Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number three hundred and seventy five, published on
March nineteen, twenty thirteen, and on today's score Zone short
game Academy, The Wedge Guy addresses a listener's question about
adjusting the lie angle of your wedges just like the pros.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors. Featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 1: I love the image that you just painted of filling
the cup with water, and when it overflows, what direction
is it going to flow? Yeah, that's really helpful, But
it's going to be away from the cup.
Speaker 3: Going to be down the paull line. So there's no
necessarily any guarantee that the direction water would flow below
the hole is the same direction that water would flow
into the hole. That's the hardest one to get right, yus.
The green is perfectly flat and tilted, which again is
not the real world. That's the only time the direction
flowing in would be the same as the direction flowing out.
Because the whole isn't necessarily placed on a flat surface,
the direction in could be slightly offset from the direction out.
That's much more common than not. So that's why it
has some limitations. Is it only gives us the fall
line directly below the hole. It doesn't necessarily represent the
fall line above the hole. We can make a decent
estimation based on that, but won't necessarily be as accurate
as we would prefer.
Speaker 1: That same point. Putt it from the instructor's perspective with
John Braham.
Speaker 2: This is Golf Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers
and golf professionals to help blower your score. It's worked
for your host, Fred Green.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast. John.
Speaker 3: Hello, Fred, how you been very good? Thanks?
Speaker 1: How the lesson's coming?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: If I don't usually do too much in the winter time,
most of my lesson businesses through travel, so I'll travel
between two and four weekends a month, just especially springtime
is starting to pick up quite a bit now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And to just clarify for the audience, John is
not speaking with me and sword fighting at the same time.
His dog is actually we talked about this. His dog
is walking around the room, is with you know, with
his nails on the tile. So John. A few episodes back,
we talked to Mark Sweeney about the aime Point golfing
system putting system that he developed, and it was to me,
it's a fascinating story of a guy with an idea
and how he developed it and turned it into something
very useful and brought it on to teachers all over
the world. And you have embraced Aimepoint.
Speaker 3: Certainly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I think you told me
that you're not even giving normal golf lessons anymore. You're
just doing aim Point exclusively.
Speaker 3: Yeah, almost exclusively. I'll teach very little full swing. It's
getting less and less and less over the years, and
it's nearly nothing now.
Speaker 1: And from your perspective, and this is why I was
so excited to have you on the show, because you know,
there's so many different theories on putting. But as a
certified instructor of I'm assuming you're a PGA certified instructor
as well. Yeah, So, as a PGA certified instructor and
as an aim Point certified instructor, what is it about
aim Point that you love, and why should we embrace it?
Speaker 3: The reason that I love it is because I can
prove it. I can prove it right on the putting
green while I'm teaching it that here's the scenario, here's
the hole, here's the ball, here's the surface. We can
do a read. We can get it right, we can
get it wrong. Whichever the answer is, I can go
out and figure out why I got it right or
why I got it wrong and measure it and prove it.
That's why I got involved.
Speaker 1: So it's all about being able to quantify.
Speaker 3: Everything exactly correct.
Speaker 1: All right, move on? I mean I want details. I
want to know again from from your perspective, what it
is that you teach. And you know, I'd like to
just open the floor here and let you go. And
you know, obviously it's not visual, but if you can
walk us through the elements of it and why we
should fall in love with us too?
Speaker 3: Sure? I mean, first we start off with explaining to
people what actually causes the ball to break? What are
the actual true variables involved? And there's basically three and
those three are how steep is the ground between the
ball and the hole? Let the balls rolling across? What
direction is the ball rolling across the ground? We use
the term angle what angles across in the ground. And
then the third one is how long is it doing
it for? So if I can figure out what those
three things are, how steep, what angle, and for how long?
Based on those things, physics and science says we can
predict the ball should do this. Now, certainly we can't
control if it hits a ball mark or hits a spike, marray,
whatever the case we be, and things of that nature.
The green' is not a perfect surface, but we have
between thirty and forty seconds to make the best estimate
that we can make. And if you know what the
variables are, how to find them and measure them, we
can do that very very quickly and be done sometimes
almost before we actually get to our ball from the fairway.
We can start doing this process from one hundreds of
yards away, and then we just get there. We kind
of refine our answer based on what we know that
we're looking for, so it's a very specific process of
things that we're looking for. The time element is mainly
broken down into our distance from the hole and the
speed of the green. There's other things involved in that,
like grain and wind things of that nature, which are
much harder to quantify because they tend out to be
very consistent, you know, winds coming in and out. So
the main things that we deal with again are how
steep one angle? Then you could say, you know, how
fast is the green and then how far away? So
that's what was Once we figure those things out, we
have a piece of paper that we look at saying okay,
based on these inputs, the answer should be X, and
we go from there and try to hit it with
the assumption that our skills are going to hit the
ball that delivers it between six and twelve inches past
the hole. That's one of the assumptions that we kind
of build in is that every part we're going to
try and hit at the same distance relative to where
we are and where the hole is. So it's working
on you know, the actual skill the feels involved of
determining what those variables are. So that's the art part
that's still there that's never changed. We look at it,
we feel that we do all those things trying to
figure out what those pieces are. Then the science piece
is okay, based on our skill and our feel we
come up with this answer, and then we now we
have the harder of the two parts, in my opinion,
which is actually hitting it there at the cruck speed,
aiming it there, things of that nature. So you know
all of those variables. I can go in and I
can measure while I'm practicing and say, okay, I thought
the ground was this steep and it was this deep.
I thought I was coming from this direction, I was
coming from that direction. I thought I was eight feet
away when I was ten feet away. Whatever the situation is,
I can do something to measure it, to find out
how well I've practiced said versus how well I determined
it in the real world, and continually work on these
skills that I can quantify, and like you said, it's
quantifying feel is a great way to explain what we're
trying to do. Saying okay, we need to figure out
what these things are. We're going to put an actual
number on them. Not just well it's a little downhill
and it goes a little to the right. We want
to know exactly how much downhill it is, how steep
the ground is, that it's going down, all of those things,
and based on the accuracy of our skills determines the
accuracy of our read instead of just having it being
a kind of a memory device, which is what normal
green reading is. In my opinion, at least the way
I was taught it is you look at the ground,
look at the ball at the hole, maybe go to
the other side, maybe you throw the bucket of water
around the green, whatever the situation may be, and then
I use that information and try to apply it in
the future when I run across it again. Well, the
problem with that is that those only include the variables
of the ground itself. For example, if I had, you know,
let's say, a ten foot pot across the slope on
two different days, I can have it roll across the
exact same ground and break completely different amounts because of
either the speed of the green or how hard I
hit it, or whatever the case may be. There's some
other element in there besides just the ground itself that's
going to help me to predict what it's going to do.
If I only play the same course all the time,
or at least a course that has the same speed
of the green all the time, I can get very
good at applying what I see now to the future.
As soon as I go to a new course or
come to my course on like the invitational or remember
guest day, and the greens are faster than normal or
slower than normal, whatever the case may be. I have
no way now to predict what the curve will be
based on all of my experience because they no longer
apply to the same situation. So I will constantly struggle
trying to figure out, why does this ground look exactly
what I'm used to, what the ball is doing something different.
So we're trying to teach people to kind of get
out of that kind of, you know, the endless loop
of you know, apply to the current what I saw
in the past, instead of saying, okay, here's what the
actual variables are. Let's figure out what they are and
then just apply them to the situation that I have.
It's just a very different process of doing it. And
it's very similar to you know, the change from you know,
SI seven years ago or in every full shot was
an eye based event. I look at the green here
I am, I predict about how far away I am,
and I choose a club based on that visual appearance,
and through time I start to build a relationship between
what I see in my distance and what the club
that equals, and I'm sure at some point in time
when yardage markers and lasers became more prevalent, the golfers
that had learned the skill of doing it by sight
were very reluctant to switch because they had invested all
of this time and this energy and the skill in
learning that visual event. But nowadays nobody plays golf that way.
All of the players that play for a living are
mapping the course out in advance or shooting lasers, aregating
as much detailed information as they can get to help
them make that one choice. It's that same idea that's
that we're bringing to the green that instead of it
being just a strictly visual event, it's an area that
can be measured and can be quantified and can be
learned as a skill. And then we apply science to
an answer.
Speaker 1: I am way too twenty first century centric, because when
you said an ibased event, I thought you were talking
about a new product from Apple. I was like, what,
oh I E y E oh got it? How many
other dare I call it a system? Aim point, we'll
call ampoint a system at this point? How many other
systems have you experienced, studied, and taught before you concluded
that aim Point was it.
Speaker 3: When I started with aim Point, I wasn't aware of
any other system that proposed to do what Mark was doing.
In fact, I mean, you don't know me from a
hill of beans. But when I first heard about it,
I specifically got in contact with Mark to try and
figure out what was wrong with it. There's no more
skeptical person than myself in filtering information as it comes in.
I have four kids, and I, especially in the wintertime,
I spend a lot of time at home researching and
doing stuff online trying to gather info. And so when
I had heard about this, I'm like, oh, this is interesting.
No one's ever tried to say they could do this.
I want to get a hold of this guy and
figure out what's wrong with it. Well, how can I
break this thing so it doesn't actually actually work? And
when we got together, you know, he was able to
measure and quantify the things that he was doing, so
I couldn't really argue with him, so I got involved. Now,
since then, I believe there are two other systems that
are at least maybe even more than that, maybe three
that are kind of working off the same idea of
at least trying to predict what the ball will do.
But I have not had any personal experience with either
of those other systems, aside from just what I've read
online or heard from others. But I've never been to
another class another system to see exactly what they do.
Speaker 1: Do you know what the other systems are?
Speaker 3: I don't know the name of one. Jeff Manham's got
one some kind of wheel, but I don't know if
he's got a name for it. There's a new one
out that is that the vector one. No, that's a
different one. That's a different one. And there's another one
that a guy who used to do yardage books for
the tour I think his name is and and he's
just within the last couple of weeks or so, he's
he's used all the topography information that he's gathered on
tour to generate an app to say, Okay, well if
the holes here and the balls here, the balls should
break like so. But it's right on the phone. It
would be completely illegal, but.
Speaker 1: That's not gonna stop us exactly.
Speaker 3: So, So those are the only the only other ones
that I'm aware of that attempt to try and quantify
break based on location is what we're doing.
Speaker 1: It's not John Grund. I know that John Grund did
the yardage the sprinkler heads, but not the yardage guides.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, I think it's I think it's And I
know his last name is Straca. I'm just not sure
if his first name is John but s t R
A c k A. I think Straca.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen that before too. And Jeff Mangum has
uh has been a regular on Golf Smarter for years.
And he's quite detail oriented.
Speaker 3: No doubt.
Speaker 1: And if you ever looked at his website, oh I've been.
Speaker 3: I've engaged with Jeff many times and uh and and
detailed is a great way to describe Jeff's responses.
Speaker 1: I won't say obsessive. I'll just say detailed, detailed. Yes, yeah, Jeff,
you're so entertaining. All right, Well, anyway we're gonna we're
gonna get into I hope you you allow me to
get into specifics about the elements of aim point and
what what we can learn from you without obviously getting
a clinic. This is about as close as we're going
to get right now. But you do give you know,
you were here in northern California just recently doing clinics
all over the country, all over the world, all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was just at the Metal Club
up in Fairfax just last weekend. I'll be at the
I'll be in Phoenix this weekend and then a few
days for the LPGA event and oh great, very pretty
much every weekend from now until almost the fourth of yourly.
It's gonna be a busy spring. Great.
Speaker 1: Well, I apologize for missing, and I was out of town.
I would have loved to have come up to the Meadal.
Speaker 3: Club and yeah, it would have been great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would have been fun. Ever since I talked
to Mark, I've been fascinated by this without having to
get the lesson. I wanted to get one, but I've been,
you know, looking at greens lately. Mentioned recently. I live
right off of a private golf course, so I get
to walk around the greens when people aren't around and
look at it and trying to identify slope and which
is the fall, which is the line? That is, if
we just drop the ball right here, it's just going
to not break at all. It's just going to go
dead straight right. Explain to me how we can do
that on a green without dropping a ball. I mean,
let's let's go through the various steps on what it
requires and how we learn how to do that.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a multiple of ways. I'm sure Jeff has
shared some we you know, we we there's only you know,
a few ideas that actually, you know, hold true to
at least what we're trying to do. I mean, when
when we're teaching it, especially to someone who's had a
little bit of experience. Again, we'll start as from any
distance away where they can see the ball and the
surface and the flag, they can see those things. We
start trying to identify the fall line from hundreds and
hundreds of yards away, generally speaking in terms of a
general slope direction. Sometimes that's easier to see from a
distance relative to the high and low points that kind
of surround the surface itself. So we've actually had tournaments
where we do all of the green reading from off
the green just to see how well we can do,
and then once you get there you kind of refine it.
But so when you're on the green, you know, it
can still be a site event for sure, trying to
figure out, you know, relative to you know, where the
hole is and where the ball is and if we're
assuming that we're crossing a single, single surface, we'll start
with the easiest one first. You know, the surface between
the ball and the hole is consistent. It's the same
direction and the same amount throughout. Now, certainly that doesn't
happen on all pots, but for the easiest of ones,
we'll kind of start there. But it's trying to figure out,
you know, in that area between the ball and the hole,
what direction is the ground going. As you mentioned, what
direction is the fall line. You know, I've used pictures
of taking a hose and stuffing it in the hole
and filling it up with water, and you know, figuring
out where the water would come out. You know, we've
we've talked about walking a circular shape around the hole
and then based on how you feel changes of elevation,
you can feel where the fall line will be. You know,
if you're kind of walking half of a circle at
some point you'll be walking down the other part to
be walking up where that change is will be where
the fall line is. You know, another way that we
do it is strictly just by sight, you know, just
by looking at the hole, trying to figure out what's
the high and low part on the whole. We also
do it by in terms of just general all overall balance.
You know, the body is designed to keep us upright
and vertical so that we don't fall over, and based
on just the way that we're standing on the surface,
our body will make some adjustment to that, and in
certain directions that we're going to be facing, we'll get
a a sensation of balance that, Okay, this is facing
up the hill and this is facing down the hill
straight where if I was facing across the hill, I'd
have one foot lower than the other. You can kind
of visualize that. So trying to figure out a balance
relationship within our own body as to where the fall
line would be based on how we're actually just standing
on the ground would be one of the last ways
that we do it.
Speaker 1: When you're circling the hole trying to and I loved
when Mark talked about how you can if you close
your eyes, you can kind of feel where the slope
of the green and how it's changing while you're walking
around it. But are you walking around it from two
feet away, five feet, ten feet? What is the optimum
distance that you're circling the hole that you can feel
where the fall line.
Speaker 3: Is it really varies. I mean, in a perfect world,
if the green was perfectly flat and tilted, you would
do it at whatever distance your ball was away. It
wouldn't matter because it would all be the same. In
the real world of greens, the fall line is not
a nice, straight, continuous line. So we try to figure
out the fall line that's between our ball and the hole,
so that the walking one we don't use because generally
you have to do it in a manner that's too
far away from where the ball is, So you know,
it's kind of taught to do it below where the
hole is. Well, if the ball is not near below
where the hole is, the fall line could completely change
somewhere else relative to the fall line that's below the hole,
so we don't really use that. We try to figure
out the fall line that's between the ball and the hole,
that the fall line the balls are actually going to
roll across as precisely as we can by doing more
of that balance feel between the ball and the hole.
Speaker 1: I love the image that you painted of I always
thought about, you know which way is and people like that,
how which way is the slope right on a green?
And people always say, oh, well it goes to the mountain,
and so it goes to the lake. Well, actually goes
to the irrigation. Yeah. Right, So I always think like
which way is the water going to flow on the screen.
But I love the image that you just painted of
filling the cup with water and when it overflows, what
direction is it going to flow?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: That that's really helpful. But it's going to be away
from away from the cup.
Speaker 3: It's going to be it's going to be down the
fall line. So there's no necessary, necessarily any guarantee that
the direction water would flow below the hole is the
same direction that water would flow into the hole. That's
the hardest one to get right. Mmm, there's unless the
green is perfectly flat and tilted, which again is not
the real world. That's the only time the direction flowing
in would be the same as the direction flowing out.
Because the whole isn't necessarily placed on a flat surface,
the direction in could be slightly offset from the direction out,
and that's that's much more common than not. So that's
why it has some limitations. Is it only gives us
the fall line directly below the hole. It doesn't necessarily
represent the fall line above the hole. We could we
can make a decent estimation based on that, but it
will necessarily be as accurate as we would prefer.
Speaker 1: And in the slope and the grade are those two
different things? And how do we define those as we're
out there.
Speaker 3: I would I would say they're the same thing. The
slope amount or the grade is you know, one of
the big things based on just how steep the ground
is between the ball and where the hole is, and
then the slope direction that's the fall line. And then
the time would be that third piece that I had mentioned,
how long it's the ball.
Speaker 1: Roll for right? And and it's obviously gonna well, you know,
it's not obvious, but I would think right, And I
would think that if you're putting uphill, it's going to
actually take longer if you're equidistance, say you're uphill and
downhill putts and you're ten feet away, that it's going
to take longer to get to the hole going uphill
than it would downhill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's exactly the opposite of that actually, and ten
really and the majority of people make this air and
I think part of it is just because of the
way greens are described. For example, if I had two
surfaces that were perfectly flat, and one green would be
a stimp of eight, which would be called a slow green,
and the other green was a stimp of twelve, which
would be called a fast green. And on each green
I was going to hit the ball exactly the same distance.
Let's say that same ten feet that you mentioned the
green that's called the slow green, I actually have to
hit with more force. I have to hit it harder
to travel that same distance because it has additional friction
on it, So that ball actually rolls faster for the
amount of distance that it's rolling. The ball on the
twelve I hit with less speed with less force. That
ball rolls a lot slower for a lot longer and
longer amounts of time for that same ten feet. So
a slow green has the fastest rolling golf balls on it,
a fast green has the slowest rolling golf balls on it.
Just like a downhill putt is considered fast has the
slowest rolling ball on it, and a pillo PUDs that
are considered slow you have to hit them hardest. They
have the fastest rolling puts on it. It's been a
poor way of describing what slow and fast greens are
relative to what the ball is actually doing on them.
You know, the only reason an eight breaks less than
a twelve is because I have to hit it harder
and it travels for less time. That's why it breaks less.
We could have the exact same ground, the same everything else,
But the reason why it breaks less is because I'm
hitting it harder, as traveling for a less amount of time,
less time, less amount of time that gravity can affect it.
Let's break over the same distance. So it's and most people,
once you explain that to them, go like, oh uh okay,
I get that, I just wasn't thinking right. But it's
a fairly common misconception that I run across in the
clinics that I do.
Speaker 1: Huh well, I would I would generally say, I'm totally
baffled by what you said, but I know I think
I followed you on this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Just just think about whatever whatever amount of force
that you're hitting the ball with that's controlling the time
element generally speaking. Okay, and if I'm hitting them all
the same distance, but I have to hit one harder
than the other, then the one that I'm hitting harder
is going to travel that distance in less time than
the one I'm hitting softer.
Speaker 1: I have so many more questions for you. I want
to know. Could you stick around so that you can
also answer these questions and we do a golf Smarter
for Members only episode.
Speaker 3: Can we do another one? Oh? Absolutely be happy to
Oh that's great.
Speaker 1: All right, So we're going to have John. I'm going
to have one more question before we go, but I
just want to let the audience understand that John will
continue this conversation on the details of the ame point
putting system on our next episode, which is golf Smarter
for Memory Only. And if you are not a member
of golf Smarter for Members Only, I encourage you to
check it out at golfsmarter dot com because with your membership,
you will not only get a new episode every single
week that we publish one, you'll get part two of
many of the conversations that we have, but you'll also
have access to our entire archives. And now that golf
Smarter is up in the three high three hundred number,
there's a lot of conversations that will help your golf game.
So please, I encourage you, I ask you to support
golf Smarter and help it stay alive by joining golf
smarter for members only and take advantage of the benefits
that also include additional discounts. My last question before we
get to the members only though, is your follow up
with your students on I know one person who's done
aim point was totally fired up about it and try
to get me to understand everything. He tried to give
me the lesson, and then two months three months later,
we were out playing and I noticed that he wasn't
using his book, he wasn't going into the details. I
asked him or I thought you were doing am point
and he said, yeah, it was too much And I
got it and I don't really need to do it anymore.
How is the long term reaction from your students have
you been following up on that?
Speaker 3: You know? It really varies quite a bit depending on
the student. I mean, there are certain personality types that
enjoy the idea of trying to get the answer right
and will pursue the process in the effort to get
the answer right and spend additional time practicing and learning
how to do it so that they get the answer right.
There's other types of personalities that don't necessarily need to
get the right answer. I just want to get an
answer this kind of okay, and then they can just
kind of, you know, fill in the gaps with their
own feel or whatever. On their own I can cleatly
understand both ideas and concepts. You know, I certainly fall
into the more exacting side based on, you know, the
way that I think and my preferences, and because of that,
I will do the extra work to get the answer
that I want. I know a lot of people will
will feel that, you know, trying to learn a green
reading system based on actual true numbers takes away their
feel and it becomes too too thoughtful and too mechanical
or whatever the case may be. You know, Yet at
the same time, you know, you ask them what their
driver launch conditions are, and they know their angle of
attack and their club path and the spin rate and
their launch and all the other kind of stuff where
they know exactly, you know, they're going to shoot a
laser from here to the flag. But if I tell
them to aim three inches out, they're like, well, I
just want to kind of just kind of hit it
about a cup out or whatever. It's it's an interesting
dichotomy between you know, the preferences of some people relative
to wanting exactness in other areas and then wanting a
little bit of vagueness in others. So it completely depends
on the person. I've certainly run into both types. There's
no question that most people underestimate the amount of skill
required to do it well and the amount of practice
to do it well. There was a gentleman that I
saw at a conference. His name was doctor Brett McCabe,
who had an LPGA player who had learned the system
and was doing quite well with it. And then a
few months later he had noticed kind of the same
thing that she hadn't been doing it so much, and
he had asked her, you know what's been the change is?
She goes, well, you know, I've learned it all. You know,
I think I got it. And doctor McCabe's response was is, like,
you know, aimpoint is a skill. It's not a gift.
It's not one of the information piece, which is the
putt prediction break amounts. That's the science piece. The actual
skills required to generate the answer that will provide the
correct amount of break requires a great amount of skill
that requires continual maintenance and practice to do well. Especially
living up north. You know, I'll go especially on the holidays,
I won't step on the ground actual ground for you
months at a time, and then when I go to teach,
I can certainly sense that my perception of the skills
I need to be able to do to per see
what the ground is doing have lessened and that it
takes a little bit of time for me to get
back into reacclimating my skill set to what the reality
of the ground actually is. So a lot of people
aren't necessarily familiar with the idea that it's not just information,
it's an actual skill, just like their golf swing is,
and then if they don't do it, it gets worse.
Or some people may make mistakes and then not know
that they mistakes and think that the science is bad
because I didn't match what they had. I run across
that one more often than not that you know, someone
will do a read and what all actually does doesn't
match what the chart did, and they just assumed that
whatever they did was correct and what the numbers on
the chart were wrong without ever going back to check
to see, well, did I have the slope ride that
I have the angle right? Did I have the distance right?
I did I have the inputs right?
Speaker 1: Or not?
Speaker 3: And if they're not checking and they're not diligent with that,
it's very easy to say, well, you know this book
is wrong and I'm always right. Just the different personalities.
Speaker 1: Awesome. We're going to continue. I'm going to go to
that next question, but we'll do it on our next episode.
Thanks again for agreeing to stick around, and thanks so
much for your insight on this and your help.
Speaker 3: Certainly, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: This time once again for our score Zone Short Game
Academy with the Wedge Guy Terry Taylor, CEO of score Golf. Hey, Terry,
how are you?
Speaker 4: I'm great for it.
Speaker 1: How are you doing fine? You know, I'm I'm not
going to talk about this much, but I'm taking lessons now.
I've never taken lessons, but I'm taking lessons now. And
my teacher posed a question to me that I want
to throw out to you. What is the objective of golf?
Speaker 4: Drink beer and have fun?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's what I said, And he said.
Speaker 4: Objective of golf, that's an interesting question. Did you answer
it forrim?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: I answered it many ways, and he kept looking at me, like,
stop making it so difficult, stop getting so deep, stop.
Speaker 4: Speaking the thick of a golf is you hit it
from here until it goes in the hole, and then
you go do it again seventeen more times you win.
Speaker 1: It's put the ball in the hole.
Speaker 4: So anything that counts is how many times you had
to hit it to get it in the hole. And
nobody gives you bonus points for which clubs you get,
how far you hit it. The only thing you get
points for is how many times did you hit it
before it was in the hole?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And it's all right? And his point, and I'm so
glad we're talking about this on this show. During our
Short Game Academy, we just finished a conversation about putting.
His point is it doesn't matter how long you hit
the ball. You know, you can hit it two fifty
and send it right up the middle or two seventy
five three on right up the middle. That's not going
to get you as excited as hitting a twenty foot
putt or chipping from off the green and putting it
in the hole. Right.
Speaker 4: That's right. So his whole point was about that in
his book, Getting Up and Down, that he learned the
game when he a little bit of kid. His dad
took him out of the putting green and gave him
a little cut down putter and a ball and said here,
put it in the hole. And so you know, he
dropped it four or five, six feet whatever, and you
know he couldn't make it go in the hole. So
he would just go set it right next to the
hole and tap it to where it would go in.
Because that was what was fun, is watching the ball
go in the hole. That was what he was there for.
And Watson said, to this day he does not like
anybody hitting a putt back to him. He likes to finish,
whether it's two inch or six inch or ten inch
or two footer. He wants to put the ball in
the hole because that is the point of the game.
Speaker 1: Right, And what I like to call the happy sound,
that sound of the ball goes.
Speaker 4: Most golfers in most recreational games are hitting and puts
back to it. And you may play eighteen holes of
golf and only actually hear the happy sound three or
four or five times, right, And guys, for hitting your
one footers and your ten inches back to you. And
the next thing you know, it's like I never really
finished anything today. Pretty interesting, all right.
Speaker 1: So so the point is get get the ball in
the hole and and do it as little as possible.
But the objective of golf is thank you very much,
mister teacher, who I'm not allowed to talk about anyway.
We do have a great question that came in from
Paul Arellano or Paul Ariano, but I think it's Paul
Rolano from Vista, California, and he wants to know well, Terry.
He writes it this way. I've read that pro golfers
usually have their lit angles flattened. Is that something everyone
should do as well? Or do you need to swing
a certain way before flattening lie angles on wedges?
Speaker 4: Well, it is very common, Paul and all the listeners
out there for the tour players to play their wedges
one to two degrees flatter than they play their irons. Now,
this is proportionately flatter, please, So if your irons are
two degrees upright, you might want to play your wedges
one or even standard. If your irons are standard, you
might want to play your wedges one to two degrees flat.
The reason the tour players do this is because it
helps them set their hands in the low position at
address that they want. And good players and I always
encourage golfers to watch video of good players hitting short
game shots, wedge shots, full swing nine irons, you know,
and particularly the little delicate shots around the green, and
you'll see these guys crouch a little more on their knees.
Their hands are hanging straight below their shoulders, so their
hands are lower at address, closer to the ground than
they would be with a full swing seven iron or
six iron, because they're standing more upright for a more
powerful swing. And if you don't flatten the lies on
your wedges, and you do that, you're going to stick
the heel of the club in the ground. With a
more upright line golf club, I like to think that
the lie of the club is my guide as to
how I'm executing. So if I feel the toe of
the heel, the toe of the club, or the heel
of the club sticking in the ground, I know that
was a swing flaw, not not a misfit golf club.
So if I'm sticking the heel in the ground, I'm
getting too low with my hands, which doesn't happen too often,
but particularly what most offers, you'll feel that toe sticking
in the ground because you're getting more upright your hands
are drifting a little further away from your body. And
you know, if you think about it this way, if
you set up to the golf club, Paul, and make
sure that club is sold flat on the ground, swing
so that you feel that soul, make flat contact again.
Let the club be your school. Let the club be
your guide to schooling you as to whether you're doing
it right or not.
Speaker 1: And that's your answer. That's a good one. That's a
good question.
Speaker 4: It is a good question because and one of the
things that and I think your listeners and we talk
about this, you know every couple of weeks is I'm
all about the toolkit. And I'll talk about instruction. I
understand the god swing everything, but the toolkit that we
use to play the game is so crucial, so important
and having the right tools in our bag for our
particular game and having those tools shafted properly and length
andlngles and the right loft to gap your your set out.
And we should talk more about the toolkit in future
episodes because I'm I mean, it is so important. You've
got a big investment, and if you invested in the
wrong things, you're going to be frustrated. Out there.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Well, I think that everyone is learning that you
know what you're well, at least your opinionated. Whether you
know what you're talking about or not. You have an
opinion about it, but it must be a good opinion
because the score golf scoring clubs. You score forty one
sixty one clubs put up against some of the major manufacturers.
You're selling these at shows, and the response even from
the press, the response has been very very good. Congratulations, well, thank.
Speaker 3: You, Fred.
Speaker 4: And we took a fresh approach at this end of
the set. And I invite any of your listeners to
look at their late model wedges or brand new wedges, whatever,
and go compare them to some that are in the
bargain barrels that date back to the forties, fifty sixties.
This is the last club in the bag that has
not caught up to the modern game that we play,
the full swing power game, you know, and fifty years
ago nobody made full swings with wedges, and now everybody does,
and the wedge did not catch up with that, and
so people get ballooning trajectories and inconsistent distances and it's
not their fault. We give absolution here. It's not your fault.
You're playing a nineteen fifty model golf club with the
twenty thirteen model game, and there's a disconnect there, and
there's better technology, and we've seen upstart companies challenge the
status quo for the last forty or fifty years in golf,
and better technology wins every time.
Speaker 1: Terry, thanks so much once again, and we'll speak with
you soon.
Speaker 4: I look forward to it. Thank you. Fred