Hi, This is Alan Taylor from Fayetteville, Georgia, and I play at the Griffin City Golf Course. This is Golf Smarter number nine hundred and eighty six. What did Ben
Hogan say about the more I practice, the luckier? Again, Paradoxers like drive for a show and puts for it don't really help people, right because they suggests that he the guy who has a long t shot may not be better than the guy who can quote unquote well, but with Mark Brodie's well, we realize that the guy who can hit the longest and have an unimpeded subsequent shot would score better than the guy who's shot and crooked, for example, or who's shot but in the fairway, simply
because if I'm using a sandwich into the green, the chances of me getting closer to the flat would be higher than you who's using a six or five iron. And that's just basic principles of a ball flight. Because the more lost you have, more back spin, less sight spin, easier for you to send the ball where you're aiming.
Here's what I teach that I've learned from listening to Golf Smarter with Singapore instructor Justin ten 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 Justin.
Hey Fret, thanks for having me back.
On Absolutely you sent me a text recently and I'm like, Okay, no question, we need to discuss this. This is really awesome and it's like, here's what you said to me. With twenty years of coaching and learning from great coaches before me, I hammered out the below to to tell a PGA professional who asked you for mentorship and thought i'd share it with you as a lot of these
things I learned from your podcast. Now, you and I have talked about what you gathered from Tony Manzoni in the years that we had him on, and that you've also shared with me that as a golf instructor in Singapore, you've been using Golf Smarter as a resource to learn what other teachers are talking about. And I'm so flattered by that. I really appreciate it, and I've heard other instructors say the same thing. So when you gave me this list of nine things and we'll go through all
of them. I was just blown away of how impressive this was that you would use this and that you got this information from the teachers that we have on the show. Thank you.
No, it's my pleasure to be able to share the material that I learned. And it's really about increasing enjoyment in the game, right. If you're talking about growing the game, who wants to play a game that's painful? So you look at the word g o lf in reverse, it's flog. No one wants to flog themselves. And I think, and I think that the approach that I use is far easier for people to gain some kind of mastery of the golf swing so that they can enjoy the game.
I think these are two very different things. If you manage to hit decent enough shots for your skill level, the enjoyment of the game will come, maybe slowly, but surely.
Yeah, but golf. Getting better at golf learning about golf is a slow process.
Indeed, learning about the game of golf the golf swing is no different from learning a new habit. And for someone to learn the game the swing effectively, we need to understand that we are teaching human beings that's point one. We are teaching human beings, not golfers. And that's something that I learned from. But Charmond and I understan what I want to get across is most coaches need to first do sect finding. You've got to be a great
fact finder. You've got to understand what's the student's KPI, not your KPI. Most instructors feel that their KPI is all going to show the student in front of me how brilliant I am.
But no, maybe I need to stop you for a second when you say that's.
The key performance indicator.
Thank you. Yeah.
So a lot of coaches think that the student wants to hear the latest and greatest in the world of golf swing technique golf swing technology, but actually maybe all he wants to do is to hit the ball better so they can enjoy his weekend game with his buddies. And then we also need to understand the students constraints, like what's his real ambition versus his reality? His ambition may not be scratched to be a scratch golfer, and
here we are. Sometimes we see great junior in front of us with a great swing, like, oh, you know, you should play college golf. Hey, maybe all he wants to do is just to get out there and the open, enjoy some fresh air, beat balls with his buddies, and that's it, Like that's his idea of fun. And when it comes to their reality, maybe a seventh year old guy is not going to fit into your idea of
a great golf swing, right, And that's physical constraints. And I think once once coaches look at that as a business, do their proper fact fine, then it's easier to kind of define the problem that's in front of us. But we can define the problem that's in front of us, we can, then we're then in a better place to
be able to solve it with effective techniques. Yeah, and absolutely, I think once you understand that, then it's the next step would probably be to understand that if we're teaching human beings, then there must always be room for outliers. I think a lot of coaches make the mistake of like, oh, it's going to be black and white. I think coaching is not black end. Coaching human beings is more like fifty shades of grain.
So I'd love to know more about, like how this came about that you made this list you said that a new PGA professional asked you for mentorship, and so did you just rattle off some ideas that you had or did you go let me get back to you and you sat down and just started writing things and where were you pulling them from? And then we'll get into the list, although you've already started.
Yeah. So most professionals in Singapore, Asia know that I've got a I've got it a heart drive here, it's four gigabytes SSD samsum T seven. I'm fond of telling them that this hard drive is probably worth something like US one hundred thousand, like the amount of money is spent on buying material. Ah, yeah, it's probably worth it in that region. So he said that, hey, do you do you mind if if you shared the contents of
that hard drive with me? I go like, okay, but how do I sift out what's relevant and what's irrelevant for you? Because in my evolution as a coach, I've started off as a very technical instructor golfing machine stack until more to the very soft skills of coaching where you kind of understand students mental type than to anatomy
a person's body type. How each how different segments of the body interact with one another, and I go like, you know what, if I just gave you the material like that, it's I'm gonna do you a big disservice because it took me years to understand the material and even longer to put them together. I believe we spoke about my performance Pentagon before. It's not just a full
swing technique. It's also skill development. Then it's also how the human brain acquires skill, retains skill, and then ultimately reproduces it under pressure. So it's it's not just that, oh this is black, this is white, it's how do these different segments together? And I go like, okay, I don't want to just blow you off and say oh, you can't have it, but like, what what can I tell him that sets him in the right direction. So there was in the saw. I was in a sauna
and he texted me the stuff. It's okay, let's just bang this out together. And I was quite surprised that I managed to come up with nine ten things. And I was like, hey, you know what I should I should share this with Fred and my other mentors who have been kind enough to put together an amazing roster of instructors to citing our technical knowledge of coaching.
Hm hmm. Yeah. I recently heard that someone said, and it's so true, and you've just supported it, that golf really can't be taught, it has to be learned. Yeah, that makes sense.
Yes, so I tell I tell friends this. Some things are taught, something are taught, Like, it's very difficult to go teach someone how to coach, like, it's got to be in need. You're going to have the desire to want to help people improve. And for great coaches that I've learned from, they always want to be a better version of themselves, and not just that, right, they also want their students to be a better version of themselves.
And you can't you can't really help people unless you are constantly on the quest of how do I make this easier for the person in front of me? How can I give them better information in an easy to understand manner. And that brings me to the second point of the list community.
Well, the first one being let me just say that the first one on the list was we are teaching human beings, not golfers. So you did cover that already.
And.
Let's we'll get to number two. But let's step aside for a second for some of our sponsors, to let them let everybody know who they are. We'll be right back. All right, I'm gonna just go ahead and read this and then I'll let you elaborate on it. And it's number two on your list. Is communication is the most important skill in transmitting ideas, yet gets the least attention.
Yeah, a lot of golf coaches. When you tell them, hey, come to my seminar for the latest and greatest in three D emotion analysis ground reaction forces, they'll come. But if you say, come and learn how to communicate effectively to your students, I don't think that's quite as popular. However, if you are unable to get ideas across, how can you be effective? So that to me is a great skill that is more often than not neglected. I think
you need to understand your student's worldview. Do they have any previous sports they play that we can relate to. That's extremely important and I find that once you understand those things, the learning curve deepens dramatically. And in communication of golf swing technique, I understand also that there is
relative approach and an absolute approach. What does that mean, So on an absolute basis, if you're off plane, you know you're off playing, you come across the top outside and as the case maybe, but from a relative basis, you might want to tell the student, hey, you know what you're stringing, so farther the left, you need to feel that you're going to the right in almost forty
five degrees. Now are they able to do that? Absolutely, they're not going to have a string path that's inside out by forty five degrees, But on a relative basis they might feel that way. And it's your job as the instructor to say, hey, I'm trying to get you to exaggerate so that your extreme into our path will cancel out your extreme out to inpath. That's basically the
approach that the great John Jacobs too. And once you help students to understand that what you feel is not exactly what's happening, learning can be accelerated very, very dramatically.
Well, the way i'd like to look at number two, I know that you're you've made this list for a PGA professional, and these are tips for PGA professionals with their students, but I think this is also an important tip for a student to be able to understand about their instructor. That communication is the most important skill in
transmitting ideas. It gets the least attention. So for a student, if they feel like the instructor they're working with isn't communicating on a level that they understand, maybe they should. It's okay, leave a teacher, right, I mean, you're not committed to this person, you know by marriage.
I think as an instructor, you want to be able to communicate complicated ideas in a manner that a seven year old can understand. It need not be complicated, and most students don't really want to know things like ground reaction forces. Again goes back to the point number one, what's their key performance indicator. They're not there to learn how to be a golf coach. They're not there to
be certified in ground reaction forces. That's the instructor's job, and the instructor's job when the student is in front of them, is to make what my mentor, Jim Hardy said, make the next ball better. That's that's our job. That's how we imagine. But I don't think students are going to give me five stars because like, wow, Justin knows everything every new ones there can be in in the golf grip. But you help him hit his next shot better.
That's all he cares about, and that's what he will be telling his weekend foursome about.
Absolutely, let's move on to number three, which I was gonna go, oh, that's something we talk about on the show. Well, this is your list is based on what we talk about on the show.
Uh.
And then, and I say this a lot, is that you know, hitting a golf ball is not the same as playing golf. And the way you write it here is there's the golf swing and there's the game of golf. Great instructors know when to teach which one. Yeah, excellent point.
So the golf swing makes a golf shot, and you're making enough golf shots, that's the game of golf. So maybe for beginners it's really about the golf shot, the golf swing, so you work on things like that. But for a good player, I'm talking about guys with five handicaps and below, is it really the golf shot or are there other parts of his golf game that needs addressing, Strategy,
maybe fitness, Maybe it's this mental approach. So earlier we talked about surfing, there's the surfer, there's the surf board, and there's the waves. So what's outside of our control would be the waves. And sometimes good golfers need to understand, Hey, you know, my technique is of a sufficiently proficient level, got decent equipment that's fitted to me. But hey, if we're talking about a thirty mile gale win, then is
this really a day for shooting sixty six? Well, if you could, or credit to you, right, But sometimes it's expectations and the outcome. And once you understand that, then you know, I suppose there is more acceptance and it won't be so hard on yourself. You probably enjoy the game more and that ironically could lead to a better score. And as an instructor, again all goes back to point number one. What does the human being in front of you want. Some guys just are interested in having a
pretty string. That's fine, we can do that. Some people are interested in the golf score, that's fine, we can work on that. Whatever you want, what's your kpi? We will work together to achieve that. There is no right or wrong. It's what the guy in front of you paying for the lesson once but Keviat sometimes you got to set expectations right. You've got to make sure that his demands are realistic.
Yeah, it was a show that we recently did about the teacher who uses the bell chart, the bell curve of PGA that every golfer has on their scorecard, and that is poor rounds, good rounds, average rounds right PGA. And so you can you know, if you're a seventy shooter, you can say to yourself, well, listen, I shot a seventy nine today or an eighty one. Okay, that's a poor round for me. I would love to be in that position. For me, that would be a good round.
But for me eighty two eighty five, that's an average round, right, And a good round would be you know, just above eighty or just below that, and I'd be happy that. But we have to accept that, we have to understand that it happens on any day you're out there to every golfer at every level.
Some days you get a good waste and some days mediocre ifts. And golf is such a great metaphor for life, for we have great days, we have not so good days, and some days is outright bad.
Oh, justin I'm having so much fun with this. Thank you. Let's move on to number four of this list of yours, and that is the game of golf must be taught using a data driven approach. I'd like some explanation on that one.
I mean, that's the buzzword right now, right with artificial intelligence, but it's it's basically making. It's going back again to point one, that finding. So you've got the guy's KPI, But is your diagnosis of his swing law accurate or not? Like people talk of all your stings outside in okay, for a twenty four handicap, but you don't really need camera to see that. You can tell from his movement pattern. You can tell from the big old slice or the
pull he's hitten. But what about for a zero handicap a scratch player, do you really know whether it's in three degrees into out or is it six? And the face to path is it three one point five? We don't know until you put him in front of track man of some Rada device. So things like that you want to be making. You want to make sure that as an instructor, you're truly working on cause and effect
and not spurious correlation. And if your instructor is just guessing, then maybe the solution that has come up coming up with is just guess work, and one day it works because of luck, next day it doesn't work. As an instructor, you want to be effective, meaning to say that everything you work on produces a correct result. Again, I quote Jim Hardy. It says that if the next ball is not better, then either the student is not doing it
correctly or you gave the wrong diagnosis. The only way to ensure a correct diagnosis is to make sure you've got the tools to provide the facts. Why guess when you can measure when you go to a physician. Imagine the physicians say, oh, let me guess what you have. Nobody would stay in that triage if the physician says, I'm going to guess what's the cause of your problem? But instead, physicians have a defined list, They have instruments they can use to verify your condition. And it must
be the same when it comes to golf instruction. And that brings me to the next part of the golf swing. The golf swing it nive number five. The golf swing is not a beauty contest. Just look at Jim Fury. Let me give you. Let me give you some statistics. Jim shot fifty eight and fifty nine into separate PGA Tour events. He has career earnings of seventy one and a half million dollars. Let's take that in. Let us
just pause and dig that in. I know of a lot of professional golfers who would want to do that, who would want to achieve that. So your swing system, as a coach, it's got to be robust enough to explain why esthetically displeasing swings can produce a concert in ballfler. It may not look the way you want it to look, it may not look to your definition of beauty, but we still need to understand why that works. So we're
talking about having a robust string system. So it's not just about looking at the golf swing from a certain perspective. You need to be able to understand all the different systems out there so that your swing system can explain anomally. Actually it's not really an anomaly. If a swing can produce consistently low scores, it behooves the instructor understand why it works. And if you don't understand why, it's because your string system and you're understand standing is lacking. It's
not complete. And the great instructors that I know, like Butch Harmon, Thought Harmon, Peek Cowen, they don't. When you look at all of their students, all of their swings look sally different. You can't you can't shoebox them and say, hey, that's Butch Harmon's guy. Those are those guys are Peak Cowvin's guy. Because what every human is built differently proportionally. Sure, we have we have generally we have one hit, we have two arms, we've got two legs, but the proportions
of them in relation to one another differs. And because they differ, by design, all the swings should look different.
And that's another very important point for golfers to understand that the golf swing is not a beauty contest that you don't have have to try to swing like fill in the blank here, Adam. Your body has your own yeah right, your your body has its own limitations. You may not work that hard at your body, you know, to be a have a golfer's body, and you may but don't have expectations of what it's supposed to look like.
And you know, like every for the years that I've been pretty much in my whole life recording people or even taking photographs. There's so many people go, I hate the way I sound I when I hear a recording of myself. Well that's what you sound like. Well that's what your golf swing looks like. I hate my photo. I hate the way I look in this picture. That's because that's what you look like. I'm sorry, And that's what your golf swing looks like.
Yeah, okay, you know, at some level, I think we should celebrate our differences rather than I would be something that we are really not. You know, if golf, if the golf sing is the be all and end all of the game of golf, then Adam Scott should have a career that's close to Tiger Woods. What because I think when he came out his golf swing looked almost
like a replica of Tiger Woods sing. But we know that his career his great career, but it's never mentioned at the same in the same conversation as Tiger Woods. So the game of golf is more than just the golf swing. We need to remember that.
So what separates those two guys?
What from your perspective, Obviously it's a mental approach to the game of golf, Like, that's something that's very intangible, right, we don't know how they think, especially under pressure. That is something that you can't really see when you're looking at a telecast. I mean, what's the stories that's going through in their hits. We don't know, and no one's going to let you into their mental space. But all we can see is golf enteredy Like, oh, his off
plane on plane, it's got ten planes. I don't know. It's difficult, right, And the commentators on the broadcast certainly don't help me, and they say, oh, he came over the top, Like goes back to fact finding, like, really, do we really know for sure that he came over the top, because I'm fond of saying this, right, what does how many degrees? There's one minute on the watch phase represent it's six degrees. Can you really tell what's
six degrees with your naked eye? It's really really difficult, And six degrees can make or break your golf shot. Is the difference. It can be the difference between a push draw or a.
Hook from your perspective. Watching his career go by, Tiger has made many swing changes when he comes out again and says, Okay, I'm going to start playing now. But I've made these swing changes. I'm doing this. Do you see the difference? Do you see that there is a big change.
Yes, there is a big change. And when you talk about successful swing changes, I think it. Throughout the history of golf, probably only two guys have made swing changes successfully and come out on the other side better. The first one was Nick Foudo with his book with David Letbetter, and the second one would be Tiger Woods. But if you look through the history of quote unquote swing changes,
they are not going to find many successful examples. So it's almost like this, right, Imagine I'm a missionin star chef. I's got this great recipe for cheesecake. Call it, and then suddenly I tell your friend I want to improve the recipe. I'm going to revamp the whole thing. Does it make sense? You'd be going like, justin, You've got the winning formula for cheesecake. Look at the lines outside your shot. Now you want to change the recipe. You could.
I could come up with a better recipe, but what is the probability of that? That's a very high bar decline. So instead of just looking at a better golf game as Okay, if I improve my swing, I'm going to shoot lower scores, take a more holistic view, and I clean up my diet. What skills am I lacking? For example, around the green strategically? Am I making mistakes that cost me in the long run?
All right, here we go with number six of nine, and then I love this one. The scorecard only records scores, not swing technique. And it follows up to what we were just talking about.
Yeah, exactly. At the end of the day, when you meet your buddies at the clubhouse after your run and when we go how did you play? We are only interested in all I shot two under paw ten over par. That's all we care about.
He's not.
No one's going to hang around and say, oh, you know, oh you used that left sided swing today. How was it all today? I use the center swing today? Or last week I used the right sided string didn't work so well? Oh I switched coaches. No one's interested in that. All we care about is, hey, Fred, you shot two underpart you beat me by two holes. Here's your money. That's all we care about. And on Twitter it's the same thing. No one really, there is no column for
oh okay, just then use the swing technique today. He should he should have a score of six underpart doesn't work that way, and it again goes back to what are we trying to do. If your aim is to have lower scores, then you've got to do proper fact finding. Where am I losing scores? But if your aim is playing golf swing, then you know we will help you beautify your swing. But that the caveat is that may not lead to lower scores.
Yeah, it's interesting. I kind of threw someone back recently. I was playing with them, and I've played with this person many many times. But one time I hit the ball and he said, oh, that was a great swing. And I got him off guard because I said, you know, you've seen my swing a lot. What was different about that? Why are you now saying that was a great swing?
What did I do?
But please tell me? He had nothing to say. He was like, I just nice and fluid there. Okay, great, But you know, but when someone says that to you, ask them why. Maybe you're gonna learn something. Maybe you're gonna learn.
Something rather than a quick, jerky, unsynchronized sing. But great golf shots. That's the opposite. I guess it's also a maturity. Sure that when I started teaching golf gosh way banging two thousand and five, I'm like, you know what if every one of my students sung the same way flat letters I love golfing machine like I would have, I would be a happy coach. But being is on, I realized that that's just one part of effective coaching.
And it brings us to number seven, which is interesting because you you advise this teacher to tell his students beware of false sayings like drive for show and put for dough. Yeah, and the list goes on and on and on about things like that. My my ley'st favorite is I'd rather be lucky than good. Not me, I'd rather be good and have occasional luck. Thank you.
What would it Ben Hogan say about the hotter the more I practice, the luckier again? Yeah?
Yeah.
Paradoxas like drive for show and put for don't don't really help people because it suggests that, hey, the guy who can hit a long who has a long t shot may not be better than the guy who can
quote unquote well. But with Mark Brodie's well, we realize that the guy who can hit the longest and have an unimpeded subsequent shot would score better than the guy who's start and crooked, for example, or who's stopt but in the fair way, because simply because if I'm using a sandwich into the green, the chances of me getting closer to the flag would be higher than you who's using a six or five iron. And that's just just
just the basic principles of a ball flight. Because the more loft you have, more backspin, less sight spin, easier for you to send the ball where you're aiming. So we could be really careful with paradoxes like that. Another one is all drive the hips for power. Now, the technology that we have these days, it's like, yeah, you know what hip rotation speeds on the LPGA Tour, it's higher than the PGA Tour one or simply because the men have stronger upper body, and that's really where steel
is generated from. Case in point, I've played with the military vets who've lost one or two legs, but you know, you strap them onto a special golf cart. These guys can still hit the ball, get the ball out there a decently long way. It's arm speed isn't it. But again, you don't want the yeah. You don't want to just say or just have strong arms. Sorry. Ideally, again we look at the golfing. It's not black and white. It's always sifty shades of gray. It's more I call taking
a neutral, balanced approach. The game of a decent girls wing is not too much arms and not too much body. It's enough arms and enough body, not too steep, not too shallow. It's basically the Goldilocks approach. And as an instructor, once you understand how to balance out the different components in the swim, your student's next ball can indeed be better. It's not some pipe dream. But again, to get to that level, back to what we say about it's not
a one size fits all approach. You need to understand all the various techniques. And when you look at a student swing in front of you, it's almost like click, click here does this? It goes here? Oh, and hang on, he's also doing this. It's like a decision tree that finally spits out this is what you're going to do
for him. It's knowing all the techniques, seeing enough things, being able to apply an effective solution there and then okay, you got this, do that, and that's what keeps students a coming back for more and be telling their friends that's the best advertisement you can have.
Absolutely, and also leads us up to number eight. For an instructor, you must be a master of anatomy to understand anatomical cause and effect, things like the explain that place.
So if you don't understand how the body works, it's very difficult to create a quote unquote certain look. Like for example, if if a student is early extending and then you look at his grip, like, yeah, of course it's early extending. It's got a weak grip. His face is way open at the top. To close the face, he's going to extend his trail arm right, so that's going to cause his body to live, his hips to extend forward towards the ball, Like that's a no brainer.
Not that that that type of string is wrong. Jack Nicholas had had more vertical forces in his string. You could see his hips go towards the ball on the downswing compared to see a surgery here, compared to say Gary Woodland. Now, if you understand how the body works, then as an instructor, you could say, hey, you know
you want more and more rotary string. You're going to stand further away from the ball, that more forward flexion of the trunk, You're going to have maybe perhaps a stronger grip because your brain knows my face is a bit shut at the top. I've got to rotate a bit more. I can't release the club with my by extending my right arm. Your brain understands all that. I mean, you give the student a queue to strengthen, and I'm going to have you hit a little fad David Duval.
Then you can create changes down the timeline of the swing. But if you don't understand how the body works in relation to one another, good luck trying to create a certain look. So, for example, if you want your student to have more more rotary look at at the point of impact, you don't. You don't fix the elements that encourages that. You're not going You're never going to get him to have that look. You're never going to get him more to have his tosso more open and impact.
I mean, why would he when his club phase is way open and you want to get him to open up even more. Well, that's like trying to help him ingrain as fortier the push lines, so cause and effect not spurious correlation.
Okay, we're going to do one more segment here, and because not only do we have your ninth point of your list, but I wanted to throw something at you that that was motivated by you sending me this list. And we'll talk about that in a minute, but let's go to your last one here, and number nine is you must be a master of the mind and body connection. As desire creates intentions which create forces on the club expressed in the motion of the swing. Yeah, please break that.
Im intentions create sources on the club expressing the motion of the swing. What does that mean? If your student thinks that the golf club as a specula used to lift the ball up in the air, he is always going to be on his trail foot trying to hoist the ball up. Certainly you could work for a shorter club like the Sandwich, but good luck if you're trying
to use a fairy wood off the deck. So by understanding a student's intentions with what they're trying to do with a particular club or a particular shot, you can you can quickly change that intention and once you explain to them, Hey, look, the street spot of the club is on the fourth or fifth groove of the seven iron, and we're trying to use the seven iron to hit
slightly down on the ball. And when you get that across to them, his intentions would then force him or her to shift their way onto the lead side in order to get that fourth and fifth line on the face of the ball. Voila. We create saffnin, we create a lower ball flight, and you explain, hey, the ball, the ball is going to take off based on the a, the dynamic love that you're creating, and the angle of this of the golf club.
Oh my, I think I just realized why I've been struggling with my six iron rightly, and that's because I'm hitting it way too low on the club on the club face. I'm not getting it up, I'm not hitting it in the direction I'm aiming, and I need to come down a little more and hit it higher up on the club face. My interpreting that correct.
Yes, So what would be quite helpful for a lot of golfers. And this is one of my most popular Instagram clips. I actually drew a smiley face and a dot on the fourth and fifth group, And all I told students was, let's make the dot touch the center of the ball, so that that kind of freed them up from all the competing thoughts in their head. I'm going to keep my left arm straight, keep the hit center. Now, if all you're trying to do is to get the dot on the ball, you know what, You're going to
have a fairly centered base of your neck. You're going to have your center of gravity favoring your your lead side. You're going to have your shoulders kind of your trail shoulders slightly tilting down towards the ball, so that at the as your club face is approaching the ball, it's doing so on downward angle of the ta. And guess what, you're going to have some some difits after you hit the shot, which is probably one of the most satisfying things you could do when blame golf on the golf course.
M oh my gosh.
The other extension of the mind body connection is helping students understand besides intention, it's also helping them understand how your body makes changes. So it's not just telling that, hey, you know what you're going to this is your your swing error, but it's also okay, this is your string error. This is how I would change it, how I would change it for you. Maybe you go to the top of the swing. This is what it feels like even though it feels wrong. Look, I'm taking a picture of
your correct position at the top of the backswing. This is what it looks like. They go, wow, okay, it's very different like what I feel and what actually happens totally different. And something I learned from doctor Scotland was reactive neural muscular training. So a lot of the weekend golfers that I teach don't really have that mind body connection of like, oh, okay, this is what a position
feels like. So for example, if I'm getting them to have a quote unquote shallower shaft plane on the down swing, I would say, hey, I'm going to steepen the shaft dramatically, but I want you to resist against that. So if I pull the shaft towards me when I'm standing in front of them, they start to resist and make the
chaff stay on a flatter angle. That's going to activate all the correct muscle and I normally do five second counts for five repetitions for twenty five seconds after that, they're like, well I can I can start to feel that my muscles are a bit achy. I said, that's activation. And when we start making store golf swings as a form of correction, that muscle burn is reset enough so that they can go, okay, I'm going to use those muscles. So that's that's another aspect of the mind body connection.
Awesome, Well, that is an amazing list, and again I'm quite flattered that you use a lot of what we've talked about here on Golf Smarter over now in our twentieth year and you've been able to use it and with to be a mentor to other PGA professionals, not just not just your students. But after I received this list, I thought, I'm going to give something a try that
I've not tried before. I'm going to go to chat GBT and I'm going to use Ai and ask Ai, what are the top ten golf tips that we've learned from the Golf Smarter podcast. And this is what was fed back And we don't need to go into these deep, but I want to run these by you and get your reaction to one or two or going deeper if you want, and it said. The Golf Smarter podcast offers practical advice for improving your game. Here are ten key tips gleaned from their episodes. Number one, you were just
talking about this center your contact. Focus on striking the ball in the center of the club face for better consistency.
Absolutely, and that's all.
That's pretty good.
All the ball cans about the club face that just struck me. Was it on was it on plan? Was it on path? In relation? Is it zero nowt am I being struck with the center of the face, center of percussion, that's all it cares about. Like, it doesn't care who's on the other end of the golf club. It doesn't care the age, the gender, golf balls. Like a computer, what program is being fed into me? That's all that matters, right, It's all that matters.
Number two, Understand your swing mechanics, simplify your approach and avoid overthinking.
That's very true, like TGA professionals on the last hour of a major when they're going to make a birdie that there is really no time to think about anything else. And those guys who don't have a simplified approach always tend to get in trouble because they start worrying about things that should not be Oh, now suddenly they see the water. Now suddenly they're thinking about They start projecting themselves way in the future, that things that could go. That's no place in the game of golf.
Right. Number three Short game mastery prioritize distance control and solid contact for putting and chipping.
To go wrong with that the short game. The short game is about landing your ball on the spot. And this is what makes the short game comparatively more difficult than the long game. Long game is I just want to get the ball somewhere the game.
I need to get it to a spot, right, Yeah, your target gets with each consistent with each sequential shot from tee to green, your target gets smaller and smaller and smaller. The first one is is wide, and then you gotta get it on the green and then you got to put in the whole it goes there. Number four Strategic course management. Play smarter by assessing risks and planning each shot.
Yeah. I mean, if all you have in your bag is a fade, why try to hit a draw on the last stow just doesn't mix in. Don't be something that you are not At the same time, or at least that you haven't I haven't practiced, and at the same time, also make sure that you're not you're not losing strokes by making in effective decisions off the tea and into greens. Those things, in my mind, don't cost you.
Anything, especially on your scorecard.
Yeah, and don't play the hero shot back to the ego.
If you don't have it, just because you saw it on TV doesn't mean you can.
Yeah, doesn't doesn't mean that you're gonna thread a three iron through the trees just because you did it once.
Number five mental game. Manage tension and stay present to enhance focus.
And go wrong with it. Yeah. Yeah, it's like driving right. Once you get to a certain proficiency in driving a car, you don't really think about like, wow, I gotta turn the steering wheel twenty five degrees stuff like that. I think if people play golf the way they drove a car, they enjoy the game far far better. The problem with golf isn't balls there You think that, hey, because the ball is not moving, I've got time to run through a checklist and I can bend the ball to my
will well just because it doesn't move. But in other spots, because the ball.
But if it moves, you freak out.
Oh yeah, but you know in other sports, right, it's us reacting to a moving ball. When golf, the ball not moving creates a lot of problems for golfers.
Number six practice efficiently use drills tailored to your weaknesses.
Of course, I think a lot of us don't really. Unless you're a golf professional, you don't really have time to spend like five hours on the range trying to work something up. I think these days, if you work with a competing golf professional, he should be able to give you a drill that meets your needs. Then that solves your problems fairly quickly. And once you understand the process of a moto program change, then you know the path. The path may not be shot, but it will be very clear.
This one, I'm kind of again go back to flattery. It's like, oh, we really talk about it this much that it's that AI is picking it up. Number seven Embrace flow state. Relax into rhythm for more consistent performance. Yeah. Relax into a rhythm, Yeah correct.
I think I think when people understand flowstick, it's basically us enjoying the task that we're involved in and not thinking about externality like driving, Like right now when we're talking to each I'm not thinking about outcomes. Then you can really stay in the floor. How that relates to golf with remember the twelve year old kid that was telling you about playing shooting is doing it. There was no expectations he was he was really enjoying the activity
he was in. But then after shooting twenty nine at the front night, he's like, oh, I've got Grandeo's ideas of being the first twelve year old in Singapore to shoot a fifty eight in competition, and you and I can know that really doesn't It doesn't work that way. Then now you're you're trying to do something that's the opposite of being in a flow state where you let things happen.
Number eight no ball flight laws. Learn how adjustments affect trajectory.
Yes, once you understand the true ball flight laws that space is the primary determinant of where a ball takes off, then it's easy to correct or adjust your soon to produce the intended ball flight for the situation I had.
And we're just kind of talking about this with that twelve year old kid. Number nine avoid perfectionism, focus on progress, not flawless execution.
You know. Interestingly enough, I had another point on my list that I came up with. It's basically, don't let perfect be the enemy of good color relate to do that Barto's principle, right, the eighty twenty rule. Sometimes good enough is good enough. It need not be perfect.
And the last point that AI suggests that they learned from Golf Smarter podcast number ten, fitness and flexibility. Stay physically prepared to avoid injuries and improve mobility.
Yes, that's true in this modern day and each However, some people will say, hey, back in the sixties seventies, golfers didn't really look like athletes, but they still shot low score.
Yeah. Yeah, but there were also in those days the golfers that were succeeding were older. You have a lot more younger golfers succeeding at a very high level right now. Yeah.
Interesting you point out this.
And I think that has a lot to do with physicality.
Another point I would like to bring up is I think golfers back had less injuries than the modern athlete. Jack Nicholas said that one key reason for his success was that he was never injured during his career. The only he at fifty eight or fifty nine he had his first hip replacement, but that was like at the tail end of his career, but at his prime he never missed any major due to injury. I thought that was telling from the greatest golf of all time.
Justin Thank you so much for sharing that list, Thank you for staying in touch. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and your instruction. I really appreciate it and really enjoy having these conversations with you.
Thank you very much for having me back on for always happy to share