Speaker 1: Hi, This is June Gaston from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and
I play at Chair Triage golf Course. Golf Smarter number
four hundred and eighty three, published on April seven, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: It's an old joke with golf pros.
Speaker 4: The student company said, well, if I could just get
that bof off the tee closer to the whole and
we said, well, that's conceptually you have the idea, right,
and they go, what do you mean? I said, well,
I'll give you twenty yards off every tee, but my
guess is you probably.
Speaker 3: Won't beat your last golf scorer.
Speaker 4: Now what do you mean, Well, I'll give you twenty yards, right,
So you give the guy twenty yards, but it's on
the same line that he hit it. So if it's
going towards the right rough, now it's deep in the
rough at twenty more yards and if it's in the
center of the.
Speaker 3: Fair, and then he gets twenty yards closer.
Speaker 4: Right, But most people really wouldn't improve that much with
the extra twenty yards. Surprisingly for most people that they
would actually struggle just as much. So the reality is
when they start doing and that's my coaching is going
in that direction is more I would say, real time assessment.
I'm offering a product now to my students called shot
by Shot which analyzes your game in real time and
you do it yourself. It's real simple. You rate your
drives one through six, did you hit the green, did
you not hit the green? And then we find out
what you did inside of fifty yards.
Speaker 1: Never let a bad golf swing get in the way
of a good round. With DGA certified instructor John Grund,
this is Golf Smarter Premium. Here's your host, Fred Green.
Welcome back to the Golf Smarter Podcast. John. Thanks, Fred,
good to be here. It's great to see you again.
Tell me what's going on in your life. I appreciate
you coming here today because I know that you're leaving
town first thing in the morning.
Speaker 3: Right, yep, where are you going?
Speaker 1: I'm going to a golf tournament and you're playing, You're
not watching.
Speaker 3: I'm playing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the first time I've played in about seven months.
Success in September, first golf tournament for me. I got
a little accident, little injury. So I'm coming back from
that and trying.
Speaker 1: To and what is the what's the tournament.
Speaker 4: It's the Senior PGA Northern calis Senior PGA Match Play Championship. Okay,
so members of the PGA of Northern California who also
happen to be members of the National PGA Club Club Professionals.
It's our senior section championship. And it's match play, okay.
So there's a match play right now and then later
the summer there'll be a stroke play version of it.
Speaker 1: And you've you've played in this tournament, yes, in the past,
And how have you done.
Speaker 4: I lost two years ago, I think in the semi finals,
played okay. The year before that I had lost in
the quarterfinals. So and then last year I didn't play
for some reason. I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1: But you have experience in two PGA Tour tournament place.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it's been a while, but I've played a
lot of tournament golf the last seven or eight years
has been a little bit less than probably than I thought.
Speaker 1: I would have because you're focusing on teaching.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I had another business too, as we've talked
about before, in the golf industry, and I sold that.
Now I'm back to focusing on teaching and coaching full time.
So you know, it's hard to ride two horses, but
I'm trying to. It's it's a challenge to keep it
in perspective, but it's actually good for me, I think,
in the sense that I'm kind of getting in the
zone where my students kind of come from, and that's
probably a healthy thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much.
Speaker 1: So tell me no, but you have some PGA tour experience.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I played full time after leaving UCLA. I
thought I'd go into the insurance business and that was laughable.
So that lasted for a couple of years, and I
kept playing amateur events and kept playing better.
Speaker 3: This is a footnote to that.
Speaker 4: You know, it's every guy from my golf team basically
is still playing golf.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, you know.
Speaker 4: So it's like I was like the fifth man on
a college golf team, and I thought, surely a fifth
man has to go go work for a living, not
play golf. Not that golf's not work, but you know
that type of work.
Speaker 3: So but I did. I went out and.
Speaker 4: Worked for a brief period of time in the insurance business,
which I trained to do, and found myself playing better
and better in amateur events. So I pursued a golf
career and made that decision in nineteen eighty one to
be a full time no, let's see eighty three, to
be a full time golf professional. I guess eighty two
or something, and I just haven't looked back since then.
I've stayed in the golf world as a golf professional,
and I was able to play overseas South African tours,
Canadian tours, a little bit in the South Pacific, a
little bit in Mexico, a little bit in OURPGA tour.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that. That's where I'm trying to get too.
Speaker 3: Well, Okay, what did you go? Well?
Speaker 4: I so back in the earlier days, I'm trying to
think what they called it before the Hogan Tour. I'm
a dinosaur. So before the Hogan Tour, which then became
some other tour, Nike Tour, and then it became the
web dot Com tour. It was called the uh what
was it called? For about three or four years, they
actually canceled it lasted. That's how Tom Lahman got on
the regular tour. A lot of guys came from that tour.
They played ten events. They were all one hundred thousand
dollars and.
Speaker 1: One hundred thousand dollars person person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, yeah, there wasn't much to play for.
Speaker 4: Quite frankly, I thought they were charging you on no, no, no,
it was one hundred thousand dollars person. There was ten
of them, and if you did well enough, you could
actually I forget how it worked, but I think the
top ten money winners were exempt of the tour finals.
They didn't even give you a tour card. I don't think.
Maybe they did.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's been a long time. I certainly was not one
of those guys, but I played enough of them. I
played a few of them, a few cuts here or there,
but nothing of any I was better on my home
turf in southern California.
Speaker 3: Competing in events, and I did okay. In Canada.
Speaker 4: I never won, but I had a couple of seconds. Well, yeah,
that's that's impressive.
Speaker 3: Too. Yeah, you know, I was, I was a tournament.
Speaker 1: Golf is just to me, it's it's like it is
what parody is about, right, you have to have parody.
There's yea. I love dynasties in any sport. I think
dynasties help a sport. But you really, you you may
get that once in a generation in professional golf, you
get a person who dominates the tour.
Speaker 4: Oh well, yeah, that's you know, as Malcolm Gladwell would
call them, they're the outliers. They're just different people and
there's no uh they don't fit into uh they don't
fit into categories. They create categories.
Speaker 1: Well, we're talking about Tiger Arnie Jack, you know, I
mean it's.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean, if you go there, I mean
I have some opinions on that, but well you hear it. Well,
I mean, you know, probably Walter Hagen would have been
one of the first first, you know, as a professional
golfer in our country. Byron Nelson certainly was for a
period of time, Ben Hogan was, and they all had
different characteristics. I honestly think Byron Nelson could shoot lower
scores than anybody in the history of the game for
quite a while. I mean he shot he posted some
numbers that were I think for a long time he
had the lowest single year stroke average on the PGA
Tour for like fifty years until time, right, I think
it was like sixty seven point something or sixty eight
or sixty seven, and I mean he was, Well, that's.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting that even today, with all the advancements
and all the you know, the the change in fitness
and and the body types and the distance, and still scores.
Speaker 3: Are not decreased.
Speaker 4: And the average score, yeah, from the PG eight from
the PGA Tour to the amateur golf and somebody could
probably I'm just going a little bit off my past knowledge,
and you know, cause stats are so I don't have
Siri with me right now, but I can honestly tell
you I don't think the scores have dramatically decreased that
much in either category. And I honestly say an amateur
golf if if at all, really you know, the the
amount of subject, you know, there's just not that many
people shooting that much lower golf scores. And let's classify
that for a minute. Courses are not as well conditioned
today than they were today. They're not I mean then
they weren't as well conditioned exactly, and so greens were
a little bit slower, but they were bumpier, so putts
didn't go in as easy. But then again you could
be more aggressive. Like we saw last year at the
British Open. You know, you saw some greens that were
rolling kind of pretty standard stuff, you know, tens, you know,
rolling on what we call a stint meter. I don't
think anybody knows really what not many people have ever
used one or seen one in their life, but everybody
talks about a stimpt meter. I have my own personal
stint meter, and that's your brain right.
Speaker 1: No, No, Actually, what I do is when I go
to the practice putting green, I'll take three strokes. I'll
try to find a flat spot on the practice putting
green and I'll take three strokes. I won't even look
at the ball once it leaves the putterhead. I'll just
keep my head focus, taking just my normal stroke, and
then I'll walk it off. Yeah okay, and then I'll go, okay,
today it's a six, or it's a you know, and
it's a lot with advertre or it's an eight, and
that tells me, gives me a sense of what the greens.
Speaker 3: Are going to be right that day.
Speaker 4: So anyway, the Stint meter was by a guy named
a Stimp and it's it's it looks like an old
hot wheels track and it has a dimple in it
and you lift it up slowly and we just yourself
on the hot.
Speaker 3: Wheels track, you know that. Pardon and dated yourself on wheel.
Speaker 4: They're still cool, hopefully they're coming back, hopefully, And there's
an app for that.
Speaker 3: There's an app for that.
Speaker 4: And when you lift it up, it rolls off and
if it's on a flat green, the distance that it
rolls and they take the average of so many but
and you know, greens vary. That's sort of my specialty,
but they vary over a period of time. But yeah,
so the game is changing, and so we have Hogan
that I think was probably one of the most precision
driven players ever in the game. And he overcame some
extreme difficulties. You know, as we know, he was hit
and get a car accident, hit by bus and greyhound
bus and so he was a different type of guy.
He hit the ball and his career changed a little bit.
You know, he came on the tour is kind of
a long driver. I don't know if people remember that
for a guy who was one hundred and forty pounds,
he could just smash it.
Speaker 3: If you go from.
Speaker 4: Power Golf to to the five Easy Lessons or five
Easy Lessons or whatever, you know, swing changed quite a bit.
And I think that was a little bit of flexibility.
And he also kind of fought a hook a little bit,
so he was trying to figure out how to how to.
Speaker 3: Deal with that.
Speaker 1: Why are so many people obsessed with trying to find
this secret to Ben Hogan?
Speaker 4: Well, I think it was one of the first times
we saw on golf. I mean, Bobby Jones was similar,
but he combined both power and finesse in a way
that we hadn't quite seen before. And so I think
that was one of the things. And his record was
pretty impressive, you know, his ability to win majors and
respond to the moment for major championships was tremendous, and
when you watched him, it was like, you know, it
was like and again to date myself, I mean, it
was like it was a car.
Speaker 3: Every shot was a carbon copy.
Speaker 4: I mean one of the things you a lot of
people will not really recognize, but we now can we
can track with launch monitors is elevation and our shot
arc And with Hogan, his shots were so consistent coming
off the face, So he would hit a seven iron
every time.
Speaker 3: I mean, it wouldn't.
Speaker 4: Vary on its on its trajectory, and drivers were the
same way, and if he wanted to, he did. And
the stories are analyst about him. I happened to spend
a lot of time at one point in my early
right before I turned pro, with a man named and
after I did shortly seventy nine, eighty eighty one, eighty
two eighty three, with a guy named John Shlee, who
Ben Hogan befriended for some unknown reason, except that Shelee
approached him one day and said, I'd like to take
lessons from you, and no one did that. I mean,
it was like, what have you just done?
Speaker 3: You just talked about Hogan? What did you do? That's crazy?
Speaker 1: You know you can't say that to mister Hogan, right,
And so that that.
Speaker 4: There was like a islands in the room, like you know,
like it was this huge faux pa. And so a
couple of years later, Hogan approached him and said, John,
how you play it? You're talking to me, mister Rogart,
and you know, I've been following your career, you're following
my what.
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 4: Uh And sure enough they became close friends, and so
he spent a lot of time down and down in
Dallas playing.
Speaker 3: With it was either Preston Trail or whatever wherever they played.
Speaker 4: Shady shitty oaks, I think, but they spent a lot
of time and uh, he had some very interesting stories
and almost none of them have to do with mechanics.
Speaker 3: Really, Yeah, what does he talk about?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's so interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's where you know, and that's for me
as an instructor.
Speaker 3: That's what I like.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm a I like just haven't been involved
in sports at different times in my life and sort
of a I wouldn't say not fanatic, maybe I am.
I love sports, you know, like Tomorrow nights pretty.
Speaker 1: Much the national holiday, right, the national championship, a national championship.
Speaker 3: It's a national holiday. I mean, you know, for me,
I mean, I just.
Speaker 1: That's another conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right.
Speaker 4: But what I'm saying is is behavior wins, see, you know,
and we saw it last night. You know, we saw
two matchups of some two classic teams and the guy Wisconsin. Yeah,
the guys that were able to impose their will on
the other team one five years from now, where we
see how many of those guys in Wisconsin playing in
the NBA and how many guys from those Kentucky playing
in the NBA. Yeah, Yeah, you just gave a pretty
good number there, and I think you're probably pretty close
to right.
Speaker 3: And but last night, Uh, the guys from.
Speaker 1: Wisconsin, the Badgers, Yeah, the Beedgers, Badgers, the Edgers, the Panger.
Speaker 4: They were able to impose their will on some Wildcats,
right and uh and they won. So Hogan, I think
that's one of the impressive things about him, was able
to impose his will on a golf course. One of
my mentors was a man named Eddie Marin's still pro
emeritus a bel air, Yeah, and my coach at UCLA,
and I started taking lessons from him in the mid seventies.
Oh that's a hot wheel thing I just did myself.
So anyway, but mister Marrin's is a tremendous instructor. And
I remember one time he told me I had transferred
there from a Division two school to finish up my
career in college golf, and I was transferred into a
team that had you know, they were number one in
the country and their second team was probably number two,
so maybe not quite but pretty close. And and I
I was playing pretty well, you know, in the fall schedule.
I played okay, and I was kind of on the
border making the traveling team in the spring. And he
says to me, John, he says, listen, Son.
Speaker 3: There's four areas.
Speaker 4: There's four there's four things you need to do at golf.
He says, if you learn how to control yourself, you
can you can control the club. If you control the club,
you can control your shots. If you control your shots,
you have a moderate amount of control over that golf course.
And if you focus on those things, those first three things,
you can slightly impose your will on the course. Otherwise
the course is going to dictate the terms to you,
and you want to be on the other end of
that stick if you want to play your best golf.
So Ben Hogan was sort of the epitome of that.
He was able to impose his will on golf courses
because he could determine. And getting back to John Shlee,
I remember Slee took me out one day and we
were talking about driving and he says, what's going on
with your game? And at this time I was a
club champion I think at Industry Hills where he was teaching,
and we went out and played, and he said, you know,
I was having trouble with my driver one day and
I asked mister Hogan about how I can improve my driving,
and he says, well, John jumping the cart with me,
and they jumped out and they went out on the
golf course and he says, see this dibot. That was
my dibbot this morning. He said, see the dibbot five
feet right of that. That was my dibot this afternoon.
The problem with that is my spot that I was
picked out was twenty feet left of that. I hit
both of these bat Then he went the next hole
and literally he was picking out spots in the fairway
where he wanted his ball to end up, and the divot.
Speaker 3: Was pretty much with it.
Speaker 4: You know, He's picked out sides of you know, dark
spots and light spots in the fairway. He wasn't aiming
at trees and trying to hit lines. He wanted his
ball to end up like his nine iron right. He
was picking blades of grass well basically. I mean, he
was you know, we I'm gonna take it over that
right edge of the bunker. Hogan was like, no, I
want the ball to land, and I want it to
end up there, right because from there, that's the shot
I want into the hole. Right that that's the shot
that I like the look of that shot, you know,
or the shot plays better for me, or it's an
easier shot in you know, if you got a front
left pin, being being short left and in between clubs
is not a good place to be. Maybe being on
the right side of the fairway not in between clubs.
You know, you might be twenty yards shorter there on
the left if you can drive.
Speaker 3: It away up there.
Speaker 4: But hitting the three wood to the right side of
the fairway might open Might it open open it up
for you a little bit? You know, It just depends.
And it's everybody has their shot patterns that they like
to play. But he was a master of that. And
I think that's so behavior wins, and so those who
can practice, Like for like, I'm trying to get ready
for a golf tournament, and you know, that's a brain
that I got to kind of crawl back into and
tournament preparation is a little bit different than normal practice. Well,
you kind of want to recreate like I'm I'm trying
to get I'm trying to look at my wedges right
now and see what my distances are. And so I
with a launch monitor, now I can practice in real time.
I can practice. I can get.
Speaker 3: Results that are actual, real.
Speaker 4: Not just oh I think I'm hitting at eighty four
yards with my fifty two degree sandwich or fifty four
or whatever. No, I'm actually hitting eighty seven. That's the
number when I bust this thing. And for me, I'm consistent.
I can stand there and hit twenty eighty seven yard
sandwiches in a row, I mean literally within a yard
of each other if I hit it solid. And so
I want to know what I'm doing, and so when
I practice, I want to practic just kind of a
little bit like I'm playing. So I want to know
the yardages I'm trying to prep by what yardis am
I currently hitting shots right now? And I want to
roll some pots, put a little real time pressure on
my stroke on the putting green. So I have a
few drills that I used, nothing complex, but just trying
to kind of get ready to get my brain ready
for I was going to say, it's not about the mechanics,
not really, no, no, And like I was given a
lesson yesterday to a promising young twelve year old boy,
and he's got some talent, and nobody actually introduced to
him the idea of a preshot routine, and he had
he'd kind of figured it a little bit out of
all on his own, you know, because he's got some
he had some skill and.
Speaker 1: A twelve year old yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's got some skill already, you know, he
can go out and shoot. So we were talking. He
comes to me, this is you'll love this one. So
he says, you know, I think I want to work
on my driver today. And I go really, oh, okay,
well what's going on with your driver? And he goes, well,
I played didn't play too well the other day. I go,
w'd you shoot? He goes, well, I had a really
tough day. It was kind of windy and cold. But
I shut forty one at mckinnis or forty two or something.
I said, okay, well tell me about the round that's
a par thirty thirty two, right, yeah, And it wasn't.
It wasn't his best round, but because I think he
shut close to par there a few times. But yeah,
or maybe he's even broken, but he can play much better.
So I said, well, tell me about the round. I said, okay,
so I hit a good drive. I hit a drive
off one and kind of on the wrong side of
the fairway. I didn't hit it quite as long, but
I had wedge in and I said, okay, what'd you
hit on the next hole? I had wedge in the
next hole. I said, what'd you do on the third hole?
I missed the green? So what'd you hit next? For
the second shop? I had wedge pretty close, but I
didn't put so well. And we go through things and
I said, okay, so so far during this nine hole,
as you're telling me, you had nine shots inside of
ninety five yards, okay.
Speaker 3: And how many pets did you have? Oh? I had?
Speaker 4: I had twenty three pots. So you had thirty two
shots with a wedge and a putter.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Again McGinnis as an executive little golf course. Right, it's
part three, but there are three. It's the number one,
three number four.
Speaker 3: There's like five part three's six or four or five
part three.
Speaker 1: Four four four parts and four part four is four
part fours. Yeah, four part fours and five part Three's right.
Speaker 4: So the point I was trying to make to them
was if you want to be better, your behavior has
to become better and then your golf swing gets better. Okay,
so I said, so when you practice, practice the things
that you're not doing well enough on the golf course.
Speaker 1: Why would anybody want to do that? Why would I
want to go practice things that I can't do well?
I want to hit the ball, like.
Speaker 4: Most people go to the golf course and they have that.
For them, golf is an activity. It's not a process
of getting better. They think it's a process of getting better,
but they're actually just doing an activity because they have
no idea what actual behavior will actually make them better.
They don't know how to practice. So if you want
to hang out with somebody that plays really quality golf,
you will find that they practice more efficiently. They practice
the things that are that they need to improve upon
because they through determination of skill and knowledge, they determine
and maybe today technology they're able to determine their inefficiencies
for them, and they'll practice things that may draw upon
for the next tournament. That like courses might require a
little more driving accuracy, or might require a little more
wedge play, or might like this week, we got a
gusta coming up. So lag putting becomes number one, speed
control becomes imperative, and iron control becomes number two. And
so those are you know, things that you need to
be blow the hole, you need to.
Speaker 3: Have uphill putts.
Speaker 4: You don't want to put yourself position where it's really
tough to two putt right, let alone one putt. So
so with this young man, we said, you know, well,
thirty three shots with the do you think that's really
the problem the driver?
Speaker 1: Hmmm, what do you think he probably didn't have that
many shots with a driver.
Speaker 3: Well, no, he didn't.
Speaker 4: But but the point is is, you know he he
had like nine wedge I mean of the holes of
all the par fours he had wedge in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So and they are a long hole. I'm just saying,
in his mind, he's thinking he wants to drive it
longer and hit it longer. And I know that's standard
for a young twelve year old thinking he wants to
hit it further and our farther. I think it's the
quick pest, but we all do. Yeah, And and and
we all think that, and that's that's one of the ironies.
It's an old joke with golf pros. But the student
comes to he said, well, if you know, if I
could just get that ball off the tee closer to
the hole, you know, And he said, well, that's conceptually
you have the idea, right, and they go, what do
you mean. I said, well, I'll give you twenty yards
off every tee, but my guesses you probably won't beat
your last golf score. What do you mean, well, I'll
give you twenty yards. Okay, that's all right. So you
give the guy twenty yards, but it's on the same
line that he hit it. So if it's going towards
the right rough, now it's deep in the rough at
twenty more yards, and if it's in the center of
the fair and then he gets twenty yards closer. Right,
But most people, really they don't. They wouldn't improve that
much with the extra twenty yards. Surprisingly, for most people,
they wouldn't. They wouldn't that they would actually struggle just
as much. So the reality is when they start doing
and that's my coaching is going in that direction is
more I would say real time assessment I'm offering a
product now to my students called shot by Shot which
analyzes your game in real time and you do it yourself.
It's real simple. You rate your drives one through six,
did you hit the green, did you not hit the green?
And then we find out what you did inside of
fifty yards and you know, it's real simple stuff. And
from that there's like a three hundred thousand round database
and we can kind of drive some of the amazing
stats that will help you doing short game challenges with
people finding out. So most people really have no idea
how far they can carry it. If you ask them
to carry a forty four yard shot, no, they wouldn't
know what that really is and they and they probably
wouldn't make solid enough contact.
Speaker 3: So that's that's the.
Speaker 4: One area where the instruction does have to be. You
have to get people. The most important thing any golfer
can ever do, ever, unequivocally ever is find the low
point of his arc. And he can consistently do that.
That defines the quality of the player.
Speaker 1: If you want to, I need to tell because I
want to clarify this arc of your.
Speaker 3: Swing or arc of the ball flight, arc of your swing.
Speaker 1: Okay, the low point.
Speaker 4: The low point because the golf balls hit first, and
the bottom right, the bottom, the bottom of your arc
is for all players of lower handicap or you know,
the lower the lower lower, it's between probably an inch
and almost two inches in front of the ball. So
everybody thinks they hit the ball and then the club
moves up up Now with a driver, I will I
will verify that.
Speaker 3: There's there's two schools of thought in this.
Speaker 4: Most of the launch monitors will tell you the best
players in the world who just slight me up on it,
and I think that's true. But the drivers are deeper
now and they're different, so.
Speaker 3: Technically center of gravity, yeah, the pushback.
Speaker 4: So so your arc is it's a little I haven't
quite my brain hasn't wrapped around that one. I'm not
maybe quite that quickly smart enough.
Speaker 1: So so professional players, the better players, the bottom of
the arc is in front of where the ball is setting.
That's correct, and for most amateurs, most of os, it's
that's why so many people hit the ground first, you know,
because there is it now, is that a set up
position or is that.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, we can follow my thought. Let me
follow with my thoughts mechanics.
Speaker 4: So so with the short game, you know what good
players do is they control their ball after it lands. Right,
the best wedge players in the world control their ball
after it lands. First of all, they know. I think
I've told you the story before, but I had an
illuminating story when I was about let's see what year was.
It was nineteen seventy seven, so whatever. I was eighteen,
nineteen years old and I have this illuminating moment. I
go up to a golf club near my house to
drop off some stuff and there's Hubert Green on the
driving range.
Speaker 3: It was basically, if.
Speaker 4: You're a musician, it would be like walking into a
record shop in San Mafel and finding Bono. Yeah right,
okay for me, right, it was like really, so I'm
down there, I'm all by myself. I'm watching Herebert Green
hit golf balls. And he looks around at me and
I'm five feet ten feet away from him, and he says,
are you a golfer, which you know, I guess.
Speaker 3: He was just a conversation. So I said, yes, sir.
Speaker 4: And by the way, just people don't know this, and
I think he was.
Speaker 3: A purple hard guy. Twice so he has a little
sense of intensity about him when you talk to him.
Speaker 4: He just you know, it's just like this piercedness, you know,
like what he says to you, it's like, yes, sir, yeah,
I played golf, sir.
Speaker 3: He goes.
Speaker 4: A few minutes later, he goes, well, do you want
to know why I'm the best golfer in the world?
Speaker 3: And I said I'd love to know. Yes, I would
like to know.
Speaker 4: He proceeded to hit three shots with each golf club
in the bag at different heights and different elevations and
different distances and different shapes, and basically called every shot
and the finish at off he hit I'm now going
to hit a driver one hundred and fifty yards with
a full golf swing, and which he did. And then
what really backed it up for me is he went
out and won the US Open a month later, wow,
with a death thread on him, by the way, a
little little by the by Wow, which I guess was
not you know, he understood that world pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: So waking up thinking you might die to day, then
you got to play the us O.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, he's got to shoot you, right, Yeah, a
couple of right, So he gets that anyway, so that
for me was the first area of well, if I
learned how to control my golf ball, then I get better.
Speaker 3: I say, so, it's not it's you know, it's not now.
Speaker 4: I used to think it was always the arrow and
not the always the Indian and the not the arrow,
and now it's combination with launch monitor. The equipment's huge,
don't underestimate it.
Speaker 3: It's massive.
Speaker 4: But you know, you need to match your equipment to
you whatever Indian you are, right, So we have technology
to be able to do that, and that's mass. I
think that's probably the biggest change in the game in
the last fifteen to twenty years is being able to
the combination of the technology and then matching your game
to that technology to get the most out of whatever.
Speaker 3: Skill sets you have.
Speaker 4: But that being said, the best players control their wedge
game by hitting the ball consistently and in the manner
in which they want to do it, so when they
make contact, it's a sound. It's a discernible sound. Maybe
not so discernible with little wedge play, but little pit
shots and little chip shots. You need to hit that
ball first, and the low point is going to be
slightly in front of the ball and unless you do that,
then you can't control the ball the way you want it.
And you know a lot of players with their wedge
play fight too much spin. That's the better players. Right,
you're hitting a little shot and you don't want it
to stop. You needed to you need to roll and
roll out. A lot of times you hit a sand
wedge and all sudden, oh gosh, it stopped. I didn't
want it to stop. Now I got a twenty footer.
So controlling the ball, shooge and the wedge wedge play
is massive. So again bringing back to this young young man,
twenty three pots, that's a really bad and the wedge
play could have been a little bit closer.
Speaker 3: So what should he be practicing? Right?
Speaker 4: Putting and work in the wedge and you know, twelve
years old, why not because he's not going to get
the distance it's going to come. His golf swing's fine,
he'll hit it further farther whatever.
Speaker 1: I go, he's correct, and so.
Speaker 3: He's got to do that, and so we need to.
Speaker 4: But we the lesson I was trying to share with
him was, hmm, how do I behave how do I
react to my results?
Speaker 3: And how do I look at them?
Speaker 4: And how do I educate myself on what I do
on the golf course and how do I reflect on it,
and then how do I get better? And I think
that was a great thing for me. When I transferred
to UCLA, was hanging around guys like Corey Paven and
Tom Pernice and Steve Pate and Jay Delson, all these
guys that have won PGA Tour events. Duffie Waldorf Is,
they did that. They did that very well. And I
think a little bit what happened to be mister Marrin's
He invoked sort of that aura of behavior as the
lesson he gave me. But it was important to review
what have I done on the golf course. I remember
I was playing Mini Tours. I was struggling a little bit,
and I started keeping notes on my up and downs
from different distances and my ratios, and so I started
noticing I had a huge gap between about forty and
about eighty five yards, and so.
Speaker 3: I started working on that.
Speaker 4: And the minute I did that, you know, suddenly I'm
playing in US opens, I'm finishing high and the money
lists and professional events outside of the country. And I
didn't do anything massively different. I just learned how to
manage my wedge game between about thirty five and about
ninety yards.
Speaker 3: That's yeah.
Speaker 1: I noticed that for myself as well, that when my
start with my scores were going down, it's because I
was focusing on those that distance and those shots.
Speaker 3: Right, sot and stuff.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you as an instructor, and
you even talked about this, Every shot was a carbon
copy and you're talking about Hogan. When when students come
to you for the first time, what are the the
two things that you hear from most students on what
they you know, like, why are you here? Distance in consistency, distancing.
It's just everybody says the same thing. Every instructor says distances.
Speaker 4: Most people are pretty much I mean, you know, there's
there's some element of that neess to it, and some
sometimes very clearly.
Speaker 3: It's just that.
Speaker 1: And and what I've been noticing too so that.
Speaker 4: People are starting to that people are starting to say
I get more questions now about putting than I used.
Speaker 3: To interesting, and I don't know why that is, but
it is okay.
Speaker 1: So what I want to go after today is the
myth of consistency. I think because I think that it's
so interesting to play with people on a regular basis
and hear them complain about a shot that they make.
But I don't think they notice or recognize that they
complain about that shot regularly, you know. And I was thinking.
I even wrote to somebody recently and said, try this
on your scorecard. When you make a shot that you
don't like. The first time you make a shot you
don't like, just make a mark on your scorecard, okay,
and focus on every time that happens in your round.
Make the mark and see how many marks you've made
during your round to like, oh wait, I did that
six times today, seven times. I did that twelve times today.
So to me, that means they're incredibly consistent.
Speaker 3: Well right, I mean it's interesting.
Speaker 4: I mean, let's define consistency a little bit, or inconsistency.
The problems they have are reoccurring, and they're the same
problems over and over, so therefore it is a consistent issue.
They view it is is that they want to be better.
So their idea of themselves, you know, it's sort of
like it's a little everybody's a little gullible. They always
think they're a little better than they are or it's
a sting, you know. It's like the sting operations. People
can they believe something that they're not and so so
that premise allows them to think that they're inconsistent. But
when I put them on video or I put them
on a launch monitor with Doppler radar, like we see
players using or their swings are massively consistent, massively consistent,
I mean, there's consistent as tour pros almost.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: The problem is is that their pad, their swing patterns
will create a wide a more wide variety of shots
because of their inefficiency. But the pattern of their swing
is relatively the same way if I if I was
to put it on three D motion detector, their body
is going to be doing the same thing over and
over again. Their pelvis will be reacting the same way.
Their spine angle will be the same way. If we
look at their club head moving around their body, it
will basically follow a very consistent pattern to a certain extent,
especially people that have played for a considerable amount of time.
Beginners maybe not so much, but people that are that
you know, have played, you know, they played enough golf.
They think they're being inconsistent. They are consistent, they're just
consistently inefficient at creating a low point of arc in
front of the ball.
Speaker 1: So how do you convince these students that know you
actually are consistent.
Speaker 4: Well, I put them on you, and I just show
them the pattern of their golf club, and then I
take a look at their golf face of their face,
and they'll find out the worn out spots on their
face are all in the same place. That just it's
not it's not the sweet spot of the club.
Speaker 3: Before and more towards the toe.
Speaker 4: You don't get too many people missing it towards the heel,
and on a driver, it's usually high and outside on
the toe because they're steep. They're coming steep and they're
coming to the club. The club is working at the
top of their golf For most people, the club works
away from their body and then across their body through
the ball, which then produces sort of.
Speaker 3: A chicken wing type effect. Right.
Speaker 4: So for better players, from the top of the back swing,
they have a little bit more depth in so the
club can work down and out in front of them,
and so the club is now working into their body
and away from their body, which is so it works.
It works sort of into their body coming down and
then away from their body through the ball, where the
opposite is true for the inefficient player. It's more away
from the body and then into the body through the ball.
And so and then what also happens too, They don't
get enough weight forward and they don't get the weight,
the proper weight forward.
Speaker 3: They don't get the.
Speaker 4: They don't get the So every good player and you
can see it.
Speaker 3: It's classic.
Speaker 4: It's almost classic for other sports too. But if if
you want to throw a baseball, if you want to
throw a football, and the spine leans away from the target,
the leg and pelvis starts to lean to the target.
So legs are leaning towards the target on the downswing
and the spine is leaning away from the target, and
that creates leverage in the golf swing and that allows
when you get that pelvis area forward through through impact,
that allows the low spot of the arc to be
in front of the ball. Without it, it just doesn't happen. Interesting,
So it's like the kind of the comment might be, well,
I'm hitting off my back foot, Yeah, yeah, you are,
you know, right, And and that's what people kind of do.
And when when you find a person that's consistently getting
the low point of his arc in front of the ball,
his dispersion patterns will become much tighter. Okay, so we
like with the launchmutter. Now with my focope, I can,
I can look at this. So I do a lot
of tracking of golf shots now with my students, and
we start looking at dispersion patterns. I recently had a
player and I wish I don't. I don't know how
he did in the match.
Speaker 3: Play this week.
Speaker 4: He's playing in the San Francisco Seniors, and and we
just we detected that, you know, just nothing that technical,
but his all his all his shot patterns with his
wedges between short wedges were short and left and and
it was a little bit of a club face alignment
and ball placement and just intent of what he needed
to do. So a little correction of his stance and
a little correction of ball placement, we were able to
get his lower his web shots more online and he
qualified like in the top five, I think. And he's
won his first two matches in this week, and I don't.
Speaker 3: Know how he did yet. So I've been com busy.
I haven't checked.
Speaker 4: But that's just because I was able to see the
dispersion ratio, and we were able to we his dibbot
was a little bit behind the ball, and we were
able to buy ball placement, were real to get the
dibbot a little bit further forward and by moving the
ball around create a better, more solid impact, and he
was able to get more control over his shots and
a little bit more consistency out of that.
Speaker 3: Interesting, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Sure, but this is a guy who wants to compete,
and he is competing. Yeah, I mean, but what about
the I mean when you when you have your normal
students right who are just out there because they want
they want more consistently, they want more existence, but they're
not going to work on it that much because they
have enough time to play golf once a week.
Speaker 3: You have a couple, you have a couple options you have.
Speaker 4: You can do a reality check and go to your
golf pro like me, and find out how far you
actually hit it and what your pattern actually is, and
then act like a real competitor and to know thyself
as divine, admit your weaknesses and play to them or
around him.
Speaker 3: It's that simple.
Speaker 4: And then once you do that, you buy equipment that
can maybe with somebody that really knows what they're doing
can less soften those weaknesses.
Speaker 1: And you're talking about getting fitted for your class.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just don't change the swing.
Speaker 4: Just just change, you know, adapt the swing with with
with the equipment.
Speaker 1: So it's going to be a lot harder to change
your swing if you're not going to be that dedicated
to it anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, swings don't change. And this is
me as a behaviorist again, and less intention changes and
intention precedes all activity. So unless you have a clear
knowledge of what you're trying to do, and your intention
is to do what you're trying to do, which is
the correct thing, then the pattern's not going to change.
So most people have no idea what they were supposed
to do with a golf club. They think they're supposed
to hit the ball. And there's not a golf prone
in the world that thinks about hitting a golf ball.
Speaker 3: Keep going.
Speaker 5: Well, they just don't think about they think about where
they're all to go. Yeah, the targets first, the golf
ball is not the target. Ball is not the target, right.
Speaker 4: So we have in so I get my students maybe
to throw a rope, I have I have them thrown
ropes like short ropes, thick ropes at the target, and
nine of them will throw it thirty yards left of
the target right away. You know, I have PVC pipes
that I haven't there. You can even throw your own clubs.
I take them out of the fairway and have them
start throwing the car Yeah, okay, yeah. And so their
intention is to swing the club at the target. And
unless that's part of the process, then then you're you're
gonna have You're gonna struggle.
Speaker 3: You will.
Speaker 4: And because there's only two things involved in hitting the
golf ball, basically from from a technical standpoint, one is
geometry and the other one's physics. Geometry has to do
with direction, and physics has to do with the leverage
and distance. So if you're swinging a club or a
rope properly and you throw it properly out at the target,
then you're accomplishing both the geometry and the physics in
that moment. And that creates and the only way you
can do that is to have your legs leaning towards
the target, You're spine leaning away and you and you
make and the low point of the arc. I can
show you. I take people who would normally hit it
fat have them swing a rope and they look like
Ben Hogan and they've never played golf before. Literally they
look like they have so much leverage coming into the ball.
It's like, Holy smokes, and what happened. One thing we've
done is we've eliminated the golf ball because the golf
ball gets in the way of the target for everybody, right, So,
and when we start doing that, think people get people
get better. But the intention is is what's my intention?
What's my relationship to the target?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And so the better my relationship with the target is
higher quality of golf shots I tend to hit for everybody.
So it's a target oriented game. It's not a swing
oriented game. It's not a technical you know, it really isn't.
At the highest at the simplest level, it's that way,
and surprisingly the better you play at the highest level,
it's sort of that way too.
Speaker 3: I mean, you have some you have some things that you.
Speaker 4: Can draw upon as a as an experienced player, that
you might be able to fix in a round of golf.
But usually it's the simple stuff. It's breathing, it's a
little more relaxation, it's getting rid of the noise.
Speaker 3: Right, use your head everywhere, right.
Speaker 4: It's that's the stuff, and it's it's just you know,
not making yourself the enemy, really, and that surprisingly. I mean,
I used to have guys call me a lot before
tour school, and not so much and more they're getting older,
but but they'd call.
Speaker 3: Me for about putting.
Speaker 4: And you know, how do I because I've historically been
a pretty solid putter, and John, what do I need
to do? You know, inevitably it's like, well, you need
to stop trying to make pots.
Speaker 3: What did you just say?
Speaker 4: I said, you need to stop trying to make pots?
Speaker 3: What do you mean that's why I'm calling you need
to make more pods? I said, well, stop, I go.
What do you mean? I said, your only object?
Speaker 4: Your only job is to hit the ball, figure out
what the line is, hit it on that line with
the appropriate speed. You're not responsible for it going in.
Speaker 1: So you can't you can't be forgetting it, can't.
Speaker 4: Be making the putt while you're trying to hit it.
You have to be here, you have to be present.
And this is from a guy that has a panic disorder.
So I understand the biggest thing in the world is
being present, being accountable right here.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to laught you, but no, no, no,
it's true.
Speaker 3: No, it's true.
Speaker 4: So you know, uh, you know, golf has always been
my moment of zen, you know, because I can. I'm
much better with twenty thousand people, at least I used
to be with twenty thousand and ten thousand people watching
me than I am in a hotel room in Wichita
by myself.
Speaker 3: You know. I mean, I'm having.
Speaker 4: To read a book, I'm doing sit ups, I'm doing
push ups, I'm stretching, I'm doing whatever I'm reading, you know,
So being so I'm able to focus, you know, I can.
It was natural for me to take my situation on
it with a golf ball and make what's what needs
to be accountable right here, to make the whole objective
for most people to play better, whatever it is. And
I think, and I've played with athletes in all different
sports through my profession as a golfer. They come to
me in pro ams, and they're all drawn to golf
for some you know reason, And I think part of
the reason is is they realize it takes them back
to what I call the original sin, which is, you know,
there's a little there's this thing. There's this moment at
some point in their lives where they decided that if
they focused on this thing, it would captivate them for
a really long time. And they enjoyed that process. And
they see in golf that it's unless they give in
to it, that unless they immerse themselves in the moment
like they did with their other sport, which they probably
can't do full time anymore, aren't doing full time, that
they're able to kind of do this at golf again.
And they love that process. So guys that and women too,
and just guys, the ones that get better are able
to immerse themselves in that moment to moment process in
a round of golf or even in their practice, and
there is it is a sort of meditation. It's a
meditation of what's present right now for me to do.
And that's target oriented. That's not ball oriented, right, and
that's that's that's sort of like the fun process. And
we kind of lose track of that a little bit.
So you know, I say to my amateur golfers, beat
everybody hitting a bat. And my whole motto has always
been never let a bad golf swing get in the
way of a good round of golf.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, right, I'm going to write that one down.
Speaker 4: Right, So so you can't blame it on your swing,
because that's just placing the blame someplace else.
Speaker 3: That's just passing it down. You know.
Speaker 4: You get to sign the scorecard. No one, No, at
the end of the round, no one said I had
the best golf swing this week. No, you sign your name, right,
they don't sign you don't sign golf swing. Oh, my
golf swing won the tournament. No, I as a person.
Speaker 3: Won the tournament. Right.
Speaker 4: We think tiger Woods golf swing changed all that much?
Now you think wedge games changed all that much physically?
Speaker 3: Probably not.
Speaker 4: His relationship to that club right now, to those clubs,
to those shots has changed, but he mechanically it's probably
not massively changed. So so there's the art, right, there's alchemy.
How do I mixture that and how do I bring
that out of me to make it make it as
good as I can? And that's where that's the fun,
you know, And it's always has been that way. You know,
the Scottish understood that in its infancy of the game.
Speaker 1: Amazing, All right, John, we've come outside now to the
golf course that I live next to, and we're gonna
do You're gonna do a little tip here on consistency.
Speaker 4: The number one thing you can do to improve your
iron plate is make sure that the low point of
your arc is in front of the ball. So one
way to do this without practice, without using any golf balls,
find a fair way bunker, make a lion in the sand.
So what we're trying to do is to make sure
our low point of our arc is in front of
the ball.
Speaker 3: We're gonna imagine this a line. Is the ball we're.
Speaker 4: Gonna set up, and we're going to make a golf swing,
and the low point of our arc should be slightly
in front of that sand.
Speaker 3: Let me do it again.
Speaker 4: Now, the opposite of that would be this, See here
are my line here. The opposite would be which most
of my amateur students do is they hit behind the ball.
What we're trying to do is to make sure that
you hit in front of the ball. Let me show
you that one more time. If this is my line
right here, I went the club. The low point of
my arc to be up over there, right, so I'd
hit the ball first, And now I found the low
point in front of the ball.
Speaker 3: Let me do it again.
Speaker 4: If you can get the low point of your arc
in front of the ball, your shots will go straighter
and farther