Hi. This is Francine Valley from West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and I play a Squamish Valley golf course. This is Golf Smarter number nine hundred and seventy three.
There was a story of Sam Steed and it's a week before he's playing in his first PGA Tour event. And it's in nineteen thirty six. He's at the Greenbrier and the head pro organized a big match's going to be this rookie Samsteed, that's the big up and coming name. He's going to play against the former US Open champion. He's going to play against two other US Amateur champions. As a result, work gets out massive crowd around the
first tee and Sam Steed is last hood. He is shaking so bad and is so nervous that he's basically on the verge of a panic attack. He was shaking so bad that he couldn't steady the ball in the tea with one hand. He had to use his other hand. That's setting the stage for how nervous he was, so he backs up. He's doing his visualization and what most people are not aware until after a fact, but what Sam actually does is he closes his eyes and he
relives his most amazing drives on that same hole. He collects himself, moves forward, and then he hits the shot. Then a crowd they're like, whoa. The reason why everybody was like gasman is because he just outdrove his playing partners by fifteen yards, and only that he has hit about ten yards further than all of his most successful drives on that same hole. How does a guy go from a verge of a panic attack to then hitting his best drive ever just moments later?
Dave Man Golf, Seaball Seed, Target, Hit Ball Road to the Tour Summit with Bo Watson.
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 back to the Golf Smarter.
Podcast, Bo, Fred, it's a pleasure to be back. Thanks.
Oh yeah, it's been a while since we've had a chance to catch up, and you've been doing some really remarkable stuff as far as the golf training side of it and creating these summits. And we'll talk about your upcoming summit later, but let's talk about what's going on in the media space. You know, we briefly touched as before we started recording, and I didn't want to go too deep into because I really want to hear your
thoughts on it. But there seems to be this movement from the tourist side to look towards things like YouTube and media influencers who are being invited to play and compete. Now, what is going on?
Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. I mean, we're watching I think it just speaks volumes to the platform that YouTube has been able to provide the golf space. I mean, you can look for it for some really good information, but I mean, if I'm gonna be honest, there's a lot of bad information out there. But on the side of that, that's the thing.
That we talk about all the times, like just be careful about YouTube because there's so much conflicting information that you can just your mind will.
Explode one hundred percent. And you know, for the I would say for the greater part of like say the last fourteen fifteen years, I mean it's been primarily used in the golf space as a place to go and get instruction information, right, but over the last like I would say three to five years. You know, you've had some influencers come out and kind of overtake Rick Shill so to speak, as far as like, you know, the
most subscribers on YouTube. And when you look at the Good Good, you look at Grant Horvat's and you look at those types, even Brian Brothers and those guys, and it's it's fascinating because now it's kind of like shifted into a direction where it's all about entertainment, and you got all these guys and YouTube stars that are playing against each other in these matches and they're bringing a
lot of eyeballs to it. And so as a result of that, you know, PGA Tours taken notice and earlier this year, interestingly enough, they actually believe it was several spots they offered, as you know, exemptions or sponsor invites into the Myrtle Beach. That was the first year that Myrtle Beach has had like a PGA Tour event, and so several of these guys actually were able to go play in a PGA Tour event. So it's pretty interesting. Then you get to say the creators Cup, it's the
first time they ever did this. But the week of the Tour Championship. They had what was called the very first I believe Creators Cup. I think it was played on Monday or Tuesday. And what was so interesting about it is that you know, you had you know, Luke Kwan, you had I believe it was Wesley Bryan. I don't know if George played in it, but you had a few of the good good guys, Page Spirnaka I think is how you said you last name, Amy Chow and
or a few others like that. And so it was all these like big top influencers that are invited to play into US event and Lukewan ends up winning it in a playoff, and if I'm not mistaken, because he won that, he got an exemption or an invite into next year's Masters and the Open Championship.
Wow.
Yeah, wow, tell me about it.
That's really remarkable. And so there, I guess it looks like PGA is recognizing what's going on, you know. And it's interesting because a lot of the names that you mentioned I'm not familiar with that. I'm obsessed with YouTube, you know, I really enjoy no matter what I think of live, but I really enjoy watching Bryson and his break fifty. I think it's just such a great idea.
And I've asked a friend of mine, I said, look, instead of competing against each other, why don't you and I just go out together, combine our efforts and see if we can shoot par And he's like, yeah, I'd be willing to.
Try that, so just make sure you film it.
No, no, you know that's the thing is. And I've always it's like, oh, I'll just bring the camera out and we'll just video. It's like no, no, no. These guys are going out there with a crew. They've got multiple microphones, they got at least to probably three cameras going at any given time. Dragging around these guys, and it's like, I just that's a lot of pressure. You forget about gambling, just doing it in front of a camera a lot more pressure.
Yeah yeah, I mean, but hey, what better way to similar pressure? And uh, you know, work on your tournament golf? Right?
Yeah, well that's what you're doing, right, You're you're you're talking about tournament golf and playing to win as opposed to just playing. You've been focusing on how how golfers can just like no, no, no, I'm a very competitive person I want to win? How do I do that?
Right? Yeah, that's a that's a key subject, right because everybody talks about I remember doctor Rick Jensen talking about this one time and I'll never forget it. He talks to like there's like four phases of you know, playing golf so to speak, and training. First phase is kind of like you're leaves like block practice, like where you're
working on your swing and stuff like that. And then there's like a second phase that you know, you're you're starting to kind of transition and do like game like scenarios and I could be missing the vote on this, but you know, the principle is still the same. And then the third phase is like you're going out on the course, which is what he called like transfer training, like how are we able to take the skills that we're learning in a practice environment and able to take
it to the course. And then the last phase is, right, how do we do it in a tournament setting? How are we doing under pressure? And that's a totally different animal, And honestly, that's what you know, Shannon, my business partner and I we specialize in, which is more of the mental side, and that's where we show golfers. We call it psychond mask of training. It's it's it's teaching people how to get into the zone at a flip of a switch. You know. The more appropriate scientific term, obviously,
he's flow state. And we we like to coin or talk about. We coined the term, you know, caveman golf. You know, when you when you play your best golf, it's it's when you see target, seaball hit ball. And it was funny. Scott Fawls and I were having a conversation just last week and he's he was sharing, you know, a little bit of how he's been playing, and you know, he invited Garret Clark in his only YouTube channel and
just talking to him about that. But you know, these last few weeks, like Scott has been playing like lights out and it's been funny because what he shared on the phone was like, this is the first time and I don't know how many years where I do not have a a single swing key or swing fault. And I was like, well, Scott, you know what that is, right, and he's like, I don't know. It's like, you know,
I said, that's caveman golf. You know, it's just sea target, seatball, hit ball, and we know that when a golfer can get to that place, all is a special place to be in because honestly, that's where your best golf is going to be. And that's in any sport. I mean you go ask you know, like the late Kobe Bryant or anybody, or even Lebron. You know, when they're playing their best, they're not sitting there talking about how their
elbow flexion is and where the pressure is on the basketball. No, it's like I see the arc of the shot and I see it going in and it's more right brain oriented, where a lot of golfers to get in trouble so fast when they stay in the left side of the brain. And honestly, the only sport I think that people can actually dominate from the left side of the brain is
playing chess. But you don't want to take to any sport, and especially not golf, because when you start getting into the overthinking and too many swing thoughts, good luck.
Yeah, I totally understand it. I've had it a couple of times. There's times where I'm like, I'm so comfortable out there, I'm not thinking about it. I'm just you know, see target, aim, hit it and don't think about what I'm going to do with it. But I don't know what's going on. But the last couple of weeks it's like, what am I doing out here? I really feel lost. And in the last round I played, it was like,
this is not going well. There's periods of time where I can play three four rounds with a ball, and then there's last week where I lost five balls in one round. I'm like, who are you playing? Who is this?
What's going on?
I'm overthinking it? Huh.
Very likely you need a reset, you know, And well, how do you do that? Oh, that's a good question because a lot of people they try to do the textbook version, right, you know, they read all that I'm not going to call it the books, but you know they know what is said in a lot of mental game books. But there really isn't anything out there that's
very practical. And I think that's one of the things that really a lot of people in I mean, and you can go on our Amazon and honestly, like we're not taking credit, Like God gave us the download for the book that we wrote, so I'm giving him the glory on that. But you know, it's fascinating. One of the biggest things that we hear all the time from Amazon reviews and people that read our book is that
it's so practical and so like. One of the things that we share about resetting is what's called the ball reset, and we go in detail in our chapter, but I'll briefly cover it here because like when someone's in what we call a red light state, when things are going south, like we said, you've lost several balls or something like that, you have to do something in order for you to get back to what we call a green light state.
Uh.
Neuroscience. Doctor Is Justice kind of pioneered this part of it, you know, analyzing and doing brain scans of you know, thousands of golfers and he's done a lot of amazing work in this area, and he has shown that, you know, when we have so many swing thoughts or so many thoughts or just negative thoughts. For example, let's say like you hit two shots, ob, you're in a red light state at this point, and especially if you've done it
off the tee two times in a row. You know how many times we've heard people or they snap hook one left OB and then they're like, all right, I'm not doing that again. I'm going to try to overcorrect, and they overcorrect and then they slice it into the water on the right hand side. And at that point you're in fight or flight mode at this point. And the main thing is if you don't do something here, it's going to come off the tracks very very fast.
And this is where the ball reset enters the picture. And so part of the ball reset is we do it is called a hard reset.
Now.
Piece of this we got from Doctor is Justice, but the other part of this is from Brian Kine, which is one of our mentors. And what we did is we were able to piece this all together. And what's so fascinating about it is when you do the hard squeeze. This is where like you take a club, or you take your hands, you take a towe, it doesn't matter. But there's a type of breath that we like to utilize which is called a physiological side, which, by the way,
if you just do that breath alone. Stanford came out last year and Pioneer or they came out and shared this research and believe it was January last year. You go look us up, and the original study of it was how to lower anxiety, and so they found that this type of breath, Like you could think of all the breathing techniques that people have talked about over the last like ten twenty years, Well, the physiological side is on a totally different level, and it just completely outdid
every single one of them. You know, the military box breathing, all those, right, and physiological SIAO is just in a totally different category. So like Scottie Scheffer for when he's playing the best, he's like in a totally league of his own like tire was in his prime. That's the
physiological side when it comes to breathing. Okay, so when you do a physological SIA, it's like where you're doing two quick inhales, like or you're breathing through the nose and you're taking like a deep belly breath first, you know, in hell, and then it's a very second quick in hell pausing, and then you're doing a long exhale out
your mouth for like five or six seconds. Now, when you do the hard reset, you're basically doing the same thing where you're going and then you're holding your breath and then you're squeezing as hard as you can, so like on a pressure of like one to ten. You're squeezing that at eleven for five seconds, and then you're exhaling slowly while decreasing decreasing the pressure. Let's say on the golf club in my grip, and I'm decreasing pressure from like a ten down to like a two while
slowly exhaling. Now, doctor is a justice a part of that. He found that when you did just the deep belly breath, squeeze as hard as you can, ex hel slowly. They found that in an actual real time brain scan on a golfer, they found that he went from a red light state and it went back down to a green light state. And what was interesting is in the brain it had the equivalent effect of if you had done twenty minutes of meditation or twenty minutes yoga. Talking about
a massive nerr a hack. Right. So just that piece right is part of the B which is breathe. We call it breathe hard reset. So that's B is in the ball acronym. The next part is as where you do an a firm, you do a power talk statement, you know say you hit you know your drive ob Well you just say hey, you know what? Adversity is my advantage. So you say that really quick under your breath.
The first L is look back. All that simply means is we're going to look back to a time where we hit an amazing drive on a similar hole or maybe it's the same hole, and you're going to relive that memory. And so you relive that memory basically like daydreaming. So you play that shot over in your head, and then once you've done that, then you go to the LASTEL, which is look forward. So just in about under twenty seconds, we just go through the entire ball acronym, which is
a hard reset power talk statement. Relive an amazing memory. Now your attention back to the present moment. And here's the cool part. Let me give it a little bit of a story here on that first L.
And before you do that, we're going to take a time out and I'll hear the story after this. Okay, I cut you off, and I apologize for that, but I don't so because I needed to absorb what's going on here, because I'm going through the breathing part and I feel like that I'm creating tension by tightening up with this, you know, squeezing it, but then letting it go. I think back to doctor Joe Parent telling us about the etches sketch, you know that you use when you're
having a tough time. Just take your edges sketch, flip it over, shake it out, and erase the whole thing and then start again. But we're at the ball acronym breathe a firm, look back, look forward.
There you go.
And you had a story to tell.
Yeah, So what's fascinating is we came across this. I forgot where I found it, but there was a story of Sam Snead and it's a week before he's playing in his first PGA Tour event, Like he's going to make his PGA Tour debut, right, And it's in nineteen thirty six, I believe is the year, and he's at the Greenbrier and the head pro or whoever it was, they organize like a big match and so in this match, it's going to be this rookie Sam Sneed that's the
big up and coming name. He's going to play against a former US Open champion. He's going to play against two other US Amateur champions well. As a result, Work gets out massive crowd around the first tee and Now Sam Sneed is last to hit. He is shaking so bad and is so nervous that he's basically on the verge of a panic attack. And to put this in perspective, they said that he was shaking so bad that he couldn't steady the ball in the tee with one hand. He had to use his other hand, all right, So
that's setting the stage for how nervous he was. So he backs up, he gets find the ball. You know, he's doing his visualization. And what most people are not aware of until after the fact, but what Sam actually does is he closes his eyes and he relives his most amazing drives on that same hole. Now he collects himself and moves forward, and then he hits a shot and a crowd like is gasped. You're like, whoa. And the reason why everybody was like gasping is because he
just outdrove his playing partners by about fifteen yards. And not only that, he has hit about ten yards further than all of his most successful drives on that same hole. Now, wait a second, how does a guy go from a verge of a panic attack to then hitting his best drive ever just moments later? And a big piece of that is the first L and the ball acronym is
what we call the look back. And the reason why it's so powerful and it's so important for people to utilize is because when you have a bad memory, or maybe you have an upcoming shot that's you know you're dreading or you're very nervous about. You know, we hear all the time people have first T jitters. This is an amazing, amazing tool to utilize before you go hit that first T shot because here's the thing. You could be dreading it. You could be thinking about all the
negative energy and what if scenarios. But if you go through that entire ball acronym where you do the hard squeeze and you say something like, hey, the more pressure there is, the better I perform, And then you do a look back where you maybe go back in time where there was a lot of pressure in a certain certain shot and you hit your best drive ever and
you go back and you relive that memory. Well, I got to ask you, if you've done those three steps and you did it with the right intensity and you were obviously walking in faith with those first three steps, then that last hole when it comes to looking forward, you would have to be at that point pretty excited to play that upcoming shot. You would have to be. You'd be much better. I mean, let's say you're like
five percent. Like if we're gonna put a scale on this, let's say you're like at a five percent of being successful too. Now you do the ball acronym. I mean, you just increase your chances of hitting a pretty good shot to probably like eighty ninety percent at this point. So that's how we practically do a hard reset. So when you're in the middle of a round, you're playing terrible or you got something that you're dreading, ball reset is going to be your secret weapon.
Awesome. Also, there's the acceptance. And we talked to Joel Suggs a couple episodes back, and he talked about his PGA Bell Curve un scoring, which is you're gonna have rounds that go poor good average, right, and the bell curve, the top of the Bell curve is your average. So accept that. Don't beat yourself up, right, lighten up, let it go move forward, and stop thinking about your swing mechanics because it's only gonna hurt, right, Yeah, it's really
going the swing. The thinking about swing mechanics.
Yeah, swing mechanics. If you think too much about that. I mean, don't get me wrong, Like I come from a swing background and you know, blessed to learn under some amazing minds in the game, and it is a piece of the game that you can't ignore. However, if you don't shut that off when you're playing, it's going to be really, really difficult to play your best. You know, you have to eventually either with just like one swing
thought or one swing key, which is healthy. But when you start going and thinking too much about that and start adding in more, it's going to be very, very tough to perform. And that's that's just the nature of the game. You know, it's a sport that demands precision. But when we start getting in our own way with too many thoughts, too many things that we're thinking about and splitting our focus, good luck, it's just going to be a really really difficult round for you. I hate to say that.
And you work with a lot of amazing instructors, but you're partnering with them. It's not necessarily that you're getting instruction from them. You're trying to collaborate with them, right, Yeah, And that's what you're doing with your summits that you do. Seems like you've been doing them manually now for a couple of years.
Yeah. Yeah, this will be our upcoming one. This will be our fourth one. Yeah yeah, four or five.
I think we've I think we've covered each of them with you. Yeah, I'm not mistaken. And so let's talk about some of the people that you work with at these well, your upcoming one, your upcoming summit.
Yeah. So, you know, I think it's fair to say, like the very first tim that we had was consistent golf summit, and the whole idea behind that was, you know, sadly, we talked about it a little bit. You know, unfortunately, mini golfers they go on YouTube, they're searching for information and it's not that it's bad. You know, they got something wrong in their swing, or maybe they don't have access to a coach. And unfortunately, I hear that a
lot from golfers in our community. You know, they're in a place where maybe they do have some swing instructors, but they're not very good unfortunately. And you know that's the other reason why we have the summit is we want to not only educate golfers but you also want to educate instructors and help them get better. And so the idea behind the very first summit and the reason why there was such a big need for it is, you know, if you had God forbid something seriously wrong
health wise. You know, you have a special disease, or you have something that you know, like cancer or tumor or whatever, my question to you it would be, are you going to go see a general practitioner or are you going to go see the best specialists in the world on that particular topic. I mean, it's a no brainer, right,
you want to go to the very best. And so that was the idea behind the very first summit, and it's the idea behind every summit we've ever hosted, and especially the one that we're about to do, which is the Road to Tours Summit. You know, if you're going to go out there and search information, yeah, you can go on YouTube and you can go search for free, but then that is probably going to cost you more
than the free information you just got. And see, that's the part of the quation most people aren't taken into account, is that you can honestly go out there and search your way out of this game, and sadly that's what mini golfers do. And I know that from research by the Proponent group. Lauren Anderson runs that group down in Florida, and it's kind of like a you know, who's who an instruction and the research that Lauren has you know,
published and you know, have found over the years. I'll never forget the one study that he found where yes, we see, you know, over a million golfers typically you know National Golf Foundation. You know, it's no secret, and we talk about this in the book too, but they they said, you know, someone like a million to two
million golfers quit the game every year. Now, besides injury retirement, you know, getting old being kind of like the number one, but the next closest, the biggest reason why golfers are quitting the game is because of frustration.
The word I was going to toss out frustration yep.
And a lot of that, unfortunately, is self inflicted. And it's because of people going on YouTube searching for something that they look at the symptom right, which is, hey, I got a slice. Okay, I'm gonna go search YouTube for how to fix a slice. But here's the downside in this game. You have so many different body types, you have so many different types of setups, you have different clubs and different shafts. So, I mean, there are so many variables that are in play here that it
doesn't just come down to swing plane. There are other factors that were not taken into account. And honestly, unless you are a really really good coach or somebody that has actually learned under a really good coach, you know that's that's a big key. That you're educated on what to look for and how to search for, it very likely you're not going to get to the root of
the problem. And that's where the specialist comes in. And that's kind of been the idea behind every Summer that I've ever hosted, is I went and found the expert in this particular you know, part of the game when it comes to club fitting or nutrition, or the mental part of the game or a full swing or short
game or putting. You know, we went out and found those types, you know, like a Jane Seekman or Sean Folly or a Goodness grat I mean, there's so many like doctor Kwan, I mean, Ralph Bauer, I mean, there's so many types out there in different areas of the game that it's like, Okay, here's the specialists, and here's the information, and here's the questions that you need to know in order for you to be successful in your game.
So that's been the idea behind every summer hosted and one we got coming up as the road to the tour.
It's so interesting that you said something that I had just written down about the downside to YouTube is you'll see something that resonates with you, but it's not personalized to you. So you'll think, oh, well, I have this lice and this guy's teaching me how to get rid of a slice, and so I'm going to go out and do that. And yet that's not really what.
The cause of the problem is, right, you know, maybe you just have a bad grip and that's not being discussed in any of the videos that you're looking at, nor would you even consider that, Oh well, this is the way I've always gripped it, so it's.
Got to be fine. So the downside again of YouTube, as prolific as it is, is it's not about you. You make it about you right on that I mean, is that kind of where we're going with this?
Yeah, I mean it's the idea, right, It's you can quickly spot out the very good coaches, the one that is, you know, are the ones that are sharing the really good content and they're the ones that are kind of educating you more on what to look for versus like, here's a drill to fix it, and you've got to get to the Y. And that's really really hard when you're gonna take that one to many approach. And that's that's why I like, it's so important to educate you
based on So I'm a big fan. Yeah, I've been blessed to kind of learn the golf machine more ad and so, like you know, you'll hear coaches and even some of YouTube instructors will talk about P one, P two, P three, P four, p five, and they're great positions. That's all they stand for, you know. P one being a draft. P two like chaft pro in the background, I mean, and backswing, you know, just to keep it really simple. P three being like we're left arms pro
of the ground. And so you're looking at these positions and it's a really easy way to kind of pinpoint figure out like where are you getting wrong? You know, John Dougherty, who he partnered with and he's a phenomenal coach that nobody knows about yet, but in my opinion, he's one of the best in the world. And it's mainly because he spent so much time with Maco Grady. And anybody that's worked assault and teaching a game have gotten their information one way or another from Maco Grady,
whether they're going to say it upfront or not. I can. I can attest to that because I've had conversations with the who's who in the instruction the world, and I can tell you they have gotten their information and or either indirectly or directly from Mac. Okay. In fact, funny, funny side story, I'm not going to name names, but like the who's who when they did a Golf Digest schools, and I'm talking about the who's who. We're talking like the top five top ten people that are currently right
now in Golf Digests. But back when they did the Golf Digest schools in the late nineties, they had Mac come in and teach the teachers. Hopefully they went out and did the school so it's pretty funny. But anyways, so P. One, P. Two, P. Three, P. Four, You know when you have somebody talk about those positions or you educate them on what to look for. John is always a big promoent proponent of you know, P one to P two is probably one of the most important
you know, what do you want to call it? Sequencing that you want to look for because a lot of times what happens when a person takes caught back or their grip type or how their tilts are working. You know, you can fix a lot of issues between P one and P two that affect the entire rest of the swing.
So like, for example, someone like over rotates and goes way inside from P one to P two in the backswing, you know, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble going up to the top of the swing at P four and then when you start down P five, which is you know, someone getting very steep and coming over the top or whatever. But it all started at from address to the backswing and the very early part
of P one to P two. So you know, that's what I mean about, Like you want to have a foundation or a system, which is what mac has done when he created a P one system. I mean the P system like P one to P nine basically that's what we call it. But what's fascinating is that when when you have something like that, you know what to look for it and it's easier to diagnose the faults
and then get to the root of it. But when you go straight into hey do this, drill, do this without explaining the why, that's where it gets dangerous.
M interesting. So the summit that you've got coming up this year, it's interesting because again this is talking. You're addressing golfers that want to be serious about playing winning golf, not just playing golf, not just going out there and having I mean not just going out there and having fun. But when you're playing good golf, it's a lot more
fun when you're playing bad golf. But still, no matter what level you're at, there's going to be days that you're going, I was not good today, I shot at seventy three, you know, and then there's guys who were like, I was not good today. I shot one hundred and six. But you're you want to talk, you want to address those folks that are serious about competing, and you've got this summit coming up this year that's going to be
it's well, just let's start name dropping here. Who do you have and how is this what you do for the years you spend your time developing the next summit? Are you teaching these days?
You know, it kind of seems like in this particular one, I mean this has been in the works for probably the last five months, so I mean I spent a lot of time put into this and you know, bringing in these type of people and experts and influencers and
all that and set this event. So yes, I mean the majority of my time is still spent where coaching clients all around the world because, like I said, you know, a big part of what we do on a day and day out basis as the mental side of the game, which is, you know, teaching people how to get into flow state more often because that's where you're going to win.
That's where you're going to play your best golf. Regardless of what level you're at, even if you're a guy that shoots in the nineties hundreds, if you can think better and you know, get to a place where we call cavem in golf, you're going to lowder scores. Like that's just the fact. And that also applies to a player like a really good player that's on tour, you know, if you can remove the distractions and get to the point where pressure doesn't necessarily bother you as much or
you know, it's not that you'll ever remove pressure. It's okay to be nervous, it's okay to you know, fill that kind of energy. But it's how you respond is key. And that's that's what we've really helped a lot of players do, is how we respond to that type of environment.
You know, And although the summit is road to the tour Summit, we know there's gonna be a lot of people that are attending us that are your everyday golfer at once win a club championship, or maybe he just wants to be the best player in their foursome, or you know, it's a college player or maybe even up and coming junior golfer that wants to play golf in college. And then you know you're playing in college. I mean,
how do you win your first college tour event? I mean a college event or you know, after college, what does it look like to turn pro? And if I'm going to turn pro and I'm going to make this my pursuit, you know what's the fastest path. Well, that's your answer with the summit is we have literally I guess you could say we pioneered it because I haven't seen anything else out there in the last five years.
Last time you hosted this, the very first one was I think twenty twenty one, and it was the very first ever summit that was designed around what does it take to get to a top ten world ranking? And so that's what we've done with the Road to the Tour summits, and that's what this one is all about. We're bringing in the who's who to show you the fastest path to get to the top level in the game. And that's for the PGA Tour and the LPGA.
Tour Amazing, amazing and the the people that you bring in, you're not just talking about swing mechanics. You've got them covering all different topics. Absolutely a month a month of golf smurters, like just going all over the place with a lot of different experts sharing their wisdom and instruction. Is this a hands on or an online course?
No, so this is this is a live online summit LB two days on the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, and you know, we we have brought in PGA Tour LPGA Tour and a dp World Tour. So we had Justin Barget from PJ Tour to share his insight, you know, what does it look like in all the different paths to get to the PGA Tour. We also had Jody Brothers, who is Chief business Officer of the LPGA Tour and also the head of the Epsent Tour, which is the
development tour for LPGA Tour. So he gives all of his insight and shares the multiple paths for someone to get to the LPGA Tour. But he also has given and is giving some amazing insight to get the attention of a potential sponsor invite. And that is fascinating because what he has and what he's going to share is amazing when it comes to getting your name recognized or
putting yourself to the front of the stack. You know, these tournament directors, they're getting like fifty sixty seventy applicants on you know, trying to get a sponsor invite into a tour event. And what Jodie is going to share is one of the fastest ways to actually secure a tournament sponsored invite and that's super important. So that's gonna be a good one. And then we had Stuart Cage of DP World Tour, which is known as you know, formerly as a European tour, and he shares some amazing
stuff and we'll share some incredible stuff. One, you know, how to increase your chances of qualifying through you know, Q school and stuff like that. So we got those guys, and then of course.
And then well, well let's there's a long list of names and we'll get to more of those, but we'll come back and we'll do that in a minute. You mentioned that the summit is just coming up in a couple of days of when we're publishing this show. It's November eighteenth through the nineteenth. It's a two day online summit. So that means if somebody is like fascinated and wants to pursue this, but the date has already passed, is
it still available on demand? Can you still get access to all this amazing information?
Absolutely?
Oh good? But but oh but there's a butt.
But this is going to be good for your listeners because you know what this means, Fred that when you publish something and when they come out with an episode, they definitely don't want the what they call it they call it FOMO fear missing out.
Oh I know what means.
This means that they need to watch your content as soon as possible, soon as it comes out. Because if you are listening to this right now, good for you, because if you want to attend the rot To Tour Summit, I'm going to actually show you there's a way that you can attend this for free and watch the entire
event for free. And you'll know when you go to the to the page and go through Fred's link, which will be slash Golf Smarter, and you definitely want to check that out because the information that's gonna be shared on this summit, honestly, God, you know, we could charge one thousand plus for this, and in fact, there will be many PGA and there's gonna be a lot of Jay instructors that are going to go through this for the MSR credits, but a lot of them will also
attest and say that yes, I could have charged you know, a thousand plus for this event just for the information and who's on it, what they're going to be sharing, and even let's put it this way, if you're a person that is like a tour player and this information secures your tour card. What does that worth? Do you? Well, I can tell you right now that could be worth millions of dollars. So to be able to attend this for free for two days pretty fascinating. But if you are, by chance.
Stop teasing, how do you do that?
You go to the page, you'll find out.
All right, So the link will be in our show notes.
It will be. But even if even if you're listening to this after November eighteenth, nineteenth, it's totally fine. We're still going to show you twenty four yep. For we're going to show you how to still go to the link and you'll still be able to watch and see the recordings and we'll show you how to do that.
Great, great, great great. Okay, let's keep talking about some of the people that you're going to have there, because make it worth it. Let's let's go down the list of people that you're going to be showcasing in your summit.
Yeah, so like day one, obviously we got the PGA Torial, PGA Tour and dp World Tour, but we also have Mark Emmlman and you know Mark Snellan as a longtime broadcaster, brother of Trevor Limiman. And you know, Mark's a player himself, but he's also a great coach and he's been out there inside the roads for many years, and so he's
got to see the who's who in the game. And what he's going to be sharing in that particular recording session with me is going to be fascinating because he's going to show you what it takes to get to that level, but not only that, what you need to do in order to stay out there. See, this is where a lot of players get wrong. They can make it on tour, they get their tour card, but how many times that we heard people lose their card within the year of actually obtaining it, and then we don't
see them again. And so you want to watch Mark's episode because he's going to share some incredible stuff that's going to actually show you how to stay out there on door.
And let me ask you this about about these presentations. Is this like a PowerPoint presentation that they're doing or are you interviewing these people? And I'm guessing it's all video.
Yeah, that's going to be video, And that's what's unique about it. You know, sometimes unlike you you know, most podcasters, they basically just record it and it's only audio, right, whereas this is going to be video and audio, and so people will be able to watch this. It's going to be live, and it's gonna be a live summit.
On and each person's doing their own presentation and it's like a PowerPoint thing.
Not necessarily a power point A lot of them is going to be like an interview style where we're going to be asking them questions and just getting information and.
You're going to be doing that interview yeah, okay, okay.
Yeah, And so someone might use a PowerPoint, they might go into presenting style, but in the case of market it's probably going to be sinces. His style all the time is podcasting like yourself. He's probably gonna be more comfortable to just sharing his information freely, right. So that's that's the first one, or that's one of the ones. On day one, we also got Pete Callen. Pe Callen
is probably the best coach that nobody knows about. It's funny there's a Golf Digest article written about him with that title, But Pete is somebody that you should know about because, honestly, in my opinion, he's probably top three in the world just in terms of his wisdom and who he's worked with. I mean Roy mcroy's part of it.
You know, the students he's worked with, Ian Matt's, Fitzpatrick, I think Lee Westwood, a lot of European stars, right and just to him and who he's worked with, he's credited for helping players win over two hundred and fifty times worldwide and then eight majors. The guy's got a ton of wisdom and so his is someone I'm super excited about because wisdom that's gonna be shared on that
is gonna be amazing. He doesn't really do a whole lot of interviews or you know, a lot of like freely sharing his information out there, So to get him on the summit, I'm pretty pumped about. So he'll be another one. We also got Parker McLachlan. He will also be on Day one. That's a short game chef. He's also a PGA Tour winner and he's gone through Q School twice. And he's the one that I'm really excited about because this guy has successfully gone through Q School twice.
Not many people can really say that, and so again he's gonna have a lot of wisdom to share, like how to successfully go through Q School because everybody knows Q school is like the most intense pressure, right There's so much on the line, and for him to go through it and successfully qualify twice, it's gonna be pretty interesting to get his wisdom. But his segment is also
gonna be a lot on short game. He's a phenomenal wadge player and he's one of the best out there to ever do it, and so he's going to share some really incredible insight on how to become a better wedge player, better person around the green, also in putting. And then we also have Scott Fawcett Ando. Scott's been on your show, and what better guy you know to cover strategy right.
What decade decade golf?
That's amazing. You know, he and I have developed a really good friendship over the years, and he's been pretty much I think, every summing I've done, and I mean, why not, because the guy is just so brilliant when it comes to just making better decisions and anybody is going to get better if you apply any of his stuff, so his is always going to be good. And then Shannon and I will also be on day one and we're going to share, you know, a lot on the
mental side of game. And so that will include day one as far as the speakers for day one, but you know, it gets really good on day two. Get some incredible people on day two.
Go ahead, come on.
So one of the headliners is going to be Ted Scott. So it's no secret in the incredible year that Scotty Shuffler had this past year in twenty twenty four. But in my opinion, I really believe Ted is a big reason behind it. And here's why I know that we all got to see what happened at the PGA Championship
earlier this year. Right Scotty gets arrested, goes to jail, He's probably only like one or two people that could go through that type of you know, firstands right adversity and still come out and shoot, man, what do you shoot?
That day?
It was like four or five under or something like that on that Friday or whatever it was. And what's interesting is the next day, and this has been planned, Ted was supposed to, you know, go home to his daughter's graduation or something like that in high school that he had already planned that he was going to be away. And then we see Scotty on day three, moving day and he really struggles with the fill in caddy. And so my opinion is Ted is a big part of
like keeping him grounded. And Ted also believes like Scotty, you know, he believes in God and so he's he's and there's been articles and stuff like that written on their relationship and everything else. But I really believe that Ted is a major part of why he's done so well.
And you know, the fascinating thing is Ted's got a ton of wisdom just in terms of caddy in So I brought Ted in because I want Ted to share on his experience as a caddy and what players need to look for when it comes to hiring their own caddy, because that's important. That's a team and a lot of times, you know, players come out of college and they don't give a lot of thought. And I remember Mark Fulcher, justin Roses caddy I had on the very first summit.
I mean, he covered a lot of red flags when it comes to choosing the right caddy and stuff like that. And you don't have that luxury if you earn your torque card and you choose a bad caddy and you're not gelling and you waste you five, six, eight events and you're not making a cut. That's gonna cost you a lot of money and that's gonna put you behind a ball. So that's another person that we brought in
for Day two. We also brought in one of our tour players, Savannah a Lobby, and she's been amazing at just being able to showcase herself like through Instagram and making herself attractive to sponsors. So her information and her wisdom and just showing players on how to attract sponsorships is a big deal because when you're a college player and you're coming out, you need to go ahead and get the ball rolling on the social media side of things so that you can make yourself attractive to a
potential sponsor. And she has done an amazing job of that from a grassroots level, so to speak. And so she'll share her wisdom on how to do that and that's gonna be very valuable. And then we also got people like Ralph Bauer of Tour Read. You know, I know a lot of times I was one of the first ones be so to find an aame point at
the very beginning with David Orr. But you know, a lot of times I hear the complaint that when people struggle with reading greens and they've gone through ain point, it's like they can't really feel the percentage of their feet and stuff like that. Well, Tour Read is incredible because it's an app on your phone that you can literally just go out there and place on the green and see what the percentage is and you just continue to work through that to verify what your reads are.
And so it's a really good alternate to someone to maybe struggle with a point. So I brought in Ralph to share his expertise on that. So that's going to cover the putting green reading side of things. And you know, we got a few more like John Dockerty who's going to cover full swing. And you know somebody that, in my opinion, is probably the most underrated in the swing space because of his time spent as Maco Grady's right hand man for many years when Mac did a lot
of these golf schools. So a lot of wisdom, a lot of information, but it's all geared toward helping people get to that next level in the game, yep, yep.
And how long per day is each summit day? So it sounds like a commitment to.
An extent, right, you know, I believe we're looking at somewhere between three and a half to four and a half hours each day.
Well, okay, so make make that your plan for golf that weekend.
You need to, right, No, no, no excuse Right, We're going to be a November golf for you know, basically North Carolina and above right, you know it's getting colder, so what better way to maybe take some cold days and immerse yourself into an event like this, The better your game for the off season.
Absolutely, absolutely, Road to the Tour Summit and it's going to be at Road to the toour Goolfsummit dot com. You got it, and there is a lot more information. There's a link in the today's show notes. Just use that and it'll take you there and get you. Well, you kept talking about you can do it for free if you go through this. I'm not sure what that means, but you can figure it out for yourself. Well, it's great to talk to you, man. It's always interesting what
you're putting together, and I love having these conversations. Thanks so much. We'll coming back.
Thanks you.
Yeah, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Again. I'll leave a link in the show notes so that you can get access to the live event but also the on demand replay as well. You go to road to the Tour Golf Summit dot com slash golf Smarter, and that two in there is the number two road number two the Tour Golfsummit dot com slash Golf Smarter.
I absolutely want to thank this week's Golf Smarter Ambassador, Francine Valley from West Vancouver, British Columbia, for opening today's episode, but I also want to make sure that franccene thinks seriously about getting out of Canadian winner by joining us for our next Golf Smarter adventure the weekend of March twenty six through the thirtieth, twenty twenty five to the iconic Robert Trent Jones Trail just outside of Birmingham, Alabama.
We'll be staying at just one beautiful resort and spat the entire weekend, but we're playing three different courses along the trail. The ground transportation is included, and we'll have dinners together to a group podcast recording, share stories, have a lot of laughs, but most of all get to check off three beautiful courses Oxmore Valley Ridge Course, then
ross Bridge and finish with Oxmore Valley Valley Course. Reserve your spot now to make sure your name is on our short list of three foursomes and get all the details about the trip at tmi goolf dot com slash golf Smarter Again. Our adventure starts as we arrive on Wednesday, March twenty six, twenty twenty five. Then we'll play eighteen on Thursday, eighteen on Friday and Saturday one more round
before getting back to the airport on Sunday. Now, if you'd like to make a full week and play more down on the trail, that's not going to be a problem because Tara and alanover at tmi goolf dot com we'll work with you. There are so many longtime listeners who've become email buddies that I really want to finally get a chance to play with. And of course if you're a golf Smarter ambassador, then we have to finally
meet in person again. Tmi goolf dot com slash golf Smarter want to remind you one more time to leave review for Golf Smarter from wherever you're listening to this podcast. It really is the best way for people to discover podcasts when they're searching for something new in golf. Well, we may not be new, but we have a great archives and we get some great guests that we like to talk to all the time. But I want to
hear what you think. Go ahead and write that review, and then once you write it, send me your review and where you posted it, and once we confirm it's there, we're going to send you all three gifts that are
available to our golf Smarter ambassadors. If you have any questions comments, want to open a future episode with where you're from, where you play, and that episode number, or you've submitted a review on your favorite podcast platform, or you have a suggestion for an upcoming episode, or want more information about our adventure, please write to Golfsmarter podcast at gmail dot com or click on the Heyfred button when you visit golfsmarter dot com.