Commit To Being A Great Playing Partner featuring Karl Morris

the nth degree. As we're going around, we're a little bit more engaged with other people. My experience is when people have experimented with that as a commitment, they generally play better. And the worst thing that happens with that, fred you actually enjoy the round more because you do genuinely engage with other people.

isn't it. But I don't know about you. I've got to the point now where I would feel incredibly guilty if I didn't do the things that I needed to do to put it out week but week by week and above anything else, right, I just genuinely enjoy doing what we're doing here because I mean I'm a coach first and foremost, but I mean that's quite a lonely

place to be at times. You know, you just go about your own business and you see your own clients, but to share ideas with other people, I just find that it's a wonderful hobby.

me if you will. Some of the teachings that Fred is doing now, were, you know, versus fifteen eighteen years ago when I had him. I'm sure it's advanced because he's so thoughtful.

beat of his own drum. But you know, funnily enough, he was on last week's podcast on my podcast a week before last, and I look forward to him with a like like us. We sort of have an annual conversation. It's a bit like it's a bit like Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever. It comes around once a year, and he's gracious enough to come on. His wife, Joe, is

a lovely person. She facilitates that. But every time I listen to Fred, every time I do a podcast with him, I generally play it back three or four more times, which I don't really do with too many other guests, because there's so many wonderful insights there, and he is such a deep thinker. I think for me, one of the big things that has influenced my thinking is Spread's idea that when you go out on the golf course

is how does the golf course occur to you? Does the golf course occur to you as a place of opportunity or is it a place of threat? And I think for most people we've fallen into the trap of the golf course unfortunately becoming a place of threat. And if the golf courses occurring to you as a threat,

there's going to be a physiological response to that. So you know, we can be trying to do all kinds of things in our swing and work on all kinds of stuff, but we're if we're physiologically threatened by the environment called golf, we're probably not going to perform at

our best. And no amount of breathing techniques and things like that, whilst they all have the value and the place, it really is understanding how you are perceiving that environment, how you're perceiving the game of golf, which I think then lends itself to that key question that we probably don't ask enough as golfers. Why do we play? Why is it that we do this thing called golf? And I think when I ask players that question you very

often they'll answer it. And I realized that the answer is not their genuine answer, It's an answer that's been given to them by other people. And when you press them two or three levels down and you really get to the root of white people play golf. I think if you can tap into that, you can then create something that you can go out and make a commitment to you when you actually play golf, and I think that's one of the roots to change the perception of golf from being a threat to an opportunity.

as well. Okay, that's enough of that. But just recently, and boy must have come from the deepest part of my mind with Fred Schumaker, but just recently I realized that and came up with the idea of that the tea box is a meeting place of uncertainty and the green is a meeting place of hope, and that everything in between is like, Okay, I'll see you there.

but there's that bunker in the middle. So definitely there's a lot of uncertainty when you step up to the tee. But when you're stepping up on the green, the putting green, it's like, I hope I can do this. I think I can do this. I want to do this, and I'll know if not, I'll get close. Right, It's a meeting place of hope.

we want to whack a golf ball and play. But I think for most people that comes a point whereby there's a sense of identity on the line when you go and play golf, and a sense of your self worth, and all those things tend to kick in, and then what we tend to try and do is protect ourselves from the feelings that bad shots give us. And the search to protect ourselves from those feelings then tends to fall into a couple of categories, the main one being technique.

That if I can just get the right technique, if I can just be given the silver bullet, if somebody can bestow me with the wisdom of putting my club in a certain place, or swinging in a certain way, or moving my body in a certain way, surely that will protect me from poor golf. Well, I'm not sure if any of your listeners can ring in and say they've reached that promised land, But my experience is that

it's a fruitless search. Not saying you shouldn't work on developing your skills, obviously that's a big part of it, but nothing will ever protect us from hitting poor shots. But actually, if we can get to the stage where we can develop an acceptance for all outcomes, to me, that is the genuine foundation of confidence. You know, Raymond Pryor has been on both I shows, who's a great psychologist.

He talks about stable confidence, and you know, essentially stable confidence only emerges from a willingness to accept the variety of outcome.

bad shots and you get upset with ourselves. But then if you watch the game at the highest level, you see that they make mistakes as well, but they get out of it. They don't carry it with them. It's the acceptance of the results and then working from there and their skill set as such. And let's not forget that they do this seven days a week, ten hours a day, okay, six days a week. Give them one

day off, but because they're traveling. But all golfers make bad shots, no matter how good your your skills are.

the fact that the game is inherently incredibly difficult. You know, when we're talking about impact, you know, if you're going to knock it thirty forty yards off line, off the tea, we're talking about a club face that's probably three degrees closed at ninety five one hundred miles an hour. That is infinitesimal degrees of difference between down the middle and

in the water or in the trees. But I think then it comes into an area I've looked at an awful lot these last few years is to really understand that if you're going to get the best out of your golfing experience, it's about focusing on devel up in certain skills and then being able to access those skills out on the golf course. Now, what does that mean?

Well to me, there's a big difference between focusing on a skill and focusing on a form or a function in the sense that most people get drawn into how does the backswing look? Or is it too flat? Is it too upright? Am I doing this with my hips right? So we get drawn into the esthetics of the swing. Now we can argue then endlessly about what is correct, what is right, whose model's best, whose theory is best?

But ultimately, what is the only thing that we know for certain that supplies information to the golf ball as to what to do well? It's the golf club at impact is the only thing that supplies the information to the ball. The ball doesn't know whether you're in a good mood or bad mood, whether you've been nice to your wife, or you've been a good person, or you anxious or calm or whatever. The only thing that the golf board responds to is the physics and geometry of impact.

So surely we should be spending more time developing the skill of influencing impact now, you know, shout out to a friend and colleague, Adam Young John Sherman, who's been on my show, who shares sort of similar ideas on this that you know, if you are focusing your attention on developing the skills and impact, I believe, then you're at what I call the scene of the crime. You're actually investigating what's gone on. You're not in the I

don't know. In the States, we have the board game called Cludo where there's a murder in a house and it's in different rooms, and you know, the murders in the library with a dagger by whoever it is. You need to be in the right room to study the crime, and I think the right room to study the crime for golf is impact. And you know the guys and

lady listening this winter time. Even if you if you did something that sounds so simple, but you set off on the quest to develop the skill of a centered strike. As obvious as it sounds, just hitting more golf shops, hitting more balls out the middle of the club would transform your experience because flashing on out the middle of

the club just feels inherently good. And yet I would I would guess an awful lot of people tuning in are putting their attention almost anywhere other than impact, and their attention is on almost everything other than what the golf club is doing to influence impact, because there's so much out there about how the body should move and how the risks should move. I'm not saying that's not a factor, but if you're not, if you're not clear

on your impact conditions, you're not developing skill. You're focusing on form, right.

improve because they didn't improve their impact conditions. However, when you start using one of the most powerful mental forces of all, which is intention, If I have an intention, so for instance, we're talking about center strike, if I know that I'm hitting the ball off the toe regularly, that's my pattern, and I do some practice where I intentionally hit the ball off the heel as a result

of that intention. The genius of my body, which has got up in my body, everybody's body, the genius of the body, which has got a few billion years of evolution behind it. It's amazing how the body organizes movement around an intention. So does the form improve as a result of intention, sometimes not always. But what does improve as a result of intention is your impact conditions. And if your impact conditions improve, it's as simple as this.

If your impact conditions improve, you will be a better golfer. It's it's it's it's as simple as that.

do I need to place my attention? Well, I could place my attention on my right elbow, or my left paper, or my right knee or whatever. That's probably not been no influence impact that much. But if I place my attention on the club, now I can with my attention that I can influence my intention. And then what attitude do I bring to that? Do I bring an attitude of perfectionism or do I bring an attitude of curiosity.

do wrong? Triggers endless search is in terms of technique, I'm literally always going to be all over the place based on lots of opinions. But if I hit a shot offline and I asked the question, what did I do wrong? Was the club face open or closed? Did I hit it out the middle or did heated out of the toe? What was the interaction with the ground?

You know those those big three. You know, every shot, every shot that you hit that you don't like, will be down probably to one, not probably will be down to one of those three factors. And I think, if the explanation that we give to when a ball goes offline is more and closed for one of a better word, if it's not, if it's not all over the place,

if it's not with lots of different opinions. If if I can keep my attention on three possible things that cause golf balls to go off line, I'm now playing a much simpler game. I'm now able to deal with the variety of outcomes. My acceptance levels improve, and I start to influence the things that really matter. So I start to play a game where I developed a bit more resiliency, and perhaps more importantly, the big skill is adaptability. Is that can I notice what's happening and then adapt

to that. I said, I was with a young guy this afternoon. I coach at a lovely golf course in the mid part of England called Delamere Forest. It's a beautiful golf course. It's it's almost a spiritual experience going playing golf around there. It's a wonderful location of anybody

ever against the chance. But we were out there today and we were, you know, we were talking about these these these concepts, and he really grasped the idea of simplifying his explanations of what actually happened out on the golf course, and he said, he said, I can feel a sense of calm that I'm not lost in an endless search to try to find a solution that doesn't seem to have a solution. I can keep my eye on a couple of things that I can work with.

in front of the ball. Yeah, And so my intention is to make contact with the ball then hit the ground after that, and I try to keep a good attitude about it. But it makes so much more sense. But if I'm thinking about my left arm, my left wrist, you know where my right elbow is, and all these things are in my mind on a regular basis, but I try to block them out during the swing. I know about them. I'll take a practice swing and I'll

concentrate on those things. But when I want, when I walk up to the ball, those things are not what I'm thinking about are focusing on because if you think about your body parts when you're making your swing, you're shaking your head. Good luck, just good luck, good luck.

that would be the easiest thing in the world. You know, if we grab a pen, you would think we could keep our attention on the pen, or if we were sewing using a knife or whatever, we could do that. But I all those years ago, I started it's a few shots, and I realized. First of all, I realized I'd probably never made a golf swing for twenty years were at some level, I wasn't telling myself how to

move a certain part of my body. Twenty odd years, every golf swing I'd ever made, I was trying to tell myself to move in a certain way based on the latest information or the latest theory or whatever. So this idea of making a golf swing where I just placed my attention on this golf club and see if I could keep it there through the through the swing, it was just kind of like wow. First of all, it was difficult because my mind was pinging around all

over the place. But then I started to realize that, my God, if I could keep my attention there, surely then I can influence what it does. And again, for all the folks listening, would I would recommend that they try that basic exus I go to the range and maybe for the first time in your life, get a bucket of fifty balls, get a seven iron or a five iron or whatever doesn't matter, the club really and hit some shots. Well, you don't do anything in your

golf swing. You're not trying to do anything. You're literally not trying to fix anything. All you're going to do is place your attention on the club and see if you can observe it, see if you can stay with it for the duration of your swing, and see what that experience is actually like. And for most people it's it's a completely different route go down because if you if you can't pay attention to the thing that's going to influence the ball, surely our attention is in the

wrong place. Now, I know a lot of coaches were listening say, oh, you've got to move your body in a certain way, You've got to put force into the ground and all those things. I get all of that, and I'm not saying that doesn't have an influence, but come back to it. For most people, the quickest route to start to get some enjoyment out of this game is to take care of those three factors and impact were the club's pointing where you hitting on the club

and your interaction with the ground. You know, you just said about about the low point. The other thing that we've got a capacity to is imagine things. So you know, if I was on the range with you and you said, I'm struggling with my low point, the low points behind the ball, what we could we could maybe place a team front of the ball, or a coin or something like that. And so Fred, can you collect the ball

and the tea? Now, obviously if you collect the ball and the tea, that's going to move the low point a little bit further forward. Now you can imagine that when you're on the golf course, you could you could see an imaginary coin or a tea or whatever. So utilizing the power of imagination as well alongside intention and attention. You know, these are wonderful things that we have the capacity to do. But because we're so much inclined to just focus on information that other people have given us,

we dule the imagination. We don't use our imagination the body. You know, think about all the physiological responses that we've all experienced when we've been dreaming at night, which is a wonderful use of imagination. And you wake up in a cold sweat because you've imagine that something terrible is about to happen and the body is physiologically responding to that.

That's the power of imagination. But you know, could we use our imagination in a way on the golf course that actually helps us create more clarity with the intention?

can play with anybody. I'll just meet a couple of people on the on the you know, at the first tea box. But I can use my walk on a golf course as my meditation. And you know, when if I have the ability to go out when things are not going well or i'm not happy about something. I find that I can get into a better mood by playing golf, which is kind of counter into it because of the frustration that golf presents to us. But it

doesn't matter. The frustration is going to be there. It's just being able to walk and spend those hours enjoying my time, enjoying being outside.

What does work for me when I try and do it every day is you've just said, is to go outside and place my attention on the feeling of my feet on the ground as I'm walking along, and that becomes my mantra that I just I just tune into the feeling of my feet. Of course, my mind goes somewhere else, but I can bring it back. But I think that's one of the most beneficial things that a

golfer could do, especially in the winter time. You can work on your golf away from the golf course by doing walking meditation, you know, because we also ignore the fact that when we're playing, and I know a lot in the States is on cards, but if you walk in the golf course, you know, ninety percent of golf isn't golf, you.

I also think what it does help as well. I think it you know, rhythm, we've all experienced when we're playing well. We tend to feel a certain rhythm in our game, a certain rhythm in our movements. I think those rhythms can often be dictated how we're moving between shorts, and I think when you do walk in meditation, you tend to fall into a more personally effective rhythm of

movement that then can transfer into your golf swings. But what we were saying before Fred about going to the range and placing your attention on the club head, that is meditation for me, because you know, ultimately, what is meditation, it's deciding to pay attention to something on purpose, non judgmentally. You know, you sit and notice your breath, or you notice a candle or a mantra or whatever it is.

That's the same principle what just said with the club So I think, you know, all these things kind of tie together in many ways that produce a set of areas of exploration that I think can be fascinating. Yes, you'll probably play better golf, but there's more benefits in the rest of your life. I mean, my god. You know we were saying before we started that we're living

in an incredibly chaotic world. We're living in a very very unstable world, and actually, if you go too deep into it, a pretty frightening place that there's so many things potentially could happen or might happen, that golf should be a sanctuary. The time on the golf course should be a time away from all that crap and nonsense that were being fed all the time, and all the misinformation, all that kind of stuff and the overlord of information.

Golf should be a sanctuary for that. But if you're taking a busy mind onto the golf course and just feeding it more and more information and more and more thoughts, it's not a sanctuary. It's a hell. So you're not getting away from the nonsense in the world. You're bringing it with you to the golf course.

shots before. You know, just because you've done it twice on one round, it's not a time to start changing what you do. Just get into your mind and tap into the place where you've been and stop trying to change things all because this is how golf works. It's not going to be the same every time, and you're not going to improve with every round.

job trying to do all of that. Now my understanding, you know, probably twenty years ago, when I first started with all this, I would I would give people a lot of techniques to try and control the thinking. I'm completely the opposite of that now because I do understand, you know, I have no idea what I'm going to think next. I mean, this thing inside between my years comes up with the most random nonsense most of the time.

But what I would say is now I've got a little bit better with not so much trying to change my thoughts, but the relationship to those thoughts. And I think to understand when you go and play golf. You know, from day to day, we're different, we have different triggers, we've interacted with people differently. To go out on the golf course and feel that you have to be in

a perfect state, it's probably the biggest block to that state. Whereby, if you can go out and you can realize everybody listening to this has had this experience whereby they've felt great, they've seen the shot, they've done everything perfectly before the shot, they're convinced it's going to be a good shot, and

they hit its sideways. They've also conversely had the experience whereby they're pretty uncomfortable, they might feel a little bit nervous, they're not even certain of what they're trying to do with the shot, but they've still managed to pull off a good shot. So what I'm getting at, it's a bit of a paradox, really is that don't think that everything has to be perfect for you to take a good golf shot. It's amazing how efficient the body is following

through an intention. If that is what you then bring to the shot eventually, So you know, don't get hung up on trying to be perfect mentally anymore that you should get up hung up on trying to be perfect.

of town, and we had a fine time. Didn't talk much because they were heavy their own game and they're, you know, from a different part of the country. But they were in town to play golf and they wanted to know another golf course, and so I gave them a suggestion. I said, oh, but you know, there's this other course. I could not come up with the name of it, and I play there at least once a month,

and I was like just completely drawing a blank. And I'm attributing to that to oh, okay, I'm getting close to seventy years old. My next birthday, I'm seventy years old. Names are not going to be flowing through my head as regularly as they used to be. But how does the aging process impact your mindset on golf or does it?

then that can almost become a self fulfilling prophecy. There have been a lot of occasion spread when you were twenty thirty, forty fifty, and sixty when you couldn't remember stuff, but the story doesn't necessarily kick in. Then that that's due to the aging process. Now, I'm not saying there's not declined for us all, which clearly there is, but I think we've got to be very careful of not creating that self fulfilling prophecy of a story. But I

think that's why golf back to our sanctuary idea. I think that's why golf doesn't promote itself enough to the older generation of how important it is, not just from a physical perspective, but from a cognitive perspective. That if you if you look at golf, if you go out on the golf course and see that golf is between sixty five and ninety five separate puzzles to solve, that in itself is a wonderful way of going out on the golf course, staying present to each shot and enjoying

the opportunity. And you know, puzzles and quizzes are popular the world over, but nobody would sit there with a crossword and if they couldn't get seven across, get really annoyed with themselves and call themselves an idiot and throw the paper down and throw the pen away and storm off somewhere else. They would just go and try and solve the next puzzle and see if they could get

a little bit closer to it. So I think when you start to look at the frame of reference that golf, you go out there and it's a wonderful puzzle to solve, that is a great creature of creator of curiosity. And I think then really understanding how important other people are. And I know it's a cliche to say it, but you know, can you genuinely enjoy and engage in some conversations that you perhaps wouldn't maybe ordinarily go towards? Golf

provides that environment, doesn't it. And I think to see that preciousness of opportunity when you go and play golf of a genuinely interesting conversation with somebody. Not not always everybody's up for that, but it's a medium where it can come out. You know. I've had some amazing conversations walking with clients on a golf course that have gone far away from their golf and trying to hate it straight.

And that is the wonderful nature of the game if we actually are open to that, to that potential adventure.

engaged with other people. My experience is when people have experimented with that as a commitment, it's not always the case, but they generally play better because they're not so weighted down by their own self reference.

So I've not got anything planned in the in the in the immediate future, but I am really interested in these ideas that we've talked about today about skills and developing skills and then being able to access those skills. And I think overall, if I've got a mission in go for it is to try and simplify things todayn to some some workable concepts. Not I look back for

in my career. I look back in the early days, and it was it was well meaning, but the but the sole purpose of my coaching in the early days was to sound clever and and to and to and to throw big words at people and show the people how much knowledge I've got about the game. And I think almost every coach probably has to go through that at some point where there's there's a little bit of

ego kicking in. I'm not saying I don't have an ego now, because everybody has an ego to some degree, but I genuinely feel that as I hopefully I've got a little bit better at this, I don't help everybody, obviously, but as I've got a little bit more competent this, at this, I am willing to say less and and and being willing to say less I found is actually very very productive.

key areas that do start to produce results. And I firmly believe when you understand these things, you don't have to wait for months and working on extensive swing changes and complicated moves. You can start to tap into that innate genius that we all have and enjoy the experience of go for More.

a wide variety of topics in golf. But I really am happy that you are focused on getting people like Fred Shoemaker and Jim Waldron and Jane's story, John Sherman, Scott Fassett and the Martin Chuck is he Justice, all these people that we've had on but you really focus on And that's part of what I love about podcasting is that if there is a part that is two tent too danse for you to absorb, pause, go back, listen to it again, listen to it multiple times, and

you've got a podcast that commands that attention. Congratulations and thank you.