Speaker 1: Hi, This is Fred Green from the Golf Smarter Podcast.
This is part two of our extended series with Tony Manzoni,
who passed away in twenty eighteen. Even if you've heard
these episodes in the past, it's a great reminder to
reiterate Tony's teaching methods that he communicates so effectively and
based on your feedback, works incredibly well. What we're doing
differently this year versus what we've done the last few
years is that I'm replaying these episodes in the dated
order they were originally published. Tony's book The Loss Fundamental,
One Simple Move Better Golf Forever is once again available
on Amazon, including the Kindle format, and his video of
the same name can now only be seen online. If
you'd like to gain access, please write directly to me
at golf Smarter podcast at gmail dot com or click
on the Heyfred button at golfsmarter dot com. To find
out more. Please visit Golfsmarter dot com. Thanks so much
for your support and enjoy.
Speaker 2: For members only.
Speaker 3: Golf Smarter number two fifty four recorded on October twenty six,
twenty ten, The Single Pivot Swing in detail with Tony Manzoni.
Speaker 1: This is Golf Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers
and golf professionals to help lower your score.
Speaker 2: It's worked for your host, Fred Green.
Speaker 3: Welcome and thanks for downloading the Golf Smarter Podcast. A
few episodes ago, we had a conversation with Tony Manzoni,
who claimed to have unearthed the secret to Ben Hogan's
golf swing. Tony calls it the single pivot swing, and
he'll soon be opening this Single Pivot Academy down in
Palm Desert, California, where he coaches and teaches at College
of the Desert. Well after that podcast, not only did
Tony get a number of calls requesting a coaching session,
I received many emails wanting more in depth information. So
I called him and luckily we caught Tony before he
left the country for meetings in China, and he was
more than willing to discuss his theories in detail.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 4: Tony, Hey, how are you today.
Speaker 3: I'm doing well and I'm so glad that we caught you.
I understand you're going to be leaving the country any.
Speaker 4: Minute, right, Yeah, I'm going to China and meet with
some government officials about doing some golf courses there and
also created some golf schools and kind of tied into
what we're doing with golf illustrated here at College of
the Desert.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's very exciting.
Speaker 4: It is, and it's my first trip to Asia, and
I'm so excited about going to China because right now
I think that's a hotspot for all the golf activity
in the world.
Speaker 2: One of my business acted We're not just golf, yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, everything everything, and golf is kind of the
criteria for people that are working in various industries to
do business. In my golf management program, I get a
lot of boys from Korea and China that have been
sent here by employers so that they get some form
of knowledge about the management of golf courses and then
also a little bit about teaching, but primarily to get
their skills up so that they can play golf and
do business on the golf course.
Speaker 3: Very interesting. Well, and part of your College of the
Desert program is golf management.
Speaker 4: Correct, that's correct, Yes, that's correct, Very very good.
Speaker 3: So when you were on the show and we had
you talking about shot Watch and among other things, but
we wanted to talk about your single pivot swing, and
I've got to ask you a couple questions about it,
and you were kind of vague about it, which was okay,
but I was inundated with emails and phone calls from
listeners around the world saying.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, I want more.
Speaker 3: You tease this as Ben Hogan's secret, and you really
didn't even talk about it. So it's not much that
I would call some back and say, hey, can you
do a second episode, you know, in a couple of weeks.
Usually we'll do long interview and cut into two, but
this time we had to call you back and get
you to talk more about the single pivot swing.
Speaker 4: I hope you well, I can do that. I can
do that for you because it's really a passion of mine,
and I think we've kind of got a ground swell
moving right now with this thing. When I came up
with the method, through years of research and especially watching
Ben Hogan, I wasn't sure myself, because when you're thinking
a little bit out of the box as an instructor,
there's always a question, well, you know, have I flipped
my wig here or have I really found something? And
it took a while for me to realize that this
is valid, this is what Hogan did, because there's been
a lot of people saying they knew what he did,
and I think this is an aspect to it. I'm
not sure it's everything he did, but I know that
I know that in watching some of the film that
I have of him, especially in this later year, this
is exactly what he did. Wow.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, and one of the comments that I
received was, I can't believe he doesn't have a website,
not even a simple one.
Speaker 2: So you need to explain this.
Speaker 4: And it's like, well, I'm finishing a book with a
gentleman by the name of Paul Servantis, who's a very
very fine co writer. Uh, and I speak in a
certain way, so he's tried to keep that flavor in
the book without editing me out of it. And so
Paul does have a website that he's building at this
present time, and we will have a lot of information.
And then Golf Illustrated, because I'm working with them with
a single pivot golf school. They have the Golf Illustrated
has just gone online and they have a pretty large website,
and we're going to be doing kind of golf viignettes
that we'll be putting on there myself, Al Geiberger, Mike Lyons,
and Brian Geiberger. That's the for some of us, and
also a young lady by the name of Karen Gottwald
who's our female instructor about to single pivot, how you
have to set up to it, because setup is really
important in making this happen. What we're eliminating in the
single pivot golf swing is we're eliminating the lateral move,
the shifts from the right leg to the left leg.
And it's not an invention. There have been many great
players that played off the left side, but no one
has ever really explained it in detail how you do
it and what are the functions and so forth. So
that's what that's what my role has come has happened,
is that I've I've watched this and of course I
give lessons to a lot of people, especially elderly people,
and now that this doesn't work for young people because
my golf team are all you know, they all kill
the ball and they're all playing off of one axis.
But I saw that older people people that always said
I can't get over the left side, I can't finish
the swing anymore. I can't get any distance. I've increased
their distance just two to three clubs by just putting
them in the right position, by setting them to the
ball correctly, and then keeping them there throughout the motion
so that there's not a lot of weight on the
right side, so they can clear their left side. They
can turn their chest left of the target and get
the right shoulder pointing at the target. And while they
do that, the left arm stack is connected high on
the chest. And that's the secret of this. It's playing
off of one axis. Now we're not tilting the shoulders,
so this is not stack and tilt. And I don't
mean to infer that what they do is wrong. I
don't like to get into those things. But you can't
hurt your back doing this. When you're tilting your shoulders,
especially on the through swing, you're going to end up
in what we used to call a sea position, and
there's a little bit of strain on the lower back.
And all the people that played from that era that
finished with the head back and the body kind of
in a sea position, they all were troubled with their
back in later years. And Hogan, if you see any
pictures of him, he posts it up so that he
was on a straight line because he didn't work that way.
He didn't work down and under to hit the golf ball.
When you do that, you have to turn your arms over.
There's two ways to square the golf club. You can
turn your arms over and hit it, or you can
rotate your body and keep your arm connected to your
body like it's a lever connected to a gear. So
when you set up to the golf ball, the first
thing you're going to do is you're going to set
up sixty forty sixty percent of your weight on your
left foot and forty percent on your right. And why
you're doing that is because you're aligning your left hip
to the outside of your left foot, and that's impact.
Is when we hit the golf ball, whether we sway
off the ball and come back to it, that's where
we're going to end up. But with this concept, we're
going to get against impact to start with. So we've
positioned the legs in the proper position, and now all
we have to do is rotate the upper part of
the body and we're gonna coil the body without moving
that center, and that's our head we're going to stay.
Our face will be right down on the golf ball. Okay,
So the right shoulder and the right hip are going
to turn behind us, and that's going to pull the
arm around the body with the rotation.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to stop you for a second here
because as you're describing this, not only am I trying
to do this, I'm standing up, I got a club
in my hand.
Speaker 2: I'm doing this.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there are people who listeners right now who
are on a commute train standing there doing this with So,
so let me just let me just kind of visualize this.
So when I'm bringing my hands back, I'm not bringing
my hands up. I'm bringing my hands more.
Speaker 4: You're you're not well, yeah, but you're not bringing your
hands back. Your arms are connected to your body and
you're turning your You're turning your upper torso, and your
arms are being moved to a position behind you. The
arms are in front of you, okay, and they're going
to stay in front of you in the addressed position.
But as your body, as your body is rotating, it's
it's turning, it's turning around. The right shoulder is now
being displaced behind the spine, and the right hip is
being displaced behind the so your right side is turning.
There's no there's no lateral move back. There's no there's
no sway back to low power. You're coiling. Imagine a
wall against your right shoulder. Okay, you're going to turn
inside that wall with your right side, and that movement
will take the club back into a position. And everybody
is different because we are all built differently. Some people
have a lot of flexibility, some don't. Some are short waists,
some are long legged. So there's no position you can
say you have to take the club here. So by
connecting the arms slightly on top of the body at address,
we from a single axis, which is the left leg,
and we we stay against that brace, almost the feeling
of there's an imaginary wall on your left side. Okay.
So now from that position, you're going to coil the
upper body staying centered. Okay, so when we coil, we're
not going to tilt our head to the right. We're
going to stay right on that ball. So the right shoulder,
right hip go behind us, and the club, the arms
will follow. The left ear was going to go across
the chest. This is a big this is the big key.
It's going to go across the chest, and the left
arm should sit fairly high on the left pectoral muscle. Okay.
Years ago, there was a great player by the name
of Dick Mayer. He won the US Open, the World Open.
I had a little problems with alcohol in his later years.
And I met him and he used to watch me
hit balls, and he used to say, son, you've got
to keep your left arm on your tit and he
meant the nipple. Okay. And and he wrote a book
subsequent to that that gerald Ford was in the gerald
Ford Library. He gave me the book, and in that
book it says that everybody has an area in the
body that defines where the left arm should be in
that'sh the left arm should be right above that nipple
of the on the man on the left pectoral muscle. Okay.
And he would watch me hit balls and say, you
got to keep your arm up on your tit. And
I used to think this guy's whacked out because I
had no idea what he was talking about, until I
learned that that was position is paramount to hitting the
ball solid and straight, time after time after time, because
when the left arm stays high in the chest, the
only way it can move because it's connected to the body.
Is the rotation of the body opening up through the target,
kind of like if you've ever seen Anika Sorenson play,
Anika was very It was a real rotator of the
golf swing, and it looked like her body was facing
the target at impact. And that's exactly what it was.
So if people in the audience would stand up, if
they can do this and put their arm right across
their body and then take their right arm and hold
their left arm high against the chest, and then just
turn the body and see how the arm moves with it.
It's not coming off the chest, it's still pressed against it.
But if you keep turning left, the club will square itself.
Speaker 3: Now, you talk about seniors being able to do this,
what kind of to me? The way you're describing this
In this rotation, it seems like a lot of flexibility
is required.
Speaker 4: I mean you have, Oh, no, none at all. I'm
believing I'm about as flexible as a solid pretzel. I
can't touch my toes. Okay, I'm lucky if I can
get past my knees when I bend over. But I
can do this, Oh yeah, I can do this. Hey,
I'm seventy four years old. You know an atrophy is
snuck in there somewhere. Now. I try to stay as
limber as I can, but really I'm not going to yoga,
I'm not doing stretching. But what I found is that
all all, if you put your arms across your chest
like you see guys criss cross their arms, and you
get in swinging position, you set yourself off against the
left side brace and just turn the top part. You're
going to turn it enough to where your back is
to the target. Even less than that is fine, okay,
But if you're turning your right side behind you, this
is the ticket. If you try to turn your left
shold over to your chin, it's harder to do if
you take your right side and pull it back behind
behind you towards the target. That's the keyword, towards the target.
Because at the top of your swing, your weight is
now seventy thirty. You're braced against that wall and on
your left.
Speaker 2: Side, the seventy being on the left side.
Speaker 4: Left side you started sixty forty. Because you're displacing your
weight behind you and it's going behind you towards the target.
You have now braced up seventy thirty. The left knee
has not pulled back from the ball or pulled back
to go towards the ball or behind it. The left
knee is pointed straight to the toe of the left foot.
Speaker 3: Okay, rotation in your rotation, your your knee has pointed
to your foot. You're not banking your knee on that rotation.
Speaker 4: Well, you're You're both knees are bent. Okay, I'm because
I'm trying to talk you through this. Okay. As I
as I turn my right pocket and my right shoulder
behind me, okay, towards my left heel towards my left heel.
As I do that, my left knee points towards my toe.
Speaker 2: Should on your left.
Speaker 4: Left foot, left foot, the right leg will elongate, it'll
get it won't lock, but it'll get. It'll get steeper. Okay.
So now you're now you're braced on your axis that
you're going to swing around. Okay, So you're there. Okay,
Now all we're all we're doing is we've coiled the
top part of the body. Our legs are in position.
So now all there is left by staying connected high
on the pectoral muscle. Okay, we just unwind our chest
through the target around the left leg, and we finished
with the chest pointing left of the target and the
right should're pointing at the target. And trust me when
I tell you I have a I've got an eighty
six year old man that when he first came to
me and he took the club back, he looked like
a tree falling to the right. He had no conception
of turn. I've got him on his left side now
and he's hitting the ball farther now than he did
when he was in his fifties because he's hitting it
with his whole body. He's not working down under so
that his arms have to flip over so that the
arms leave the body. He's hitting it with his chest,
his core, his hips, and the last thing through is
the clubhead, so as his body unwinds, the clubhead hits
the ball. Now, if you're on the right side and
you try to do this, you're gonna you're gonna spin
out open. You're gonna spin open, but you can't get
open enough. When you're on your left side. As you
as you start unwinding, you can open up as early
as you want, and you're just gonna hit the ball harder. Okay, Now,
Now the key here, the key as we do this
is that the left arm must stay on the chest
as you open. Okay, So you're gonna be turning level.
You are not gonna work be working down. You're gonna
stay level like Hogan did in his later years, and
you're gonna smash the ball. And the by product of
this is that whether you pull it or push it,
and we will do that for our life, no one's
going to hit it dead straight at the pin every time.
They're gonna push it a little right, but there'll be
no side spin on the ball because the club the
clubhead is held square throughout the heating area. There's no
rotation to square it. It's square from the beginning to
the end. Okay, So you'll pull it or push it
dead straight. So your your shot dispersion is going to
get real narrow, real narrows. So you're going to start hitting.
You're gonna hit a lot of greens and a lot
of fairways, and you're going to hit the ball much
more solid, which will make your average hit further. See
you when we move off the golf ball. And it's
a trend in teaching. At one time, the Nicholas's the Palmers,
they stayed right on the ball their head and did
not move. It didn't move because they didn't make that
little lateral move on the backswing. And then all of
a sudden, instructures start saying it's okay to move your head,
and I'm here to tell you that's a bunch of bs.
It isn't okay to move your head because you got
to move it back to the place you started, because
that's your center before you hit the golf ball. And
you know, unless you're neurria of or somebody like that,
how do you do that, especially when you get past fifty.
So that's why so many people. You know, we have
a driving rain chair at the college and you see
people and they're just locked back on that right foot.
The ball goes right and their instructor says, will shift
your weight. Well, that's that's the problem. They did shift
their weight. They put too much weight on the right
foot early. Yeah, once you get back on that right
side unless you unless you have an athletic body. And
even the athletic guys that are arm swingers every now
and then, they're all all over the place. I mean,
you look at Dustin Johnson, a tremendous athlete, tremendous strength.
He can hit the ball two miles, but every now
and then he can hit it so far off the
Fairwey Mickelson another arms swinging around the downswing. But you
can see it when the when the arms come down,
the body can't. The body can't rotate and the arms
come down at the same time. One. So if the
body doesn't, if the arms come down, the body is
going to follow the arms when they when the when
you're a rotator, the arms always follow the body. And
and and because you're not turning the club over, the
clubhead isn't going to be opened a long time, closed
a long time, and square for just a moment. So
now you're you're eliminating one of the things that happens
to all of us as soon as you get anxious,
as soon it means something. You know, our eye hand
coordination runs down our leg I mean that, I don't
care who it is. Uh. You saw Dustin Johnson in
that one tournament where he stood in a bunker. Well,
he didn't have to be in that bucker if he
could have just hit the ball in the far away.
But because he's he has to square that club with
his arms. As soon as it gets really important, you're
gonna you're just you're gonna hang on or you're going
to release it too early. See. And that's what Hogan,
that's what he really figured out. And in his later
years he made statements, I square the golf club with
my body. Okay, well that's how. But he didn't tell
you how to do it. That's what the single pit
was school and concept is about. It tells you how
to do it. And I want to tell you. Uh
and I don't mean to brag, but I am going
to brag. Since I've been teaching. Yes, since I've been
teaching this, I have had nothing but repeat business and
nothing but referral business, and people tell sending me emails
and tell me I never hit the ball like this.
I haven't hit it like this since I was a kid.
Blah blah blah blah blah. And it works. I've got
al Geiberger, who's a pretty good golfer in his day,
doing this. Okay. Al geiber was voted as having the
top one of the top swings of the top five
best wings and he is now a single pivot player. Okay,
I have a terrific teacher from Canada that was reluctant
to this at first, although he tried to stay centered
to the ball, But once he got all the pieces together,
his following now is expanded tremendously because you get instant results.
I know, one of the guys that heard your podcast
came down to see me. Really yeah, oh yeah, I've
had two actually I had two lessons, and there one
young man. He said, great to hear, thank you. Yeah,
And what do you shoot? He says, well, I'm about
a twenty handicap. So I said, well, I hit a
few balls from me, and then immediately I saw he had
his hands out of position and he's just swinging back
on the golf ball and with no power. And then
here he's in this probably early thirties and well built guy,
and here I'm this over the hill pro and I
get up there with a nine iron and I'm hitting
the past where he's hitting the seven, and I mean
way past. And he's where you getting on all that power?
And I said, because you're hitting it with your flick
of your wrists and I'm hitting it with my whole body.
And I got him in position, and I'll tell you
after about the fifteenth golf ball, he was blasting the others.
I've never hit a ball this far in.
Speaker 3: My life, the chilly.
Speaker 4: Believe me when I tell you, it gives me the chills,
because my passion is teaching, and I'm you know, we
all want to make money, but I promise you this
is this is like an elixir for me because I
finally found something that really works for I don't care
what level player, and I've got some I've got some kids.
I've got a twelve year old, and I'm going to
give a plane lesson too. She's had six lessons, and
she hits it so far and so straight, it's just ridiculous.
But she's she's blessed. But she's also she's also lucky
that she got a fellow like me that didn't teach
her shift to the right, shift to the left, because
she'd be chasing that monkey for a long long time.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you, my passion is finding people like
you to share this knowledge. So I'm glad that we've
found each other.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I received an email from a listener in Joplin, Missouri,
and he had a number of questions. He says that
I just finished it, and I had a lot of questions.
Instead of writing to you, he thought he'd write to
me so that maybe I can ask you again. And
you mentioned a couple of times about Hogan's later year
later years. He was just curious, is that the is
those later years? Is that after he wrote the Five Lessons?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, way after.
Speaker 2: Way after, Okay.
Speaker 3: So he says that he's intrigued by what you're describing
and he's read Hogan's Five Lessons and it really didn't
help him as much as it would he would like.
Speaker 4: He wants to well, if you listen, if you read
the Hogans, there's a lot of really great stuff in
Hogan's but what he says in there, and you know,
I mean they asked him near his death because he
went to Golf Digest in the nineties to release a secret,
but he wanted a six figure payment and they refused,
and so I think he took it to the grave
with him. But they asked him in his later years, well,
what was your secret? What really was it? Because there's
been a lot of speculation, and he said, they're going
to have to dig it out of the dirt like
I did. And I just love him for that because
he had no gruz, he had no real video and
nothing to work with. He had to get out there
and just beat balls. But he got an idea in
a dream state. And I know what that I really
believe I know what that idea was. And it wasn't
weakening his grip and all that pronation and suppornation stuff.
I mean, he may have done that, but I've got
film and you can look at him at the top
of his swing, and his weight is on top of
his left side. His right leg is so steep and
so braced, and you can see he's right there ready
to rotate. So he eliminated that transitional move that I
don't care who you are, whether you're a tour player
or a high handicapped player, it's difficult. You've got to
move laterally onto the left foot and then rotate, and
you have to time that rotation in a split second
when that club is really really moving. And for some
of these young guys that hit three or four ferris
then blowing out of bounds right or left and never
knowing what they know what I'm talking about because I
was one of those guys. When I was a young man,
I was a very good player. But every time I
got into a tour event one hole or two holes,
I'd hit the ball left and it'd be out of
bounds or into some real trouble where I ran my
score up, and I always thought, well, I just don't
have it. And I just want to pass this information
onto people, for those young people that are out there
that really want to play this game. You've got to
be connected and rotate that body so that you can
control that clubhead. You have to know where that club
head is through impact. If you're just guessing and hoping,
you you got a long road and a rough road
to go through.
Speaker 3: Well, you had mentioned the word coordinate, and I'm wondering
what it. What kind of I guess coordination is the
word that I'm looking for. Does it take a lot
of good hand eye coordination? Does a lot of work
to get that coordination together to hit it, to get
it at that right spot.
Speaker 4: If you're going to hit the ball with your hands
and arms, if you're going to rotate your arms hit
the golf ball, you better have really good coordination. And
then you better practice every single day for a long
time because you can lose it immediately and you're going
to lose it when you get anxious anyway. But if
you're if you're scoring the club with the rotation of
your big muscles, your your big muscles, your shoulders and
chests really can't rotate on a lot of different planes.
Your hands and wrists are much more appliable. They can
they can flip over and flop and hang on and
so forth. The body really can't do those things. And
the body of the nerve endings are right at the
edge of the body. So when you're nervous, the last
thing you want to try to do is to do
something with your fingertips or your hands. It's just not doable.
You know when your handshake when you get nervous, but
your chest doesn't shake. Okay, So if you can take
that club and trap it across your chest and then
the only way that that arm can move is for
your chest to rotate, that clubhead is going to be
in the same position time in and time again. I mean,
I'm writing a book, I'm going to China. I run
a golf management program, and the coach of the Ben's
golf team. I don't have any time to go out
there and hit balls. Okay, but when I go out
to hit golf balls and to demonstrate this. There is
no question in my mind that I can take a
driver out seven iron witch. I don't care what it is.
I'm going to hit it one way. I'm going to
hit it straight. Now. I may tow it a little bit,
I may heal it a little bit, but the ball
is going to hold its line because my club head
is not turning over, it's not tumbling.
Speaker 2: Just not a lot of spin on the ball when
you hit it.
Speaker 4: No, I don't have any side spin at all. That's
what I'm telling you. I don't have any side spin
on my golf ball. My ball doesn't draw, my ball
doesn't fade. My ball goes right or left a little bit,
but never to the point where it would ever be
in the rough. Okay, And unfortunately for me, I learned
this to to at an advanced age. I don't I
don't have the desire to compete, but I really have
the desire to pass this on. Now. I can tell you,
as a golf coach, a lot of the young men
that come to me, they have they're pretty good players,
I mean plus ones and scratch and so forth, and
when they hear this and they don't hear it from
a lot of people because this is kind of this
is not new, but it hasn't been talked about. Let's
put it that way. They're always very suspect, and as
I tell them, look, I am not going to try
to change the way you think or to play. I'm
going to just show you the way I play and think,
and then you make your own mind up on what
you want to do, because I don't want to disrupt
anybody in their game. And obviously there's a lot of
ways to play this game, but I think I've found
a way that really makes it easy for the advanced
player as well as a high handicapper. I think they
both profit from this. I mean I I I would
get on the golf chair, I would talk to whoever
on the tour and not be a little bit nervous
about what it's about telling him this, because if they're
an arm swinger, I can improve them. It's just it's
just that simple.
Speaker 2: Wow, now you you mentioned that.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that it says in the
Hogan's book is that the beginning of the downswing transfers
the weight from the right foot to the left foot.
Speaker 4: Well, Hogan said, the first move of the down swing
is to clear your left side. Okay, if your weight's
on your right foot and you rotate your left side,
you're on your right foot when you're hitting the golf ball.
And that's why a lot of people, when they took
his words verbatim, they could hit the golf ball because
because he left out the parrot. The part in the
letter I have by Ben Hogan to a friend about
how to hit the driver, he states emphatically, at the
top of my swinging, my weights on the instep of
my left foot, not my right foot, my left foot.
And when the first time I read that, I just
blinked and said, well, Ben must have had a cocktail
that day and or maybe a little dyslexia kicked in,
but he meant right foot. And then as I continued
my research and looked at film of him, and then
saw quotes where he told Mike Austin, who was a
pro from Los Angeles, from now on, I'm going to
play off the left side. And then one time I'm
with a conversation with Lee Trevino, Lee said, I've seen
a lot of great players play off the left side.
I've never seen anybody great that stayed for any length
of time on the right side. But I didn't understand
what he was talking about, and like most people, I
was too embarrassed to say, I don't know what you
mean by that. So through this period of time, this
learning experience, and then also there was a lot of
self doubt. Who am I? Who am I to say
some of these guys are wrong? But then when Jack
Nicholas made a quote in Golf Digest after the second
so people pointed out to him that he was staying
on his left side. Jack made the statement, and it
was a very you know, brash statement. He said, anyone
that teaches you to shift your weight on your right
foot on the backswing doesn't know how to teach well.
Led Metter and a lot of these guys hairsit straight up. Okay.
And I know when I first wrote, you know, when
I was writing my book some excerpts of it. When
in the local sportsbook here a little golf book, a
couple of pros wrote skating reviews of what I said.
You're insane, You're a fraud, blah blah blah. You know,
in the South side of Chicago, and me wanted to
go over there. And punch somebody in the nose. But
you know, at my age, I watched that stuff. So
I just wrote back. I just wrote that, and I
just said, well, you have your you know, you have
the right. I don't think you should slander me, but
you have the right to not agree. But but Al
Geiberger and Jack Nicholas agreed with me, and that's pretty
that's good enough for me. Yeah, but there really was
a lot of self done. I must say to you
that you know, I've been a hand player all my life.
I had no formal training. I was a kid and
I caddied like most of us did from my era,
and that's how we learned to play golf. We got
to play on Mondays at Caddy's Day and we had
hand me down clubs, but we prevailed. And because I
could play baseball pretty good and I was kind of
blessed with eye hand coordination, I got to the point
where I can play in a tour event, not to
stay out there, but I was good enough to qualify,
let's put at that point. But the game was always
elusive for me, and I just said, I just came
to the conclusion, well, I'm just not good enough I've
put my tie in, but I'm just not good enough
and I just didn't understand connection and rotation. And then
a lot of people think that Jimmy Ballard was the
one that was the first one to say that, but
that's really not true. I've got books that were written
in the twenties and thirties that talked about connection and rotation.
And there was an argument at the time. Do you
face the ball when you're hitting it or are you
facing the target when you hit it? Because your face
on the ball, your arms have to cross over in
front of you when you when your body's facing the target,
then your your arms are being pulled by the body,
so that this this this argument has gone gone on
for a while. Okay, and Hogan, you know, he was
a very bright man. He had like I S one
seventy five IQ, so he was close to genius. He
he figured it out, He got a thought and figured
it out and worked on it. And I don't think
he ever really divulged his secret. But you can see
it in his later film. You can see it so clearly.
You can see his rear end is totally on his
left leg, as was Nicholas. Even though Nicholas hoisted the
club upright and Hogan took it around him. They were
still against that brace. And I think that that is,
you know, the playoff of one axis is it really
eliminates a lot of the air made on the transitional
move and then the coupi gra on. That is, if
you can keep your left arm connected high on the
chest so that the movement of the body rotation brings
the arm into impact, then you got the best of everything.
And that's what we teach. I mean, there's some finite
things like when you set up to the ball, your
right hip has to be on the inside of your
right foot head address, and then when you go sixty
four do you find that the left hip has to
be in line with the outside of the left foot.
So the legs are going to be reactionary to this
winning You're not gonna have to drive the legs. You're
not gonna have to move the lower body and then
the upper body and all that stuff. That's all very
very difficult. And really when we use the legs for power,
that leverage comes from the ground up. It doesn't. It
doesn't come when we're when we're moving laterally, we're actually
not totally on the ground. So the more you're grounded,
the more power you can get from your legs. But
your legs have to be in a certain position so
that you can so that they can stay grounded as
you rotate the top part and then they just react. Unfortunately,
you can't see what I'm saying, but hopefully your listeners
are getting a labor for this. And and you're.
Speaker 2: Being very descriptive. It's good.
Speaker 3: I mean, if if you know, don't not while you're driving,
of course, but if you can close your eyes and listen,
you can visualize a lot of what you're saying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because this is this is really important, and I
mean it's really important if you're if you're if you
love the game I do, and you want to improve.
And the beautiful part about this cool concept is you
can do it from your chip shot to your drive.
It's the same exact concept. You you are connected at
the left arm and you rotate your body through the
target and it pulls a club through. The club can't
turn over, and you're going to hit really wonderful shots.
And we're not trying to stay behind the ball, We're
trying to move through the golf ball. Again, that's another concept.
See when you drop your right shoulder down, your head
goes backwards, it goes away from the target. Your body
arches and your hands turnover and you hit the golf ball.
But the true rotational person doesn't drop down and hit
the ball. His right side stays level and he and
he just slams his right side through that golf ball.
He hits it, hits through the golf ball, his right
side goes past the ball. If you're using the golf ball.
And this is what I tell all my students. The
golf balls a line. It's just a point of reference
to align your club hit at the target. But you've
got to move past that line. Your divot has to
be on the other side of that line. It can't
be behind that line when you put your golf club
behind the ball. If you brought the club right to
that spot each and every time, you'd be hitting the
ball fat because the club sets behind the golf ball.
So we've got to catch that ball and then the
divit forward of it. Okay, so we've got to be
moving through it. The more underneath you work. For all
the people that hit it, thin and fat and thin
and fat you're behind the ball, so you have to
be in position to hit the ball with power. And
most people are behind the ball too far, so the
only thing they can fire is their hands, and they
hit and fall back. They step back in the box
like a lot of baseball players used to do. I mean,
that move is prevalent in golf. There's PhDs with that movement.
I can tell you that.
Speaker 3: This seems to be your creation, your discovery, not of
your creation. Obviously you're you're basing it on on what
you're watching from Hogan. But even if you uh were
to put in a search engine on the internet, single
pivot swing, it's going to pop back up with stack
and tilt.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and it's not. And believe me when I
tell you the only similarity is that we we set
up more weight left. But that's the only similarity. Stack
until is totally different than what I do. And God
bless them, that's that's their method. I don't I don't
talk about their method because it's it's not my method
and it's not what I believe. And I'm sure they're
just as passionate about their method. Heck, they wrote a
book and and and they did a tape. But I can.
I can honestly tell you that when my article article
came out and Golf illustrated, I got a lot of
email from people that bought their book and bought their
tapes and said, I can't do this. It hurts my back.
But when I tried your method, I could hit the ball.
Now does that mean I'm right? No, It just means
that some people think that my method is easier. I
do know one thing. Ben Hogan rotated through the golf ball.
He didn't tilt. He was stacked. He was what we
call posted, straight up and down. When he hit a
golf ball, he did not tilt back. His chest was
left with the target, and he was always in perfect balance.
He didn't go down and search for that golf ball.
He didn't need to do that. He could turn to
the ball. He cleared his right side and his early swings,
he was very long with the swing, and his swing
looked the same, but there was a big change to
his golf swing. His knee position was more towards the ball.
As he turned. In his later years, his knee jetted
straight out to the left foot, as did a gentleman
by the name of James Barn in the twenties with
Hickory Chefts. So again, that wasn't Hogan's invention. It was
I'm sure Ben found that if when his knee worked
that way, he was more balanced and braced, because that's
the whole key here, is that your body has to
be ready to make a really athletic move, and when
it's drifting right and drifting left like a willow, there's
nothing athletic about that.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that you haven't mentioned yet
as a comparison or even its relevance, are the other
terms that we hear so frequently are the single, single
and two plane swing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, and Jim Hardy is it Jim Hardy? Yeah,
he wrote the book on plane swing on the single
plane swing, and he's a very fine teacher, and he
even shows that Hogan got a little bit on his
left side when he does his demonstrations. You know, I
believe that the body rotation puts the club in a
position just like when you're going to throw a baseball.
You kind of wind up, but there's no specific position
that you put your arm, and your arm goes to
a place where your body feels strong so that you
can make a hard throw, and I think the golfing
it has to be that way. I think that when
we set up properly, and if we're not changing our
spine angle, if we just rotate the body and keep
the arms connected to the body, that they're going to
find the position that you should be in. I have
never believed that you should try to get your wrist
hinged at the top or flat at the top. I
think that I think that that hurts people primarily because
they're thinking about their hands and their position, and you
can't shut that off. At the top, you're going to
be thinking about your hands and trying to get that
club flat at impact. And I've got scores of film
of me hitting the golf ball where my left wrist
is flat, and I can tell you that I have
never tried to get left wrist flat. I believe lag
and all of that are they're the consequence of doing
something before that. So as I rotate and that club
is being pulled, that club is going to be lagged
and my left wrist will have to be flat. When
my body stops and the club goes forward, that's when
my left rist is going to hinge and it's going
to cup. That's when you hit the ball weak, but
that's because the body stopped. Okay, but there's no way
that you can bring your arms out and try to
keep your left wrist flat. I mean, that's insanity. I
see people hurt themselves doing that and they hit everything
weak right, And yet there are people that are teaching
that today. And you know, that's one of the things
that I've always said. I'm a pgm ember since nineteen
sixty five, and not one person from the PGA has
ever come over and said, Okay, let me see what
you're doing to make sure you're not making people crazy here.
And I think that a lot. There's are art teachers
that are teaching out of a book and they're just
not cognizant them Why things happen. There is cause and effect,
and the left risk being flat of impact is an
effect of something else. It is not because you purposely
try to keep your left frist flat. I mean, that's
just that's ludicrous. You're moving too fast. There's too much
weight forward, especially when you have a driver in your hand.
Even though it may be fifteen ounces or so, the
weight of that clubhead is enormous as it's moving through
time and if you're if you're if your body stops,
that weight is gonna is gonna flip your hands you,
I don't care how strong you are, they're gonna, they're gonna,
they're gonna cup. And that's why a lot of people
when they go to hit the ball hard, they hit
that sky shot, they go straight up in the air
and they get that mark on the top of their club.
I know there's a lot of people out there now
nodding there.
Speaker 2: I'm raising my hand. I'm one of those people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Okay, that's because you pull the club down steep,
the clubhead turns over and you make contact with the
top of the club, not the face the top. Okay, well,
that's because the body is still and the arms are down.
They're coming down and nothing is releasing except the arms.
I can remember so many times when I, you know,
I'm from another era. I played with per Simon woods
and I'd have these pure woods and I'd take I
try on a par five to kill the ball, and
there there'd be a big white spot on on the
top of my club. And I just hated myself for that.
But I never knew why I did it. I always
thought it was going underneath the ball, but you can't
go under the ball.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: How many times you see people go, you know, I
need to tee it up higher. Yeah, change change their
tea position after they do that.
Speaker 4: It's nothing about that. So all of those things, the
golf God was whispering my ear. Hey, you see what
you just did? You know why? And finally, my inquisitive nature,
and I was driven by the passion not to play
any better anymore, but to be able to teach people.
And also when I want to demonstrate, I don't have
to think, God, hopeing will shank this one or something
like that. I mean, I don't have those thoughts anymore,
especially when my kids are all, like I say, really
solid players. I've got a fifteen year old that's blasted
in the sixties all the time, and he hits about
three twenty off the tee and he's fifteen years old.
I want to slap him when I'm trying to tell
him to do this a little bit more. I've got
to get up there and be able to produce. I've
got to get up there and say, Okay, we'll watch this.
I'm going to hit this fire and it's going to
be dead straight. I'm going to hit that yellow flag
and I'm going to make it fall right just a
little bit. And I can do that. I have no
fear about doing that in front of anybody, because I
know there's a mathematical thing going on. If my left
arm is trapped against my chest and I rotate my chest,
my club's coming into that ball square. So if I
align myself properly and those conditions stay in place, I'm
going to hit that ball. Now. Have I ever hit
it when I was trying to do this? Have I
ever pulled one or push one? Absolutely, but I knew
exactly what happened, and I'll say my arms went first
that time and I reconnect bam. I hit it perfect.
So there's no doubt in my mind that this works.
There's no doubt in my mind that anybody can do this, male, female,
young or old. And I think that it's I think
it's what the Master figured out. And I've just kind
of add little signature things in there that that I
think are very really you know that that relate to
what he was trying to do. And then make it
easier again. The setup. You have to be set up
against the wall against the brace and you can't you
can't let your lower body go underneath your top top
of you. So the slides under because it's got a
slide back the other way. And then you're just you're
you know, you're in Chinatown. I mean, it's it's it's
over sell the clubs, buy a dog, go for a walk.
Speaker 2: If you're going to go for a walk, don't hit anything.
Speaker 3: So so well, you mentioned how you know, when you
talked about popping the ball up off the tee, and
then everyone always has advice about where your tea placement was.
The Other thing that I frequently see from from armchair
golf instructors are the people who say, oh, you lifted
your head.
Speaker 2: Oh you lifted your head. Oh you lifted your head.
Speaker 4: And that's just insanity. You know. I tell I show people,
you know, I have a number of because in a
golf management program, there's a lot of boys that came
in to learn the business, but they're not really skilled
in golf. They're double digit handicaps. And I get them
out there and I, you know, I try to feed
them a little bit of this and try to help them.
And they topped the ball on occasion and they say
to them, you know why you top that golfley say, well,
I looked up and I sa, are you sure? Are
you sure? You looked up? And they see why? Yeah,
I looked up and I said, well, let me show
you something. You watch my head. I'm gonna be I'm
gonna hold my head dead's still, and you're going to
see my eyes are going to be a neck gulp
ball and I'm going to hit the very top of
that golf ball. Now you know, I don't have time
enough to swing this club seventy miles an hour with
an iron and hit the very top of that skin.
But I'm going to do that, and I'll top that ball.
I'll make a really hard swing and then the ball
will go four or five feet and they'll say, how'd
you do that? It was really easy. I anticipated impact.
So what happens when you anticipate the impact you clinch.
So when you tighten your hands, your arms get shorter,
they pull in towards you, and that's why you top
the golf ball. So for people out there that are
top it a lot, especially with that faraway wood, it's
because they're hitting to the golf ball. So there's only
one cure for this. You got to be brave. Number one.
You got to set up to that golf ball so
that you don't get way behind it and then you're
trying to catch up. You kind of focus on where
you're going to go with your body and the club
head and not the golf ball. So when you get
it the coil, let's just say that's phase one of
a two part swing. Then you got to unwind to
the second part and hold that position. Look, you know,
look pretty, look like someone's taking a picture of your
follow through. And if you get your mind off of impact,
then you'll quit trying to hit and when you hit,
you won't have that response. So for everyone that's top
of the ball, I can promise you you're tightening up,
not looking up.
Speaker 3: That is phenomenal observation. We even had a listener right
me and said once that his dad always used to
say to him, if you lift your head, the only
thing you're going to see is.
Speaker 2: A bad golf shot.
Speaker 3: When I watch Annika, it always looks like she's lifting
her head before she hits the ball.
Speaker 4: Well, she looks like she was looking at the target
because she rotated her body and because her head and
eyes moved towards were moving following the ball. That's another thing.
You don't stay down when you hit a golf ball.
You let your eyes release. You have to because if
your head is looking to the right and you're trying
to turn left, your head is going to block your rotation.
So you've got to release your eyes. I mean that's
been said forever. There's a lot of great players. But
Anika David did the ball at one time, and it's
a shame that he moved away from his original swing,
but he was that left arm was so across the chest.
He had that club face shut at the top. But
it didn't really matter because he just rotated through the
golf ball and his eyes were really down the target line.
When he was hitting the golf ball, he was looking
where he wanted the ball to go. And Anika did
the same thing becausefully in your spine angle, you don't
want to focus on the golf ball anyway. I mean,
they're old saying a good player sense where the ball
is and bad players stare at it. And there's a
lot to be said about that, because if you get
stuck looking at that golf baller looking at a dimple
on that ball and all that blowing that we've been
told to do. You're gonna stay on that ball and
you're gonna shut down your swing because the ball is
not the golf swing. The ball is the center of
the swing. You're going to decelerate like crazy if you're
focusing on the back of the ball or anything, and
you gonna use your hands. Your body's gonna stay behind
the ball. I mean, you're going to be You're going
to be just still when you're hitting it instead of active.
And that's why so many people hits so short. I mean,
I had a guy recently come up to me about
six foot three and he says, well, I you know,
I'm fairly new at the game. I've been played about
a year. I said, okay, well tell me a bout you.
So how far do you hit a How far do
you hit a driver? He says, oh, I hit about
one sixty five, one seventy And I said, you should
be able to throw it that far for God's sake,
with your size. And when I got through with him,
you know, he was two thirty two forty because side
was there the length, you know, he had a very
long arm and then a club on top of it.
So he had a huge lever, but he didn't know
what to do with the lever. And so all of
these things you know, are are they all relat If
your body's in the wrong position. I don't care how
strong you are, you can't hit the golf ball very far.
I used to give lessons to gene Upjaw years and
years ago when he was with the Open Raiders. Jeane
was a massive man. I weigh one hundred and fifty
pounds and I just drilled it by him, I mean
one hundred yards okay, And he'd say, how can you
hit it so far? My leg's bigger than you. Didn't
blah blah blah. But when he got to when he
got right, when he figured out where to be instinctively
because he was an athlete, you know, he hit it
two miles And I didn't know all of this then.
But you get there. Every now and then, do you
understand what I mean? Every now and then you clock one,
you say, what did I do there? Your body is
in the place. Well, now I know where that place is.
That's the thing. I know. We'll put you and you're
gonna you're gonna hit the ball farther. You're going to
hit the ball straighter, and it's it's and it's not hard.
I have people say, well, how many lessons do I have?
And I say one, maybe two, and then then then
I can pass it. I'm pass it on to you,
and then you'll know every time you hit the golf ball,
what that ball is doing will tell you what you
did or did not do.
Speaker 3: Well, we're gonna come down to Palm Springs. I'm going
to spend some time with you.
Speaker 4: Well, i'd problems you. It's not going to take a
lot of time. And you don't have to be a
great athlete. You don't have to be young and springy.
You can you know, you can be just a regular
guy that doesn't have eight hours to day to practice.
And I'll show you. I'll show you how to hit
the ball and hit it solid. And I mean that's
a flat guarantee.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: I love that kind of flat guarantee. That is confidence,
and that's what the game is about. Having that confidence.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, you know, I've been at this a
long time. I've you know, I made my bones. As
they say, I know how to teach golf and I've
been doing this since. You know, I've been a pros
in sixty five, but it's really the last fifteen years
that I've learned how to swing the golf club. And
I just wish I had done this a little earlier
and really and where I really was sure it was right.
It's probably been the last sixty seven years and now
I and now there's a couple of guys on the tour.
I'm not going to mention, but I just wish I
could have a conversation with him. I don't want any money,
I don't want anything. I would, in fact, I would
do it anonymously, but unfortunately Egos they're not going to say, hey,
there's a guy on a driver that could really help you.
You know, it's just not going to happen. But just
for the sake of the game, you know.
Speaker 2: So when do you come back from China.
Speaker 4: I'm going to be there a week. Hopefully that's going
to be all. I mean, I'm enamored with it, but
I have so much to do on this side of
the pond. I've got to catch up. But I want
to really try to to get some golf academies there
and teach people how to operate a facility, because it
doesn't make sense to me that they're going to build
ten thousand golf courses in the next five or six years.
And that's the that's on the drawing board. That they
don't that their own people can't operate them. Doesn't make
sense to me that they have to get somebody from
Australia or America or whatever to run their golf course.
So they should build their own base of employees, you know,
so it benefits them just like we have we have here.
We don't have to call someone in Australia to run
a golf course here, and that's what they need. So
they need junior programs and they need some management program
so they get an understanding. You know, this is not
rocket science. The golf industry is a service oriented business.
To accommodate people. You anticipate what they're going to say
before they do it, and you're ready to form that accommodation.
And that's it. Learning to fold the shirt or sell
a set of clubs. Come on, we can all do that.
But the secret of this business is to make people
feel welcome and not when they walk through the door
and look at them and say, well, that guy's not
going to spend any money. You know, you don't qualify
people in this business, nor should you in life for
that matter. But that's a secret of this business. And
I've been lucky because that was taught to me as
a young man. And I've made a lot of money
in the golf industry and times when people didn't make money,
and and you know, it's it's what I pass on
to mysch students so that they can go out there
and they can become successful.
Speaker 3: Well, if you receive two phone calls from the last
episode that we barely even scratch the surface on the
single pivot swing, I'm hoping you're going to get a
lot more emails and phone calls. I will make sure
to post your your email address on our blog site.
And you told me T Manzoni at College Oftheesert dot edu.
Speaker 4: Correct, that's correct, And.
Speaker 3: Then let's let them contact you that way, unless you
want to give the phone number that I contacted you.
Speaker 2: At this one.
Speaker 4: If they want to, they can call me in my
cellular phone. If they don't agree with me, please don't
call me and call me a bunch of names.
Speaker 3: If you don't agree to call me, just get a
hold of me and my cell phone.
Speaker 4: My cell phone is seven to six zero five three
four three one nine zero, and you have my email,
and anyone that's interested in trying to find out more,
if they're a little bit confused, you know, and drop
me into or give me a call, and I'll be
happy to help them in any way that I can.
Speaker 3: Well, like I said, I'm going to try to come
down to the Palm Springs area around the first part
of twenty eleven. And if I do and we get
a chance to get together, I hope that you'll allow
me to bring a video camera and and maybe even
put a little bit on video on here so we
can get that on golf Smarter TV too, to show people,
because based on this information and the emails that I received,
they want more information. They are intrigued by what you're
saying and want to know more, So we've got to
get it out there.
Speaker 4: Well, that's great, and I I appreciate, I really do
appreciate the opportunity to tell you all this stuff because
it's it's it's it's like, you know, I feel like
I have a lightning in a bottle right now and
it's trying to get out, and I want to get
it out, and not so much to praise myself, but
to help people with this game, because it's such a
fantastic game, and and to suffer with it like I
know I did for many years is ridiculous. If you
get the right amount of information, it isn't that complicated.
We're not building a rocket here, Okay, we're swinging a club.
And if we just play on an access and rotate
around that access, it makes it so much easier