Hello. So this is Richard Gates from Athamston Cree and I'll play at Mouse Great Golf.
This is the Golf Smarter Podcast, episode number nine seventy nine. You know, if I'm not comfortable with something like my grip or my setup, I'll make sure I work on those things off the golf course. You know, once they get on the golf course though, you have to play golf.
You have to adapt because you know, if you.
Work too much on the range, you're not adapting very well. If you can put the playing part more in the positive ratio, I think you're just going to get more out of your game because you don't adapt on the practice tee. Let's face it, the environment there just doesn't allow you to adapt.
When you're on the golf.
Course, you're always trying to figure out Okay, different wind direction on every hole, the win the turf, every lie is different, every scenario you have seems to be different than the next. So the more you play, the more golf shots that you develop and remember in your repertoire to the next time you go, oh wow, so oh
I had a lie like that two weeks ago. That you have to you have to a lot to have a lot of good recall memory to remember what this particular lie does to the golf ball, where you don't have that on the practice team.
With this episode, we launch our twentieth year balancing Practice and play is Essential for Golf Improvement with Steve Scott, PGA. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Steve great, great to be with you, Fred, Thank.
You so much. We have so many different topics we can go talk about here. Looking at your bio, You've done so many different things in the golf world, and usually I would start, where do you want to start? Actually, where would you like to go? Now, let's do it this way. What is the Silver Club golfing society that you founded?
Yeah?
Well, well, so I was a PGA profess I still am a PGA professional. I was had the traditional head professional role from two thousand and nine till the end of twenty seventeen at a couple of clubs in New Jersey and New York. And you know, ever since then, I've been associated with a group called the Outpost Club, and we created kind of a competitive version of the Outpost Club. Basically just a bunch of golf officionados who
love the game. We basically set up really fun opportunities for our members to go and play great places in the world of golf, whether it's you know, the Olympic Club, East Lake, Oakmont, I mean, kind of the creme de la creme, if you will, of the golf world. And so we set up kind of yeah, we set up really you know, kind of when we do some resorts as well. We do some international trips. We went to the Walker Cup in Scotland last year.
Fun, you know, we just we put together a lot of fun things. Everybody in our group.
The Silver Club Golfing Society is a single digit handicap our sister society, the Outpost Club. Anybody can can join that, but you know, you have to have a pretty passionate love for the game. Architecturally significant courses, you know, kind of a golf.
Nerd if you will, I guess, but not too nerdy.
Well, you're talking to the right group here, because anybody who's listening to this show, I have to believe, is a complete golf nerd because we cover so many different topics and so many different directions and people keep listening. So I'm like, I don't know what we're going to talk about next, So thank you for sticking around. So golf Nerds it is. Have you always been a fan of golf architecture?
You know, I haven't, not forever, I would say, so. I played for professionally for six years. I played professionally from the nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and five, had moderate success. I played in twenty PGA Tour events in my life, one a couple of times in the Canadian Tour.
But you know, I.
Quickly realized that my game was not up to the snuff of the.
Tiger woodses of the world.
So, you know, that being said, you know, I decided to shift shift years.
I got married at a pretty young young.
Age to a great lady named Christy who's she's an LPGA teaching professional herself, and you know, we've just always been involved with the game, and so you know, the natural progression was I, you know, I always wanted to
be in golf. I love the game of golf, I love competing, I love kind of sharing the game with others and so, you know, in my travels, I mean when I was a head pro in the met PGA section in the New York Metropolitan area, I was at a club called Paramount Country Club and it was a course designed by a famous architect called aw Tilling has to build a course on the private estate of the Paramount Pictures founder Adolph Zucker back in nineteen twenty and
it was about thirty minutes northwest of New York City in a city called New City, New York, in Rockland County. And you know, being in the METS section, you get exposed to a lot of great golf courses. You know, the greatest architects of the world. You know CB McDonald and you know Tilling, Hass and then the you know, even in the modern you know, anybody really who is
anything in golf? Donald Ross for example. Obviously not nobody of these are modern, but you know, not too many modern courses I get in the New York area, a lot of built in the nineteen tens and.
Twenties and whatnot.
But yeah, over time you start to develop a love for you know, what makes golf cool. It's kind of like being a wine enthusiast, for example, and you start to understand what makes wine good and certain years and vintages are better than others, and so, you know, you start to get into that world in the golf world, and it's kind of cool to understand the history of some of some places. And I live in Winston Salem, North Carolina now, and so I belonged to a course
called the Old Town Club. It was built in nineteen thirty nine, really the last golf course in the Golden Age of architecture. And it was built by Perry Maxwell, who built mainly courses in Oklahoma, Texas, like you know, Colonial Country Club and you know places Prairie Dunes in.
Kansas. But he built Old Town.
And it was really because of the connection with Clifford Roberts from Augusta National, the gentleman.
He was working with the R. J.
Reynolds Company, and he had a connection with you know, the founder, the head of R. J. Reynolds and said, you know, who should I get to build a golf course here in Winston Salem, North Carolina. He said, oh, Perry Maxwell. He's been doing some work at Augusta, you know, in the mid to late in mid to late nineteen thirties, and so it just kind of worked out. And so anyway, it's kind of the routing of the golf course is unbelievable.
You know.
So over time, I guess, make a long story short, I have become a golf architecture, you know, really just an enthusiast and a lover of you know, what makes golf courses cool?
I mean the routing.
Why did the architect pick the way he did to lay the golf course on the land that he did that he had to work with, and it's really genius in a lot of ways.
And back then they didn't have.
All the technology they do now at their disposals, So it makes it even more astounding that they built the golf courses the way they did back then.
It really does when you think about what they have available to him today and what they didn't have available but still were able to make some courses that are as challenging today as they were when they first open, and probably even more.
So, oh no doubt.
I mean, you know, they just didn't have the earth moving equipment which made the golf courses much more natural. Back then, they had to picture the best properties because they weren't able to move as much earth and which makes the golf, which makes golf better because it doesn't it's not artificial. It's very natural looking. And I think that's what the architects that are building golf courses nowadays
are really doing. So yeah, just there's so much love for you know, the architect and the canvas that he uses with the land that he has offered and or she is offered. And so it's been pretty it's been pretty neat to experience. I've probably you know, been to or played two thirds of the country's top one hundred golf courses. So very fortunate in that respect. At only forty seven years of age, I've gotten around to a lot of great places.
So a lot more to go, but.
I've had a lot of great experiences, you know, through the Silver Club, through the Outpost Club, to be able to you know, see and experience and enjoy so many of these these world's great golf greatest golf courses.
Yeah, I played last week. I went and visited a friend in Maui, Hawaii, excuse me, and uh we played a course, the Dunes at Maui Lani, which was designed by the late Robin Nelson and Robin was on the show multiple times. He grew up in the area where I live now, Marine County, California, and he was one of those architects that was like, let's just take the land as it is and not do a lot of movement.
And this course is like the only link style course in Mali, and it was tough, but it was really beautiful the way he was able to just let the let the ground, let the land take what the hole was going to do, and made it incredibly challenging. It's definitely it's kind of like going on a group tour to a country where you don't speak the language, and
you just like, I need a local with me. Luckily my friend lived there and played multiple times, and it's like needed to guide me through this course because if I didn't know where I was going, that little booklet that explained where I was would not have helped at all. Right, right, using the land the way it is in today, you know, with having all that earth mover equipment and not needing it was really spectacular.
Need to experience those courses, and there's so many courses being built right now that are so remote and they're becoming so popular. I mean, Bandon Dunes is very hard to get to, and that's you know, relatively new. I mean there's there's courses. There's one being built in the Orange Groves of central Florida, in the middle of nowhere, south of Seabring, Florida, on a sandy ridge called High Grove. It's going to be starting to be built. That one
is very very interesting. Gil Hans is building that one. So anyway, there's just a lot of very remote places being built now that are it's really interesting where they're finding this land and the perfect property.
Yeah. I've played Bandon Dunes a couple of times. Luckily, you know, I'm on the west coast, so it's not as difficult to get to, but it's still difficult. Yeah, you get too, but it's become I guess it's like fret Boy Disneyland. It's like just guys wanting to spend days doing nothing but golf and talking about it and playing. But it's an absolute joy. Have you been out to Bandon Nuts.
I have, I have. I was there yea in twenty just about a year ago.
Now, Yeah, yeah, awesome. So I want to talk about your time as a not just a teaching professional, but as a playing profession because you also wrote a book, Hey Tiger, you need to Move Your Mark Back, which is such an amazing title. Give me a brief overview as a taste.
Oh boy, well, it really goes back to my experiences playing in the nineteen ninety six US Amateur finals against the great Tiger Woods.
Wow.
Yeah, it was pretty serendipitous event for me. I mean, three hundred and twelve players start the US Amateur and to think you could be in the final two, let alone your opponent is arguably the greatest player who's ever lived, right, so even at that time, at that time, he was going for history. The day that we played was he was going for three straight US Amateur championships. Nobody in the history of golf had ever won three straight US Amateurs.
I mean one hundreds be played one hundred and twenty four years now, I guess. So it's pretty amazing what he did that day and how it all turned out. But you know, just to make it to the finals against him as a miraculous feat in itself. But I was five up. There's the thirty six. The finals of the US Amateur are thirty six holes. We went thirty eight holes, so two playoff holes on top of the regulation time. But I was five up after eighteen holes and shot two under par in the second eighteen I
played very well, but he just played lights out. He shot seven under, and so we tied and went to the second playoff hole where he beat me. But the epic moment of the match, and where the book is entitled, is, you know, basically, I'm two up with three to play. So if I win this particular holes, the thirty fourth hole of the match. If I win this hole, I win the match and I take away his history moment. And so we both hit our drives down the fairway.
I hit my approach into the green side bunker and his wedge approach he drove it fifty three yards past me exactly, and his wedge approach went about six feet from the hole. So I hit a bunker shot out. Wasn't the greatest bunker shot, but not the worst. I had about ten feet for park, so I had to make my putt for par to force him to make
his to win the hole outright. Well, his ballmarker was right in my line of putt, and so, like any golfer does any day playing golf, Hey, would you just move that butt ballmarker over one putter head so we can have a free roll. And so he does, and I went up there and I made my putt, and you know, it was very nervous and as you can imagine in a moment like that, and hit the best
putt I could ever dead center the hole. Walking off to the side of the green, and I had noticed that he had put his ball down in the wrong spot, and so basically I just turned my head to the side and I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I said, hey, Tiger, you got to you got to move your mark back. And he he had forgotten. And so if he would have played from the wrong spot, he would have lost the hole. That is, that's the rule in match play golf, and so the match would
have been over at that point. I would have won three up with two to holes to play, and uh, and that would have that would have been pretty been pretty crazy to win the US Amateur. But to win it on a technicality like that, Uh, you know, it's not necessarily golf. It's the first rule of the game is to play with integrity. And you know, I asked him to move the mark over, so I should be the one to remind him move it back as well.
And there have been instances in golf where, you know, the second part of that two part transaction did not take place, and people do it those things on purpose sadly. But for me and what I learned in the game as a youngster, that moment was it was something it was a reflex action for me. If you look back on the YouTube video that's out there now, I mean it's you know, it was just a it was a reflex action. Like it was something I learned in the game.
It was kind of burned into my idea at golf DNA, and so that's just what you do as a golfer. You remind your opponent to move his mark back, You help your opponent find their golf ball. You it's you're kind of your own police out there in a way. There's no referee blowing whistles or throwing flags, and so golf is that gentleman's sport, gentlewoman's sport, and so you you just do the right thing. And that's really what that moment and that whole entire book was all about.
Well, congratulations on making it that far and congratulations are your integrity, But I'm curious to know even in nineteen ninety six, did Tiger have the intimidation factor that he was known for when he made it to the tour and just dominated the tour. When you walk out there and you're like, I'm playing Tiger Woods. The guy has just won the last two Amateur Championships going for his thirds the last round. Was he intimidating or was he just a great guy to play with?
Well?
And many more options than that.
He was very intimidating, for sure. I mean, given the sheer length that he drove the golf ball in itself, I think was very intimidating. But luckily for me, about nine months prior to this, I was paired with him in a collegiate event. He played for Stanford and I played for the University of Florida, And that was a really good break because that day, that first time I played with him, I was very intimidated.
I was watching what he was doing.
He was hitting shots that were just otherworldly, and so really I made it a point and I shot in that day, by the way, and he shot a seventy The very first time we played wow. And so it was definitely he threw me off my game. I was I was not sharp, I was not focused on what I needed to focus on. So the game plan going into that US Amateur Final was to not watch him hit a shot. And that's very difficult because he's very impressive.
He's amazing to watch. If any of your listeners, I'm sure, have ever seen him hit a golf ball in person, the sound of his golf ball certainly I couldn't get away from that. But I just didn't want to get caught up in his world. And so that was kind of that was the game plan that day that my girlfriend Christy now my wife for over twenty five years now, who was cadding for me, which is another wrinkle in the whole day because not many females actually caddied back then.
We'll get to that, but you know, yeah, he was definitely intimidating, but and I had it. But I had a game plan to kind of, you know, get out of that intimidation factor.
Okay, girlfriend caddy, then wife Caddy. Did she caddy for you on the tour too.
A little bit? Yes, yeah, she definitely, you know, not full time. I mean I never had my PGA Tour card. But but I've played a bunch of events and she's caddied for me in both the Majors that I played and the Masters in the US Open.
She's caddied for me in lots of events.
The very last PGA Tour event I played, I mean forty seven now, so I played the Windham Championship on the PGA Tour in twenty nineteen through the Carolinas PGA section where I reside now, and she caddied for me there too, So might.
Be my last PG event. I hope not.
I've got a chance to qualify for the PGA Championship this next year, which is exciting, so I still compete.
I'm still into the game.
But yeah, it's pretty neat to having somebody who knows you and knows your game so well you'll be right with with your step for step, well, yeah.
You'd always hope that whoever's caddying for you that they know your game, especially at that level. But there's also an element of husband, wife energy, even boyfriend girlfriend energy that can I can imagine. I mean, like, I can't even play golf with my wife, you know, She's like, oh, I you know, I play golf, and I'm like, you haven't picked up a club in five years. Well, we can go play nine holes. I said, well, I'm not going until you hit a bucket a ball. Now, I'm
not going to do that. It's like, okay, forget it. We're just you go for a hike, I'll go play golf. We'll be We'll all be fine. But how do you avoid I mean, there's a couple of topics here, but I want to talk about you and your wife. Your wife caddying for you. How do you avoid that kind of tension that is natural for a couple.
Yeah, it's we just we get along so well. I mean, like I said earlier, she's an LPG teaching professional herself, so she's into the game. She understands. She's not just you know, a wife that just goes shopping every day. I mean, she understands, you know, everything that I go through competitively. She played competitively at Florida Southern College and you know, high school before that, and she didn't really
have any aspiration to turn professional. But yeah, it's uh, you know, it could be trying at times if you miss a whole bunch of cuts in a row and you're not making a lot of money, and and you're in all these strange cities, and you know sometimes you know hotel rooms and you don't want to be in and yeah, asking, oh.
Gosh, what's the point that you say to her, yeah, I'm going to get a different caddy next. How do you do that? I mean, how do you tell her that you're fired?
Yeah?
Well, I think it's it's it's more you realize it mutually when if you're not making you know, me as the golfer, I'm not out there holding enough putts and hitting enough good shots. I'm not making checks. So somebody's got to make some guaranteed money. So that's probably what it turned out to at some point. I'm trying to remember exactly when that happened, but it definitely happened.
I'm sure it does. I'm sorry. I kind of find that funny. Yeah, and baffling as well. But congratulations. I mean, I'm glad that you were able to make it work. Wow, let's see, there's so much talk about you. You then have done a lot of golf media as.
Well, Right, I have, I have, I.
Because you're blessed with that incredible voice.
Thank you, Thank you, Yeah, maybe, uh fortunate in a lot of ways. But you know, I measured in communications in college, so I always kind of had a plan when I missed a cut. When I played the Canadian Tour, for example, and they were the Golf Channel was covering events, I would I would work as an encourse reporter a few times over the weekend, which was fun. I wanted to get my foot into the door. I always I always had a love for it. I mean, I'm a
golf nut. I watch golf all the time, probably too much, but I've always kind of had that love for all the everything that goes on in covering a golf event. So, you know, as a head professional in the mets section back in I guess it was twenty seventeen, well, twenty sixteen is when I kind of got my first breaks.
The USGA event, the US Girls Junior was at a club not too far away from where I was a pro at, just over the border in New Jersey at Ridgewood Country Club, and they needed another person to cover the semi final match, and I knew somebody that got me involved with it, and so I worked that and I guess they liked what I did and so the next year I did three events for Fox when they had the eight events that they covered for the U S. G A, and and then you know, I did that
for I did that for a couple of years. But really I kind of saw it because as a head pro in the in the summer, in a July for example, you're kind of in the heat of the of the golf season right there. And you know, I really had the love for the broadcasting side, and I and I my club was very kind that the owner of the club was very kind to let me go and you know, spend three weeks essentially in the middle of the golf season doing covering these events.
And I had this love for it.
I had this passion for it, and so yeah, that that kind of led me to you know, shifting gears a little bit in my career and and opening up the you know, additional opportunities to do broadcasting and and nowadays really for the last three plus years, I've been either an analyst in the booth or an en course broadcaster for ESPN and PGA two or live and so I've been doing several events for them every year, and so that's been a ton of fun and that platform has blown up.
If anybody has seen that.
I mean, we've got four different channels, and I think they'll there will be a fifth one this year with an international feed that's fully staffed with a you know, a host and an analyst and an en course reporter. So yeah, there's only going to be more coverage of
the tour. So it's very exciting for me. I love, you know, being out there in the you know, in the mix, or learning about what the players are working on with their coaches, or and then explaining that to the viewer in a way that's not over their head but in a way that you can, you know, it's easily digestible and understandable, whether you're a twenty handicap or a pro. I try to give all sorts of knowledge levels and information during my during my coverage of an event.
So what makes golf unique and interesting on television is the unique perspective that en course reporters and in the booth people can bring to the game. Do you try to find a niche for yourself as a broadcaster on your perspective? Are you just talk well no, I for sure, No.
I think every every analyst out there, which I am. I'm you know, the host is kind of the one that brings you in and out of commercial and kind of sets up the analyst for you know, the color of what's going on out there, getting inside the player's heads.
And you know, for me as a PGA professional since two thousand and seven, shot, I'm going on, you know, almost twenty you know, nearly twenty years of being a PGA professional, and all the thousands of lessons that I've given, I try to relay, you know, what the players are doing, you know, in their golf swings or you know, try to help them identify, help the viewer kind of easily identify what sort of changes Like Exander Schafflee, for example, you know, for this last year and the great play
he had and two major championship victories, you know, what did he do with his instructor, Chris Como in strengthening in the club face at the top of the swing that really helped him succeed in a greater level in twenty twenty four. I mean, those are the things that I love passing on to the viewers who maybe don't quite get all the inside knowledge. That's the fun part for me. And you know, definitely my PGA professional side. I bring that to bear for sure. You know, I'm
not a major champion. I'm not a Ryder Cup captain. You know, I'm not you know, probably not going to be in the eighteenth tower for a major network. But you know, somebody like me can serve a very good role in you know, passing along really pertinent information, timely information, and being succynct with your thoughts, those things. If you marry those things as an analyst, I think you'll nail it.
Okay, let's talk about the state of the game from your perspective. How are we doing and where are we going?
Yeah, our question, that's a loaded question right there. You know, I don't think anybody really knows other than Jay Monahan and those few people that are in those closed door meetings right now, there hasn't been much to leak out with which what going on between the Live Tour and the PGA tour. You know, your guess is kind of as good as mine on that one. But I think they're getting closer to something, you know, by some accounts.
But you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of little things that everybody's trying to iron out, but the golf world needs to get back together more than just a few times during the major championship seasons.
You know, we need to we need to.
Get the best players on the same golf course, you know, a dozen times a year, and that would I think that would be a win. I don't think it's going to be every week because I think there's you know, the Live Tour could continue in its team format.
You know, I don't know if the PGA Tour will ever go to a team format. I think that there's just a lot of.
Things that you know, the two team events that the presidents and Ryder country.
True, well, that's a bigger team. And then you know, we have this TGL Golf that's going to be starting up in early January. That's this indoor you know, golf simulator sort of league, which is very interesting to me to see how that will all kind of shake itself out.
I you know, some people are very skeptical about it right now.
I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I think that that's a you know, we've got four person teams of PGA Tour players and we're going to see We're going to see a team aspect of some sort, you know, through PGA tour players. So I think that's going to be a very interesting addition to our Monday and Tuesday night lineups the first quarter of the year.
Yeah, you know, a decade or so, maybe even a little more than that ago, when someone started a thing called Twitch where people were just watching somebody play a video game, and it's like, that's a dumb idea that exploded, right, So watching people play video games has been proven to work, so watching people play simulators may have some legs to it. I mean, I just.
We're going to see, We're going to see.
I think it's going to be it's a very interesting concept and there's tremendous funds behind it. They built a state of the art stadium, indoor golf stadium, if you will, that nobody has ever seen before, so you know, a screen that's you know, twenty times the size of a movie theater screen or something like that. So it's it's going to be very unlike anything we've ever seen. Its gonna be very very interesting. It's almost like they're hitting
shots into an Imax theater or something. It's it's gonna be really interesting to see how it all plays.
Out.
Yeah, there's a place down in la I think it's Cosm is the name of it or something, But it's it's like a movie theater but for sports, and it has this gigantic screen that it makes you feel like your courts are at courtside an NBA game or you're sitting in the end zone at a football game, and it's kind of like a bar, and do people go to and watch. I can see how this could really be attractive in many markets.
So it's a it's a very interesting concept, and yeah, we'll see how it all shakes out.
Well, you said your guess is as good as mine. I don't think so, Steve. I think you're you're in it. You talk to him, what's the buzz on the on the on the grass? I mean what you've talked to players. You get their sense of what's going on, and clearly you're saying they're as confused as all of us because the doors are closed in the cons are not public. Yeah, what's the sense you get on both sides of And I don't know if you talk to live players as well.
No, I really haven't, honestly, you know, I really think the meetings have been extremely tight lipped. I mean not even the golf insiders that have more insight than I do. I mean, nobody's really shared anything. So it's you know, it's like I guess J Monahan said, you can't negotiate out in public the way they're doing it and what they have to do, all the little things, because the social media world will run rampant. I mean, they just can't. They can't let any little thing leak out, and so
it's you know, hopefully it will have I don't. I'm not seeing it's going to happen for the season of twenty twenty five.
You know, it's just getting too close. We have two months to go.
I just don't think they're going to be able to get enough things in order and in place, so it might be an a year or so.
Yeah, who knows how far along they are and those those meetings and what's going on, because it's amazing that nothing's got leaked at this point. You'd think you'd get something out there to find out what's going on. Huh, don't know.
I don't know.
I'd love to know, but we'll deal with it at the time. So let's let's talk about playing golf all right, You're you're teaching pro, playing pro, You've seen a lot of things. What do you feel is the state of golf instruction these days?
I think the state of golf instruction is is great. I mean, I think the the you know, there's there's so many avenues for the quote unquote average player or any player to consume golf instruction out there through the world of YouTube, through social media platforms that so many of these teachers have and utilize. I think the so
so that's wonderful. I think as a student you have to be very cautious though, because every teacher has their own concepts, their own ideas, their own thoughts about what the swing should be. And there are so many different ways to play golf. You can grip the club conventionally. You can grip the club, you know, cross handed, you can grip. You can put your right foot back when you make a back, I mean you can. You can
set up left and may hit a fade. You can set up right and hit a draw, you know, as a right I mean.
You can. There's so many ways to put I mean, there's so many ways.
To get the ball into the hole. I think what you have to do as a player with all of this instruction is you have to find out what works for you and then just stick along those lines because you know, if you are if you are somebody who who consumes golfing information and golf instruction out there, you can get confused. I mean, you know the pages of Golf Digest or Golf Magazine. I mean they've they very often put you know, in consecutive.
Pages on there on their in their magazine.
They have you know, in the past, they've put you know, conflicting ways to do this or do that. But there are just so many ways to do it. And so you know, the more information you seek out as a as a as a student can be good, but it can also be you know, not so great because but you do have uh you know, the world of AI is.
Out there right now with golf instruction. Uh.
You know, you don't even need a golf teacher in some ways if you don't want one. I mean, you can just video your swing and you know, the AI will you know, tell you if your left arm is too high, if your club face is too open. Uh, there's it's very interesting what is out there. But I mean, then you have all the launch monitors like track Man and flight scope and all of those things that help
tell you everything about your your swinging. It's almost information overload, and so you have to really be selective, I think as a student in what you seek out, because you can get confused. You can there are there's there's so much information out there where twenty twenty five years ago there was not, and so you know you have to get you have to kind of pin down and maybe you need some you know, get your local PGA professional too.
You know, if you're a member at a club or if you're at a public club or whatever, it doesn't matter. Seek out somebody who's you know, who you feel is knowledgeable, or somebody in your area you feel like is knowledgeable as a teacher or a golf professional, and you know, ask them what they think too. They'll probably have a
different answer than I will. But I think the best and the best lesson I ever got, the best understanding, was, you know, find a golf teacher who you really connect with, or a method you really connect with, and really dive into that. And you know, don't jump here, jump there, look for all these because you can get lost in the abyss of swing thoughts and swing instruction out there too.
I think that that's a there's a lot of cautionary tales out there, you know, whether it's the professional ranks or just the average club player.
There is so much information. Like just recently, a few weeks ago, a few episodes ago, we had g hay Lee with sports Box AI. Right, we talked to her and learned about how AI can monitor your swing and give you suggestions, and you know, you find someone that works for you and you stick with it. But I found and as a recreational golfer, not a competitive golfer, but I found that it works for me for a couple of rounds and then it's gone, it doesn't work,
and it's like, now what do I do? I tweak here, I tweak there. There's always there's always something going on that you've got to figure out. What am I? You know, how do I continue with that? Stay without without overdue? I don't know what the answer to that is.
Well, look, we're in the we're in the instant gratification world here right, we have Amazon and we can go on our phone right now and press a button and you know, something can be at our door in an hour.
Depending on where we live.
And you know, with this instant gratification world doesn't necessarily exist in golf, it really doesn't. Being proficient at the game of golf it is a it's a process. I mean, it's a you you have to have a very long term mindset. If you want to be good at golf,
you have to put lots of hours into it. And if you don't, then you know, you can be an average player and have fun playing the game and you know, shoot in the eighties or ninety or hunters or whatever you shoot, but you know, to really be proficient, you know. For me, I've been a golf professional for you know, since i was what twenty two years old, so for last twenty five years, you know, I've I've studied the game.
I've I've perfected my own game.
I've hit tens of thousands of golf balls, and I've basically developed a golf swing and putting strokes that you know, they're pretty repeatable by this point, because I understand what makes Mike swing tick. And so I try not to stray too far from from those things that I've learned over time, trying.
Not to go too down too many rabbit holes.
Let me ask you this about golf instruction. Is there I don't want to say too much. Where is the balance in instruction on swing mechanics and course management, because you know, we call the show golf Smarter. Yeah, and that doesn't necessarily mean work on you know, hit two hundred balls a day, you know, over and over and over with no instruction, just hitting the balls, going oh, look at the ball flight, Look at the ball flight. Look.
But then you get out on the golf course and you're not hitting off of a mat, you're not hitting off of sandy grass, and you're not hitting off of an uneven line, you're not hitting out of a you know, course management being able to met to me is playing golf versus hitting balls. Where do you find that balance? And as an instructor, for you, how do you maintain that balance and where do you what do you emphasize? Well?
I think for me as a I still play tournaments, and so the closer I get to a tournament, the more I want to play golf, the more I want to be on the golf course. If there's something I'm working on in my swing, I'll spend a you know, if I have let's say, you know, five hours a week to work on my game and plus maybe a round of golf. You know, I will, I will make sure that you know, if I'm not comfortable with something like my grip or or my setup, I'll make sure
I work on those things off the golf course. And then you know, once they get on the golf course though, you have to, you have to play golf.
You have to.
You have to adapt because you know, if you work too much on the range, you have the flat lies, like you said, and you have you're you're not adapting very well. And so the best the more that you can play, honestly, if you if you have if you can put put the the playing part more in the uh in the the positive ratio of the practicing to playing, I think you're just going to get more out of your game because you don't adapt on the on the practice tea. Let's face it, because you the the the
environment there just doesn't allow you to adapt. When you're on the golf course, You're you're right, you're always trying to figure out Okay, different wind direction on every whole.
Uh, you know, the wind.
The turf, every lie is different, Uh, every scenario you have seems to be different than the next. So the more you play, the more golf shots that you develop and remember in your repertoire to where the next time you go out you said, oh, I had a lie like that, you know two weeks ago that you have to you have to a lot to have a lot of good recall memory like that, to remember what this particular lie does to the golf ball, for example, where
you don't have that on the practice tee. So you know, if it was me, the best year I ever had playing golf was was that I can remember it was nineteen ninety six.
That year I played against Tiger.
I played so much that year I can't remember even practicing a lot. I just went out on the golf course and played and played and played, and that was me. Some people are very different. Bryson de Shamba, he says when he's home, he doesn't play golf.
He practices golf, and that's it.
And so it just depends on your mindset and how you're you're kind of wired. But as a general rule, you are going to learn a heck of a lot more about yourself and about your game when you can devote more time on the course and less time on the practice team.
Yeah, I can see that so as a not as a golf instructor, but as a golfer, which I'm assuming the way you're talking, you've been playing most of your life. You started out as a kid. Yep, what do you what stands out to you as the best advice you've ever received as a golfer?
Best advice?
That's uh, I think I had.
I had a great instructor. I was very fortunate.
I met a gentleman by the name of Ray Daily when I was ten years old and he gave me lessons for about three years. He was a he was a you know, one of the old pros. He wore the sans a belt, slacks, and he had played on the tour back in the fifties. And uh, he taught me. He didn't charge me a penny for the lessons he he caught. He taught me by the way, which was unbelievable that would ever happened to it. But his name was Ray Daily, lived in Pompino Beach, Florida, and was
just a huge impact for me. And the one lesson that he gave me that I'll never forget as long as I live, and it's the simplest thing for dialing in your golf swing. You know, as you turn and you go back to the top of the swing and then you come down your right hip. If you're a right handed golfer, your right hip and your hands have to get to the point of impact at the same time. And if you can do that, you'll time the strike up very well. So he always told me, said, Steve,
hip in hand together. And so that's kind of the thought. You know, if your arms, if your hands out race your hips, you're not going to hit it well. If your hips out race your hands, you're not going to hit it that well. But it's that marriage of the lower body and the upper body in just a simple phrase, hip in hand together.
I thought that was the best lesson I ever.
Got, interesting because that's mechanics, that swing mechanics, right.
But it's simple though.
It is it is, but it's and it's effective and it's in your head right. Like some of the best advice that we've ever had on the show may have come from a listener who knows where at the beginning is, but we say never follow a bad shot with a stupid shot, right. So now we're going back. We're going back to course management and playing golf versus hitting a ball.
Yep.
So I'm just so fascinated. I love that question, and it always kind of throws people when I ask him that, like, what's the best advice? So let me ask him this as an instructor, what's the best advice you've ever received.
As an instructor? I also learned as an instructor. I learned from the great Bob Tosky founded the Golf Digest schools with Jim Flick. And you know, Bob is still He's still live and kicking. And I was almost one hundred years old, Bob is and but he taught me, this was probably about twenty years ago, that as a right handed golfer, you know, your left arm, or your lead arm as a golfer, is the master arm, and your left hand, your lead hand, is the master hand.
You have to really understand that that that side of your body needs to be controlling the club face more than the right side or your trailing side of your of your your body.
And once I learned.
That my golf ball behaved a lot better, I understood, I understood how to grip the club better, which controlled the club face better, which in turn controlled my golf ball better. So it really all stemmed from, you know, the left arm and the lead arm being the master arm.
Fascinating Steve Scott s c O t TPGA dot com right yep. And then on social media find you at Steve Scott PGA.
Yes, yeah, s S Scott PGA on on Instagram and the X. And you know, there's a really neat, neat thing though that you know, if as we're as we're going, can I can I just add this? So there's a really as you know, in the broadcasting world. And so we've got you know, the Silver Club Golfing Society, and I'm doing a lot of broadcasting with ESPN. One of the other great things that I'm doing is I'm involved
with it with a group called Whole nineteen. It's a it's a really it's a neat new venture if you will. There's a gentleman by the name of Mac Barnhardt and a lady by the name of Rose Lanham have have created this kind of a speaker's form, if you will, called Speakers for Good and this Whole nineteen part of it.
So Mac and Bros.
They're involved with a lot of a lot of great people in the game, from Lucas Glover to Joey D who is the great fitness trainer for a lot of the PGA two players in the in the Jupiter Palm Beach area.
Who we just had on re there we go.
See as Joey D's you know, he's on our podcasts. He's famous, right, But you know.
And so and so what we're doing, we're creating it, you know, with with the likes of myself and others, creating really neat opportunities for for you know, companies, corporations within whether it's PGA tour events or whatnot, to have a really kind of unique, you know, kind of boutique experience,
if you will. Let's say, for example, there was a small group of people involved in a in a company and they wanted to have an inside look of you know, what were the players going through, and so like I could walk around with a small group of people during nine holes of a PGA Tour event and give them, uh the insight to what what is going on in the PGA Tour players heads, for example, and kind of
give them the the inside track. You know, you have all these pro ams on Wednesday at a PGA Tour event and the players get to interact sometimes with the the golf professional out there, depending on how outgoing or they are or not. But you know, they don't always get all the inside information out there to what they're
doing when they're doing it. And so you know what this, what our Whole nineteen group can offer is kind of just a neat kind of inside the experience in a way, kind of an elevated VIP experience if you will to you know, go and you know, really you know, get involved with these corporations and these companies who want to be involved with golf, and you know, we could have a day and they could get trained by Joey d We could you know, I could go play golf with them.
We could I could fix their.
Slice, and then we could go out to a tour event you know, in the area and and you know watch and get the inside scoop of what the players are doing.
There.
There's lots of cool opportunities that are being created with with Whole nineteen.
So I just wanted to share that with you as well.
Yeah, sure, and how do we find that?
And you'd be able to find that on playersfourgod dot com and look through there and and reach out to Rose and and we can get some good information on the whole nineteen and uh and get involved with that awesome Steve.
It's really been fascinating to talk to you, hear your story. Thank you for sharing some incredible stories and some incredible insights and lessons. Thanks so much.
No, it's really really great to be with you, Fred.
And yeah, just sharing all the fun information and the fun anything golf.
I can talk all day about