Speaker 1: Four members only. Golf Smarter number three hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: seven pubblished on June four, twenty thirteen.
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: If you want to minimize deceleration of the club, then
Speaker 3: you're going to have to get busy with your post
Speaker 3: impact intentions to keep driving that thing through. That's the key.
Speaker 3: It's not just over when you strike the ball, You've
Speaker 3: got to drive it through. It's a martial arts. I
Speaker 3: interviewed a champion brick smasher, but he said that the
Speaker 3: point of acceleration is always well passed the first brick.
Speaker 3: If he's chopping eight bricks, he's thinking about way past
Speaker 3: the eighth brick all the way down to the ground,
Speaker 3: like he's going to move his whole body and move
Speaker 3: all the way down through all the bricks, and he
Speaker 3: has to folks on a point, well beyond.
Speaker 1: This is beyond follow through though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just all the way to the finish, right, You
Speaker 3: got to stick the finish and you got to work
Speaker 3: it all the way through. And that is what the
Speaker 3: great ball strikers do. And if you know what to
Speaker 3: look for, you can see it.
Speaker 1: Improve your swing from impact backwards with lag Erickson. This
Speaker 1: is Golf Smarter. Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only.
Speaker 3: John, Yes, thanks, it's great to be back.
Speaker 1: I love when people do that when we haven't done anything.
Speaker 1: We've been here the whole time. Bifurcation. I brought it
Speaker 1: up at the end of the last episode, and I
Speaker 1: find it a very interesting topic because I truly, yes,
Speaker 1: we all get to play the courses. We can go
Speaker 1: play pebble and Tory Pines, and there are public courses
Speaker 1: that we get to play that we've seen on tour
Speaker 1: on television and the pros have played. But the PGA
Speaker 1: follows the rules as laid down by the USGA and
Speaker 1: the RNA.
Speaker 3: The end.
Speaker 1: Then there are some rules that the USGA says no bifurcation,
Speaker 1: but they'll go yes, we're going to institute this rule
Speaker 1: immediately for the tour, but for everybody else, we're gonna
Speaker 1: wait four or five years. Okay, so that is bifurcation basically.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Really, you know, come on the wedges and the whole
Speaker 1: putter thing. Wait you wait thirty years, somebody starts winning
Speaker 1: with a long putter and you gotta get rid of
Speaker 1: anchored putters.
Speaker 3: That's pretty ridiculous, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It sure seems that way to me.
Speaker 3: I'm against it, you know, I'm against banning the long putters,
Speaker 3: even though I don't use long putter and I don't
Speaker 3: like the long putters. But the fact that it's been
Speaker 3: around this long for them to just go ahead and
Speaker 3: say it's banned.
Speaker 1: Without talking to anybody about it, you're just doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, the USGA has made a lot of
Speaker 3: big mistakes over the years. It probably started by allowing
Speaker 3: metal woods in the first place, because golf was a
Speaker 3: game of woods and irons. I mean, for the entire
Speaker 3: history of the game from the very beginning was woods
Speaker 3: and irons. So when you talk tradition, woods and irons
Speaker 3: right all the way through. And now baseball they're still
Speaker 3: hitting a wood bat right, leather glove and a leather ball, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it hasn't changed that much. Football they still
Speaker 3: have a leather football, I think, don't they? Yes, you know,
Speaker 3: cricket still a wooden bat, so you know, nobody's jumping
Speaker 3: up and down about that. Are they with baseball using
Speaker 3: a wooden bat?
Speaker 1: Well, baseball and on the professional levels pretty much the
Speaker 1: only level that is using wooden bats. Everybody else is
Speaker 1: using metal bats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. And Little League right everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And as a matter of fact, the National League
Speaker 1: is the only league that doesn't have designated hitter. If
Speaker 1: you go on all the other leagues, designated here is
Speaker 1: kind of like the standard thing. But people are like, no,
Speaker 1: it ruins the tradition. Oh stop it. But so, how
Speaker 1: do you feel about hybrids? I mean, in thirty years,
Speaker 1: the USGA may come out and go, you know what,
Speaker 1: hybrids make it too easy to hit out of the rough.
Speaker 1: We're going to make them legal. It's like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we've been using these, we were raised on hybrids.
Speaker 3: Now it's not fair for a kid, for or a
Speaker 3: kid that was, you know, eight years old, picked up
Speaker 3: the game and just his dad handed him a long
Speaker 3: putter and said, hey, yes, this it's easier, and he
Speaker 3: learns how to use that. So to take that out
Speaker 3: of his hand just isn't really fair. It's ridiculous actually,
Speaker 3: But I would argue that it never should have been
Speaker 3: legal in the first place. I mean, long putters never
Speaker 3: should have been allowed in the first place. Metal woods
Speaker 3: and the giant frying pans and cavity backs and all
Speaker 3: this stuff never should have been allowed in the first place. However,
Speaker 3: since they have, you can't just go back all these
Speaker 3: years later and then make them illegal. So I'm against that,
Speaker 3: but I'm against what they did in the first place,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense. But given be consistent, Yeah, but
Speaker 3: be consistent because that's tradition. Like I was raised that
Speaker 3: golf was a game of respect and tradition. Right, you
Speaker 3: don't cheat, you know, you learn, it's a gentleman's game.
Speaker 3: You're you know, it's not like other sports, like you're
Speaker 3: you're polite, you're playing.
Speaker 1: There's no coach along referees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was one of the beauty, the beauty
Speaker 3: of the game and one of the great virtues of
Speaker 3: the game, and and brought a lot of great people
Speaker 3: to the game. But all that's gone now, you know,
Speaker 3: that's gone now because with the gear and the break
Speaker 3: from tradition has been I can't think of a sport
Speaker 3: that's been more run over by technology than golf has.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's it's crazy. This game of
Speaker 3: tradition is no, it's no longer a game of tradition.
Speaker 3: It hasn't been for quite a while. It's now more,
Speaker 3: really more a game of technology.
Speaker 1: So the PGA Tour should have their own set of rules.
Speaker 3: Well, some tour should, I mean, whether it's PGA. I
Speaker 3: think there should just be a new a new tour
Speaker 3: that starts up like a person tour, where you just say, okay,
Speaker 3: we're our own organization. These are the rules.
Speaker 1: Oh you think the TV would buy into that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I don't. You know, some people love seeing
Speaker 1: the ball fly three hundred and fifty yards.
Speaker 3: But on TV, so you can't see it fly that,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, It wouldn't matter. You can't
Speaker 3: see much on TV.
Speaker 1: So oh, look the balls up in the sky. What's
Speaker 1: I have no idea because they're doing a close up
Speaker 1: with the ball the whole time. You don't know that
Speaker 1: there's a Yeah. When I first started playing, I was
Speaker 1: blown away. It's like they said, oh, what a beautiful shot,
Speaker 1: but he hit a way to the right. What is that?
Speaker 1: I had no idea that was such a thing as
Speaker 1: a draw, you know, and it's like, oh, that's supposed
Speaker 1: to do that. No.
Speaker 3: I mean if you look at other sports, let's say,
Speaker 3: other sports of bifurcation is happening, right, I mean look
Speaker 3: at football, for instance. I mean you've got the Canadian
Speaker 3: rules football. You've got these different indoor arena you've got
Speaker 3: in soccer, rugby, rugby, union, rugby league. I mean there's
Speaker 3: these different versions of you know, how about softball, you know, softball, baseball,
Speaker 3: you know, there's different There's there's professional women's softball. If
Speaker 3: there's professional women's softball, there can certainly be professional men's.
Speaker 3: Per Simon to her, I think, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 3: necessarily have to be as big as the PGA tour,
Speaker 3: but this could be a place where you know, the
Speaker 3: real shot makers and the real players like they go
Speaker 3: maybe like like a jazz club. Okay, this is a
Speaker 3: real good the good musicians go down here and they
Speaker 3: played out at Smokey's or whatever on you know, Tuesday
Speaker 3: nights at midnight or whatever. From you know that sort
Speaker 3: of thing. I think there's room for a tour like
Speaker 3: that where there really more of a ball Striker's Tour
Speaker 3: because on a tighter course or the rough's higher and
Speaker 3: you have to hit it straight and this sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Greens are smaller and all this. It's a different game, right,
Speaker 3: and having to shape and curve the ball and work
Speaker 3: it correctly and position in the right side of the Pharaowah.
Speaker 3: It's not how many farries you hit, it's about are
Speaker 3: you hitting it in the correct side of the faraway?
Speaker 3: You know, that's how good the guys used to be,
Speaker 3: you know, to be able to hit it which which
Speaker 3: side of the pharaoway, not just his swing as hard
Speaker 3: as you can and figure, okay, half the time the
Speaker 3: ball is going to land in the faraway and that's
Speaker 3: kind of Guys are winning on the PGA Tour hitting
Speaker 3: less than fifty percent of their ferries. That's crazy, that's
Speaker 3: not that's not professional quality. So by furication is necessary
Speaker 3: I think for golf to to really hold some kind
Speaker 3: of traditional value which is lost now. So other sports
Speaker 3: again what so interesting?
Speaker 1: It's interesting topics sports, I mean, other.
Speaker 3: Sports are all are all, you know, branching off. I
Speaker 3: mean most other sports have branched off. I mean football's
Speaker 3: branched off.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, yeah, and you even have you know,
Speaker 1: from from the college level to the pro level, there's
Speaker 1: different rules on a lot of sports.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of a lot of different rules. So
Speaker 3: I think it's just a natural progression, and I hope
Speaker 3: and I hope that conversations like this and well, obviously
Speaker 3: more and more people are talking about it. When I
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't play golf for thirteen years, so
Speaker 3: when I left the tour, I didn't want to be
Speaker 3: a club pro and sit in the shop and sell
Speaker 3: socks or whatever. That just wasn't my thing. So I
Speaker 3: just went off and did you know, other things. And
Speaker 3: when I came back to golf, Actually, my wife wanted
Speaker 3: to learn how to play golf, and she didn't even know,
Speaker 3: really I was a golfer. She found some old maggating
Speaker 3: clippings or something, you know, and saw, oh, while you
Speaker 3: were like a champion golfer, and uh, and I we
Speaker 3: talked about that. She said, oh, I've always wanted to
Speaker 3: learn how to play golf. So I kind of looked
Speaker 3: around for a driving range.
Speaker 1: How did you tuck that away and make it like
Speaker 1: it's part of your life?
Speaker 3: I had played in thirteen years, so I mean I
Speaker 3: had I had, you know, clippings and boxes and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, but I just I just didn't play. It
Speaker 3: just wasn't interesting to me to go out and not
Speaker 3: play as well as I used to. Like, that wasn't
Speaker 3: something I wanted to do other things. Oh wait, well
Speaker 3: made you quit the traveling? Oh?
Speaker 1: Is that what it was?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got tired. I was on the road eight
Speaker 3: months of the year for seven years, so it was
Speaker 3: a lot of traveling and that's exhausting. Yeah, I just, uh,
Speaker 3: I when I retired, I had full exemptions and everything.
Speaker 3: I didn't quit because I wasn't playing well. I just
Speaker 3: thought there's more to life than just doing this and
Speaker 3: I wasn't reaching the level. I didn't put good enough
Speaker 3: really to to win consistently. I was able to win,
Speaker 3: you know. I won on the Canadian Tour shot seventeen
Speaker 3: ninnder hitting per Simon and blades. Never hit a par
Speaker 3: five and two. You know, it's not like the guys
Speaker 3: are playing par sixty eights now because they hit every
Speaker 3: If you're hitting every par five with an iron, that's
Speaker 3: it's a par four. Ye Yeah, so it's a par
Speaker 3: sixty eight.
Speaker 1: But it's par five for the rest of us.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but attill level at the pro level. But
Speaker 3: I'm seeing when I was playing on the pro level, say,
Speaker 3: for instance, the week that I won, the par fives
Speaker 3: were not necessarily reachable in two. I didn't hit any
Speaker 3: of them in two all week. You know, there were
Speaker 3: three shot holes, so that was actually a par seventy two.
Speaker 3: I shot four straight rounds in the sixties, you know,
Speaker 3: and I'm proud of that. I'm proud that I did
Speaker 3: that with persimmon and blades. So if a young player
Speaker 3: thinks he's a good golfer, let's see that. Let's here's
Speaker 3: persimmon and blades go ot. Let's see you go shoot
Speaker 3: seventeen nineer where you can't hit a par five and
Speaker 3: two and so can you do it? Well? Can you
Speaker 3: do it? So?
Speaker 1: Then you don't like cavity back blades either. You want
Speaker 1: to see blade just blades.
Speaker 3: Well at the professional level, Yes, I think that would
Speaker 3: be better because it's going to be a better test
Speaker 3: for the professionals. Again, there's the bifurcation issue. The club
Speaker 3: players can that's fine, you know, if eighty year olds
Speaker 3: want to propel the ball out farther. But another way,
Speaker 3: it is kind of silly, because that's why they have
Speaker 3: like the different te's, like the white tea and the
Speaker 3: blue te's and the black te's and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: So as you get older, you start moving up, right,
Speaker 3: I mean really you could still hit per Simmon and
Speaker 3: just and the the barettis play.
Speaker 1: It forward that movement that was going on last year
Speaker 1: and trying to catch some steam and it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be. But that's just so everyone can be able
Speaker 1: to TF where you want, as long as you can
Speaker 1: get an eight iron, you know, approach shot like the
Speaker 1: pros do, you know, make it more like that.
Speaker 3: But another thing for the club players is when they
Speaker 3: when they do have professional tournaments on their course, the
Speaker 3: members that are club they don't want to see the
Speaker 3: pros come out and shoot sixty two in their golf course,
Speaker 3: you know, oh gr course. You know, they want to
Speaker 3: see the pros, you know, shooting par or maybe a
Speaker 3: couple under par, a lot of the pro shooting over par,
Speaker 3: and that gives them pride. A lot of the members
Speaker 3: at these classical courses, they have a lot of pride
Speaker 3: in their course and they don't want the pros coming
Speaker 3: here and just driving their par furs. And hitting wedges
Speaker 3: into par fives and on a little sixty five hundred
Speaker 3: yard course or something. I mean, it's disrespectful to the
Speaker 3: course interest to the members. You know, like this course
Speaker 3: right out here, beautiful little golf of course. Members don't
Speaker 3: want to see that. They don't want to so.
Speaker 1: They want to do it. They don't want to see
Speaker 1: someone else doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But if the player, if the pros are hitting it,
Speaker 3: hitting the ball, say two hundred and fifty yards like
Speaker 3: they were when the course was designed, it was did
Speaker 3: the bunker the placement of the bunkers is based upon
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty yard drives, right, and then the
Speaker 3: course is relevant, it's historically relevant. And another thing is
Speaker 3: course records. You know, like a course record that was
Speaker 3: shot in the sixties where guy was hitting for Simon
Speaker 3: and Blades. I mean Rancho Park in Los Angeles is
Speaker 3: a perfect example that course record. I think it's sixty
Speaker 3: two and that was shot in nineteen sixty eight or
Speaker 3: sixty nine and it still holds to this day. Wow.
Speaker 3: You know, even against all the modern gear, that really
Speaker 3: says something. But even if a young player goes out
Speaker 3: there and shoots sixty one with the modern gear. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's see you do it with the old staff, then
Speaker 3: which was better? Or what if a kid shoots sixty
Speaker 3: two with the new stuff? Well, which record is better?
Speaker 3: M You know what I mean? Which is better to
Speaker 3: do it with persimmon and blades and a blot of
Speaker 3: or doing it with a ball in a club that
Speaker 3: hit drives the ball fifty yards farther?
Speaker 1: How do you compare different eras? And like that conversation
Speaker 1: in basketball I always find really interesting because the guys
Speaker 1: have gotten taller and stronger, but the court's the same,
Speaker 1: The ball is the same, the height of the rim
Speaker 1: is the same, and scoring is basically the same. And
Speaker 1: even today scoring has not changed dramatically that much with
Speaker 1: all this new gear. But it's easier to hit with
Speaker 1: the newer gear when you and I'd love to let's
Speaker 1: talk more about Advanced Ballstriking dot com. In your method
Speaker 1: of teaching, do you teach people when you get someone new,
Speaker 1: do you stick per simmons and blades in their hands
Speaker 1: and say, let's start with this and then once that
Speaker 1: gets easy, you're going to love the game.
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't require my students to hit persimon,
Speaker 3: But I explained to them the advantages of doing so.
Speaker 3: For one, they're heavier as well, and to play them.
Speaker 3: I mean, for one, there they're heavier and your body's
Speaker 3: going to get stronger by swinging them. So all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, the club that seems really heavy. Six months
Speaker 3: later you pick up a modern club, you're like, what
Speaker 3: the heck is this lightweight piece of garbage? You just
Speaker 3: want to throw it away, But you can't feel the club.
Speaker 3: See golf. Golf is a game of feel, and you
Speaker 3: can feel a heavier club in your hands. You want
Speaker 3: to be able to feel where the club faces throughout
Speaker 3: your swing at through impact. It's not just a blur
Speaker 3: down there. You're not just swatting at it. It's not
Speaker 3: just nothing. So there's that aspect of being able to
Speaker 3: feel the club so that you can hit it straighter. Now,
Speaker 3: when you have more masks in the head and you
Speaker 3: start holding shaftles, then you can hit it farther than
Speaker 3: you would have when you first started hitting per Simon.
Speaker 3: And then there's also the aesthetic of persimmon. It's beautiful,
Speaker 3: you know, piece of wood down there, they're refinishing and
Speaker 3: you can work on the personmon yourself. I mean you
Speaker 3: can drill holes in it, add lead to it. You know,
Speaker 3: you can do all sorts of modifications, personal modifications. We've
Speaker 3: got a lot of our students are getting into the
Speaker 3: art of the craftsmanship of person and restoration and altering
Speaker 3: their clubs so that they can like the li angles
Speaker 3: are I play very flat? You know, it's about six
Speaker 3: degrees flat li angles, And we teach typically a flatter
Speaker 3: type of a swing because if you swing flatter than
Speaker 3: the club works more around your body, so that now
Speaker 3: when you turn your body towards the target, you're using
Speaker 3: your body rather than you're using your body to propel
Speaker 3: the club rather than lifting it up above your head.
Speaker 3: And then it's more of an arm throw coming down.
Speaker 3: You can't really start turning your body and this just
Speaker 3: comes straight down over the top, you know, and you
Speaker 3: hit a pole. And the worst place to miss a
Speaker 3: green typically is long and left over a green, because
Speaker 3: that's going to give you a downhill chip that's sloping
Speaker 3: left to right. For a right handed player. That's the
Speaker 3: most golf courses, especially the older courses, that's not the
Speaker 3: place to hit it. You're better to miss short right
Speaker 3: because it's an uphill chip from and it's a right
Speaker 3: to left chip, which is usually easier for people. So
Speaker 3: we want to set up our gear and our swing
Speaker 3: so that we don't miss long and left, and that
Speaker 3: the miss, while it might not be pretty, our miss
Speaker 3: is going to be short and right and not long
Speaker 3: and left. So we set our gear and our swing
Speaker 3: up to that end. And what's happened is a lot
Speaker 3: of the students are improving by leaps and bounds because
Speaker 3: they're hitting the ball straighter and they're not missing long
Speaker 3: and left, and they're not coming over the top of
Speaker 3: the shot, and they're getting better contact. And the main
Speaker 3: thing is that they're hitting the ball straighter, and then
Speaker 3: they get they end up hitting the ball longer because
Speaker 3: from the drills and exercises that we do, because we're
Speaker 3: very interested in increasing our flexibility and our muscular strength
Speaker 3: through training, and over time, the players end up getting
Speaker 3: much better. I just played with a student yesterday that
Speaker 3: was a he was a nineties shooter and he's now
Speaker 3: shooting in the mid seventies and this is over about
Speaker 3: two years and he's hitting per Simon and blades real.
Speaker 3: So what does that say. It says something good is happening.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Well, and it sounds like one of the
Speaker 1: things that you seem to be a big advocate on
Speaker 1: without saying it, but strategy, And I think that that
Speaker 1: is one of the things. And I think we talked
Speaker 1: about this, But the way I think about this whole
Speaker 1: concept of golf Smarter and how I got started with this,
Speaker 1: is that I really believe that if you have a
Speaker 1: strong mental game, which you talked you touched upon initially,
Speaker 1: if you have a strong mental game and you understand strategy,
Speaker 1: you can lower your scores a lot faster than if
Speaker 1: you just work on your swing mechanics.
Speaker 3: Oh. Absolutely, yeah. Course management in the in the later.
Speaker 1: Course management is you know, that's I call it strategy,
Speaker 1: but everyone else calls it course management. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not hitting your driver on every hole. It's
Speaker 1: not on the par five's hitting your three wood on
Speaker 1: the second shot because you want to get it within
Speaker 1: thirty yards of the green because you know you're not
Speaker 1: gonna make it. And then you have a thirty yard
Speaker 1: shot and you don't practice a thirty yard shot. You know,
Speaker 1: strategy it seems to be more demanding when you're using
Speaker 1: per simmons and blades.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And there's there's just a there's what you
Speaker 3: want to have the there's a beauty and an art
Speaker 3: to playing golf, and a lot of that is a strategy.
Speaker 3: Once you learn the ball striking, we learn how to
Speaker 3: hit it straight. That's what we teach people how to
Speaker 3: hit it straight, so that then they can start applying strategy.
Speaker 3: If you're hitting the ball all over the golf course
Speaker 3: all the time, then I mean you can kind of
Speaker 3: strategize a little bit, but for the most part, you're
Speaker 3: just trying to make contact and just sort of get
Speaker 3: the thing out there somewhere to get it down or
Speaker 3: the green. But when you become a better ball striker,
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, well if where's where's the where's the
Speaker 3: miss here? You know where's the miss Okay, here's what
Speaker 3: I want to do. But if I'm gonna miss it,
Speaker 3: I'm going to miss it over to the right, or
Speaker 3: I'm going to miss it here or there or whatever
Speaker 3: left of the pain and are below the hole, I'm
Speaker 3: going to keep it below the hole. You want to
Speaker 3: be putting uphill you want to probably be putting. If
Speaker 3: you're a right handed player, you probably want to have
Speaker 3: right to left putts. If you can and below the
Speaker 3: hole and as far as shots into the greens, then
Speaker 3: you know, you want to be hitting off the faraway.
Speaker 3: It's easier to hit the ball farwy than out of
Speaker 3: the rough of the trees, so you want to be
Speaker 3: in the fair. I'd rather be in the faraway hitting
Speaker 3: a foe iron than in the rough hitting a six iron.
Speaker 1: Yes, for me, I would agree with that.
Speaker 3: But at some point, like I say, with the PGA
Speaker 3: two or the guys are hitting it, you know, three
Speaker 3: hundred and forty yards, so they're hitting they'd rather be
Speaker 3: in the rough with a wedge than playing golf thirty
Speaker 3: forty years ago where they're hitting two iron out of
Speaker 3: the rough, you know, or four iron out of the rough.
Speaker 3: So it's changed. But yeah, strategy. So our course of
Speaker 3: advanced ball striking we have eleven modules, and the early
Speaker 3: ones are base about, you know, training the muscles and
Speaker 3: getting the swing correct so that you can We work
Speaker 3: towards holding shaftles, minimizing club face rotation post impact, and
Speaker 3: swinging the club on plane through the strike, but not
Speaker 3: on the backswing and not necessarily even at transition. We
Speaker 3: believe in flattening the shaft out at transition so that
Speaker 3: the swing plane becomes three dimensional and not two dimensional.
Speaker 3: We don't believe in the two dimensional swing plane. It's
Speaker 3: it's not a plane really, only through the strike, and
Speaker 3: that's created through tension and opposing forces. So you've got
Speaker 3: something pulling one way and then pulling the opposite way.
Speaker 3: So in an other words, you know, in the sense you're
Speaker 3: trying to come from underplane pre impact, and then post
Speaker 3: impact you're trying to pressure the club out the opposite way.
Speaker 3: So this creates an opposing pressure and an opposing force
Speaker 3: in the hands, which creates more feel. So you're there's
Speaker 3: a term that we use called fighting the orbit pull.
Speaker 3: So in other words, if you let go of the
Speaker 3: golf club at impact, it's going to hit the ground
Speaker 3: and kick out to the right. But we're gonna resist that.
Speaker 3: We're going to try and move the club more left
Speaker 3: and around our body as we swing through it. But
Speaker 3: for that to work, we need to be coming from
Speaker 3: what we call the four thirty line, which is more
Speaker 3: from the inside coming down. So you come from the inside,
Speaker 3: then you work it around the body, and the only
Speaker 3: way to do that is to anchor it through ground pressures,
Speaker 3: through proper application of foot footwork, legwork and the hips
Speaker 3: and the torsa rotation. So there's a little bit of
Speaker 3: technique involved, and that's why we train hard in the
Speaker 3: beginning to get that down so that then the later modules,
Speaker 3: as we get into modules nine, ten and eleven, then
Speaker 3: we're all it's all about shaping the ball and curving
Speaker 3: it and how we're gonna do it in a more
Speaker 3: sophisticated way. And the beauty of the approach is that
Speaker 3: to shape the ball, to curve it left and right,
Speaker 3: draw and fade it. With the ABS method, you don't
Speaker 3: have to change anything in your setup. You don't have
Speaker 3: to change anything on your back swing, nothing to transition,
Speaker 3: nothing on the downswing. You do it all post impact.
Speaker 1: Oh so that's what you're talking about when you say
Speaker 1: impact onward?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, onward. So in other words, the modules are
Speaker 3: set up basically so that you're always swinging into something
Speaker 3: that you've already rehearsed. So we sort of train the
Speaker 3: swinging backwards, like we teach what the muscles should be
Speaker 3: doing after you strike the ball, so that when you
Speaker 3: go back to working on the backswing and transition, then
Speaker 3: when you come down to the ball, you already know
Speaker 3: what to do, so you're swinging into familiar territory. Most
Speaker 3: golf instruction would say, okay, you know chronological right grip,
Speaker 3: stance and posture, and then we work on the backswing,
Speaker 3: and then we get you perfect at the top, and
Speaker 3: then we work on it. But what happens is you
Speaker 3: can have all that stuff lined up. You can go
Speaker 3: to the driving agency guys with perfect setups, perfect backswings.
Speaker 3: It just hit the ball horrible. So the idea that
Speaker 3: a perfect setup is going to lead to a perfect backswing,
Speaker 3: it's going to lead down to perfect impact. It's just false.
Speaker 3: It's just fallacy. It's just fiction. M So what you
Speaker 3: want to learn to do is to strike through the
Speaker 3: ball properly and post impact, because the the golf swing
Speaker 3: doesn't just end at the ball, and that's a tough
Speaker 3: thing for people to get. They say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: the ball's left the club, it's over with, right, what
Speaker 3: does it matter? You know, that's what everybody thinks.
Speaker 1: I've always thought that the contact was in the middle
Speaker 1: of your swing, right.
Speaker 3: Most people think that once the ball leaves a club, hey,
Speaker 3: that's it, that doesn't matter. But what they don't understand
Speaker 3: is that the impact. And when I talked about in
Speaker 3: the other when we were talking earlier about the sound
Speaker 3: of the golf ball and being struck, you different frequency
Speaker 3: holding shaftles and hitting it with pressure and force. Uh,
Speaker 3: this has to be worked on post impacts. In other words,
Speaker 3: if the golf club's coming in at one hundred miles
Speaker 3: an hour into impact, the less the club had slows down,
Speaker 3: the more feedback you're going to get through the shaft,
Speaker 3: and the more deeper you're going to compress the golf ball.
Speaker 3: If the club is say moving ninety miles an hour
Speaker 3: after impact, it's compared with it moving sixty miles an
Speaker 3: hour after impact. So you come in at one hundred
Speaker 3: and it leaves at sixty, the club heads moving sixty
Speaker 3: after impact. That's you don't you don't want to have
Speaker 3: that big loss. See so everybody thinks, well, what does
Speaker 3: it matter. Well, if you if you want to continue
Speaker 3: to have the club moving, if you want the club,
Speaker 3: if you want to minimize deceleration of the club, then
Speaker 3: you're going to have to get busy with your post
Speaker 3: impact intentions to keep driving that thing through. Okay, And
Speaker 3: that's the that's the key. It's not just over. When
Speaker 3: you strike the ball, you've got to you've got to
Speaker 3: drive it through. And that's it's martial arts. It's talked
Speaker 3: about martial arts all the time. You look at karate,
Speaker 3: and I interviewed like a champion brick smasher guy. You know,
Speaker 3: they chops through bricks and with his fists and head
Speaker 3: and everything. But he said that the point of intention
Speaker 3: of acceleration is always well past the brick on the
Speaker 3: first brick. If he's chopping eight bricks, he's thinking about
Speaker 3: way past the eighth brick all the way down to
Speaker 3: the ground, like he's going to move his whole body
Speaker 3: and move all the way down through all the bricks,
Speaker 3: and he has to focus on a point well beyond.
Speaker 1: This is beyond follow through though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just all the way to the finish, right, you
Speaker 3: got to stick the finish and you got to work
Speaker 3: it all the way through. And that is what the
Speaker 3: great ball strikers do. And if you know what to
Speaker 3: look for, you can see it. You know, it's a
Speaker 3: lot of it's keeping the pressure moving through the strike
Speaker 3: so that the ball gets the deepest compression and that
Speaker 3: the club head decelerates the least possible you want it
Speaker 3: to you know, you can't. Actually, I don't think anyone
Speaker 3: who has actually been able to have the club head
Speaker 3: moving faster than it was after it strikes the ball.
Speaker 3: But that's because of the weight of the ball and
Speaker 3: the collision, the physics collision of impact.
Speaker 1: Oh, sure, it's going to slow down.
Speaker 3: But if you take the ball out of the equation,
Speaker 3: then yes, you can move the club faster beyond low
Speaker 3: point if there's no ball there. You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: That's a different kind of thing, and that's the kind
Speaker 3: of swing. It's going to hit the ball better. That's
Speaker 3: what the greats did. They moved the club. I mean,
Speaker 3: Ben Hogan talked about that in his book. I mean
Speaker 3: I go back to Ben Hogan just because people are
Speaker 3: more familiar with that, but there are a lot of
Speaker 3: other great strikers too.
Speaker 1: Don't tell me you figured out his secret, please.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, I figured out. Oh you have holding shaft fluck. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's everything that he talked about holding shaft flucks. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but of course there wasn't just one secret. That's silly
Speaker 3: because in the golf swing there has to be a
Speaker 3: two secrets. Because if you if you say, well, you
Speaker 3: have to slot the club a transition, Well, then you
Speaker 3: have to do something else post impact to handle that.
Speaker 3: So it has to be there's always if this, then
Speaker 3: that so secret. It has to have anes on it.
Speaker 3: There has to be at least secrets. And of course
Speaker 3: I think it was just something he had fun with.
Speaker 3: But you know, did did did Hogan have a secret? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know he had a lot of secrets.
Speaker 1: It's dark, very dark. Do you screen your students? Do
Speaker 1: in a way that you're like, you know what, I
Speaker 1: think I have another teacher that would be better for
Speaker 1: you right now? Is a beginning golfer?
Speaker 3: I yeah, I do all the time. Yeah. I have
Speaker 3: them fill out a questionnaire with a lot of questions
Speaker 3: that I look at and if I don't feel like
Speaker 3: they're a good fit, then I just you know, there's
Speaker 3: I'd rather give my attention to people that I think
Speaker 3: are correct. And it doesn't necessarily mean that.
Speaker 1: Is it more about a level of commitment or.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of things. Yeah, it's an attitude. It's
Speaker 3: commitment like.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm going on vacation this week. I just need
Speaker 1: to be more consistent. You know, it's give me a
Speaker 1: lesson or duw, it's going to help, and you're like.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, I mean, I'm not doing this necessarily just
Speaker 3: for money. I mean, it's not a money thing. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's other ways to make money that are much more
Speaker 3: lucrative than being a golf pro or teaching, you know pro.
Speaker 3: I do this because I think I think the game
Speaker 3: is suffering. I think people are wanting to improve and
Speaker 3: they don't know how. And there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: that really want to learn the old art form of
Speaker 3: hitting the golf ball. It's not so you playing people.
Speaker 1: Those aren't beginners. I mean you're not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I take I take on beginners if
Speaker 3: they have the right kind of attitude, you know. Does
Speaker 3: that mean, in other words, if they if they are
Speaker 3: passionate about learning how to strike it, like, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe say, Hey, I'm a beginner, but I've been watching
Speaker 3: you know, some old YouTube footage of some of the
Speaker 3: old shells matches, and boy, I just like I can
Speaker 3: see you know, I understand. I've been to your site.
Speaker 3: I can I can see what you're talking about. I'd
Speaker 3: like to learn it that way, you know. I want
Speaker 3: to learn how to hit it straight. I want to
Speaker 3: learn strategy. I want to learn you know, I want
Speaker 3: to feel connected to the history of the game. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to feel the disconnect. You know, somebody
Speaker 3: writes me a letter like that, I'm going to say, absolutely,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna take you on as a student, right, But
Speaker 3: what if.
Speaker 1: They say, I want to learn this. I want to
Speaker 1: learn that, I want to become better at this, but
Speaker 1: I really don't have time to practice. I can only
Speaker 1: play once maybe twice a week, and if I practice,
Speaker 1: it's my warm up before around.
Speaker 3: Well though, those people a lot of times will work
Speaker 3: well for me too, because a lot of the drill,
Speaker 3: a lot of the drills with that we do are
Speaker 3: maybe you can do it in your basement, your garage,
Speaker 3: or in your backyard with an impact back. At least
Speaker 3: you get started the first three modules. A lot of
Speaker 3: like just strengthening, so that stuff can be done for
Speaker 3: someone that doesn't have a whole lot of time to
Speaker 3: be out there pounding golf balls. You know, you have
Speaker 3: time to hit five hundred golf balls a day, or
Speaker 3: you know, play six days a week. I mean, most
Speaker 3: people don't. So this is a way to learn how
Speaker 3: to strike the ball well without necessarily having to spend
Speaker 3: you know, four or five hours a day grinding golf
Speaker 3: balls and playing. So yeah, but again, if somebody just
Speaker 3: comes to me and says, hey, you know, I I
Speaker 3: want to play. You know, I have an upright swing,
Speaker 3: and you know I want to keep swinging a frying
Speaker 3: pan driver with an upright swing, and I want to
Speaker 3: swing it like you know, I'm only concerned with how
Speaker 3: far I hit the ball, and but can you teach
Speaker 3: me how to hit it farther? And but I just
Speaker 3: kind of want to you know, I don't really want
Speaker 3: to do these modules or the stuff that you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Then you know, I'm just going to pass on that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know that sort of thing. So it just depends.
Speaker 3: I mean, i'd look over the questionnaire.
Speaker 1: And you know how many questions on your questionnaire?
Speaker 3: Oh? I think there's probably about twenty maybe.
Speaker 1: And is one of the questions you ask whether people
Speaker 1: gamble when they play golf?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: No, Because I worked with the club fitter and he
Speaker 1: had this one hundred and ten questions you know that
Speaker 1: he wanted, you know, because he was going to be
Speaker 1: screening who he's going to be working with, and one
Speaker 1: of them was do you gamble in golf?
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I should probably add.
Speaker 1: That, why tell me why. That's a good question.
Speaker 3: Because a gambler isn't going to want to suffer for
Speaker 3: a few months and have to you know, change their swing.
Speaker 3: You know, some of the students, you know, you have
Speaker 3: to kind of take a couple of steps back, you know,
Speaker 3: you have to retrain what the body's doing. So you know,
Speaker 3: it's not uncommon for somebody to not play as well
Speaker 3: for the first few months and then when they get
Speaker 3: the hang of it and then all of a sudden
Speaker 3: catapults them forward, then they play better than they did.
Speaker 3: So but yeah, that's a good question because a gambler
Speaker 3: wouldn't want to you know, he's not going to risk
Speaker 3: losing his money for a couple of months, right, So
Speaker 3: that's well.
Speaker 1: It's funny because when when he was reviewing my questions,
Speaker 1: he went through and he goes, you don't gamble when
Speaker 1: you play golf, and went, no, not at all, And
Speaker 1: he goes, what's the point why do you play golf?
Speaker 1: It's like, really, does it have to be about money?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Does every I mean, how about surfers? You know,
Speaker 3: I think about surfers lotsuse I grew up along the coast.
Speaker 3: And what about surfers, I mean, are they out there?
Speaker 3: You know? Is it all about money and Gavolet.
Speaker 1: You know, it's about the next wave, right, It's like.
Speaker 3: It's about the experience, you know. And golf there's a lot,
Speaker 3: you know, some of the most enjoyable moments in golf
Speaker 3: for me are just playing alone, just going out there
Speaker 3: in the afternoon with a few balls, dropping the ferry,
Speaker 3: just shaping it and just you know, it's quiet. You
Speaker 3: know where I play, uh, you know, out of Mayor Islands,
Speaker 3: my home course, and you got wild turkeys out there
Speaker 3: and all sorts of nature, and there's you know, fresh
Speaker 3: blackberries along the sides of the faraways and even I've
Speaker 3: even found like a wild asparagus growing along the you know.
Speaker 3: I mean you can go out there and just dine.
Speaker 1: Well. Mare Island's an interesting course too. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's I think it's the oldest course west of the Mississippi.
Speaker 1: It was a nine hole course built on what it's
Speaker 1: an army base or navy base over there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a may Island naval base, right.
Speaker 1: And then it was expanded to eighteen holes. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you knew Robin Nelson. Robin grew up the
Speaker 1: back nine or yeah, he did the back nine. He
Speaker 1: grew up in Marin County. Here. He went to school
Speaker 1: with Pete Carroll, the football coach, and unfortunately passed away
Speaker 1: last year. He was he was a great guy and
Speaker 1: came out once. We've had multiple conversations, but yeah, he
Speaker 1: used to have the heat. So he did the back
Speaker 1: nine on Mary Island and it's it's a fun it's
Speaker 1: a fun track. It's a really fun tough track.
Speaker 3: When I was out there yesterday, I mean because it
Speaker 3: could be wind blowing thirty five miles an hour out there,
Speaker 3: and the ferries are, you know, super tight, and you
Speaker 3: can't miss I mean that the third hole, that part three.
Speaker 3: I mean it's you're hitting a three or four iron
Speaker 3: into a green and the shrub brush on the left
Speaker 3: edge of the green. It's elevated tea and you're dead
Speaker 3: into the wind and you're back there with a long
Speaker 3: iron and that the green looks sounds like a poster stamp.
Speaker 3: And if you miss the green, you make double period.
Speaker 3: Yeah there's no bail.
Speaker 1: It's not that long, but you're still hitting with the
Speaker 1: you got.
Speaker 3: Raspberry bushes on the right side of the green, and
Speaker 3: you got shrub brush on the left side of the green,
Speaker 3: and then you got a bumper in the front. So
Speaker 3: if you missed short right then in that bunker maybe
Speaker 3: you make bogie. But you know, I took out a fearm,
Speaker 3: just stuck it in their fifteen feet yesterday. And just
Speaker 3: how long is the hole, my birdy? It plays about
Speaker 3: two little over two hundred yards too, but it's a
Speaker 3: dead end of the wind. And then the eighth all
Speaker 3: of course, you know that two hundred and twenty yard
Speaker 3: part three, you know, just tough. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: a hard cour you have to hit a straight out there.
Speaker 3: And that's why I love playing because it's there's no
Speaker 3: level lies on the course, nop. I think maybe one,
Speaker 3: maybe eleventh. Ferry is the only place you can get
Speaker 3: a level level eye. So it's side hill lies, combining
Speaker 3: that with wind into small greens that are tricky and
Speaker 3: you have to keep the ball below the hole. That's golf,
Speaker 3: I mean for the good player, that's the gamy stuff.
Speaker 3: Let's let's see you go play there. There was a
Speaker 3: kid that was a you know, want a good college
Speaker 3: player down at where I went to school at Fresle State.
Speaker 3: A couple of them came up to play Mayor Island
Speaker 3: you know with me, and these guys were just barely
Speaker 3: broke eighty out there, you know. So interesting it says
Speaker 3: something for for of course, not having to be long.
Speaker 3: I mean, may Island is not a long course, but
Speaker 3: it's it's tough, you know. I have yet to In fact,
Speaker 3: anytime I bring a pro friend of mine out there,
Speaker 3: I say, if you can break par okay and this
Speaker 3: little course, there's one hundred dollars waiting in the cup
Speaker 3: for you on eighteen that I'll give you if you
Speaker 3: can do it. And you can break par nobody's done
Speaker 3: it yet.
Speaker 1: It's a good bet to make. One of the things
Speaker 1: you wrote on the website that I found interesting is
Speaker 1: the comment of how a great swing feels in the
Speaker 1: mind and the body.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yeah, please, because the fact that, well, for
Speaker 3: one thing, the heavier gear of the past you have
Speaker 3: if if you use heavier gear, you have to engage
Speaker 3: the bigger muscles in the body so you can start
Speaker 3: to feel the sensation of swinging the club using the
Speaker 3: rotational the torso rotational muscle and the legs. The hips
Speaker 3: and to feel that inside the body is something that
Speaker 3: I think was more accessible in the older in the
Speaker 3: older days with the heavier gear, and now with a lightweight,
Speaker 3: it's just very easy to slap at it with your
Speaker 3: arms in your hands, because that's what people just intuitively
Speaker 3: want to do. They don't want to turn, they just
Speaker 3: want to swat at it with their arms in their hands.
Speaker 3: And with the modern gear you can kind of get
Speaker 3: away with that, you know, especially with the driver and
Speaker 3: the hybrids, and maybe not as much with the irons,
Speaker 3: but especially with a driver, a lightweight driving just kind
Speaker 3: of swat at and the thing goes out there two
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty yards so and that's good enough for
Speaker 3: most people. So they don't really learn how to feel
Speaker 3: the swing from the inside. And then the way we
Speaker 3: teach is all about feeling and sensation, universal feelings and sensations.
Speaker 3: It's I don't teach it baseball. Well, this is just
Speaker 3: what I feel, So this is what you do. But
Speaker 3: if I say that, you know, when you come down
Speaker 3: from a train transition, you know you need to feel
Speaker 3: like you're putting the shaft on a table top. Well,
Speaker 3: that's like a you know, that's a big tangible sensation
Speaker 3: that's universal to feel that way. So we talk about
Speaker 3: these big tangible sensations that you need to feel in
Speaker 3: the body. And I don't create a new module or
Speaker 3: a swing drill unless it's tested by me and a
Speaker 3: few select students that I'll have work with something for
Speaker 3: about six months, and then I look at it and
Speaker 3: I say, okay, where are we at here? And then
Speaker 3: if we all agree that these sensations are you know,
Speaker 3: very universal and tangible, then then we go ahead and
Speaker 3: release it really through the program. But I don't just
Speaker 3: sit there and say, oh, yeah, I have some idea,
Speaker 3: you know, here's swing this. I don't I believe in
Speaker 3: always swinging a golf club, Like I don't really believe
Speaker 3: in swinging any number of different drill devices, this sort
Speaker 3: of thing, all the different swing aid clubs and super
Speaker 3: weighted clubs. I don't believe in, or anything with like
Speaker 3: super whippi shafts or like a fan on the end
Speaker 3: of a club or anything that I think you want
Speaker 3: to develop your feel that you're swinging a golf club
Speaker 3: and something that you would use like you need to
Speaker 3: feel that club and you can strengthen the muscles through
Speaker 3: resistance and impact bags and that sort of thing. You
Speaker 3: can you can get strong doing that, but you want
Speaker 3: to always have the feel of a golf club in
Speaker 3: your hands, because the golf club also has a way
Speaker 3: that it's balanced right, So they're toe heavy, there's more
Speaker 3: weight out on the toe than the heel, so it
Speaker 3: kind of flip flops in your hand. And that dispersity
Speaker 3: between the sweet spot feel and where and the line
Speaker 3: of the shaft is very real as you're swinging the club,
Speaker 3: and you need to develop that not only as a feel,
Speaker 3: but also as a spatial awareness in the swing. So
Speaker 3: so swinging these training aids are a lot of times
Speaker 3: are counterproductive because I like to be training everything at
Speaker 3: the same time, like club face alignment, feel, shaft, where's
Speaker 3: the shaft, where's the clubhead? You know, and the weight distribution.
Speaker 3: And I also have a very different view on how
Speaker 3: to set up golf clubs so that they're all the
Speaker 3: same right through this set Like I don't believe in
Speaker 3: frequency matching golf shafts. I think it's crap, it's bs,
Speaker 3: it's not right. You want to have your shaft set
Speaker 3: up deflection, so if they're pressured by a certain amount
Speaker 3: of weight that the shaft deflections are going to be
Speaker 3: consistent from wedge to driver. And most people don't do this.
Speaker 3: A few of the great ball strikers did this in
Speaker 3: the past, but that's in one of those little secrets
Speaker 3: of the past. Right If you put an eight pound
Speaker 3: weight on the end of my golf club, the shaft
Speaker 3: rate's going to be the same deflection from wedge to
Speaker 3: driver in my set, so I can use the same
Speaker 3: swing from wedge to driver. I don't have to change anything.
Speaker 3: But if you've got shafts that are they may be
Speaker 3: frequency matched, which is really nice if they were guitar strings,
Speaker 3: you know, but they're not. You know, golf clubs are
Speaker 3: not it's not a musical instrument. You know. It's not
Speaker 3: a series of guitar strings frequency matched. You know. That's
Speaker 3: not what shafts do because when you change the direction
Speaker 3: of the golf club at transition, you're putting a stress load,
Speaker 3: about eight pounds of stress load at transition. So you
Speaker 3: need to stress your shafts based upon that, and then
Speaker 3: work your set around that. Seve of your shafts cut
Speaker 3: and tipped so that they're correctly set up that way,
Speaker 3: and then you can just use the same swing from
Speaker 3: wedge to driver. You don't have to change anything. But
Speaker 3: everybody is using driver shafts, and we've got a graphie
Speaker 3: shaft in your driver, and you've got something different in
Speaker 3: your irons and all this sort of thing. And I
Speaker 3: had a very well a well known teacher come and
Speaker 3: visit me, and he wanted to just talk about his
Speaker 3: own swing. So I worked with him a little bit
Speaker 3: and we looked at his clubs and he was hooking
Speaker 3: his driver. I took out his three and I said,
Speaker 3: hook this. He couldn't hook it. He had a bent
Speaker 3: flat and he was happy and really stiff shaft, but
Speaker 3: he could hook his driver. I said, what do you
Speaker 3: want to keep hooking your driver? He said, he's not
Speaker 3: really And he said what do I need to do
Speaker 3: to change my swing? I said, absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: Change the shaft.
Speaker 3: So I gave him. I gave him my driver with
Speaker 3: a personmon with a you know, telephone pole and a
Speaker 3: really stiff shaft. But it's really not that stiff relative
Speaker 3: to my irons. It's the same. It's the same. I
Speaker 3: don't use driver chefs. I use iron shafts in my driver.
Speaker 1: Wow. So I get and how long do you have
Speaker 1: your shaft on the driver?
Speaker 3: Forty forty three? Yeah, okay, I have a couple different
Speaker 3: drivers he is with forty three to forty. I've one
Speaker 3: that's forty four, I feel, which is shorter than what
Speaker 3: it's normal forty six And.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're they're coming out longer and uh.
Speaker 3: Well you've made it farther that way with a longer shaft.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you don't necessarily hit it. I mean I
Speaker 1: I Tom wish On, who custom club maker, who's been
Speaker 1: on numerous times talk about that the shafts are too
Speaker 1: long on drivers these days.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends. It depends. If you just want to
Speaker 3: hit it far, then you want to have as long
Speaker 3: as shaft as possible, as lightweight as possible. But you
Speaker 3: want to hit it straight, Well yeah, but you want
Speaker 3: to it straight. Well, that's what I believe. Some people
Speaker 3: don't care about hitting it. Most golfers couldn't care less
Speaker 3: about heitting it straight. They really, come on, they just
Speaker 3: want to hit it far. You just go out there
Speaker 3: there they're talking about that's crazy.
Speaker 1: When not the golf smarter audience.
Speaker 3: Okay, well that's good. Well that's right, because we're golf
Speaker 3: smarter here, that's right exactly, Yeah, we're smarter.
Speaker 1: Go over if you can briefly give me an overview
Speaker 1: of your modules. You kept you keep referring to these
Speaker 1: modules and what they are, what they do, and then
Speaker 1: we'll send people to you.
Speaker 3: Well, basically, we we teach the golf swing in sections.
Speaker 3: I think to just say there's one secret move to
Speaker 3: the swinging the clubbing. If there was, and I just
Speaker 3: teach that, it'd be great. But it's not so different
Speaker 3: than learning to play the piano, for instance. You know,
Speaker 3: you're not going to let you have to learn the chords,
Speaker 3: you have to learn the scales, and you have to
Speaker 3: learn to put all those together. You're not going to
Speaker 3: just sit there and rip off some classical concerto or
Speaker 3: whatever because you learn the secret move or whatever. It's
Speaker 3: just not It takes practice. So we teach it in
Speaker 3: sections and stages. And we started impact first module one,
Speaker 3: and we learn proper forum rotation and how that relates
Speaker 3: to the body and torso rotation, and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of protocols for that and all sorts of things that
Speaker 3: we look over. And then module two we deal with
Speaker 3: ground pressures and how to learn to apply the vertical
Speaker 3: and horizontal and rotational pressures in the feet so that
Speaker 3: we can anchor properly and get ready for Module three,
Speaker 3: which is post impact pivot thrust, So we learn to
Speaker 3: accelerate the torso post impact gain, picking up shaft speed
Speaker 3: post impact, and we use so we're building off what
Speaker 3: we did learned to MODU one and module two. Module
Speaker 3: three takes us up to the finish. So then we
Speaker 3: go back and we work on hand attitude so that
Speaker 3: you have the right grip pressure and how the risks
Speaker 3: need to feel it. Transitions. We got a module very
Speaker 3: critical module for that. For module five, Module four basically
Speaker 3: going back to Maus before, we just talk about swing
Speaker 3: plane and through impact and I show the student exactly
Speaker 3: where what they need to be doing with the shaft
Speaker 3: through impact and that ties one, two and three together.
Speaker 3: So then five we get into hand attitudes. Six we
Speaker 3: get into transition, how to transition the club at the
Speaker 3: top of the back swing. I don't spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time on the backswing because there's a lot of
Speaker 3: different ways to take it back. You got guys that
Speaker 3: pick it up and loop it behind him. You got
Speaker 3: Jim Furich that just picks it straight up and throws
Speaker 3: it behind him. And then you got guys like Raymond Floyd,
Speaker 3: they just pulled it way inside and then slotted it,
Speaker 3: you know, coming down that way. So that's kind of
Speaker 3: the self discovery journey for people. I let them choose
Speaker 3: their own backswings, except there are protocols that are that
Speaker 3: must be followed, like you know, you have to we've
Speaker 3: got to get your forms rotated, and we got to
Speaker 3: get your torso rotated, and we need some spine tilt
Speaker 3: to make a path passageway for the arms to come
Speaker 3: down and find the four thirty line. So other than that,
Speaker 3: how you get there that that's up to you. The
Speaker 3: student's grips vary. They have different kinds of grips that
Speaker 3: happens from the impact bagwork. Their hands find the right
Speaker 3: place on the club for them, So there's room for
Speaker 3: personal variation. So then we get module seven. We get
Speaker 3: into tying the whole thing together. We work all the
Speaker 3: modules that we learned and put into one fluid motion,
Speaker 3: and we also integrate how to transfer weight through the
Speaker 3: strike rather than you know, transferring weight to the left
Speaker 3: and then just chopping down on the ball like a
Speaker 3: lot of guys were doing a few years ago. We
Speaker 3: teach them how the great players transfer the weight through
Speaker 3: the strike. And this is all supported scientifically. There's been
Speaker 3: plenty of studies at the great strikers transfer their weight
Speaker 3: through the strike, not not at the beginning. And then
Speaker 3: module eight we get into striking golf ball, so you know,
Speaker 3: where I'm watching the students hit golf balls, and we
Speaker 3: start fine tuning and I get a feel for where
Speaker 3: they're at with everything. And then module nine, you know,
Speaker 3: we get into like drawing and fading the ball with
Speaker 3: post impact intentions out of curve it correctly and all this,
Speaker 3: and then ten and eleven then you know, we just
Speaker 3: get into course management and strategy and playing and trajectory
Speaker 3: control and all this stuff and how to. It's so
Speaker 3: it's comprehensive, very comprehensive, very comprehensive, and it takes, you know,
Speaker 3: several years for those students to get through those. It's
Speaker 3: not it's kind of like taking karate or something. You
Speaker 3: start with, you know, you get your first belt or whatever,
Speaker 3: a brown belt, blue belt, black belt or whatever. You
Speaker 3: work your way up to being a black belt. So
Speaker 3: the advanced students are you know, these guys are you know,
Speaker 3: like black belt golfers. I mean, you got guys that
Speaker 3: are a student that was he was a high seventy shoot.
Speaker 3: He went out and shot sixty five last year. Wow,
Speaker 3: you know with persimmon and blades.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, it's impressive. It's impressive. And he's been
Speaker 3: winning all his club matches and club comps and people
Speaker 3: can't believe it.
Speaker 1: Must love you, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's doing well. But you know he's he's a student,
Speaker 3: has been dedicated, you know, he he he sends his
Speaker 3: videos in every week and he's you know, he's taking it.
Speaker 3: I'm there to help out the dedicated students. Now, a
Speaker 3: lot of guys sign up and then they quit. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: well if they quit, then they quit, you know. But
Speaker 3: the guys that send their videos in every week and
Speaker 3: and we work with them, then they were really getting
Speaker 3: their money's worth out of me for sure.
Speaker 1: Early in the first episode, you mentioned when you were
Speaker 1: on the tour that you didn't have a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of success because you weren't a very good putter. So
Speaker 1: I just need to I'm so curious your nickname is
Speaker 1: lag Why that was just.
Speaker 3: A handle name when I was on the one of
Speaker 3: the TGM sites when I first returned to golf after
Speaker 3: not playing for thirteen years, and I was just kind
Speaker 3: of just wondering. I hadn't really followed golf, you know,
Speaker 3: I was I missed the whole Tiger era, like I
Speaker 3: didn't really I didn't watch it. I didn't I wasn't
Speaker 3: seeing seeing golf.
Speaker 1: Your wife got you back into this, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so interesting. And then I kind of wondered. I
Speaker 3: wondered if like the golf Machine was still being taught
Speaker 3: or anyone was still doing that. And I looked online
Speaker 3: and there were a couple of websites, and I thought
Speaker 3: so I contacted one of the owners of the site
Speaker 3: and I said, hey, I was one of the early,
Speaker 3: you know, prodigies of this method. You know, you're interested
Speaker 3: in hearing my thoughts on it, which he said, sure,
Speaker 3: of course, my thoughts weren't all that positive about it.
Speaker 3: You know, he didn't really like the fact that I
Speaker 3: had some bad things to say about the golfing Machine,
Speaker 3: but a lot of it was good too, a lot
Speaker 3: of good things, but it's not perfect and it does
Speaker 3: have some serious flaws. Yeah, and I'm the one to
Speaker 3: tell you because I experienced them firsthand, even not only
Speaker 3: through junior golf, college golf, but out on the tour.
Speaker 1: I'm looking over your shoulder at my library because I
Speaker 1: know we did. There was a book about the golfing machine.
Speaker 1: I'll fall pull it out and mention it in the
Speaker 1: clothes anyway, John, Again, the website is Advanced ball Striking
Speaker 1: dot com. And please, if you want to communicate with John,
Speaker 1: you can either click on the Hayfred button hey and
Speaker 1: ask me to put you in touch with John. I
Speaker 1: can do that, but I'll also have links to his
Speaker 1: website on our blog for these two episodes. So again,
Speaker 1: I appreciate your time, a fascinating approach to all this.
Speaker 1: It's unique and special and I really enjoyed having you
Speaker 1: here today. Thanks so much for stopping by.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.