Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number four hundred and forty five, originally published
on July fifteenth, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: There's acceptance and then there's release. But what I'm trying
to explain to people is that acceptance is not a
passive week term. Acceptance is a very peaceful warrior like
term because you come to grips with the reality it
is what it is. You don't have to like that
you just double boge the first hole, but you must
accept it. If there's one mustism in golf, you must
accept it's history. It's a done deal. The last hole
when whatever you made is Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, it's history.
It's a done deal. You need to put it behind
you and move on. And when you accept and your release,
you now have closure on that event and you can
now move into the new shot, re energize reinvigorated and
ready to play with confidence and ready to play with
new enthusiasm for the upcoming shots. And that's really what
the invisible ink. You dismiss it, you get it through you,
you move through it.
Speaker 4: Mistake Free Golf with Sports Psychologists to the pros, Doctor
Bob Winters.
Speaker 2: This is Golf Smarter.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only, Doctor Bob.
Speaker 5: Fred. You know, it's great to be with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: It has been a long time since you've been on
the podcast. I was going back in the files and
for those who don't remember or haven't had a chance
to hear you before, you go back to the first
time you were on episode number thirty nine, the Ten
Commandments of Mind Power Golf and then on episode number
one hundred and fifty one mental coach for David Ledbetter
Golf Academy at the time. And now we talk about
your brand new book, Mistake Free Golf.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you what you know it. You know,
it kind of takes me back a little bit. And
it's funny that you say that, because you know, a
lot of water has crossed under the bridge since the
last time we talked and I had. You know, a
young sports psychologist came up to me the other day
and it was kind of funny and it sort of
dates me a little bit.
Speaker 5: And he said, doctor Winners, I've seen you. I've seen you.
Speaker 3: On the Golf Channel and I heard you on you know,
Golf Smarter podcasts, and they were talking of all the
things I've done.
Speaker 5: They said, I really want to thank.
Speaker 3: You for being one of the pioneers in the sport.
And I sort of took me back a little bit. Fred,
I'm sitting pioneers in the sport. He goes, yeah, you
like one of the first people out there, and that
sort of made me, you know, reflect that I've been
in this you know business for a long time and
I've done a lot of great things, met a lot
of great people, you know, such as you, and getting
a chance to give back, you know, to golfers. You know,
really what I've enjoyed over the last forty five years,
you know, playing golf at every level and doing what
I do. So it's it's always great to be back.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you.
Speaker 4: So what is going on now? Where are you these
this summer? What are you doing and where can we
find you? Other than doctor Bob Winners dot com.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm pretty much, you know, traveling all over, but
I am you know, stationed and based in Orlando, Florida.
I am the residence sports psychologist for you know, David
Ledbetter has Ledbetter Golf Academy World teaching headquarters at Championsgate, Florida.
I also, you know, travel you know, the tour at
different events, and I have a lot of great collegiate
amateur players and tour players all over the globe. But
you know, people have found me, you know, watching the
Golf Channel. They know, go into you know, the website
and they actually Google me and contact me, and so
you know, we're all over. Plus, I'm right now speaking
to you from my Nike Golf Schools, where I've been
affiliated with them for about twenty four years, and I'm
up here in the Berkshire Mountains right now for five weeks.
And this has sort of really started about twenty one
years ago doing these Nike Golf schools.
Speaker 5: And as you know, I've always.
Speaker 3: Told people, you know, I love to give back to
the junior golfers because the junior golfers are our future.
And every year I come back and this is sort
of the fountain of youth for me, the polt stale
leone up here in the Williams College up here in Williamstown, Massachusetts,
beautifully located in the Berkshire Mountains up here in western Massachusetts.
And so I get to see these beautiful young golfers,
you know, ages twelve to seventeen, and they have this
sense of innocence, this sense of naive ta, this enthusiasm,
and I always love to get re energized and kind
of you know, get get an inoculation, get another shot,
you know, all that great stuff that they have. Because
it seems like golf, because it's such a brutal and
emotionally tough game, it sort of, you know, kind of
wears us down. It kind of you know, scars us
up a little bit. So it's nice to get some
you know, fresh thoughts, some fresh blood and some fresh
ideas going. And plus, you know, it's a it's a
nice way for me to actually introduce my theories, my
philosophies to junior golfers and and see what their impressions are.
And we can actually start, you know, talking about a
lot of new creations and new intervention strategies. So they're
a great audience to introduce it to and then I
take it out on the tours and then we're having
a blast with it up here.
Speaker 1: Very cool, very cool.
Speaker 4: When you say their naivete, how is it that some
of these young players, like we had an eleven year
old girl on the at the US Open right for
for the PGA, the Women's LPGA US Open. Yes, how
is it that these kids and there's so many young
people that are getting onto the upper level, the top
level of golf competition. What is it about their naive
ta that gets them there? Or is it because of
their naiveta that allows them to compete at that level
and not feel the pressure, or let me ask it
a different way, do they feel the pressure that somebody
with experience feels.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you have to understand really where fear
comes from, and fear sort of resides in the past,
and I think you know, when you have a young person,
perhaps they don't have that many learned fear experiences, so
they really don't have a backlog of negative memories. They
sort of have sort of a fresh slate. So when
you have I believe her name was Lucy Lee, who
comes in as inn the eleven year old, and I
love you know that she's shooting seventy seven, seventy eight
in the US Women's Open at Pinehurst number two when
they had the golf course really set up, and at
her post round interview, there she is, you know, being
an eleven year old, dripping ice cream over her golf
shoes and saying, well, my whole goal was to go
out and have some fun. So I mean, as far
as her expectations, her expectations weren't of shooting the lowest
score or winning the US Women's Open. Her expectation was
more of a task or focus expectation that she expected
to go out and have fun. She expected to go
out and test her talent. You know, she expected to
go out and beat the golf course and let the
chips fall where they may. And that sort of perspective
is really what I'm trying to do with the best
players in the world, because what happens a lot of times,
you know, you hear a lot of huff and puff,
You hear a lot of talk around the locker rooms
and oh this is going to happen, and Q school
is so tough, and it's just hell week and you
got to get through it, and you hear these war
stories and it starts to make you a little bit
more fragile as far as your psyche. So you've kind
of got to let that stuff go. And it's refreshing
when you see these young minds and the naivete is
instead of saying why why why am I not? You know,
why am I not succeeding, the young mind is saying, well,
why not?
Speaker 5: Why not me?
Speaker 3: And let's just go out and go play. And I
think Fred this is a huge thing when we start
getting people going to Q School for the PGA and
the LPGA tours or European, Korean or Japanese tour wherever
I'm working with them, and it seems to me like
the very first time that a player goes out and
goes to Q school, they really don't know what to expect.
So what we try to do is get them into
task expectations. Expect that you're going to give a great
effort into every shot. Expect that you're going to have
some fun. Expect that it will be challenging. Because what
happens as time goes on, you find that a lot
of people who don't do well at Q school or
don't do well at qualifying for US Open US Amateur events,
they almost find ways to sabotage, well, you know, I
failed before and this is the reason why. And instead
of actually learning from those failures, they start to create
this backlog of negative memories and they keep, you know,
replaying those tapes over and over in their mind. And
it seems like sometimes that the first time we do
a thing, you know, we do it pretty well because
we don't have that build up of fear or bad experiences.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit stunned here now.
Speaker 4: You know that with a name like golf Smarter, that
the golf psychology, the mental part of the game is
a huge part of our content. I talk to a
lot of different people who focus on helping people with
their mental game. And you just talked about expectations, and
that means focusing on outcome, doesn't it, And isn't that
a no no?
Speaker 3: Well, you know you have to also take a look
at that. Is that part of goals, goal setting, aspirations, expectations,
Because an expectation is a preset standard of really how
you think something should happen in the future. And so
when you talk about expectations, there's a lot of negative
expectations spread that golfers have, and the expectations that most
golfers have, I think what I call the ninety nine percenters.
They're always focusing everything around the results. They're focusing everything
around the score. They focus everything around you know, their reputation,
how they're going to look, you know, whether they win,
you know. And so it's a very much an outcome
focused expectation about something that they may or may not
do in the future. So when I talk about expectations
and what's the best type of expectation to have, it's
a task expectancy that is in this moment. You know,
I expect you to be totally committed to this shot
at this moment. I expect you to have a great decision.
I expect you to conduct yourself in a manner that says,
I know what I need to do with this shot,
and I'm going to stay in this moment and do
the very best I can, and I'll let you know.
The results speak for themselves.
Speaker 5: And I also.
Speaker 3: Expect at the end of this shot, I will accept
whatever result I have because the result it is what
it is. And so when we start talking about those
type of expectancies. We're talking about an expectation that's going
to happen in the immediate future or what we call,
you know, the upcoming present. So that's really you know,
kind of the difference there. One is a very far
futuristic expectation and the other is an expectancy about what
you're going to do with the shot in front of
you right now.
Speaker 4: And are those the basic premises of or is that
the basic premise of your philosophy, your teaching philosophy.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, my teaching philosophy is this fred is
that anything's possible, you know, like the PGA tour logo
and banner is Anything's possible. You know, I never say
never to any of my students, And what I want
them to, you know, to feel and to believe in
the philosophy we're working on is that it's about you,
your ball and the target and that's in your zone
of control.
Speaker 5: So when you go.
Speaker 3: Out and play, I want you to feel like you
can play anywhere, anytime, with anybody, under any conditions. And
when you have that sort of a personal playing philosophy,
it's a mission statement that allows you to go out
and play to your talent and it doesn't matter who
you're playing with, because what happens most golfers start looking around.
They start thinking these questioning thoughts, like who's watching me?
What do they think about me? Will I be able?
You know, to measure up? And really, if you are
totally taking care of yourself in the moment and being
right here in the moment, you don't have to worry
about anybody else because it is the most intimate relationship
you have in golf, and that is with you, your thoughts,
and your golf ball and the target. And when you
do that, I mean you were in the precious present
and that is the gift of the present moment, and
that's what you give yourself.
Speaker 1: Let's get into your book.
Speaker 4: I'm very excited about the new book called Mistake Free
Golf First Aid for your Golfing Brain. Very good title.
Speaker 5: I like it.
Speaker 4: It really tells a lot.
Speaker 1: Let's break it down. Let's hear a lot about it.
Speaker 3: Please, Well, you know, a mistake for you golf. You know,
I have a lot of people say, well, where did
that idea come from? Well, even after I had written
you know, you know my other books, the mental Art
of putting, using your mind to put your best, the
Ten Commandments of Mind power golf and doing the putting genius,
you know, DVDs and writing you know, golf fitness books
and all of these other things I've done. I took
a look and I said, most of the sports psychology
books that we have, I mean, even starting you know,
with with the early ones, they were always talking about
these platitudes, these positivisms, these trite cliche expressions about be
the ball, be in the moment, stay in the present moment.
And even though I use these terms, what I really
wanted to do was I wanted to elaborate and I
wanted to have you know, the readers say, this is
really what it means when you say I want to
play one shot at a time. Because, as you know, Fred,
if you go out and play with your guys and
you say, hey, you just need to trust your swing.
I think when people hear that, they go, YadA, YadA, YadA,
trust your swing, blah blah blah, be in the moment.
They don't know really what those things are. So when
I had written Mistake Free Golf, I went around, starting
in two thousand and six, and I went and asked
the very best players in the world, a very simple question.
I even went to the most emotionally challenged, the worst
players that were playing at a high level and asking
them what you know, they were thinking about and what
was their greatest mental mistake that they committed during their careers.
Speaker 5: And just by.
Speaker 3: Asking that very simple question, almost to a man, woman,
boy or girl who I asked it, I got, you know,
an immediate response. It wasn't like something I had to contemplate.
They say, well, you know, my biggest mental mistake is
I just get ahead of myself, or you know, I
worry about what other people think about me, or I
just have too many thoughts in my head.
Speaker 5: So what I did.
Speaker 3: I started collecting all these very you know, one on
one interviews and they were just based on one simple
question and going around to the best players in the world.
And so I started picking up all this unbelievable information,
all this great data, and so I put it into
a lot of different components titles, and I broke it
down into nine very basic mental mistakes that almost all
golfers make and mistake. Free Golf First Day for your
golfing brain is really, I think the very first book
and the only book that really takes a look at
the mental mistakes that golfers make, and it gets away
from the platitudes of positivity and it says, Okay, you know,
if you're bleeding right and you're having a mental breakdown
on the golf course, we need to apply a mental
tourniquet now. We don't need to know, get back to
the driving range and go see our guru here later
and kind of sit on the couns for two hours.
You need something right now to stop the bleeding. So
that's why I call it first aid for your golfing brain.
So really, what I take a look at, I take
a look at the you know, the nine most common
mental mistakes, and give very specific descriptions of what those
mental mistakes are, and then I give specific strategies and interventions.
Here's how to alleviate, here's how to stop, and here's
how to prevent those mental mistakes from happening again. Because,
as I say in the book in one of my chapters,
no one is immune from making mistakes. What I'm trying
to do is get golfers to stop making all these
errors of omission, the errors of carelessness, the errors of misjudgment, miscalculation,
and if we could actually just minimize a few mental
errors each day on the golf course, you will start
to play more consistently and more confidently. So that's really
what mistake free golf is really all about.
Speaker 4: And isn't a successful golf all about playing with confidence?
Speaker 3: Well, it is a about playing with confidence, but more
than confidence, because everybody wants to talk about playing with confidence.
Let's understand really what confidence is. Confidence is one end
of the spectrum. The other side of the spectrum is doubt.
It's worry, it's anxiety. So everyone wants to play with
confidence because why because it's the absence of doubt. And
so I'm really, you know, trying to get away so
much cam play, you know, having players play with confidence.
I want you to play with a focus for execution
because if you focus on executing the right things at
the right time, you will have success spread. And when
you start to have success, it creates a momentum of
more success, and then you have more and more success,
and then the residue at the end of the round,
after you've had all these many successes, the residue you
have is something that we call enduring confidence. Because what
I call the ninety nine percenters versus the one percenter
is the people that I work with. The ninety nine
percent have something I call conditional confidence, and it's a
false or spurious confidence. It's a pseudo confidence. And conditional
confidence says, well, if I start off great, I'll feel confident.
Then if I make that first three foot boy, okay,
everything's good. Now, if I hit that first drive off
of the opening tee in front of that gallery, okay,
I'm good for the day. But I always say, okay,
that's okay. Everybody understands that. But what happens when you
start off, you know, for the first day.
Speaker 5: And you go bogey bogie double bogie?
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, do they stick a fork in
you and put you on the barbie or do you
sort of rebound? And really, if you are psychologically hardy
and you're mentally strong, and you have what I call
true confidence, and you focus on executing your game plan,
you actually get through that bad stuff and you persevere
and through a determined spirit and a disciplined mind, you
actually start to play and you're now it starts to
come out.
Speaker 5: In fact, this just happened.
Speaker 3: I was talking to one of my players last night
and he was doing US Amateur qualifying and he's leading,
you know, after the first round of the thirty six
hole qualifying, and he said he started off bogey bogie bogie.
He then proceeded, you know, to do nothing different, just
stayed in the moment, continued to get to the next
shot and played the shot in front of him, and
he birdied four of the next five holes. So it's
sort of that consistency and it's disciplined and that's really
what mental training, mental skills training is all about. You
could sit here and talk until the cows come in
from the fields, Fred about you just got to be positive,
You got to do breathing exercise, sing a happy tune.
I don't tell people this, and I think people tell this.
I don't know really why they're telling them this, other
than if it makes them feel good. The point is
people need specific strategies. They need something right now that works,
that's effective, and they need also be away of what
they're doing, you know, when they're doing things well, and
they also need to be aware of what they're doing
when they're not doing it so well.
Speaker 4: Dave Stockton was on the show a number of episodes
back and he talked about looking at the clouds in
between holes.
Speaker 1: It's like, why would you what?
Speaker 4: He says, just look at the clouds And I'm like
why And he says, so you don't have to, you know,
beat yourself up on what's about to happen next. You
just get your mind out of it for the moment
and just think of something else and then get yourself
back into it.
Speaker 3: Well, I've heard all sorts of different things should people do.
I mean, they're counting the number of steps in between
the shot, they're counting the number of leaves on the tree,
or the number of leaves that are on the ground.
And I'm sitting there going wow, I mean, you are
using a lot of energy, because that's the whole point
about having you know, what we call a mental trigger,
a trigger to get you into this next shot. And
the time between a shot from your last shot to
your upcoming shot, that should be a time where you're
sort of mentally, you know, being reinvigorated, that you're sort
of it's sort of a mental time out, and it's.
Speaker 1: Sort of like what would like to call a mental mulligan.
Speaker 3: Yeah mulligan, but yeah, a mental time out. Fred is
just hey, you, okay, I don't have to think about
golf right now. And really, what Dave's Dockton was probably
alluding to was something that Walter Hagen and and all
the older players used to say, Hey, you know, just
you know, take a great walk, smell the flowers, and
realize that nobody's getting out of here alive in the
first place, so you might as well enjoy your time
on the golf course. So those are some things that
you know, we need to kind of really, you know,
take a look at. But I really want, you know,
the listeners to understand that, you know, we make all
sorts of mistakes. I mean, that's really what mistake free
golf is. It's it's a great catchy title because it
really does grab your attention if I could play mistake free.
But I mean, no one's immune from making mistakes. But
I'm talking about if you understand what a mistake is.
It's an error. It's an error in movement, an error
in calculation, or it's an error in judgment, and it's
caused by sometimes just being a lazy carelessness, or there's
insufficient knowledge or you have a misconception of what's going on.
And so when we talk about errors. You have physical errors,
you have mental errors, you have emotional errors, and you
even have sensory errors, meaning you didn't really see the
proper break and you made a mistake and you actually
played it too far left and it just didn't, you know,
break that much. Now that's a sensory error, which is
a much tougher error to detect, but an error, you know,
like I talk about, you know in chapter number two,
I hit the ball when I know I'm not ready.
I mean that right, There is a heinous error that
some man golfers make.
Speaker 5: Fred they step into.
Speaker 3: The ball, they have full commitment, they're ready to go,
but all of a sudden, the little puff of win,
you know, kind of blows into their ear. You know,
they think they might need a little bit more club,
and they know they should back off. They know they're
not totally ready, but they go ahead and hit it anyway.
And it's funny how many people make that error. And
what I really want to say in Mistake Free Golf
is that anyone who goes out and buys it will
realize right away that the best players in the world
make the same mistakes that all recreational golfers make. They
just don't make them as often, and when they do
make them, it's for a lot more money and maybe
for a title, and it's much more publicized. But they
do make the same mistakes, and they have learned through
the years to not make these mistakes because if they
continue to make these same mistakes, they wouldn't be on
tour very long.
Speaker 4: What did you mean before when you said errors of omission.
Speaker 3: Errors of a mission, just you know, not really knowing
you know where the trouble is. Uh, just you know,
errors of just just lack of understanding. I mean, so
you know, an error of a mission there. You know,
there's many different errors of a mission we can make
in golf, but you have errors of comission, that is,
you knowingly made a mistake, you made.
Speaker 5: A bad swing.
Speaker 3: But when I say errors of omission, it's like not
really knowing what you did. Because Fred, most players come
in to me and they say, doctor Winters, I know
what it is that I'm supposed to be doing. I'm
just not doing what it is that I know and
I and I have to ask them, well, if you
really know, you know what you need to be doing,
then don't you think it would be a good thing
to be, you know, continuing to do that, and why
aren't you doing it? And they'll look at me and
they'll say, I don't know. That's why I'm coming to
see you. And then I asked they talked to them.
I said, well, there's several reasons, he said, Because one is,
maybe you really don't know what it is that you're doing.
Maybe you think you do, but maybe it's a blind spot.
Maybe you're not being aware of it, or you may
be careless, or you may be just a mistake or
just a sloth. But there's so many errors that we
can make. Fred And when I'm trying to talk about
in this book, in the Mistake for you Golf, you
know book, this is this is like a training manual
and I've had, you know, people say that this is
the most complete, absolute book that they have read that
says this is. This really gets to the meat and
potatoes of everything we wanted to know about golf psychology.
And I love one of my friends, Michael Doctor, who
was the twenty thirteen PGA Golf Club Professional of the Year,
he said that this is a must read.
Speaker 5: He said, he's seen.
Speaker 3: Everything and he reads everything out there. He said, this
is a five star and he said, this is what
every junior golfer, every parent of every junior golfer, and
every aspiring tour player should should be reading. And so
that to me was a five star testimonial. And you know,
David Ledbetter and so many other people have read it
and they go, this, this is sort of your magnum opus.
Speaker 5: This is something you know that you should be very
proud of.
Speaker 3: And I had. You know, some people just asked me
the other day, they said, when did you start writing this?
And I said, well, I started collecting the the interviews
and just started talking to people back in two thousand
and six, and then I really completed it a couple
of years ago, and Saint Martin's Press, McMillan Books, said,
we love this manuscript, we want to publish it.
Speaker 5: But it took me almost all.
Speaker 3: My life to kind of figure out fred all the
different things, how we could actually make these strategies and
interventions to help people get through these mental mistakes. So
it's like everything else. It's like any great artist or
musician or even golfer. It takes a long time time
to really understand what it is about these these descriptors.
So you can provide an accurate prescription for success.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm you know, this is the ninth year that
I've been doing these interviews consecutively, like every week, and
to me, it's such a lesson and I continue to
learn more stuff that I'm blown away.
Speaker 1: It's like never thought of it that way. That's wonderful.
It's there's so much, so much to know.
Speaker 4: When we're talking about momentum, Like when somebody I'm playing
with double bogies the first hole with a three putt,
They're like, oh my god, today is going to be awful.
Speaker 1: My comment is generally, yeah, well you got that out
of the way.
Speaker 4: Now that you're done with that, let's, you know, move
on and forget about it, you know. But there's that
momentum factor that you were talking about earlier, and it
seems like the momentum, the positive momentum forward as things
get better and you start getting into a groove, that's
a much slower climb then the momentum when things start
to fall apart and everything rapidly goes downhill. How do
you balance that and stabilize that?
Speaker 5: But it's funny.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna bring back a story that just happened last week, Fred,
And since you and I are just having this great conversation,
I had, you know, junior golfers and we went to
sort of like a wonderful little bowling alley and it
had all the video games and you could actually get
a video game and you get you know, sort of
you know, all the tickets. You know that you go
like the Chuck E Cheese and those places where you
get all the tickets and you can go in and
have your kids, you get it. Well, I had some
junior golfers hit like a little water balloon that had
invisible ink onto one of my you know, young LPGA
teaching professionals, and they did it as a joke and
they took it.
Speaker 5: In good stride.
Speaker 3: But I'm sitting there and I'm looking at this and here,
you know, the LPGA teaching profession had like a white
blouse on it and there was a.
Speaker 5: Huge big thing blue ink.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, blue ink. And I'm you know, it was
sitting here, I'm going, oh my goodness, now what happened.
I was sitting here going, well, you know, junior golfers,
hey kids or kids, you know, and we all laughed
about it, and you know, the teaching professionals.
Speaker 5: My goodness, what's going on? I go, oh, I can't.
Speaker 3: This is a brand new blouse. And they were talking
about After about ten minutes, it all faded away. And
so I started thinking about this as you were, you know,
posing that question. Is that you have invisible ink that
it shows up for a while and it dissolves, or
you have what we call indelible ink that leaves its
mark that you know it's It's sort of like that's
the difference between great players and the wannabes. The wannabes
get hit with that ink and it isn't a disappearing,
dissolving invisible ink. It becomes an indelible ink. It becomes
an ink stain. They think they've damaged the round and
it stays with them and all they can do is
look at the stain and they never get through it.
And it was interesting. I mean, that's kind of an
analogy for really what we do, because that's really what
acceptance is all about. Acceptance, and I'm trying to explain
this to all of my tour players and all of
my players, where collegiate or junior players, the amateur players,
Acceptance is really a neutral objective term when you accept
the result of something that has happened. Say that you
have a player that's double bogue in the first hole,
and now they oh, they start going into the personal
pity party.
Speaker 5: Why why? Why?
Speaker 3: And what happens is that you really have to be
able to accept that and let that go. There's acceptance
and then there's release. But what I'm trying to explain
to people is that acceptance is not a passive, weak term.
Acceptance is a very warrior like, peaceful, warrior like term
because you come to grips with the reality it is
what it is. You don't have to like you know
that you just double boge the first hole and you
could have a little bit, you know, of emotion, a
little bit of what we call that arousal drive that
sort of kind of kick it into a different gear. Okay,
let's get through this. You don't have to like it,
but you must accept it. If there's one must one
mustism in golf, you must accept because it is what
it is, because it will be unchanging. It's history. It's
a done deal. The last hole, whatever you made is
Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, it's history. It's a done deal,
you need to put it behind you and move on.
And when you accept and you release, you now have
closure on that event and you can now move into
the new shot re energized, reinvigorated, and ready to play
with confidence and ready to play, you know, with with
new enthusiasm for the upcoming shots. And that's really what
the dissolving the invisible ink. You dismiss it, you dissolve,
you get it, you know through you you move through it.
But when you have the indelible ink, when you stain yourself,
when you do not accept, you take that stain that trash,
and you take it and you stain the next shot
and the next shot, and before long, you know, your
round is trash.
Speaker 1: And that's why we're talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have to throw the shirt because the ink
will not go away. The concept of the invisible ink
ors is indelible ink just drew me immediately to the
fact that that's why we use pencils on our score cards.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeahs.
Speaker 3: And you always have to watch the golfers that have
the pencils with the erasers at the top. I'll tell you,
you know, but no, we don't play with those type
of people. So those those people, you know, that's that's
a game of management, you know. So those are the
people what I call the ninety nine percenters. They're so
worried about score because that's really what happened. I mean
when when players come in and one of my chapters
is chapter five, I care so much about score, results
and my reputation. And I always talk about that is
that the first thing people ask you when you come
in from a round of golf, Fred It isn't hey,
did you really stay emotionally invested in every shot you commit,
be your routine and every shot. They don't to ask that.
The ninety nine percenters ask why did you shoot? What'd
you shoot? You know? Or even if they say, well,
how did you play? And Fred Green gives them an
answer like, well, I'll tell you what I hit twelve
out of fourteen fairways, I hit fifteen out of eighteen Green,
they go, no.
Speaker 5: No, no, I don't want to hear that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to hear you know what you shot.
And the only reason they ask Fred Green that is
they don't care about Fred.
Speaker 1: Green, right, They want to care to themselves.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. It's about comparing. So that's why when we talk
about golf. You have an objective score and then you
have sort of a subjective interpretation of that score. And
it's so important that you know, young players learned that
you are not your score, your self image, your golf esteem,
your golf confidence isn't just wrapped up in your score.
And you know, because there's a lot of things that
you know, you have to be able to pull out
of around where you didn't score well, but you did
some things really well subjectively, and that's really what we
have to kind of focus on. And that's really what
I'm talking about here in Mistake Free Golf, and I'm
just gonna go down you know, these these different chapters.
Speaker 5: Fred.
Speaker 4: So that's great because you know what I was about
to bring up chapter five. I was about to bring
up chapter five when you said.
Speaker 5: It, okay.
Speaker 4: I wanted to bring you up because I got an
email recently from a listener in Australia who is talking
about how he's trying really hard to not focus on
the scorecard, not to look at where he is in
his round until at the end, and he plays with
people who are all the time going all right, I'm
one up, okay, I'm you know, we're even and we're
two in no doubt, you know, And he's like, stop it,
He says, how do I get these people to stop
reminding me with the score is If they want to
do it, that's fine, but I don't. How do I
keep them from getting in my face on that?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, that's the big thing, because you know,
most golfers really aren't playing golf. They're playing the game
of how am I doing? You know, how am I comparing?
And they're scorekeepers and they're keeping stats. And these people
are probably bankers, people who work with numbers, CPAs I mean,
and they're always about the number. They're always about the
bottom line. So you know, when people ask you and hey,
you know, how you doing?
Speaker 5: How you doing?
Speaker 3: You take it and you actually deflect it. You put
the onus of responsibility back on the questioner. You go,
I'm doing pretty well, as I'm playing pretty well, how
are you doing?
Speaker 5: How are you shooting? You deflect it right back.
Speaker 3: Instead of trying to say, hey, I've got to give
you an answer. I've got to tally up my score.
Even if they tell you, hey, you know, well you're
two you're two over. You know your three behind? You
know what you have to be able to do is
you have to be able to dismiss the good thoughts,
the good intentions, and all the speaking of others and
kind of just move into your own thing. And that's
really what being in your bubble is all about, is
that you have to just sort of just let it,
just let it pass. Instead of thinking no, no, keep
your eyes, you know, and ears closed, you just kind
of dismiss it and say, oh, that's good. You know,
we're great, and then you just kind of get back
into your business. But that's that's really worth Chapter five
and I've got some very specific, you know, some really
nice ones you know, in this And I really want
to say about the book is I talk about a
nice introduction. I talk about and it was great that
rich Lerner had written my introduction for me the Golf Channel.
I've known rich for a number of years and do
a lot of charity work for his family golf tournament,
and he had written me just an eloquent you introduction.
And then I talk about a player I interviewed waltzon Briski,
you know, the iron worker that came from New Jersey
who belongs to my home club Orange Tree in Orlando, Florida,
and we start talking about you know that story. But
and then it goes right into like the nine different
mistakes that golfers make. And the first mistake that golfers
make is I don't believe in my talent. I worry,
I doubt, And that's that's the first chapter. And the
second chapter is I hit the ball when I know
I'm not ready. Chapter three is I get ahead of myself.
I fail to stay in the present moment. Chapter four
is I do not to my shot or my game plan.
Number five, I care too much about score results, my reputation.
Chapter six, I worry about what others think about me.
Number seven I expect to play perfect, and number eight
I think too much, and number nine.
Speaker 5: I lose my composure.
Speaker 3: So for every one of these chapters spread I give
a nice presentation, a descripting or a describing story. I
use a lot of players interviews, and then I give prescriptions.
I give treatments what we call doctor Bob's Rix for success.
And at the very end of very chapter, I compress
it almost into like a little zip drive. If you
want to use computer technology, I say take.
Speaker 5: It to the course.
Speaker 3: This is what you need to do because people can say,
you can talk to me about confidence and trust all
day long, just tell me what I need to do.
And so I'm really big into Okay, this is what
you need to do do. This is what has worked
and has worked in the past, is working now and
it will work in the future. And you need to
comply with this. And if you do this, you're going
to be well on your road to the road of
yes I can.
Speaker 4: It's so consistent with that. I've always thought about the
difference between men and women. Men are results oriented, women
are process oriented. So when you know, when you when
you when a woman says, ah, I'm having such a
hard time with okay, let's plug in golf. I'm having
you know, it's such a hard time with this fill
in the blank, and the guy will say, well, here,
here's what you need to do, like you have at
the end of your chapter. Here's exactly what you need
to do, and she looks at he says, I don't
want an answer. I just want you to listen to me.
Speaker 1: And that's why I like.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 4: They like to talk to their girlfriends because they just
so I've learned, I'm coming up. I've been married thirty
four years, and I've learned that when when you know,
when my wife presents a problem that she's having, I've
learned instead of giving her an answer, I've learned how
to nod a lot and.
Speaker 3: Say, oh, well that's that's that's really good. That's just
good mental management and emotional management, right there, Fred, Yeah,
so that's that's the hard Yeah. Well, I mean that's
the point, you know, and being married. You know, the
old thing about men, and I'm making a very gender
statement here is do you want to be happy or
do you want to be right? And doctor Phil, you know,
was always talking about that, you know, do you want.
Speaker 5: To be happy? Do you want to be right?
Speaker 3: But in my book Mistake for e Golf, First Day,
for your golfing brain, I sort of present both, sort
of that male female brain, if you will, because women
always ask me, Fred, why why are we doing this?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 3: Why why is this so? And so I want players
to understand, this is why you're having this problem, this
is why this has become an issue for you. Now
now we answer that question why, here's why it is,
and here's how you need to do it. Here's how
you can get through it. And here's how you can
prevent it from coming and happening again. So that's sort
of really what you were kind of talking about. And
that's why so many people say you present the problem,
you know, the presenting issue. You describe it, and you
give great interviews and the Michelle Wiez, the Suzanne Petterson's,
the Nick Prices, the Greg Normans, all the people that
you know, give like these wonderful, you know, little interviews
to you, and then you actually sort of kind of
go through and elaborate on what they did, what they said,
and then here's what we need to do in order
to prevent it. And so people have gone through and
they say, wow, this is unlike anything I've ever read before.
So you know, we're really happy with it because I
took a different approach instead of saying, okay, you need
to adhere.
Speaker 5: To your routine.
Speaker 3: I mean I took a look at here's the negativity,
here's the mistake, here's the danger zone. All right. So
all right, so you've cut yourself on the golf course.
Here's how you apply the tourniquet. Here's how we actually
get better.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, why do I have a sense that these nine
chapters are kind of like the front nine. There's gonna
be a back nine soon to follow.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, you know, and I'm just really happy because
the books has been receiving uh five stars you know,
from literary sources such as good Reads.
Speaker 1: Oh congratulations.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it's it's just everyone who reads it's been
you know, Uh, it's been available now through Amazon dot
com and Indie Bound and Barnes and Noble. I mean
you can you can get it anywhere. It's available at
all book real retailers.
Speaker 4: Well, you know what, Here's where you get it is
at golfsmarter dot com because we do have the book
in our golfers mart. We have all of your books
in our our shopping section. Yeah, via Amazon, so you
can get it from your kindle or you know, you
can get it for download, or you can buy the
hard copy. So yeah, just to remind everybody that this
book is available.
Speaker 1: Right now in our in our shop at golf Smarter.
You don't have to go anywhere else.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And you know, someone asked me the other day,
they said, well, what's the greatest mistake you know, doctor
winners that you think uh is in golf And I said, well,
I mean I can give you my nine.
Speaker 5: But I think the tenth.
Speaker 3: One is is that you fail. You make the mistake in.
Speaker 5: Not buying this book.
Speaker 3: So I think that's the greatest mental mistake it is.
I mean, I just think you know, people who have
read it, who've come.
Speaker 5: Up to me and they go wow, uh.
Speaker 3: And I get emails, you know, every day talking about
people who've had uh, they've cut you know, I mean,
they've actually taken seven eight shots, you know, off of
their score. They've shot their they've shot their lowest score.
They got into a zone like state where they were
playing one after one until I'm done. And I talk
about that mantra uh in a lot of my chapters.
Speaker 5: But the point of it is.
Speaker 3: That's what people want. They want something that's an easy read,
that's simple and very specific. And that's always been my
KISS principle. I've never thought about keeping it simple stupid,
because golfers are not stupid people. They're very highly intelligent.
They know what works, they know what works for them
and what doesn't. So I've always said KISS means keeping
it simple and keeping it specific, having a simple thought
and a specific target. And here's what we need to do.
So let's go out and let's go do it. And
so that's what mistake free golf has always been about.
Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely fabulous. So to wrap this up, I'm just
so curious about this. Tell me some of the people
you've been working with and helping out, because we've been
seeing some names that we don't recognize necessarily on the
winners winning on the tour, both women and men. How
many of these people can you say, Yep, I've had
some input, I've worked with them.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, but people go into Yeah, if people
go into the Doctor Bob Winters winners list every week,
I have different winners on there. I can tell you
one of the young stars that has done great over
this past year and who I've actually taken it sort
of as a cub and brought him all the way up,
you know, was Brooks Koepka, who's just a great talent,
you know, from southern Florida and who played for Florida State.
He's a great talent. It's going to be, you know,
working great. Another wonderful talent who just started working with
her about eight months ago is the Korean golfer he
Young Park and He Young is an absolute fantastic talent.
We have you know, Elise Saramia who is a European
tour pro and Perene Delacour who is a French LPGA
tour professional. We've got, you know, so many new up
and coming ones to go with the people that I've
had the pleasure of working with in the past, such
as the Justin Roses and in the Lee Westwoods and
the Michelle Wiez. But there's so many new play years
coming up, and I love I love my developing tour players.
You know, people you have worked.
Speaker 1: With Justin Rose and Michelle we or.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, yeah, years.
Speaker 1: Past, Yeah, oh you have Okay, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, years and years years past now you know I
you know, I don't work with him, you know, currently,
but you know, through the years, through their developing. You know,
I've been very lucky to have access, you know, to
many of the Ledbetter people come through the Ledbetter Academy
and you know, people such as the Sandra Gals to
Julieta Granadas and people such as that you know, have
worked with David and obviously you know, being with David,
I'm going on my fifteenth year now being with David,
and David's working on some new things has really sort
of been pioneering some new strategies and it's very exciting,
you know what he's doing. So a lot of things
we're doing at champions Gate is in collaboration, you know,
with with everything, and it's all sort of interactive and
so it's a mind body spirit. It's just a lot
of great stuff going on right there. So it's just
a lot of new things going on, Fred. But I'll
tell you the greatest, you know, some of the greatest
what I call success stories have come from some of
my young college players who have now come out or
going on the tours, the developmental tours, because the whole
planet right now, Fred is a golf tour. Whether you're
playing in Singapore, or you're playing in El Paso, Texas,
or you're playing in southern California, or you're playing in Maine,
there's a golf tournament going on somewhere right now where
you've got great talented people playing. And much like tennis
did twenty twenty five, thirty years ago, that's really what
golf is.
Speaker 5: I mean, I've been.
Speaker 3: Associating myself now with the Hurricane Junior Golf Tour, the
AHAGA and the FCWT and so I've been doing a
lot of work with that and even the Maple Leaf
Junior Golf Tour up in Canada. We're sort of developing
a whole new recruitment of junior golfers who are just
actually just you know, punching through and.
Speaker 5: Going to get there into the winner circle here very soon.
And they start and.
Speaker 3: They're starting to come up younger because we have so
much competition now and better information, much like the Fred
Green golf Smarter podcasts where golfers can go in and
listen to some of the world's best talk about their
skill and how they can make golfers better. So I
always appreciate being on because it's a real honor to
be with you and on your show, and hopefully we've
given you, know, the listener, some great information you have and.
Speaker 4: I'm flattered that you would include me in that list.
Thank you very much, doctor Bob. It was great to
talk to you again, and once again, the book Mistake
Free Golf First Aid for your Golfing Brain is available
at Golfsmarter dot com in our golfersmart Doctor Bob, wonderful
to speak to you. Best of luck in the future,
and we look forward to talking to you when your
next book comes out.
Speaker 3: Thanks Fred so much, and like I always tell you,
I hope you always find your ball at the bottom
of the cup.