to you know,
the guys will a lot of times you'll see them
on the T box I want to tell a story
or whatever.
Speaker 5: That it just slows.
Speaker 4: Everything down right right.
Speaker 1: And I've always noticed that when when you're in a cart,
you really focused on hit the ball, drive the ball,
hit the ball, drive the ball. And with a course
like this that is so beautiful, I could I would
love to come back and walk it because you just
want to absorb every step.
Speaker 4: And it's not like it's flat. I mean you don't
have a lot of flat lies, a lot of movement,
but no severe up and downhill zone. Right, it's kind
of gradual. If you look at it and.
Speaker 1: Did you do that in the design of the course,
you you gave it all that. This this course to
me was a phenomen I mean it was fair, it
was tough, but it's a phenomenal test of the short game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you have a good short game, you know
you can play and be competitive here always, and it's
going to expose your weakness this golf course. If you
have a weakness, you won't be able to hide it
too long.
Speaker 5: It'll expose it.
Speaker 3: And most players say that their short games get better
here and when they leave here and play elsewhere, it's
almost like shooting ducks and a barrel because you go
they're almost like catchers midst the greens everywhere else here
they're like inverted saucers. You know, you have that two
or three foot area to land your ball.
Speaker 5: If you go long. Of that, it goes long. If
you go short, it could come back to you.
Speaker 3: So that's why I said, the average player will pot
the ball up the hill most.
Speaker 5: Of the time and just take the bogie and go
to the next fall.
Speaker 4: We're part of a couple screens. Wow, And the greens are.
Speaker 3: Large, Yeah, they're they're actually they're small by today's standards,
but they average about fifty one hundred and chaine square feet,
which by today's standards are small, but they're still big
in their own right.
Speaker 4: The other thing I thought was very interesting is that you're.
Speaker 1: Your yardage markers on the course at the front ende
are to the front edge, and then in the car
it tells you you know how far green? Yeah, up
to the pin from the front edge. Why that I've
never seen that before. Well, if you play tour events.
Speaker 3: People that play tour events, okay, you're always are getting
the yardage at the front edge of the green, and
you want to know the front edge of the green,
you know, because the green's usually firm, so you know, okay,
there's the front depends on twenty. I want to land
five yards under the green, so you add five to
that front yard each and then you have the depth
of the back of the green, because you know, if
the pin is towards the back, you want to know
how much green you have left behind that pin.
Speaker 5: So that's the reason we did it like that.
Speaker 3: We wanted our players to experience what they I call
the pro experience, so our amateurs experience what the pros.
Speaker 5: Play under all the time.
Speaker 3: So you have the depth of the green, you have
a pin sheet every day it gives how far the
pin is on the green. And then you have a
front yard each as well. So if you want to
play a front yard each, you can. If you want
to play a middle yard each, you know it.
Speaker 1: It's for the guys who really can do pinpoint accuracy,
hunt and where.
Speaker 3: And even if you're bouncing your ball in you want
to know. Okay, you know, when I was first playing,
a couple of times, I used to play a lot
of tournament golf with Bob Win, who's now the cease
was I on both tours and Bob was a member here,
and one time we're sitting on this five par and
I'm like, God, I can't can't reach it.
Speaker 5: He's what do you mean you can't reach it?
Speaker 3: I said, Wow, it's too sixty eight or whatever that
a pin, he says, But look at the front yardage.
Front yards is only two thirty nine, he says. You
can get the ball, scoot it up on the front,
let it run in there. And then that started me
thinking front yardages. And that's when I realized, Wow, these
guys really think about that front yard each and if
you watch them on TV, they're always say, well, it's
one fifteen to the front, one twenty two to the pin.
Speaker 5: You know that crest is one thirty one. You can
spin it back off of there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So they have that and if you noticed our greens,
there's a lot of movement in our greens. So like
you know when you saw Tiger's shot go in on
sixteen where the ball hesitated and it fell in, Well,
we have a lot of that kind of action on
our greens. You could play away from the hole and
it'll come all the way back. So it's kind of
the more you play it, the more you understand, you know,
the option you have for it.
Speaker 1: I got to ask you about the name of the course,
the Palms. There's spectacular views everywhere, and I've played courses
that have a lot of trees, but this course has
is just lined with palm trees. Were those planted or
were those? Are those natural? And they were here?
Speaker 4: It's a combination.
Speaker 3: Fred there was the far eastern end of the property
was a date orchard, so we left those date palms there,
and as we cut the fairways between those date palms,
we then moved those date palms to other.
Speaker 5: Areas of the course.
Speaker 3: The middle area of the course was a farm they
grew egg plant things like that, and then the far
western part was ranch so and then the very back
was all that mosquite where they go dove hunting. So
I saved the as as much mosquite as I could
transplanted to palm trees.
Speaker 4: We ended up with.
Speaker 3: Two thousand fully grown palms of forty to sixty feet.
I don't know how much mosquites in that mosquite area.
Then we added another three hundred indigenous trees of mosquites,
California peppers, jack Aranda's things like that.
Speaker 1: It's what I found fascinating is like, you know, I've
played courses in the low hanging you got to get
under the tree and things like that. But these palms
they're just you know, they're just straight tall with a
little bush up on top of it. It looks like
but it's almost like you're hitting through a hair brush,
you know. I mean, you've got rows and rows of them,
and if you get caught behind or in the middle of.
Speaker 4: This, it's not easy to get through.
Speaker 1: And it's this course can be very intimidating, especially when
you look at all the memories are and stuff. But
you get into places like that and it's a real
challenge to your head too. I mean, the metal game
here is just as important as your short game.
Speaker 3: It seems like, well, yeah, I mean, it's one of
those places that once it's say you had some problems
chipping even and all of a sudden, that'll like stay
in your mind for a while, you know, and and
then you know, once you three put a hole then
and that's like in your mind. Now you're a nervous
wreck about it because you know you got so much
up and down it goes extremely fast, and and you
know it's the greens are usually about eleven, but you know,
downhill can be fourteen, you know what I mean, and
then uphill is probably ten or something. Right, So you
got that you have a four foot change between uphill
and downhill.
Speaker 4: And you said every fifteen.
Speaker 3: Feet, every fifteenth footer when they blue lined it, they
said it was a double break.
Speaker 4: And this is now.
Speaker 1: This was Mark Sweeney of any Point Golf, who's recently
on Golf Smarter.
Speaker 3: Well, Mark was here. We had a great time. He
did a clinic for the members, and he actually it
was kind of funny because I wanted this to be
like a poor man's Oakmont because I'm from Pittsburgh and
it's my favorite course in the world, Oakmon. So he
said to me, not knowing that, he said to me,
these were the hardest greens I ever blue lined out
of than.
Speaker 5: Oakmont in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4: So it was kind of funny. So it kind of
felt like a mission accomplished.
Speaker 1: Well, congratulations, mission accomplished big time.
Speaker 4: It's a it's a beautiful track.
Speaker 1: And boy, if you ever get a chance, if you
know somebody and you get a chance to get an
invitation to come out and play, don't miss the opportunity.
Speaker 6: Unity.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of golf in the Palm Desert, Palm Springs, Rancho, Mirage,
Laquinta area again with PGA West just around the corner
with six golf courses, but this is a very very
special place. Congratulations and thanks so much for today and
for your time.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, Fred.
Speaker 9: It's just a real pleasure to be with you, and
I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Well, we go from an amazing golf course to playing
on the golf course. And the thing that was so
interesting about the Palms it's you got to have a
short game, and you've got to.
Speaker 4: Be able to work your short game.
Speaker 1: Well, we want you to work on your short game too,
and that's why we have the wedge guy, Terry Taylor,
CEO of Score Golf here for our Score Golf Short
Game Academy.
Speaker 6: Hello Terry, Hi Fred, how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing well. How has the buzz been after the
PGA show.
Speaker 6: Oh, we got a tiger by the tail. We have really.
Speaker 10: Shaken up the whole short end of the set with
this approach we're making with Score and we just finished
some robotic testing on ironbron which was really pretty fascinating
on quantifying what happens off of various golf clubs in
the high loft area end of the set, and we
found out we've got a distinct competitive advantage with the
way we design these golf clubs, so kind of tease
up that part of the of the of the listeners
that are wondering about how do I score the golf
course better?
Speaker 6: We're going to have some good stuff for you.
Speaker 1: Awesome well, and this person of the show, if you're
new to what we're doing here, Terry wants to answer
your questions about your short game because he's been playing
his entire life, he's been designing clubs for longer than that,
and he's got a phenomenal product now in the Score
forty one sixty one scoring. And so if you send
in your question, if you go to golfsmarter dot com
and click on the score Zone Short Game Academy button,
you'll be able to submit a question. And if Terry
answers your question on this podcast, you will receive a
customized free score forty one sixty one wedge. It'll be
customized to your game, to your set, to how you
play the game. It's incredible how they do it. And
the first question that we have actually we're gonna I
think we're gonna try to do two questions today. But
Anthony Coletto of Mount Prospect, Illinois, Congratulations, We're gonna ask
your question, and you are going to get a chance
to start playing with a score forty one sixty one
wedge of your choice. But I promise you once you
start playing with it, you're gonna want to put the
other four in your bag. So Anthony's question, Terry, is
I struggle with distance. He talks about other things about
his friends making fun of him and losing bets, but
he says, I struggle with distance and direction with anything
less than a nine nine.
Speaker 10: Well, Anthony, welcome to the club, because about two thirds
of the guy on the tour have the same problem.
Believe it or not, We've been doing a real deep
analysis of PGA tour statistics and what we found is Anthony,
and hopefully this will help you feel better about it.
But then we're going to fix your issues. But the
PGA Tour on approach shots outside of nine iron range
that's one fifty and out are very very close to
each other. The difference for example, in eight and nine
iron seven iron range for the best guy on tour
to the number one seventy five guys only eight feet
further from the hole on average. These guys are also
good with the full swings, but like your problem that
you're expressing. When they start getting down under one fifty
and these guys are starting to manipulate nine irons and wedges,
they start the differences I call it between the haves
and have nots begins to get very wide. And I
think that there's several reasons for that, Anthony, And one
of those is is that we've all been groomed into
a modern power game. And I was just out on
the driving range this afternoon watching a couple of our
high school kids out there who can't break ninety, just
seeing how hard they could hit five irons and drivers.
And I was kind of kiddling with them, and I'm
off on a little tangent here, but there was a
sophomore girl that was over there next to them, who's
probably the best junior player in our town. And I said,
you guys ought to be ashamed of yourselves, because that
sixteen year old girl and this sixty one year old
man can both beat you like a drum while y'all
are heading at fifty yards by us.
Speaker 6: Yea cold man, it is cold, but anyway.
Speaker 10: So but the point I'm making, Anthony, is we've turned
everything into this power game, and everybody's swinging everything so hard,
and the manufacturers are cranking the iron lost down. Most
of the new game improvement irons on the market or
this year or another degree or too stronger than they
were last year because everybody's so power crazy, and the
high loft golf clubs do not respond well to a
hard golf swing. And the reason your distance and your
direction are off is partly due to the fact that
you've learned to hit these longer clubs so hard, and
these high loft golf clubs don't respond well. So my
first advice to you is go out to the range.
If this is the part of your game. Never go
to the driving range again with anything more than a
nine iron until you get this right. Practice this part
of your game and learn how to hit a nice
control swing with your short clubs you're nine in pitch,
so that you can get that direction down and make
a good consistent impact. And a couple of tips on
short iron play. Golfers tend to crowd the golf ball
too much. You still need to swing this golf club
around your bodies. And I'm assuming maybe that you hit
everything else pretty acceptably, but you're struggling with this, but
the golf club still has to go around your body.
It's still a circular motion. It's somewhat horizontal, and golfers
tend to pick the club straight up and go straight down,
So work on getting your swing around your body. These
clubs are also very short, and work on making sure
you keep the width in your golf swing. Make sure
you get a nice extension from your left side, get
an extension going away from the ball, get an extension
going through the ball, so you flatten your swing arc
out through the bottom of the golf swing. Those are
two very basic fundamentals. The third one I'm going to
add in there is when it's more important than these
than any other club in your bag, is to really
feel like you're pulling the club through the ball with
your left side. Let your right side be pretty passive
and feel like you're pulling the ball through with your
left side. Those are your swing tips. But what Fred
didn't mention, and I'm looking at your question. Your last
point was could it be equipment? And I'm going to
tell you, yes, it very well could be your equipment.
And I don't know what you play, but probability is
you're playing the cavvyback set of golf clubs that you're
nine in your p club look like your six iron,
and the six iron is designed with all the weight
low in the club and a thin face to get
that twenty eight to twenty nine degree golf club up
in the air. When you get to your nine in
your pitch, you've already got a lot of loft that
club is going in the air. But the iron manufacturers
continue to insist that the nine in the pitch should
look like a six iron. We've learned with Hybridge that
the three in the four shouldn't look like a six
iron anymore. It makes no sense that the nine in
the pitch should look like a six iron. I'm going
to ask you to do something, Anthony. Go to one
of your friends who plays a blade. Go to one
of your assistant pros who plays a blade. Put their
nine in their pitch in your bag and play around
or two even if the shaft doesn't fit, even if
it's not the right specs, and watch what happens to
your distance and direction. I think you're going to see
an improvement. So the equipment to be part of the issue.
You're swinging too hard. Probably that's part of the issue.
You're crowding the ball and swinging too upright could be
a part of the issue. But I'm also going to
share one other thing with you and everybody else listening.
Wedge design that we have in this decade looks very
similar to what we had sixty years ago.
Speaker 6: And it's just a.
Speaker 10: Phenomenal thing that that one club is not changed in
what golfers of all strength profiles and all skilled profiles
fight our ballooning trajectories and inconsistent distance. And we just
finished some robotic testing of the top two selling wedges
in the market and ours, and we found with conventional
wedges that moving the point of impact up and down
the face even a quarter or two and a half
an inch, can result in a fifteen to twenty five
foot distance loss.
Speaker 6: It's not your fault, it's the golf club's fault.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 10: And this is a story we're telling out there. And
I'm going to put a shameless plug in here, but
our score forty one sixty one wedges and short terns
were designed to bring trajectories down and improved distance control.
What we found is we have improved this distance loss
from thirty to thirty five feet to less than fifteen
just by the design of the golf club head. And
I'm going to relate that back over to the hybrid.
We designed cavity back long irons with the two and
the three on the bottom of them for forty years
and never found a way to make one that people
could hit.
Speaker 6: Yep, but lo and behold.
Speaker 10: Ten years ago, somebody had the bright idea of squishing
down a metalwood and making that eighteen to twenty to
twenty four degree golf club looked like a little squished
up metalwood. And now everybody can hit those low loft
golf clubs up in the air.
Speaker 4: And you're seeing more noise.
Speaker 6: Design a low loft golf club.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're seeing more and more of those on
the tour too.
Speaker 4: A lot of players to use the hybrid.
Speaker 10: These hybrids are like cheating. They're so easy to hit. Likewise,
when you get into the high loft golf clubs, that
shouldn't look like a six iron meter and that shouldn't
look like a wedge that's looked the same since nineteen fifties.
Speaker 6: And something to think.
Speaker 10: About, Anthony, and I don't know how far you try
to hit a sandwich or a gap wedge. But Ben
Hogan said the maximum distance for a sandwich was forty yards,
and he played a sandwich that's almost identical in weight
distribution to anything that's in the wedge racking the stores today.
And Hogan wouldn't hit it over forty yards. You have
no buiness trying to hit it over forty yards either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then you hear guys like, oh, this is
a part three and you're watching the tour on TV.
This is a part three. It's one hundred and eighty
two yards, and he's got a pitching wedge in his hand.
Speaker 10: It's like what And these guys all go at it
so hard, And like I said, it would surprise you
if you want to entertain yourself on a snowy. You
live in Illinois, so you're not in golf whether yet, Anthony,
go into the PGA tour dot com website, go to
statistics and look at that proximity to the hole on
approach shots and look how wide the difference gets from
one tour player to another inside ninine range one twenty
five to one fifty five versus how tight these guys
are in proximity the whole between one fifty and two
fifty do.
Speaker 1: You mind if the second question really leads into what
you were just discussing. John Pappas of Santa Rosa, California,
says that he's a twelve handicap and he's trying to
set some realistic goals for his pitching, chipping and sand shots.
He says, so, how close on average should I be
hitting my pitching, chipping and sand shots from thirty yards?
And in now, I don't know how to answer a
question how close on average you want to get when
you're at thirty yards and then you want to get
everything inside of tap in range?
Speaker 6: I guess, well, but that's not a realist. You have
to be a realist with your expectation.
Speaker 10: And if you look at let's look at the tour
stats and say that that, let's go where the tour
guys are from fifty to seventy five yards. These are
the best guys in the world. And this is kind
of related. I'm gonna throw this in there, but if
what's really interesting is to look at how many shots
on average these guys had from fifty to seventy five yards,
and the average guy on tour for all of twenty
twelve had less than twenty shots from fifty to seventy
five yards. The marrawl of that story is these guys
don't lay up to that range because it's a really
hard range. They're smarter than that. But when you're around
the greens, here's the rule of thumb that I would say.
If you're inside thirty yards, and that goes all the
way from the fringe out to thirty yards, those shots
are going to be divided into two categories. One is
very difficult. You got a flop shot over a bunker
to a close cut pen. Two pretty routine. You've got
a twenty yard pitch shot. Greens wide open. It's not
overly undulating. If you play to a fifteen handicaper higher,
I think that your goal should be fifteen to twenty
feet on average. That may sound wide to you, but
basically that's a range that you never three put from
and you'll make a handful of them. Now, the closer
you get, the closer. But it is not realistic to
expect tap ends from around the greens unless you do
this for a living. I mean, watch the guys on tour.
They chipped the tap in range. They chipped a five
and six feet a lot, so tap in range is
not realistic. Wait, realistic is the lower your handicap, the
fewer bogies and more pars you should make. Holding one
out is a stroke of luck unless you're a tour
player and practice this relentlessly.
Speaker 6: And I tell people all the time.
Speaker 10: If you're an amateur golfer, you should never expect a
hole of shot from off the green. Those are just
big old surprises. But you should always have the expectation.
If you're a ten or twelve or below, you should
have the expectation of giving yourself a decent par put,
decent tap in something under fifteen feet. If you're fifteen
and above, your goal should be do not chunk it,
do not play it. Hit a solid chip twelve to
fifteen feet, you save your bogie and you go on
down the road and you'll get a few of them,
and you'll make a few of those eight or ten footers.
But one of the biggest and as I mentioned early,
we did a research of our owners and we ask,
on average, how far do you think you leave the
ball from the hole.
Speaker 6: At one hundred yards, the.
Speaker 10: Average that our owners said would have made every one
of them the best player on the PGA Tour. So
they don't average that. They're good ones average that. But
when the best guy on tour from fifty to seventy
five yards, if you can get it inside ten feet,
you are one of the five best players on tour. Okay,
So be realistic in your expectations. If you've missed the green,
this is now a bogie hole. It's a bogie hole.
Save a bogie go to the next hole.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: Actually, you know what I would I would kind of
inject here is that if you have a lot of
shots from thirty yards and end, you may be take it.
You may want to take a look at your approach
shot and and kind of club up a little bit
more because you're not reaching it and you're picking the
wrong club to for your approach.
Speaker 6: I think that's excellent advice.
Speaker 10: And what we have a little book that's available for
download on our website called the Score Method, and the
score Method is about being bringing precision to your short
to your approach shots, particularly to short range pro shots.
And every golfer is kind of off the subject, maybe,
but every golfer has three distances with every club and
that's how far they hit it, how far they wish
they hit it and how far they think they hit it. Unfortunately,
golfers play the game based on how far they think
they hit it or they wish they hit it, and
that's why golfers continually come up short. And I would
tell you, if you want to improve your scoring, go
play around the golf and take one more club for
every approach shot you have, and just put a nice
smooth wing on it, and you will probably shoot the
best round.
Speaker 6: Of your life. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And the other thing.
Speaker 1: And I see this so often, and if you're a
golf smarter listener, then you've got to get this concept.
But especially like on a par five, just because you're
in the middle of the fairway, thank goodness, off the tee,
that doesn't mean if you've got two hundred and fifty
yards to go to the green, that you need to
pull out your three wood and hit it two hundred
and ten yards, because then you're in a very difficult
position when you're in that thirty to forty yard I mean,
I hate those kind of shots. I would much rather
have a shot at one hundred and ten yards than
at thirty yards because I'm so much more confident with
my score forty one sixty one forty two degree from
one hundred and ten yards that I feel I can
get it, you know, like in one putt range with
that club. So you know, golf smarter folks don't hit
it as hard as you can hit it to where
you feel you have the best shot of getting close
to the pin.
Speaker 10: And again back to the tour statistic, I'm looking at
twenty twelve statistics, and the best ten or fifteen or
twenty or thirty players on tour do not hit it
fifty to seventy five yards from the hole because they
know that's a very difficult shot. And I would advise
every listener, whether you're a two handicap or whether you're
a twenty.
Speaker 6: Two is to go out.
Speaker 10: To the range and groove a nice, comfortable, full swim
pitching your gap web shot. It's got enough loft to
get the ball nice in every morning, give you spin.
It's doesn to have so much loft that you're liable
to slide it under the ball and create you a
money shot, whether it's ninety yards or one hundred and
five yards or eighty five yards, whatever that number is,
and groove you a money shot that you know you
can count on and when you're playing a far five,
you shoot the laser or look at the yards markers,
and you lay up as close to that money range
as you can. You will begin to score par fives
dramatically better.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for taking that second question. This is
a long show today, but we've got such great content
who cares. Thank you Terry for the advice, and congratulations
to both John Pappus and Anthony Coteletto. Terry, thanks again
for these phenomenal answers.
Speaker 6: Well, it's always fun and look forward to the next show.