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