Speaker 1: Hi, This is Stuart More. Goal is from Glenn Mills, Pennsylvania,
and I played golf at the highly rating Glen Mills
Golf Course. Welcome to Golf Smarter number four.
Speaker 2: Hundred and eighty one, published on March twenty four, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: 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 1: If you can handle being a little bit uncomfortable at
the start because we had to change the way you
were standing or the way you were holding the golf
club in order to get you to swing differently, then
you can handle a lesson with me. But that's amazing
how much you can change where someone's golf club goes
or how it moves around their body just simp by
changing how they hold the club and set up to
the ball.
Speaker 2: Isn't that the easiest thing to correct for you, I
would think, is just your setup?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's not easy. A lot of people just
get the alignment part wrong all the time. Have to
know where you're going if you can't get lined up
to it.
Speaker 2: Their focus is hitting the ball, not where the ball's going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we have a challenge with all my students.
This is the first thing to hear on the teaching tea.
If we took a picture of you from the side
and from the back, and then you go home, and
then you come back today and you set up again
to hit a golf ball a day later, you get
one hundred thousand dollars. If you set up exactly the
same way two days in a row. How would you
do it? What would you measure yourself off of? They
all start figuring out that the target's pretty important after
that and lining up square to it because you can
do that every day, day in and day out.
Speaker 2: How to identify and eliminate pressure on the golf course
With Garrett Jenkinson.
Speaker 3: This is Golf Smarter Premium.
Speaker 2: Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 1: Garrett, Hey Fred, how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm great, So you're in Canada. How's the weather today?
Speaker 1: Oh, we're having a good one today. We're going to
start golfing early this year.
Speaker 2: Is that a good thing or I mean, we have
serious drought conditions here in California. We're in the fourth year,
starting the fourth year of an ugly drought, and I'm
reading articles that's saying, yeah, California, it's about one year
of water left. It's like, but that's not a problem
for you guys. You just hope that the thaws out
and warms up early.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I don't know. It'd be nice if we
could go year round, because what happens for us because
we got the condensed season, everyone just sort of goes
nuts for a voute four or five months.
Speaker 2: Well to get year round golf, I'm sorry, but you
have to leave Canada.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, and we do, right.
Speaker 2: And where do you go for your winter golf?
Speaker 1: I'm a Phoenix or Palm Springs guy. Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, well, next time you're headed out there, let
me know. I love going to Palm Springs. I'll drive
down there, all right, love it, love it. So I
was introduced to you by listener and former guests of
the show, Michael Hamill, who was going crazy about your
teaching philosophy starting on Facebook and then writing to me
just talking about how he's really changed his perspective based
on working with you.
Speaker 1: Mike's a fitness guy in town here and I've been
running golf fitness programs for about fifteen years now in Calgary,
and it's the way I ended up getting into fitness.
It wasn't because I thought we should do fitness. It
was because I thought I could see people couldn't do
what I was asking him to do on the teaching tea.
So I've figured out a way to do some fitness
things and body function things to get people to be
able to perform the things they needed to do on
the teaching tea.
Speaker 2: For me, Oh, I want to back right up there
and pick on that for a second. What are the
things that we don't do? What can't we do that
you were noticing that made you change?
Speaker 1: This? All the changes for everybody, I think. And we're
getting some really good info nowadays. I mean, we've got
these TPI screens that are going on. The Titleist Performance
Institute has got guys studying the body and how it
works and all those things. But most of its flexibility
issues for people, you know, and the troubles that we
get is it's body function. Does your body work like
it did? When you were ten years old. If you
ask anyone that, everyone will say not really.
Speaker 2: Not really, It's more like, of course not.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, and so thank goodness, Yeah yeah maybe maybe. So.
What we've been able to figure out is that we
can actually get people's function of their body back just
hit flexibility, rotational flexibility, strength, posture, balance, even and we
get people improving at that, and it's amazing how much
we can impact their game. Everything that I do is
always I've always said I, if it isn't going to
improve your game, I'm not going to give it to you,
and I guarantee the same thing with with the fitness
program that we do. I tell people, if it doesn't
help you, don't pay me. Wow, that's what I say
with my lessons as well. Well.
Speaker 2: How how much time do I get before I decide
if it's helped me or not?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You only need an hour. I only need to
prove it to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Well how can I tell you if it's
not working without going on try? Because what I have
noticed unless is that even with an hour lesson is
that by the end of the hour, everything's working beautifully.
But when I get to go back out to either
the range or the course which is may not be
for another week or so, it's not there anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, that's that's a shame. We've got to keep on progressing.
We need to be walking that, you know, going up
up the staircase, and we don't want to be regressing
and coming back and forth. We want to continue to
progress forward, right, But.
Speaker 2: It's not always easy to when you're on your own,
to make it work like it did when the teacher
was giving you the nuances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Well you can hire us to just
go golf with you all the time too. I don't mind.
Speaker 2: Sorry, my dollars are going into the playing golf round
and golf, that's right. So how do we do it?
Speaker 1: I mean, how do we stay on top of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I think that's probably my
challenge too. I look at it and I'm always, you know,
every year, I'm asking myself, not even every year, it's
every week, every day, what can I do today to
help my students get better? What can I change? What
can I add? Can I you know, if if it's
if it's video for one person and a track man
for another, maybe even just duct taping someone another one,
you know.
Speaker 2: Whatever, Have you ever ductaped somebody?
Speaker 1: No? No, but I certainly certainly tried all the different
apparatuses out there and had a few on people. But
you know, I think that people have to come to
an idea of what they want to see in their
golf swing and how they want to do it. And
I that's what I try to do with my students
is create a team atmosphere of what are we trying
to do, and where are we going and how we're
going to get there, and we do We do it together.
I don't I don't just pass the info and then
walk away. It's a process that we work through, step
by step over a series of lessons. I don't I
don't ever like seeing someone for one lesson. I need
to see them for a while and we come up
with those plans together and nail it all down.
Speaker 2: Now, you sent me an email recently and you were
talking about how the best players in the world have
many opportunities to improve their game, but the average golfer,
we don't. So and you put it on your responsibility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got the In the last couple of years,
I've got a really powerful piece of technology called a
track Man and it's a Doppler radar that that gives
you ball and club data. I think a lot of
guys are using it as a science experiment there, physics guys,
and they really like it. And I think that a
lot of those types of guys that get into the
physics too much, that information can crush people in this game.
They can take that info and be able to not
even hit a golf ball after listening to it all.
So I think it's important to have a machine like
that to learn more about what's going on. And it
gives us the situation that's happening with people. And so
it's factual data of what happens at the moment of
impact with the ball and the club. And then you
take it and you know, after a lesson, you'll see
that here's where I was at the start of the lesson,
and here's what actually happened with my golf ball and
the distance different and the flight difference and the things
that we changed did they actually work in a lesson?
And it's really interesting with that piece of information and
how how people do stick with the change then because
they've seen it and it's factual data. Of if you
do this, then this will happen, because it's not easy.
Like you said, it's not easy to stick with what
you learned in the lesson. You sort of revert to
your old things. But I find that with this piece
of machinery that when guys get the information, it just
it really hits home for them, and they're like, I'm
gonna I am really going to stick with this because
I saw it. I added twenty yards to my iron
I you know, every iron shot I added. I started
drawing the ball and I've never done that before. I
used to cut it all the time, and I don't
want to do that. And so they really stick with
it because the information is really powerful.
Speaker 2: Right we all believe that. We all think like, oh,
now now that I got it, I'm just gonna run
with this all the time. And again you take it
back out to the course the next week and it's like,
wait a minute, how did that work? How come it's
not working today?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't. I don't see. I like to
think that maybe my students are a little different than that.
Speaker 2: Well congratulations, I wonder fantastic. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1: No, So you know, I think that's that's trying to
find ways. If if I found that my students were
all having that scenario, then in my packages and things
just the way that I think I would be adding
adding in packages that included, hey, okay, we're going to
do a lesson on the on the range, and then
we've got another one that we're going to do on
the golf course. I'd be saying you have to do it.
Where I'm going on the golf course with you, there's
no choice. But I'm finding a big success rate in
a lot of my students.
Speaker 2: Congratulations, thank you. It's a very different lesson going onto
the golf course with them then working on the range,
isn't it.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's it gets a little bit more focused
on what are you thinking rather than what are you doing?
You know, on the on the teaching tee, everyone wants
to know what their body is doing and how it's
supposed to work, and you know, and you get, you
get I have to get them focused on what the
golf ball is doing rather than what their body's doing
all the time. And then you know, I think I
think there's helping someone think their way around the golf
course is a big one. One one thing I always
say to people on the golf course is, on every
single shot, if I bet you one thousand dollars to
hit the fairway off the first tee one, what club
would you hit? Two? And two? How hard would you
swing at it? If you hit the fairway, you get
a thousand dollars. So I think that changes it for
people a lot. And that's probably my my number one
comment on the golf course is if you just heard
me in your ear on every single shot saying thousand bucks,
if you hit the green, what club would you hit?
What part of the green would you hit to? How
hard would you swing? And what club would you use?
Speaker 2: Wait? What are you talking about? A par three or
being able to reach the green on a par four
on your D shot?
Speaker 1: Everything?
Speaker 2: Everything, well, just being able to reach the green off
your T shot, no matter where you're hitting from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think you know yeah, because I
think you know. So if I gave it to you,
Fred and I said we were at one fifty, let's say,
and we've got a green and you go right away,
you know, you pull your one fifty club, you say, well,
that's an eight iron for me. Okay, great, Now, all
of a sudden. If I said, there's a little bit
of wind in your face, the pin is tucked back
right corner, and there's a big wide part of the
green on the left, maybe you would chip a little
seven iron for a thousand bucks into the big part
of the green instead of an eight iron. Just it
makes you think different if you think that the goal
of the shot is to hit the green, not not
you know, not hit it within five feet. And if
you think that way on every shot that you know,
what is it that you know? What shot? A shot
at a time means that you're going to hit your shot.
So the first te you're going to put a t
in the ground, you're going to put a ball on it,
and you're going to hit the golf ball in the
fairway hopefully, and then you're going home. That was golf
for today. That's one shot at a time, and your
measure is did I hit the fairway. That's that's that
you succeeded if you did, and you failed if you
hit it anywhere else other than there. And so one
shot at a time means actually one shot at a
time meaning I'm a success if I hit the fairway
with that swing, and then my next shot would be
hitting the green with my next shot or the fair way.
If it was a part five, do.
Speaker 2: You change that philosophy or that approach depending on the
level of skill per player. Yeah, I mean, like for
a single handicap, would you say, all right, your goal
is not to hit the green, Your goal is to
get it within five feet of you in your approach
shot get it within you know, tap in distance on
that or are you still trying to just keep the
idea of let's just get it to the green and
two put.
Speaker 1: It depends on where we're at. If I already had
a player that I've been working with for a while
and they've got that figured out that it's more important
to hit the green than it is to hit it
to five feet, and then let your potter do a
little talking for you. If we were just in a
truly coaching scenario and I said, hey, I noticed you
had ten shots inside one hundred yards and you're not
hitting them close enough, then we could have that discussion.
You're going to lower your scores be if you get
your hundred yard shots closer to the flag than We
got to talk about that. And it's a risk reward
thing from one hundred yards. You might go at any
flag from one hundred and fifty yards. You might not
go with the same flag as you would from one
hundred yards.
Speaker 2: Well you yeah, hopefully you're not. I mean, now we're
getting into course management, right, right, It's true, that's true. Yeah.
I'll be at a par three one hundred and eighty
yards with a friend who, even on his best of days,
can drive the ball one hundred and fifty yards with
his driver, and he'll pull out his hybrid and you're like, oh, yeah,
flags in the back right, I'm going after It's like,
just try to get to the green. What are you
doing right?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah? And I think that's it's it comes down. Yeah,
So it changes for the level of player. For sure,
there's people who can't reach par fours and two right,
But then I'd be saying, well that that's that's a shame.
Let's go over to the teaching tea and show you
how to hit it further right, and then we're going
to get onto the course. So sometimes you don't want
to get onto the course too early either. I think
that everyone, everyone should be able to have a chance
of hitting part fours and two, that that shouldn't be
a problem unless the golf course is totally unfair.
Speaker 2: And there are those no, yeah, you know that there
are there are some architects who like to just mess
with you, and then there are those who you don't
want to make make it so well, was it? Robert
Trent Jones Sr. Was a difficult par and easy voguee.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I would love to see a golf course where
we don't have to have handicaps. There's so many tea
boxes that what levels you off on a hole is
if we're on a four hundred yard par four and
I play it at four hundred yards, what yardage doesn't
need for you for you? Is it? What yards doesn't
need to be for you to play me straight up
on that hole? Well?
Speaker 2: Isn't that the whole tea at forward program?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I think that I want to see a
golf course done that way. I'd love to see.
Speaker 2: It really well. The whole point of teer forward, I think,
is for every course to participate in their own way
and you just decide, you know, if I want to
hit an eight iron approach shot like they do on
the tour, then I need to move my tea box
up another thirty forty yards, right, So so do it
that way. Just tee it up farther forward so you
can get yourself in position for that eight iron shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to do it. I'd love to
go on the course with a few people and just
say what yardage does everybody need to have this whole
lot to play straight up? The beginner golfer might play
the a part for at one hundred yards? Wow?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 2: I mean it's not tournament play, obviously.
Speaker 1: I'd be more inclined to wager something against you or
with you if you were getting two shots on a
hole versus let's play straight up and I don't care
what your yardage is. I'll play you straight up.
Speaker 2: I like that because my kid Mike, when I go
out with my son to play, and he's always wanting
to make bets with me just to keep his head
in the game. It's like, I don't I don't do that.
He's like, how many strokes you give me? How many strokes?
I said, now, I'll give you yardage instead. You can
you can tee it up right up.
Speaker 1: To one hundred and fifty yards and I'll play you
straight up.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good. I like that idea. We're going to
make a note on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we might be on the something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that could be a lot of fun doing it
that way. Interesting, But you incorporate more than mechanics and
into your lessons.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and well we talked about flexibility already.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Probably my biggest the thing that makes me one
thing that I learned to do through making mistakes myself.
I had a lot of golf lessons where people tried
to change my golf club while it was moving, meaning
it had to get more inside or more outside, or
how the toll had to go up, or And my
belief on the golf swing is that anything that you
want to change has to be changed standing still. It's
it's broken before you move it.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. I love this idea because the golf
swing is so fast, there's so much going on that
it is so hard to be conscious of every nuance
that's going on while the club is being swung.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. So if you can, if you can
handle being a little bit uncomfortable at the start, because
we had to change the way you were standing or
the way you were holding the golf club in order
to get you to swing differently then you can handle
a lesson with me. But it's amazing how much you
can change where someone's golf club goes or how it
moved around their body, just simply by changing how they
hold the club and set up to the ball.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, isn't that the easiest thing to correct
for you, I would think is the position, grip, alignment,
the PGA part of you know, just your setup.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that's not easy. A lot of people
just get the alignment part wrong all the time.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Tough to know where you're going if you can't get
lined up to it.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and I don't think they understand the concept of
target golf or aiming at something. They're just they're just
their focus is hitting the ball, not where the ball
is going.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, we have a challenge with all my students.
All my students get this. This is the first thing
to hear on the teaching ta. If we took a
picture of you down the line and out in the
front and you set up to the golf ball. So
you set up, and we take a picture from the
side and from the back, and then you go home
and then you come back today and you set up
again a day later to hit a golf ball, you
get one hundred thousand dollars. If you set up exactly
the same way two days in a row, how would
you do it? What would you measure yourself off of?
They all start figuring out that the target's pretty important
after that and lining up square to it, because you
can do that every day, day in and day out.
Speaker 2: Clearly your incentive as a teacher is financial reward. You
always like, I'll give you one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I might have an imaginary gambling problem.
Speaker 2: Hey that's better than having an actual game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just try to get people's attention. I use
it all the time. I'm like, if someone called you up,
we use hockey up here. You guys would probably use
football or something down there.
Speaker 2: But you use hockey for everything we said.
Speaker 1: You know, I always tell them you just got called
up to the to the Calgary Flames halftime show and
you got to hit a perfectly straight shot. What are
you gonna do? You're gonna line up like this, right?
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'll tell you my dirty Canadian joke after
we're done recording.
Speaker 1: Okay, So.
Speaker 2: Do you have to or do you think it's appropriate
to warn your students before you start the lesson that
look the changes that we make today, and I've looked
at a couple of your swings, and we're going to
make some changes. Your game is going to digress before
it progresses. And because you know when you talk to people,
I had a lesson last week and my game has
completely fallen apart since then. I'm so frustrated. Well, it's like,
but if you stay with what they taught you, you
will improve. It's just going to take some time. And
you know, we have so many examples on the tour
of guys who are are tinkering and tinkering with their
swings and it doesn't work immediately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it should. It should get them, it should improve,
you know what. So those are PGA tour players. These
are the best players in the world. That's not that's
not the massive of people who land up on the
teaching team in front of me. And you know, it's
easy for them to struggle because they are so good.
Most of the people that I see when you're you know,
let's say you're anywhere from a a twenty handicap down
to a five handicap or or even up to a thirty.
When you make some good and changes in your golfing,
sure you might struggle. But my what I find my
favorite struggle for my students is they all come in
and say, man, I shot so high, I flew it
over every green. I used to play a cot, now
I'm playing a dry I have no idea where to aim,
and I'm hitting the ball way further. Well, that's that's
a pretty good complaint.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. Stop keeping score for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's you know what, it's going to take
a little time to get used to that. And I
think that if everybody said, here's my issue in golf,
you know, like the typical one. I cut the golf
ball and I don't hit it very far. Okay, so
we start getting you to draw the golf ball and
you hit it forty yards further. With everything, the next
round of golf is going to be one of the
hardest rounds of golf you've ever played. Right, everything's fixed,
and you're you're dying out there, and you just have
to learn to play the game in a new way.
But that's the exciting thing is that you start looking
at it and it's it completely changes it, and it
changes it for people and they get excited and get
rolling it. That's so much fun.
Speaker 2: And again it's a situation where you need to get
rid of the scorecard and just treat it as a
practice round and not a you know, scoring round, because
you've got new things going on. So don't hurt yourself
doing that, because you'll really get upset with yourself.
Speaker 1: Well, or just have a fun short game day rescuing yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, right, yeah, it's it seems so entertaining in
some ways that people aren't really sure of the distances
of their clubs, or even if they are, they think
they're sure the distances of their clubs. Say they hit
let's say they hit their six iron one hundred and
eighty yards, but one time they hit it one hundred
and ninety five, and now they're thinking, well, if I
hit it perfectly, I'm going to hit it one hundred
and ninety five. And what happens They come up short.
Most of the time.
Speaker 1: There's when I give you the thousand dollars bad or
one thousand dollars, which club would you pull out right
now to hit that green? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then and then part of that question you
had was and how hard would you swing? What kind
of response do you get to that?
Speaker 1: It's a tough one for people, right, they all come
back and they go, oh my god, you know I
I swing a hundred I swing over one hundred percent
and everything if there is over one hundred percent, you know,
I don't know. I look at it. I look at
any any professional athlete finds their sport easy, and.
Speaker 2: Then they become teachers and don't understand people who can't,
who don't get well.
Speaker 1: Well. But see, that's that's my My job is to
make the game is how fast can I make the
game easy for people? It's great? How how fast can
I get you to a stage where you go, man,
this is just a lot simpler than I used to
think it was. I used to make it so difficult,
and it was me, you know, it was me making
it difficult. And now I know what I'm supposed to do,
and I know what I'm practicing, and i just got
to go do it a bunch of times and I'm
going to get I'm going to enjoy the game a
lot more.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So once it becomes easy, then then the game changes.
Speaker 2: When does it get easy?
Speaker 1: That's your decision. That's up to you. You can make
it easy right now. There's a lot of people who
make it tough. There's a lot of people who have
the tools in the bag right now, they and they
just make it tough because they make everything in life tough.
They just can't. They just can't seem to say, is
this is good the way I'm doing. I like it.
I like what I'm doing. Always I gotta do better.
I gotta do better. There's something that baffles me on
in golf that people think they've always continually got to
change their golf swing. I don't. I don't know any
hockey player who's ever changed the way they shot the
puck over over their career. I don't know any basketball
player who change how they shoot. I don't know any
football player who changes how they throw the ball.
Speaker 2: They tweak, they tweak, they work with coaches, they tweak.
But you're right, making making major blanket changes on things
like that, that's that seems unique to golf.
Speaker 1: If you're right, we got a situation in the world
of golf right now that might might be because of that.
You might maybe when you're number one, you're just supposed
to say I can just practice this more and get
better at what I do already, don't You don't have
to change it.
Speaker 2: Do you get the sense that more golfers want to
be good golfers versus being happy golfers?
Speaker 1: I think that if you want to be what it
depends on what good is for you.
Speaker 2: Well, I've seen a lot of good golfers that are
not happy. It's like, because the basic nature of golf
is I can do be better. I can be better.
I can do this better. I know I can, right,
And so they're frustrated, they're angy, and you know, you
guys who you have guys who are fifteen to eighteen
handicaps that play with somebody who's a nine and they're like,
oh my god, I fight You're so good and the
nine is going, oh I missed that shot. You know.
It's do you ever get happy when you're playing golf?
Speaker 1: What is that? Is that a human nature thing or
a golf thing?
Speaker 2: Well, isn't golf like life in so many ways? That
to me, the major similarity between golf and life is
how you handle the problems right.
Speaker 1: And and that's that's why, because both.
Speaker 2: Life and golf gives you lots of crap to deal with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I hire, my favorite interview process for a
job when I hire new staff is to take people
for nine holes. I don't I don't need to ask
you a whole bunch of questions. I just need to
see how you handle yourself on a golf course.
Speaker 2: Nothing exposes a person's character faster than a round of golf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so true. You know, so if people aren't happy,
I mean we run into those people everywhere. They're in business,
they're they're in there in life, they're in friendships, they're everywhere.
That just there's just nothing that that. You know, they
can't make enough money, their house is never big enough there,
you know, and that's and then they do the same
in golf. And it was man, life show would be
easier if you're like, man, I'm pretty good at just
about everything. If you could just look at yourself and say,
I'm pretty good.
Speaker 2: And I'm satisfied, I'm happy. Yeah, it works for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, once everyone's figured that out, I think we
got life figured out.
Speaker 2: That ain't gonna happen.
Speaker 1: No, I'm living you, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That ain't gonna happen In twenty fourteen. Congratulations, you were
named the Alberta Teacher of the Year. That's yeah, you
should be very pleased and honored by that. And you
said that again in a letter to me, you said,
the game is given, taught and transform many of my beliefs,
thoughts and values that I have in my life. Let's
talk about that for a minute.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Well, what.
Speaker 2: Is it that golf has taught you that it has
transformed many of your beliefs and your thoughts and your
values that you approach, that you change in the way
you deal with your life.
Speaker 1: Now, well, some of the things that that we've even
just talked about, just you know, when is enough enough?
When are you satisfied? That's the thirty thousand foot view
of you know. I remember when I played on tour.
I mean, you know, you'd shoot a sixty five and
you come off the course and you could say, yeah,
but I could have shot a sixty two. There was
those three shots that I did. You know, I missed it,
but yeah, yeah, and you got to be at this
stage and you know, and I when I was when
I played on tour, there was also the opposite. I'd
shoot seventy five and couldn't sleep either because I just
I was so angry that I wasn't going to make
the cut, and it was you know, and you just
have to realize that it is. It just is what
it is. And you know, sometimes if you can look
at a seventy five or a difficult situation and say,
you know, here's an opportunity to turn it around now
and do something great with it. Have a great attitude,
and see if you can make something great of something
maybe that isn't that feels not so great, or even
adding to something that is already great, like shooting is
sixty five and shooting another one. Yeah, so I guess
you know, from my perspective, it's it's been. It gives
me just on little things everything in life. It's so
easy to get swallowed up by kids and work and
all your commitments that go on in our lives and
oh my god, and I you know, I can't, I
can't keep up. And sometimes we forget that, you know,
it is okay, everything's good, and just focus on the fairway.
Quit thinking about the trees, and quit worrying about the water,
and quit worrying about worry about money, and quit worrying
about these things. Those things will come and just try
to focus on and enjoying yourself strolling down the middle.
Speaker 2: How are you able to teach golfers to not worry
about history in this sense that when you said stop
worrying about this tree, stop worrying about the water, It's like,
you know, oh, every time I play this course, I
hit the ball in the water. It's like, yeah, but
that's not relevant to your next shot? Is it?
Speaker 1: Being able to let go is a serious skill? Again?
That's why I go back to that silly thousand dollars question.
You know, if I stand you there and I bounce
that question off you again, I'm like, say, like, you
get a thousand bucks, why don't you forget about the water. Like, seriously,
if someone was really going to give you a thousand
bucks to hit the green, would you be sitting here
going on, I'm going to hit in the water again,
and it's really hard, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I think, yeah, but I actually think that people
would even that kind of pressure. I'll give you a
thousand bucks, which is not necessarily a positive question. I
can see that being a tremendous amount of pressure adds
a lot of tension, adds a lot of you makes
makes the water bigger, makes your hand squeeze tighter, make
your shoulders go up even higher. You know it's not
a relaxed, loose, easy swing. Then there's a lot of
tension behind that.
Speaker 1: Well, if you know how to gamble, it is.
Speaker 2: I had a clubmaker. I had a clubmaker who once
made me fill out one hundred and ten question survey
before he would discuss making clubs for me. And one
of the questions was do you bet when you play golf?
And I said, no, I don't. I don't find gambling entertaining.
And he said, you don't gamble when you play golf.
Why do you play.
Speaker 1: That? Now that might be a problem on the other side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this guy wants to take your money exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't bet either. I'm just learning. But if you
want to bet, I will know.
Speaker 2: And to me, it's more score scorecard watching than anything.
And it's that's what I don't want to do when
I'm playing, is keep looking at the scorecard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, And we're just just commenting on on
how do you how do you you know? Uh, just
when somebody if you did say a thousand dollars question
with the water, it can work in reverse. As well.
And I think I think that's the key is we
all have to figure out how to live with ourselves
or compete against ourselves and and and succeed. You know,
That's the key is we have to be able to
That's really all we're playing against. Is my thinking going
to take me in a negative direction today or a
positive one?
Speaker 2: Interesting? So is my thinking said or is it working
against me?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, And I think that I don't know. I
get a chance to golf with a lot of different people,
and I've golfed with some guys who are pretty good golfers,
and you know, they're they go crazy on the golf course,
throwing golf clubs and to the point where I'm like, man,
I don't I got to say something because I don't
want to get hit with a golf club.
Speaker 2: You know, Well, the first lesson there is stand behind
the other guy.
Speaker 1: And I guess I I abuse my position in golf
a little bit on those scenarios. And I just I
asked them, I said, what are you getting so angry for?
I mean, really, you're you're playing at the level that
you're you that's pretty good for you. I can't play
like me or like a PGA Tour player, So why
are you trying to get mad when you don't hit
a shot like one?
Speaker 2: I actually got an email from a listener ones who
said that his dad used to say to him when
he was a kid, you know, and he was a
hot headed kid, and he would regularly throw his clubs
and his dad said, you're not good enough to throw
your clubs yet.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right. I love I do too. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Golf Performancecanada dot com.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Okay, make sure.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have lots of golf tips coming up there
too this year. Well, one thing we know today with
the track man that when people swing a golf club,
we talk about swing path and club face angle. And
I ask people all the time, if your face points
over here and your path goes over there, where's your
ball end up? And people are pretty sharp when you
ask him that question. They always tell me that the
golf ball basically follows the face, which is the truth.
So wherever your ball goes, it's because that's where your
face is pointing at the moment of impact.
Speaker 2: Club face, not your face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, clubface. Yeah. So what happens when people are
swinging is they don't realize that when they get to impact,
the faces either open or closed, or very rarely is
it square. And I find that the best way that
people can influence their club face because it's a seventy
five percent influence on the ball. The path of the
golf club influences the ball twenty five percent, and the
face of the golf club set is seventy five percent.
So the best way that you can make an impact
on your game is to actually work on your grip.
My saying that I always say is if you're not
working on your grip, you're not working on your game.
So what I want to do is try to give
you some sort of idea of what we can do
in the left hand. So in the left hand, what
happens with a lot of people, so this is their
top hand, what happens to a lot of people is
they get the golf club too diagonal in their hand
this way, and what they need to do is get
the golf club running more across their knuckles this way
so that it's deeper in their hand. You want to
be able to hold it with this pinky back here
and then that gets on this way. So if I
actually turn that this way for you to have a
look at my hand gets turned over so that there's
a bit of a bend in the wrist here as well. Okay,
so that's in my left hand. I always want to
do that. The other way I can think of it
is I want to put the toe of the golf
club up this way, so when I'm holding it, I
want to feel like I'm grabbing a motorcycle grip, like
I'm going to race the motorcycle. And then what that
should do when I hold the golf club is I
actually turn the glub face down a little bit and
close the face. So the big deal is getting the
golf club deeper in your hand, running more across your knuckles.
One other way you can think of it is how
do you hold it? If someone brought you the golf
club this way? How do you hold it? You just
grab it in here and it goes right across your knuckles.
So you can see how it goes across my knuckles
this way, And that's how you want to grip it. Lefetime,
you want to get it more across your knuckles, less
diagonal in your hand, clay around with your grip, make
it either close or open and watch what happens with
your golf ball.
Speaker 2: Awesome. That was an amazing tip and the video is
so important on that. So people are just listening from
this one, you've got to go check out on golf
Smarter TV the YouTube channel so you can see what
he just explained because it's going to have an impact
on the results of your ball flight and your swing.
Speaker 1: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great, Garrett, thanks so much, Buddy.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you, bred I appreciate it.