Speaker 1: For members only. Golf Smarter number three hundred and seventy nine,
published on April nine, twenty thirteen.
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
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Speaker 3: And finally, singer said to VJ, Well, VJ, what are
you working on? He goes, Paul, I've been working on
the same three things for the last ten years. I'm
just now starting to get good at each of them. Wow,
that's overkill practice every day. This happens to me every
day and my job. And I say, okay, Tim, I
want you to do this drill and only this drill,
nothing else for the next six weeks. Every time you
go to the range, do some work on at home,
you know, slow motion work in the mirror, do some
practice flings you back there with your eyes clos only
work on this and nothing else. And here's the response
I typically did. Oh, lot's great. I really appreciate that.
Now I also work on my grip pressure. I so no, No,
I just said, Tom, only work on this, don't work
on anything else. Oh, I got it. I understand, yees,
but sometimes I get bored to and equipment work on.
The answer is no, you can't.
Speaker 1: Well what do you do? I mean, like, okay, I
would say I can't. I can't do that. I get
bored and I then I lose focus and.
Speaker 3: I stop practicing. But don't practice anything else because the
reason why is your fatal flaw is so toxic. You're
wasting your time working on anything else. Anything else you
work on is just githering.
Speaker 1: Practice strategies to improve all parts of your game. With
Jim Walder, this is Golf Smarter. Welcome back to Golf
Smarter for members only.
Speaker 3: Jim, Thank you, Fred, it's great to be here again.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you very much. It's been just seconds since
we've finished our first conversation. But we're talking about the
power of six, the practice strategies that you can create
for yourself while you're out on the driving range or
even practicing during a practice round. First one, let's go
over to the first four quickly, and then we'll get
into number five and six.
Speaker 3: Number one was your your driver or whatever you hit
off the tea as a par four part five hitting hitting,
hitting that te ball longer and more accurately in on
your score.
Speaker 1: Because I loved what you said the the prediction of
low score. The number one predictor of low score is
green ferry, gans and regulation and combined with fairways. Hit
very is.
Speaker 3: A big part of it, yep, especially for average players
because you know, most people, if they get in the rough,
they're not going to hit the green. They don't have
a club at speed. Right, first cutter off maybe if
it's a decent line.
Speaker 1: Number two was putts between.
Speaker 3: Two super super short putts mm hm.
Speaker 1: Those are the ones from two to six feet that
you should be spending hours in practicing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's one other part about what I meant
to mention, I forgot. I put it under the putting category.
The other part of putting that can save you strokes
are long putts of around somewhe depends on what your
green speed is, but something in the neighborhood of around
thirty five to forty five feet or longer. You know,
if you play very fast greens, it might even be
sixty feet or longer. But those long pots. Outside that
range is where people off in three pot right exactly,
So you want to spend some of your time also
practicing your very long putts for distance control. Right.
Speaker 1: Number three was the danger zone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred and seventy five to two and fifteen yards, Yeah,
for sure, that's that's an area where people can really
really potentially lose some strokes if they're not practicing.
Speaker 1: And make sure you use your alignment sticks when you are.
Speaker 3: Practicing the distance exactly.
Speaker 1: Number four the mental game, or what you call it,
art of shot.
Speaker 3: Making, art of shot making, So you're having discovering what
your own best focal points are, where your mind should
be focused when you play golf, so you're increasing the
probability of not flinching and therefore hitting a better shot.
That also includes pre shot routine, having a consistent, repetitive
routine they do the same way every time. And that
gets to five, and let's move forward. Five is five.
But most people would answer when you say what's the
most important thing to shooting a low score short game,
it's actually number five on the list. Still important, but
it is number five again, I'm talking people can break
about one hundred and five or better. Right, because obviously
there are individual exceptions to all of these rules.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting when you said danger zone, when
you talked about my first reaction was thirty to fifty.
Speaker 3: Yards, that's one of them.
Speaker 1: Because to me, that's why I will not try to
hit the ball as far as I can on my
second shot on a par five, because I don't want
to get stuck in that area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well we have a ball. Who been member.
There are literally there's probably a couple of hundred different
varieties of short game shots, but there's four that have
a vastly greater influence on your score outcome than all
the other two hundred. Right now, we'll start with we'll
start in no particular order, and we'll start with what
you mentioned. Less than full distance. We call them partial
webshots from from thirty to seventy yards. Those in between ers,
especially from about forty to sixty yards, they'll drive people
crazy because you just don't know how to do them right.
Speaker 1: So that's when you also you get tents, you squeeze,
you tense up, you move faster, and it's.
Speaker 3: Screens you don't know how to do them, yeah, or
if you do know, if you took a lesson, you
didn't practice it enough to form some level of skills,
So you need to practice your partial wedges in the
thirty to seventy seventy yard range. The second category of
short game would be green side bunker shots. Average golfers
are just terrible at greenside bunker shots, so that needs
some work. The third is your basic old stand by,
the old chip and run shots, a low trajectory shot
that roll the lands on the putting surface usually and
then rolls like a pot to the hole. That's a
very important shot. You'll probably have, you know, at least
five of those around if you're if you're a mid
handicap or higher golfer, if not more. And then the
fourth is a lob wedge pitch, a high a super
high trajectory or so called flop shot with the with
the six two degree wedge. You know, when you know whatever,
whenever you short side yourself, uh, you know, you're very
little green to work with between you and the between
you and the pin, or maybe you're going over a
bunker with the pin tucked close to the bunker, or
over a tree or a bush. That shot you'll probably
have at least I would say the average golfer probably
has that shot a couple of times around. It's not more.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think that if you just concentrated on this one,
number five and the four elements of the short game,
you will have a significant impact on your score and
be a much happier golfer.
Speaker 3: There's no question, right. So those are the four big
ones in the short game. The other ones not that
they're not Again, there are many other types of shots.
They just don't they just they don't have nearly as
big an impact on your score. And then number six
are basically your approach shots. So that means your second
shot on a on a part four, uh, second and
third shot on a on a long part five. And
it's the idea here is you want to practice enough
with all of your clubs so you feel confident with
with with any club in your bag in your hands.
So I recommend people use six, seven, and eight irons
in one practice session and then practice with your nine
iron through your lob wedge, so nine iron pitching wedge,
gap wedge, sand wedge, lob wedge and your other session
so you're so so you're basically covering all your bases
with your with those clubs, and those are the ones
that are going to help you hit the green and
regulation right now. Now you can probably see something different
how I'm presenting this information. I'm not talking about anything.
As you noticed, i haven't mentioned any mechanical advice whatsoever.
I'm assuming that you've already taken instruction on how to
do all this stuff right. And if you haven't, go
take some instructions. You know what you're doing right.
Speaker 1: Call the balance Point Golf Schools at balanceolf dot com.
Speaker 3: Lots of good teachers in America today and throughout the world.
Age has got some really up and coming good teachers
right now as well in Europe as well. But take
take find out, find a good teacher in your area,
take to take instruction and then practice it. And uh,
the rest of the next few minutes, I'd like to
kind of go over how you can apportion your time
so that you have a more effective outcome.
Speaker 1: I am so fired up to hear this. The soapbox
is yours, my friend. Now that we know what the
shots are, what do we do about it?
Speaker 3: Well, let me let me start from the beginning. So
the way the power of six works is, it's it's
geared more toward UH. I'd say two types of golfers.
It's geared toward. This type of practice is geared toward
people who are low handicapped players or even professionals UH
and intermediate handicapped players. People who are about a fifteen
handicap are lower who have already taken instruction on all
of these areas. They've taken They've taken full swing instruction,
they've taken some instruction and how to hit the driver,
you know, longer and straight. They've taken some putting instruction.
So then so there say no what to do? But
now the question is how do I form a habit?
How do I get better? How do I form a skill?
I How do I apportion my time during the week.
So here's how you do it. You basically got three
options if you're going to use power power stating. Oh,
by the way, high handicappers also who've taken at least
some instruction and have some semblance of skill. I'm talking
about people who are in the maybe sixteen maybe twenty
five handicap range. Right, if you're much higher than twenty five,
you need to spend more time practicing what your instructor
taught you to form dominant habits right, which we'll get
to in a minute. That we call it overkill practice.
But if you're at a reasonable level I use the
acronym RPM reasonably proficient mechanics. If you're sort of there
or close to their, right, it's not that you're making
a major swing change. In other words, you've already made
the major swing change, or you're close to being done
with the major sling change, but you still have to
put the time in to keep your skills sharp. That's
what power of six is for those people. Right, Let's
say you have you can do two practice sessions a
week at the range, and each practice session lasts two hours.
You've got six six areas here, six key categories of skill.
You do three, you pick three of those to say,
you pick the first three. So you spend forty minutes
on your driver practice. Stop, go to the putting green.
You spend forty minutes practicing or you spend thirty minutes
practicing your super short putts and ten minutes practicing your
long putts. Right, you go back to the range. You
spend forty minutes practicing your one hundred and seventy five
to two hundred and fifty fifteen yard range clubs and
you're done. That's two hours. Three days later, you go
back to the range, you practice forty minutes on the
mental game, and you appreciate retine your mental focus. You
practice forty minutes on one or two of those four
short game skills we talked about, the flop shot, the
chip shot, the partial wedges in the bunker shots. So
let's say you practice flop shots and for twenty minutes
and chip shots for twenty minutes, and you leave the
wedges in the bunker shots for the next time. You
come right next to the next practice session and you
practice for forty minutes on your six, seven, and eight
iron approach shots. When you come back next week, you'll
practice your your nine iron through your lob wedge. So
it's every week with two two hour sessions you're gonna practice.
You'll be finished practicing all six key areas, and over time,
probably right away you'll see some significant score improvement, but
certainly within I'd say by the end of the second month,
you'll be you're gonna be significantly better at all six categories.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The other way you could do is if you
don't have two two hour sessions. You could just do
one four hour session if you can sustain yourself in
terms of mental focus and physical energy. Some people can't.
But if you have a four hour chunk, you could
just do it. Do one practice session a week and
do and do forty minutes on each of the six segments.
Speaker 1: And what if you only get an hour, that's it.
Speaker 3: That's the last one. So give an hour, you do two,
you do two thirty minute segments. You would do, say
driver for thirty minutes, and then you would do short
puts for thirty minutes. The next time you go the
next week, then you would go you would go to
number three and number four. So it's so it's a
great way to keep your your edge, so to speak,
in all six key scoring areas. Right, yep. But it's
not the only way to practice. There are a couple
other ways to practice, which I'll just kind of review
real quickly, which also have an influence. And this this
is especially geared. This first category is geared especially toward
higher handicaps, and that's what we call fatal flaw practice.
You go to your teacher and you say, you say, teach,
tell me what the number one thing I'm doing in
my golf swing right, that's causing me the most. It's
costing me the most strokes. And he might say, well,
you're moving your head too much. You're moving your swinging
off the ball in the backswing, or you're releasing your
wristcock agle earlier, or you're standing up out of your
spinning it. Whatever it is, whatever the most fatal, most
damaging thing is. He isolates it. You see it in video.
He gives you a corrective drill, and then you do
what we call overkill practice, and you go to the
range and you do as you hit as many balls
as you can. And I'm not I'm talking maybe you
know two three, four large baskets of balls, and that
an average large basket will have about sixty five balls,
and its sixty five to seventy balls, and you do,
you do shot after shot after your shot with your
mind focused just on doing that one corrective drill he
gave you. And you might do that for a month,
six weeks, two months, until you fix the flaw, until
it's gone. That's very effective practice.
Speaker 1: Or are you really that flaw Well, you.
Speaker 3: Only grain the flaw if you don't do anything to
fix it. That's the thing. Every time you practice what
out addressing the flaw, it's just gonna manifest more and more. Right,
every time we play the flaw the flaws. The flaws
tend to repeat themselves for a lot of different reasons,
and you need to address it. So that's that's a
fast way to bring your score down. To figure out
that the worst thing. Make sure you tell your instructor.
I don't care about the other you know, half a
dozen sort of secondary flaws I'm doing. I don't have
time to fix those. I've got to work. I'm working
sixty hours a week and I got two little kids
and a wife. Give me something that's gonna if I
really work on that one thing and only that one thing.
And by the way, for all the average golfers out there,
I know how you guys think. I know how ninety
nine percent of you guys are tinkerers. You're gonna you're
gonna do that overkill practice for one bucket and you're
gonna go. You know, maybe I'm pretty good with this drill.
Maybe I'll try something else. Talks about illogical thinking, right,
I mean I used to do before my back back
before I blew my back out ten years ago. I
would do eight hours a day of overkill practice with
only one thought in my mind. Eight hours ball after
ball after ball after ball after ball. Wow, Tiger does it?
Ben Hogan? Did it? You know? VJ. Singh once once
told Paul Aisinger when they would play practice rounds together.
He'd say, Paul, what are you working on your swing?
And every time he asked them the question, Zinger would
give him a different answer, And finally Zinger said to VJ, Well, VJ,
what are you working on? He goes, Paul, I've been
working on the same three things for the last ten years.
I'm just now starting to get good at each of them.
Just three things over ten years. That's overkill practice. Yeah,
that's what it takes. And you know the reason I'm
bringing this up again. Most offers don't get this. They
really you would not believe how people I've worked with, I,
you know, average students every day. This happens to me
every day and my job. And I say, Okay, here's
what I want you to do here time. I want
you to do this drill and only this drill, nothing else.
For the next six weeks. Every time you go to
the range, do some work on at home, you know,
slow motion, work in the mirror, do some practice swings
back there with your eyes closed. Only work on this
and nothing else. And here's the response I typically did, Oh,
well that's a great, great idea, Jim, I really appreciate that. Now. Now,
can I also work on my grip pressure? I go No, No,
I just said, Tom, only work on this, don't work
on anything else. Oh, I got it. I understand. Yeah. So,
but you know, but sometimes I get bored you and
it couldn't I work on The answer is no, you can't.
Speaker 1: Well what do you do? I mean, like, okay, I
would say I can't. I can't do that. I get
bored and I then I lose focus and stop practicing.
Speaker 3: But don't practice anything else because the reason why is
your fatal flaw is so toxic. You're wasting your time
working on anything else. Anything else you work on is
just dithering. It's just dithering. It's not going to produce any.
Speaker 1: Possible Well, we don't want to dither now.
Speaker 3: But that's the whole idea overkill is to is to
form a new movement pattern. You know, there's a there's
it's called neurophysiology. A neuromuscular pathway. You're disrupting the old
pathway and you're creating a new one at the same time,
and that takes a lot of repetitions. It's top said
a lot of reps, he says. He says that phrase
a lot, a lot of reps.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. You know what's upsetting me
about this lesson you're giving us. Yeah, it's making a
lot of sense. And I'm like.
Speaker 3: I appreciate the compliment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, but it's like, I don't really focus
on one thing and our No.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you want to go out and just
bang balls for fun, I'm not saying don't do that.
I'm just saying, don't expect to get better from doing it.
I just think, well, I'm going to go hit balls
as hard as I can with my drivers, see how
far I can hit it, just for fun. But don't
call it practice. That's that's a form of play. That's
a form with tinkering. It's not practice. Practice has to
have some logic behind, some some purpose. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh, you must love those who tinker during their round crazy, Oh,
I bet, because it happens all the time. Oh, I
know what I did wrong on that one. Oh, I
know what I did wrong on that one. Really, you
do the same bad thing every single time, and you
now know I mean based.
Speaker 3: On what Yeah, all right, here's another category of practice.
When you do work with a teacher on a major
swing change, you got to realize major swing changes take time.
They don't happen overnight. You got to think not weeks, months.
And if you're doing more than one major swing change,
which some people will do, you're talking in a year
or two or three years to finish, right. So, but
the good news about that is if you really want
to make that process, which is inherently slow, if you
want to make it faster and the most effective with
very few exceptions, again only for advanced players, and only
certain for certain parts of the swing. Most of the
mechanical changes on the balance point system that I developed
over twenty five years ago is done it without a
ball at home, in super slow motion in front of
a mirror. That's the most effective way to make major
swing changes. So you don't do it in the range.
You do it at home in front of a mirror.
Speaker 1: With Lynn Mary I called the tai Chi swing.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. Yeah, it's very very effective. Another way to practice,
which is one of my favorites to do. I do
it a lot, particularly if I haven't been playing for
a while, like I take, I usually take the fall
off and don't don't start playing till I get back
to Hawaiian in January. I call it creative tinkering and
exaggeration drills. And so this is one way Tiger was
talking about a few years ago and a clinic he did.
He did a lot when he was a kid, where
you just go out and you take the swing you have.
You don't try to change your swing in anyway, so
you're not thinking mechanics. You're thinking nothing but a ball
flight and let your body motion react to your intended
ball flight. So you take your six iron out. You
see how low can I hit the six iron out there?
You try hit a super low trajectory six iron. Hit
a few of those, and then try the opposites. How
high can I hit the six iron? Right? Then you
bury the curve. Let me hit, Let me hit a
couple of really, let me hit hit like a forty
yard slice with the six iron. Hit a few of those. Okay,
what if I could What if I could hit a
forty yard hook with the six iron, So you're always
going from one extreme to the other. So you do
that with curvature, you do with trajectory, you do with path,
you know, clubhead path. You try to swing exaggeratingly into
out right. Normally that'll produce a big well, it depends
how your face angle responds. But but for most people
through decent players will produce a hook.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is this is assuming that you know, the
the the better players who can manipulate their swing like that.
Because you know, I'm going through some swing changes right now,
and you just depressed me about about reminding me that
it takes months to uh to make it, you know work,
or even years. But the first thing that comes to
my mind is a perfect example of that would be Tiger, right.
I mean, how long I've been working on major swing
changes and he's back, He's now number one again.
Speaker 3: It's been about I think it's spent two and a
half years with folding now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and path is a.
Speaker 3: Path is a big deal. I mean I had a
student not that long ago, actually hear Hawaii who just
could not swing into out I mean he so we
had to stop doing this drill because he just didn't
have enough awareness in his body to produce the desired
knows His body wasn't responding to the image in his
head of swinging the club out to right field across
the target line from into out. You couldn't do it.
I had to give them mechanical way to do it.
But for people who maybe are a little bit better
athletic ability, you know, what you do is you swing
into out. When you're doing it well, the ball starting
out to the right of your targets and pretty much
staying out to the right, then you go, okay, I'm
going to swing out the inn and most people swing
out the naturally anyhow, that's pretty much you're sort of
hard wired to swing out to end. But what you
do then is you go back and forth. You go
out to end. If your club face is square to
the path, you'll hit a pull right, then you go
into out. If left face is square to your path,
you'll hit a push. So you're deliberately hitting a big
push followed by a big pole. Back and forth, and
so then you find the middle. And you always end
the exaggeration training by finding the middle. So if you're
hitting a low shot followed by a high shot. Then
you get a medium trajectory shot right, and you do
it with temple. You do it. You do a five speed,
then you do a twelve speed. Twelve speed would be
you know, twenty percent faster than your normal temple. Normal
temple would be number ten. So you start at a
five which is very slow, right, like basically half speed.
Then you do a twelve, then you do a seven
and a half speed, then you do a ten speed.
So you're constantly varying the speed of your of your
of your tempo. Right. That's a great way to help
your golf swing. The length of your backswing deliberately do
a half backswing length and a three quarterback swing length
and a full backswing length. You can you can do
how you let your wrists release. There's two main ways
you can use the muscles in your wrists and forearms
to throw the riskcock angle open, which is called an
active release. Where you can do the opposite, where you
do nothing with your wrists and forearm muscles and just
turn your body and let the turning of your body
create centrifical force which pulls open your riskcock angle. Right.
You can play around with that. You can play around
with angled attack the angle the club head approaches the
ground on a very steep angle versus a very shallow angle,
and sweep the ball off the grass, no divot versus
a deep divot in front of the ball. Right, two different,
two different ways of doing it. And that what happens
when if you did like a two hour session with
this kind of exaggerated sort of creative tinkering where you're
playing around us with this nothing real, super technical, just
sort of just feeling the sensations in your body when
your body responds to how you're trying to make the
ball behave differently, most people hit it really really well
and they realize, hey, I can make it go low,
I can make it go high. I can hit a
push when I want to, I can hit a poll
when I want to, I can slice it when I
want to. I can look at when I want to.
And after two hours, guess what you walk off the range.
You're super confident in your ball striking ability. It's a
great way to your confidence and awareness. Your body awareness
is now much more. It's more wider, it's bigger, it's
more panoramic. You can feel what your body and club
are doing. Whereas you know when you're playing badly, you
don't feel anything. It's like you just all you know,
you're hitting the ball crappy. You don't know why, right,
So this is a great way to build up your confidence.
Another practice category I call BRTT that that stands for balance, RHARITHM,
tempo and timing. So you just you go to the
range for couple hours and you maybe do thirty minutes
on balanced drills, thirty minutes on rhythm drills, thirty minutes
on temple drills, and then thirty minutes on timing, which
is the sequencing of your body parts on the forward swing.
And the big one there is timing. There's several, but
the really big one for average golfers is timing your
riskcock release point with your pivot right. If your riskcock
release is typically for most average golfers, it's going to
be too early relatively they're pivot, they'll have a number
of bad shot, particularly fat shots with their irons. So
getting the timing of the riskcock release downs a big
one for average golfers.
Speaker 1: So hard to do. I mean, i'd swear I'm struggling
big time, not just the end out, but the riskcock
thing is really baffling me, and so what I end
up doing is casting and I lose all that power
by releasing way too early.
Speaker 3: Well, you got to get in one of Martin Chuck's
tour strikers. There's a plug for I have one.
Speaker 1: I have one and just like, yeah, you're you're coming,
but my hands are too far in front, and it's
like buy, well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can be too far in front. That's fairly rare.
It tends to be a better player's flaw. But I
actually I'm at a European tour player on the on
the range here at Turtle Bay a few days ago.
We've been hanging out the last few days. Marcus and
I showed him that we were at the Turtle Day
Palmer Course the private range yesterday for three hours practicing
together and I showed him the torstriker. He loved it.
He thought it was the best training and you'd ever used.
It was raven about it. Oh yeah, oh, but here's
here's a tip for you.
Speaker 1: There are available at golf smarter dot com. By the way,
if you don't oh yeah, yeah, well you sell them. Yeah,
Martin's awesome.
Speaker 3: The quickest way to fix there's other ways, for sure,
including including other training aims besides torstriker. But the quickest
way to fix an early release where you're throwing or
casting or throwing the riscock angle away is to work
on your grip pressure, because I guarantee you that right
before you throw, right before you fire the muscles in
your wrists and forearms to throw the risktock angle away,
you're going to tighten your grip pressure. Your finger pressure
is going to tighten, and then you throw. So if
you can learn to keep your grip pressure light and
constant during the beginning of the downside, it's so called
transition segment. It's physically impossible to throw it away is
to tighten first. So as long as you don't tighten
your fingers, you're not gonna throw it away.
Speaker 1: Right Yep, Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 3: That's a little bit about practice. I think if people
apply what they're hearing here, they're gonna they're gonna. It's
very logical, it makes sense, and it works. It's worked
for the students I've used it with the last about
eighteen months.
Speaker 1: And and is it a mistake to mix and match
or I mean, because you had the way you were
doing it. You to work on number one, two and three,
then work on three on four or five and six.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Again, the power of six things for people who
are already take in quality instruction, they've got at least
a moderate degree of improvement by doing more of the
overkill or the slow motion mir work practice. Those other
forms are practically talked about, so they sort of they
sort of got a handle on it, but they still
they still have to They still know that there's these
six categories that have more influence than all the other
shots do, and they want to practice those on a
regular basis so they continue to see the scores come down.
That's what the power of six is for. If you're
if you're a mid to high handicapped golfer that you
know has particularly golf swing issues, you need to take
construction how to learn the fundamentals, and that's a lot
most of that stuff is done at home in the mirror, right,
whether it's your grip position or your setup, or your
let's so your takeaway segment or your second half of
backswing segment. Do all that away from a golf ball
in slow motion right. If you know you have balance, rhythm,
and tempo, or timing issues. If those if your mechanics
are pretty good right, but your balance is way off,
or your rhythm is terrible, or your tempo is too
fast or too slow for your own good, or your
forwards sequencing the timing of your release is too late
or too early, then then then do that type of
practice right. But the point is is to get an
overall sense of where your game is at. Where, what
are my strengths, what are my weaknesses? And then come
up with a plan. What what are these several plans
I outlined here and then and then work the plan
until you reach your goal. People go, well, how long
does it take? I go, It takes as long as
it takes. Everybody's different. Keep doing it until you achieve
your goal. Until you start to see the ball behave
properly hit the ball further straight or make more putts,
you'll start seeing your scores come down. That's and then
then then you can work on something else.
Speaker 1: I find it interesting that so much of what you
were uh of the power of six is ball striking practice.
But uh, I'm on number four, the mental game, the
art of shot making. Help me on that, on how
I can improve on that? While I'm on the range
as opposed to being on the course, because it's a
very different thing for your mental game on the range
than it is on the court itself.
Speaker 3: Well, one another form I wasn't sure we have time for.
There are a couple of others. One is called playing
the course, and this is what Hogan would do in
the range. Hogan would actually pick the club he would
hit on the first tee, typically a driver, and then
assuming you hit the driver the way he wanted to
hit it, his next shot, let's say, would be a
six iron. Then he would pull a six iron, hit
one ball to six iron. Then then of course there's
no putting because you're in the range. You need to
go to the next thing. The next let's say that
the second hold one hundred and fifty yard part three,
so he would take an eight iron, hit one eight
iron shot right again, go to the next tee. So
you're playing, you're playing the long game from from the range,
whatever course you're gonna be playing that either that week
or that day, and make it more like what you'd
be doing on so you're basically rehearsing and what you
can do in the golf course on the driving range.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that's been suggested by Manny instructor who've been
on the show and even and I remember, I don't
remember who said it, but I it was when you're
doing a warm up before year round, go ahead and
play the first three holes. Yeah you know, you know,
but in your mind on the range, you know, if
you know the course, get those first three holes in
so that when you get out and play the course,
you've already done the first three holes in your mind,
so you can you know you've practiced that and get
yourself up to speed there.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll give you a more concrete answer than that.
They basically comes down to stuff we've talked about at
least four of the other episodes I've done, which is
the idea that you have focal points, or through experimentation,
mostly on the range, you find that when I when
I see X, or feel y or here's Z right,
you get those three primary century channels. For most people,
especially average golfers, they're better off ignoring the visual and
the auditory and they're going to probably find better results there.
There are some exceptions, I mean, target picture being one,
which is visual, but except for that, if they're going
to focus on anything to do with what they're what
their body is doing. They need to use field channel.
So so, for example, I play a lot of my
best golf when my mind is in my hands in
field channel, feeling like the pressure that I'm holding to
handle with. And so I keep my mind there right
from the from right before I trigger my takeaway until
the finish. I never let my mind go anywhere else.
And what if I actually do that, I almost always
hit a really good shot. So what you're doing is
you're rehearsing what you're going to do on the golf horse,
rehearsing it on the range. How you're going to use
your conscious mind focal points. You know. That's a great
way to practice.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, every time you you pay us a visit,
I just walk away and it's not so much my
head as spinning, but I fall in love with the
game that much more every time I talk to you.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for that's that's a really nice compliment. I
appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Because it's like you give me such concrete stuff that
I understand. And I'm not a single digit player. I'm
not one of the better players, and I'm worse now
than I was a while ago. But you know, everything changes,
you know, because I'm going through. But I just feel like, Okay,
I have a plan of action, I know what I
want to do now, and I just I appreciate it
so much. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Well you're welcome, you know.
Speaker 1: I hope someday, I hope someday I can take lessons
from you. I would really love to do something with you.
Speaker 3: Well, come up, come up, come over to Hawaiian like
we talked about.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, well maybe we should do a golf smarter
school in Hawaii. I think we've talked about that. Nobody
responds to me.
Speaker 3: Come on, folks, light to Hawaii. What a horrible thing,
flight of Hawaiian in the middle of winter from the mainland.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to do that, right, But.
Speaker 3: You know, back to what you said, I mean that
to me, I guess is if I to pick the
one advantage I've had as a golfers, it's just the
way I am. My personality. Everything I do is is
is clear. If I'm not clear, I don't take any action.
I mean I don't even get up out of the
chair and leave the room if I'm not clear about
my intention. You know, that's the power of clarity and
having a clear intention. So you need to have that
to play golf. Well, not too many golfers do. Most golfers,
if they were being honest about their game, they would say,
it's a confused mishmash, a big mess of a tip here,
a tip here in an article I read there, and
something I saw on a web forum here. And they
don't really know what they're supposed to do with their mind,
with their body, with their club. They don't They don't know,
you know. And it's so part of my mission in
life is to help people become clearer about what their
intention should be and how they can go about achieving it.
And you have to approach a golf shot with a
very simple clear view of what you're trying to accomplish,
whether it's on to range in terms of a practice drill,
even if it's without a ball or explow motion in
your work or you know, practice wings with your eyes closed,
whatever it is, you have to know why you're doing
it with the purpose is sort of the meta purpose,
the overarching purpose, you know, and how it's going to
help you both in the long term and hopefully in
the short term. Right, And you got to believe it's true.
Here's the other thing. We did talk about a lot
of the practice rules. But I always tell my students, well,
why do you go to the range. Here's what people
typically say to me, to see if I can hit
it good. I go, No, that's not why you go
to the range. No, why should I go. You're going
to hit it good. You're going to the range to
hit it good, not to see if you could hit
it good. Well, yeah, but sometimes I don't hit it good.
I go. That's partly because that's golf, because it's a
hard game, right, right, But you have to decide before
you leave the house what you're going to work on
with your mental focal point, where you're gonna put your
mind and what you're trying to do with your body
and your club, and you're not going to change it
just because you happen to hit, say five bad shots
in a row. You don't give up on it. Think
about this, where there's no sport in the world where
they where they condition the advice about the mechanics of
the motion, the athletic notion on the part of the coach. Right,
the coach doesn't condition his advice on whether or not
the student gets instant success. Like if you're if you're
teaching someone how to shoot free throws, right, there's certain
rules for that. Right. I'll give you one example, because
I used to play a lot of basketball. You know
you're gonna roll. There's a there's actually a you know,
there's a release of the wrist in basketball. In a
shot in basketball deserves a golf right, and so your
risk kind of arches fork kind of kind of uncocks forward,
and the ball rolls off the two middle fingers. Right.
Let's say I'm coaching you and you try that, and
you're on your own the next day after taking a
lesson on this with me, and the first eight shots
you hit badly, miss, and you're trying to roll the
ball off your two middle fingers, right, So then you
start doing something else. Well, I don't think I'll let
it roll off my index finger or maybe my baby finger. Ah,
that rolling doesn't wory. I missed threemore. I don't think
that's a fundamental. That's how golfers practice. Now, if I
was your basketball coach and I came back the next
day and I'd say, how how's the finger roll exercise going?
He said to me. You know, I tried it and
I missed eight balls in a row. You know what
if I was, if I was like Bobby Knight, besides
throwing chairs, which what Bobby Night would probably do, not
John Wooden, Thank god, no, I'd be passed. I say,
what do you mean the greatest players in history for
the last you know, one hundred and something years, all
the top NBA players, they all roll, they all roll
the balls off the ball for two middle fingers. You're
telling me you don't think it's a rule. You don't
think it's a law of basketball mechanics. Of course it is.
The fact that you missed eight is meaningless. You keep
doing it until you start making them. That's that's how
you should practice. When you play golf, you go to
the range knowing what you're gonna do. You don't go
to the range try to figure out what to do.
That's the job of the teacher, Your teacher that you
paid all that money to. That guy's got the information.
It's that you're supposed to internalize and to practice. That's
how you get better through practice. Right, that's just cause
of effect loves logical right, I.
Speaker 1: Perfect, it makes total sense. Yeah, total sense. So I'm
just curious from one old hibby to do another one.
When you talked a moment ago about you don't get
out of your chair unless you have an intention. Yeah,
are you telling me that you've never walked across the house,
got into your bedroom and go was I what did
I try to do?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, Okay, good, I just think one night,
I just want to make sure that wasn't just me.
Speaker 3: I've got to take my Alzheimer's medication and I forgot
because you know, I have a bad memory. So that's
that's a pimological excuse, right, No, but yeah, I'm sure
I do that, of course. Yeah. But in general, no,
I try. I try to be in the moment. I
try not to think about the future of the past.
I don't. I really don't spend hardly any time at
all thinking about the past. I stay in the moment.
It's something I started doing forty years ago as practice,
a spiritual practice, and I try to be aware of
why I'm doing something, and I have to have a
good reason to do it. Otherwise I don't do it.
You're better off just doing nothing, you know.
Speaker 1: Listen, we've we've not even talked about yips or putting
at all. But I loved this conversation about practice strategies,
So that just means you're gonna have to come back
for more, right, because we've got we've got a list
of topics we wanted to cover that I know that
you and I can easily spend a half hour to
an hour on every time.
Speaker 3: The yip stuff is fascinating. I've been doing a lot
of work for the last I'm fifteen years of people
with severe cases and the yips, and it's been really,
really successful.
Speaker 1: All right, well, soon, let's schedule something so we can
bring you back more often.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, cool, awesome?
Speaker 1: All right, well, Jim Waldron again, it's the Balancepoint golf
dot com. Take lessons or do one of his schools.
Let's let's all go to Hawaii in the winter and
go play, uh not play golf, learn golf from Jim
Waldron of Balance Point.
Speaker 3: Thanks Freed, Thank.
Speaker 1: You, Jim. It's great talking to you again. Have a
phenomenal time in Hawaii, and hopefully we'll get together in
Oregon sometime soon.
Speaker 3: Looking forward to it. Yeah, you bet.