How to Identify & Eliminate Pressure on the Golf Course with Garrett Jenkinson - podcast episode cover

How to Identify & Eliminate Pressure on the Golf Course with Garrett Jenkinson

Jan 30, 202642 minEp. 481
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Episode description

GS#481 March 24, 2015 Garett Jenkinson, 2014 Alberta Teacher of the Year was suggested by a previous Golf Smarter guest who says that Garett was an inspiration in teaching him a new way to look at teaching and golf. In this episode we identify what kinds of pressure presents itself on the golf course and how to best handle it.    

WOW, Fred has been nominated for the 2025 Audiocaster of the Year by the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame. Please vote for our founder as often as you'd like as the more you vote, the better his chances of recognition. Voting is open now through July 1. Vote now at BARHOF.org   Thanks for your support and Good Luck Fred!! 🤞

Please welcome our new host of Golf Smarter, Josh Karp! Fred has retired from his work life, including the podcast, and will be working on his game with more intention than ever. If you have a question for either Josh or Fred, or if you’d like to share a comment about what you’ve heard in this or any other episode, please write to Josh at karpj2323@mac.com or Fred at golfsmarterpodcast@gmail.com.
 
For exclusive content and first access check out Corrected Mistakes on Substack: https://substack.com/@correctedmistake

Transcript

Speaker 1

Hi, This is Stuart More. Goal is from Glenn Mills, Pennsylvania, and I played golf at the highly rating Glen Mills Golf Course. Welcome to Golf Smarter number four.

Speaker 2

Hundred and eighty one, published on March twenty four, twenty fifteen.

Speaker 3

Welcome to Golf Smarter mulligans, your second chance to gain insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.

Speaker 1

If you can handle being a little bit uncomfortable at the start because we had to change the way you were standing or the way you were holding the golf club in order to get you to swing differently, then you can handle a lesson with me. But that's amazing how much you can change where someone's golf club goes or how it moves around their body just simp by changing how they hold the club and set up to the ball.

Speaker 2

Isn't that the easiest thing to correct for you, I would think, is just your setup?

Speaker 1

Yeah, and that's not easy. A lot of people just get the alignment part wrong all the time. Have to know where you're going if you can't get lined up to it.

Speaker 2

Their focus is hitting the ball, not where the ball's going.

Speaker 1

Yeah, well, we have a challenge with all my students. This is the first thing to hear on the teaching tea. If we took a picture of you from the side and from the back, and then you go home, and then you come back today and you set up again to hit a golf ball a day later, you get one hundred thousand dollars. If you set up exactly the same way two days in a row. How would you

do it? What would you measure yourself off of? They all start figuring out that the target's pretty important after that and lining up square to it because you can do that every day, day in and day out.

Speaker 2

How to identify and eliminate pressure on the golf course With Garrett Jenkinson.

Speaker 3

This is Golf Smarter Premium.

Speaker 2

Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.

Speaker 1

Garrett, Hey Fred, how are you?

Speaker 2

I'm great, So you're in Canada. How's the weather today?

Speaker 1

Oh, we're having a good one today. We're going to start golfing early this year.

Speaker 2

Is that a good thing or I mean, we have serious drought conditions here in California. We're in the fourth year, starting the fourth year of an ugly drought, and I'm reading articles that's saying, yeah, California, it's about one year of water left. It's like, but that's not a problem for you guys. You just hope that the thaws out and warms up early.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Well, I don't know. It'd be nice if we could go year round, because what happens for us because we got the condensed season, everyone just sort of goes nuts for a voute four or five months.

Speaker 2

Well to get year round golf, I'm sorry, but you have to leave Canada.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I know, and we do, right.

Speaker 2

And where do you go for your winter golf?

Speaker 1

I'm a Phoenix or Palm Springs guy. Yeah?

Speaker 2

Yeah, oh, well, next time you're headed out there, let me know. I love going to Palm Springs. I'll drive down there, all right, love it, love it. So I was introduced to you by listener and former guests of the show, Michael Hamill, who was going crazy about your teaching philosophy starting on Facebook and then writing to me just talking about how he's really changed his perspective based on working with you.

Speaker 1

Mike's a fitness guy in town here and I've been running golf fitness programs for about fifteen years now in Calgary, and it's the way I ended up getting into fitness. It wasn't because I thought we should do fitness. It was because I thought I could see people couldn't do what I was asking him to do on the teaching tea. So I've figured out a way to do some fitness things and body function things to get people to be able to perform the things they needed to do on the teaching tea.

Speaker 2

For me, Oh, I want to back right up there and pick on that for a second. What are the things that we don't do? What can't we do that you were noticing that made you change?

Speaker 1

This? All the changes for everybody, I think. And we're getting some really good info nowadays. I mean, we've got these TPI screens that are going on. The Titleist Performance Institute has got guys studying the body and how it works and all those things. But most of its flexibility issues for people, you know, and the troubles that we get is it's body function. Does your body work like it did? When you were ten years old. If you ask anyone that, everyone will say not really.

Speaker 2

Not really, It's more like, of course not.

Speaker 1

Yeah exactly, and so thank goodness, Yeah yeah maybe maybe. So. What we've been able to figure out is that we can actually get people's function of their body back just hit flexibility, rotational flexibility, strength, posture, balance, even and we get people improving at that, and it's amazing how much

we can impact their game. Everything that I do is always I've always said I, if it isn't going to improve your game, I'm not going to give it to you, and I guarantee the same thing with with the fitness program that we do. I tell people, if it doesn't help you, don't pay me. Wow, that's what I say with my lessons as well. Well.

Speaker 2

How how much time do I get before I decide if it's helped me or not?

Speaker 1

Yeah? You only need an hour. I only need to prove it to you.

Speaker 2

Yeah yeah, Well how can I tell you if it's not working without going on try? Because what I have noticed unless is that even with an hour lesson is that by the end of the hour, everything's working beautifully. But when I get to go back out to either the range or the course which is may not be for another week or so, it's not there anymore.

Speaker 1

Well, that's that's a shame. We've got to keep on progressing. We need to be walking that, you know, going up up the staircase, and we don't want to be regressing and coming back and forth. We want to continue to progress forward, right, But.

Speaker 2

It's not always easy to when you're on your own, to make it work like it did when the teacher was giving you the nuances.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's true. Well you can hire us to just go golf with you all the time too. I don't mind.

Speaker 2

Sorry, my dollars are going into the playing golf round and golf, that's right. So how do we do it?

Speaker 1

I mean, how do we stay on top of it?

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know exactly.

Speaker 1

I don't know. I think I think that's probably my challenge too. I look at it and I'm always, you know, every year, I'm asking myself, not even every year, it's every week, every day, what can I do today to help my students get better? What can I change? What can I add? Can I you know, if if it's if it's video for one person and a track man for another, maybe even just duct taping someone another one, you know.

Speaker 2

Whatever, Have you ever ductaped somebody?

Speaker 1

No? No, but I certainly certainly tried all the different apparatuses out there and had a few on people. But you know, I think that people have to come to an idea of what they want to see in their golf swing and how they want to do it. And I that's what I try to do with my students is create a team atmosphere of what are we trying to do, and where are we going and how we're going to get there, and we do We do it together. I don't I don't just pass the info and then

walk away. It's a process that we work through, step by step over a series of lessons. I don't I don't ever like seeing someone for one lesson. I need to see them for a while and we come up with those plans together and nail it all down.

Speaker 2

Now, you sent me an email recently and you were talking about how the best players in the world have many opportunities to improve their game, but the average golfer, we don't. So and you put it on your responsibility.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I've got the In the last couple of years, I've got a really powerful piece of technology called a track Man and it's a Doppler radar that that gives you ball and club data. I think a lot of guys are using it as a science experiment there, physics guys, and they really like it. And I think that a lot of those types of guys that get into the physics too much, that information can crush people in this game.

They can take that info and be able to not even hit a golf ball after listening to it all. So I think it's important to have a machine like that to learn more about what's going on. And it gives us the situation that's happening with people. And so it's factual data of what happens at the moment of

impact with the ball and the club. And then you take it and you know, after a lesson, you'll see that here's where I was at the start of the lesson, and here's what actually happened with my golf ball and the distance different and the flight difference and the things that we changed did they actually work in a lesson? And it's really interesting with that piece of information and how how people do stick with the change then because

they've seen it and it's factual data. Of if you do this, then this will happen, because it's not easy. Like you said, it's not easy to stick with what you learned in the lesson. You sort of revert to your old things. But I find that with this piece of machinery that when guys get the information, it just it really hits home for them, and they're like, I'm gonna I am really going to stick with this because I saw it. I added twenty yards to my iron I you know, every iron shot I added. I started

drawing the ball and I've never done that before. I used to cut it all the time, and I don't want to do that. And so they really stick with it because the information is really powerful.

Speaker 2

Right we all believe that. We all think like, oh, now now that I got it, I'm just gonna run with this all the time. And again you take it back out to the course the next week and it's like, wait a minute, how did that work? How come it's not working today?

Speaker 1

You know, I don't. I don't see. I like to think that maybe my students are a little different than that.

Speaker 2

Well congratulations, I wonder fantastic. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1

No, So you know, I think that's that's trying to find ways. If if I found that my students were all having that scenario, then in my packages and things just the way that I think I would be adding adding in packages that included, hey, okay, we're going to do a lesson on the on the range, and then we've got another one that we're going to do on the golf course. I'd be saying you have to do it. Where I'm going on the golf course with you, there's

no choice. But I'm finding a big success rate in a lot of my students.

Speaker 2

Congratulations, thank you. It's a very different lesson going onto the golf course with them then working on the range, isn't it.

Speaker 1

Uh yeah, it's it gets a little bit more focused on what are you thinking rather than what are you doing? You know, on the on the teaching tee, everyone wants to know what their body is doing and how it's supposed to work, and you know, and you get, you get I have to get them focused on what the golf ball is doing rather than what their body's doing all the time. And then you know, I think I think there's helping someone think their way around the golf

course is a big one. One one thing I always say to people on the golf course is, on every single shot, if I bet you one thousand dollars to hit the fairway off the first tee one, what club would you hit? Two? And two? How hard would you swing at it? If you hit the fairway, you get a thousand dollars. So I think that changes it for

people a lot. And that's probably my my number one comment on the golf course is if you just heard me in your ear on every single shot saying thousand bucks, if you hit the green, what club would you hit? What part of the green would you hit to? How hard would you swing? And what club would you use?

Speaker 2

Wait? What are you talking about? A par three or being able to reach the green on a par four on your D shot?

Speaker 1

Everything?

Speaker 2

Everything, well, just being able to reach the green off your T shot, no matter where you're hitting from.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, And I think you know yeah, because I think you know. So if I gave it to you, Fred and I said we were at one fifty, let's say, and we've got a green and you go right away, you know, you pull your one fifty club, you say, well, that's an eight iron for me. Okay, great, Now, all

of a sudden. If I said, there's a little bit of wind in your face, the pin is tucked back right corner, and there's a big wide part of the green on the left, maybe you would chip a little seven iron for a thousand bucks into the big part of the green instead of an eight iron. Just it makes you think different if you think that the goal of the shot is to hit the green, not not you know, not hit it within five feet. And if you think that way on every shot that you know,

what is it that you know? What shot? A shot at a time means that you're going to hit your shot. So the first te you're going to put a t in the ground, you're going to put a ball on it, and you're going to hit the golf ball in the fairway hopefully, and then you're going home. That was golf for today. That's one shot at a time, and your measure is did I hit the fairway. That's that's that you succeeded if you did, and you failed if you

hit it anywhere else other than there. And so one shot at a time means actually one shot at a time meaning I'm a success if I hit the fairway with that swing, and then my next shot would be hitting the green with my next shot or the fair way. If it was a part five, do.

Speaker 2

You change that philosophy or that approach depending on the level of skill per player. Yeah, I mean, like for a single handicap, would you say, all right, your goal is not to hit the green, Your goal is to get it within five feet of you in your approach shot get it within you know, tap in distance on that or are you still trying to just keep the idea of let's just get it to the green and two put.

Speaker 1

It depends on where we're at. If I already had a player that I've been working with for a while and they've got that figured out that it's more important to hit the green than it is to hit it to five feet, and then let your potter do a little talking for you. If we were just in a truly coaching scenario and I said, hey, I noticed you had ten shots inside one hundred yards and you're not hitting them close enough, then we could have that discussion.

You're going to lower your scores be if you get your hundred yard shots closer to the flag than We got to talk about that. And it's a risk reward thing from one hundred yards. You might go at any flag from one hundred and fifty yards. You might not go with the same flag as you would from one hundred yards.

Speaker 2

Well you yeah, hopefully you're not. I mean, now we're getting into course management, right, right, It's true, that's true. Yeah. I'll be at a par three one hundred and eighty yards with a friend who, even on his best of days, can drive the ball one hundred and fifty yards with his driver, and he'll pull out his hybrid and you're like, oh, yeah, flags in the back right, I'm going after It's like, just try to get to the green. What are you doing right?

Speaker 1

Right? Yeah? And I think that's it's it comes down. Yeah, So it changes for the level of player. For sure, there's people who can't reach par fours and two right, But then I'd be saying, well that that's that's a shame. Let's go over to the teaching tea and show you how to hit it further right, and then we're going to get onto the course. So sometimes you don't want

to get onto the course too early either. I think that everyone, everyone should be able to have a chance of hitting part fours and two, that that shouldn't be a problem unless the golf course is totally unfair.

Speaker 2

And there are those no, yeah, you know that there are there are some architects who like to just mess with you, and then there are those who you don't want to make make it so well, was it? Robert Trent Jones Sr. Was a difficult par and easy voguee.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I would love to see a golf course where we don't have to have handicaps. There's so many tea boxes that what levels you off on a hole is if we're on a four hundred yard par four and I play it at four hundred yards, what yardage doesn't need for you for you? Is it? What yards doesn't need to be for you to play me straight up on that hole? Well?

Speaker 2

Isn't that the whole tea at forward program?

Speaker 1

Yeah? And I think that I want to see a golf course done that way. I'd love to see.

Speaker 2

It really well. The whole point of teer forward, I think, is for every course to participate in their own way and you just decide, you know, if I want to hit an eight iron approach shot like they do on the tour, then I need to move my tea box up another thirty forty yards, right, So so do it that way. Just tee it up farther forward so you can get yourself in position for that eight iron shot.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I would love to do it. I'd love to go on the course with a few people and just say what yardage does everybody need to have this whole lot to play straight up? The beginner golfer might play the a part for at one hundred yards? Wow?

Speaker 2

Why not?

Speaker 1

Why not?

Speaker 2

I mean it's not tournament play, obviously.

Speaker 1

I'd be more inclined to wager something against you or with you if you were getting two shots on a hole versus let's play straight up and I don't care what your yardage is. I'll play you straight up.

Speaker 2

I like that because my kid Mike, when I go out with my son to play, and he's always wanting to make bets with me just to keep his head in the game. It's like, I don't I don't do that. He's like, how many strokes you give me? How many strokes? I said, now, I'll give you yardage instead. You can you can tee it up right up.

Speaker 1

To one hundred and fifty yards and I'll play you straight up.

Speaker 2

That's pretty good. I like that idea. We're going to make a note on that.

Speaker 1

Yeah, we might be on the something.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that could be a lot of fun doing it that way. Interesting, But you incorporate more than mechanics and into your lessons.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Well, and well we talked about flexibility already.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Probably my biggest the thing that makes me one thing that I learned to do through making mistakes myself. I had a lot of golf lessons where people tried to change my golf club while it was moving, meaning it had to get more inside or more outside, or how the toll had to go up, or And my belief on the golf swing is that anything that you want to change has to be changed standing still. It's it's broken before you move it.

Speaker 2

Oh, thank you. I love this idea because the golf swing is so fast, there's so much going on that it is so hard to be conscious of every nuance that's going on while the club is being swung.

Speaker 1

I totally agree. So if you can, if you can handle being a little bit uncomfortable at the start, because we had to change the way you were standing or the way you were holding the golf club in order to get you to swing differently then you can handle a lesson with me. But it's amazing how much you can change where someone's golf club goes or how it moved around their body, just simply by changing how they hold the club and set up to the ball.

Speaker 2

Right, I mean, isn't that the easiest thing to correct for you, I would think is the position, grip, alignment, the PGA part of you know, just your setup.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, and that's not easy. A lot of people just get the alignment part wrong all the time.

Speaker 2

Mm hmm.

Speaker 1

Tough to know where you're going if you can't get lined up to it.

Speaker 3

Mm hmm.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Well, and I don't think they understand the concept of target golf or aiming at something. They're just they're just their focus is hitting the ball, not where the ball is going.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Well, we have a challenge with all my students. All my students get this. This is the first thing to hear on the teaching ta. If we took a picture of you down the line and out in the front and you set up to the golf ball. So you set up, and we take a picture from the side and from the back, and then you go home and then you come back today and you set up again a day later to hit a golf ball, you

get one hundred thousand dollars. If you set up exactly the same way two days in a row, how would you do it? What would you measure yourself off of? They all start figuring out that the target's pretty important after that and lining up square to it, because you can do that every day, day in and day out.

Speaker 2

Clearly your incentive as a teacher is financial reward. You always like, I'll give you one hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 1

I might have an imaginary gambling problem.

Speaker 2

Hey that's better than having an actual game.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I just try to get people's attention. I use it all the time. I'm like, if someone called you up, we use hockey up here. You guys would probably use football or something down there.

Speaker 2

But you use hockey for everything we said.

Speaker 1

You know, I always tell them you just got called up to the to the Calgary Flames halftime show and you got to hit a perfectly straight shot. What are you gonna do? You're gonna line up like this, right?

Speaker 2

So yeah, I'll tell you my dirty Canadian joke after we're done recording.

Speaker 1

Okay, So.

Speaker 2

Do you have to or do you think it's appropriate to warn your students before you start the lesson that look the changes that we make today, and I've looked at a couple of your swings, and we're going to make some changes. Your game is going to digress before it progresses. And because you know when you talk to people, I had a lesson last week and my game has completely fallen apart since then. I'm so frustrated. Well, it's like, but if you stay with what they taught you, you

will improve. It's just going to take some time. And you know, we have so many examples on the tour of guys who are are tinkering and tinkering with their swings and it doesn't work immediately.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it should. It should get them, it should improve, you know what. So those are PGA tour players. These are the best players in the world. That's not that's not the massive of people who land up on the teaching team in front of me. And you know, it's easy for them to struggle because they are so good. Most of the people that I see when you're you know, let's say you're anywhere from a a twenty handicap down to a five handicap or or even up to a thirty.

When you make some good and changes in your golfing, sure you might struggle. But my what I find my favorite struggle for my students is they all come in and say, man, I shot so high, I flew it over every green. I used to play a cot, now I'm playing a dry I have no idea where to aim, and I'm hitting the ball way further. Well, that's that's a pretty good complaint.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's great. Stop keeping score for a while.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and it's you know what, it's going to take a little time to get used to that. And I think that if everybody said, here's my issue in golf, you know, like the typical one. I cut the golf ball and I don't hit it very far. Okay, so we start getting you to draw the golf ball and you hit it forty yards further. With everything, the next round of golf is going to be one of the

hardest rounds of golf you've ever played. Right, everything's fixed, and you're you're dying out there, and you just have to learn to play the game in a new way. But that's the exciting thing is that you start looking at it and it's it completely changes it, and it changes it for people and they get excited and get rolling it. That's so much fun.

Speaker 2

And again it's a situation where you need to get rid of the scorecard and just treat it as a practice round and not a you know, scoring round, because you've got new things going on. So don't hurt yourself doing that, because you'll really get upset with yourself.

Speaker 1

Well, or just have a fun short game day rescuing yourself.

Speaker 2

Yeah right, right, yeah, it's it seems so entertaining in some ways that people aren't really sure of the distances of their clubs, or even if they are, they think they're sure the distances of their clubs. Say they hit let's say they hit their six iron one hundred and eighty yards, but one time they hit it one hundred and ninety five, and now they're thinking, well, if I hit it perfectly, I'm going to hit it one hundred and ninety five. And what happens They come up short. Most of the time.

Speaker 1

There's when I give you the thousand dollars bad or one thousand dollars, which club would you pull out right now to hit that green? Yeah?

Speaker 2

Yeah, And then and then part of that question you had was and how hard would you swing? What kind of response do you get to that?

Speaker 1

It's a tough one for people, right, they all come back and they go, oh my god, you know I I swing a hundred I swing over one hundred percent and everything if there is over one hundred percent, you know, I don't know. I look at it. I look at any any professional athlete finds their sport easy, and.

Speaker 2

Then they become teachers and don't understand people who can't, who don't get well.

Speaker 1

Well. But see, that's that's my My job is to make the game is how fast can I make the game easy for people? It's great? How how fast can I get you to a stage where you go, man, this is just a lot simpler than I used to think it was. I used to make it so difficult, and it was me, you know, it was me making it difficult. And now I know what I'm supposed to do, and I know what I'm practicing, and i just got to go do it a bunch of times and I'm going to get I'm going to enjoy the game a lot more.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah, So once it becomes easy, then then the game changes.

Speaker 2

When does it get easy?

Speaker 1

That's your decision. That's up to you. You can make it easy right now. There's a lot of people who make it tough. There's a lot of people who have the tools in the bag right now, they and they just make it tough because they make everything in life tough. They just can't. They just can't seem to say, is this is good the way I'm doing. I like it. I like what I'm doing. Always I gotta do better.

I gotta do better. There's something that baffles me on in golf that people think they've always continually got to change their golf swing. I don't. I don't know any hockey player who's ever changed the way they shot the puck over over their career. I don't know any basketball player who change how they shoot. I don't know any football player who changes how they throw the ball.

Speaker 2

They tweak, they tweak, they work with coaches, they tweak. But you're right, making making major blanket changes on things like that, that's that seems unique to golf.

Speaker 1

If you're right, we got a situation in the world of golf right now that might might be because of that. You might maybe when you're number one, you're just supposed to say I can just practice this more and get better at what I do already, don't You don't have to change it.

Speaker 2

Do you get the sense that more golfers want to be good golfers versus being happy golfers?

Speaker 1

I think that if you want to be what it depends on what good is for you.

Speaker 2

Well, I've seen a lot of good golfers that are not happy. It's like, because the basic nature of golf is I can do be better. I can be better. I can do this better. I know I can, right, And so they're frustrated, they're angy, and you know, you guys who you have guys who are fifteen to eighteen handicaps that play with somebody who's a nine and they're like, oh my god, I fight You're so good and the nine is going, oh I missed that shot. You know.

It's do you ever get happy when you're playing golf?

Speaker 1

What is that? Is that a human nature thing or a golf thing?

Speaker 2

Well, isn't golf like life in so many ways? That to me, the major similarity between golf and life is how you handle the problems right.

Speaker 1

And and that's that's why, because both.

Speaker 2

Life and golf gives you lots of crap to deal with.

Speaker 1

Yeah, when I hire, my favorite interview process for a job when I hire new staff is to take people for nine holes. I don't I don't need to ask you a whole bunch of questions. I just need to see how you handle yourself on a golf course.

Speaker 2

Nothing exposes a person's character faster than a round of golf.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, so true. You know, so if people aren't happy, I mean we run into those people everywhere. They're in business, they're they're in there in life, they're in friendships, they're everywhere. That just there's just nothing that that. You know, they can't make enough money, their house is never big enough there, you know, and that's and then they do the same in golf. And it was man, life show would be easier if you're like, man, I'm pretty good at just

about everything. If you could just look at yourself and say, I'm pretty good.

Speaker 2

And I'm satisfied, I'm happy. Yeah, it works for me.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Well, once everyone's figured that out, I think we got life figured out.

Speaker 2

That ain't gonna happen.

Speaker 1

No, I'm living you, Yeah.

Speaker 2

That ain't gonna happen In twenty fourteen. Congratulations, you were named the Alberta Teacher of the Year. That's yeah, you should be very pleased and honored by that. And you said that again in a letter to me, you said, the game is given, taught and transform many of my beliefs, thoughts and values that I have in my life. Let's talk about that for a minute.

Speaker 1

I don't know, Well, what.

Speaker 2

Is it that golf has taught you that it has transformed many of your beliefs and your thoughts and your values that you approach, that you change in the way you deal with your life.

Speaker 1

Now, well, some of the things that that we've even just talked about, just you know, when is enough enough? When are you satisfied? That's the thirty thousand foot view of you know. I remember when I played on tour. I mean, you know, you'd shoot a sixty five and you come off the course and you could say, yeah, but I could have shot a sixty two. There was those three shots that I did. You know, I missed it, but yeah, yeah, and you got to be at this stage and you know, and I when I was when

I played on tour, there was also the opposite. I'd shoot seventy five and couldn't sleep either because I just I was so angry that I wasn't going to make the cut, and it was you know, and you just have to realize that it is. It just is what it is. And you know, sometimes if you can look at a seventy five or a difficult situation and say, you know, here's an opportunity to turn it around now

and do something great with it. Have a great attitude, and see if you can make something great of something maybe that isn't that feels not so great, or even adding to something that is already great, like shooting is sixty five and shooting another one. Yeah, so I guess you know, from my perspective, it's it's been. It gives

me just on little things everything in life. It's so easy to get swallowed up by kids and work and all your commitments that go on in our lives and oh my god, and I you know, I can't, I can't keep up. And sometimes we forget that, you know, it is okay, everything's good, and just focus on the fairway. Quit thinking about the trees, and quit worrying about the water, and quit worrying about worry about money, and quit worrying

about these things. Those things will come and just try to focus on and enjoying yourself strolling down the middle.

Speaker 2

How are you able to teach golfers to not worry about history in this sense that when you said stop worrying about this tree, stop worrying about the water, It's like, you know, oh, every time I play this course, I hit the ball in the water. It's like, yeah, but that's not relevant to your next shot? Is it?

Speaker 1

Being able to let go is a serious skill? Again? That's why I go back to that silly thousand dollars question. You know, if I stand you there and I bounce that question off you again, I'm like, say, like, you get a thousand bucks, why don't you forget about the water. Like, seriously, if someone was really going to give you a thousand bucks to hit the green, would you be sitting here going on, I'm going to hit in the water again, and it's really hard, you.

Speaker 2

Know, I think, yeah, but I actually think that people would even that kind of pressure. I'll give you a thousand bucks, which is not necessarily a positive question. I can see that being a tremendous amount of pressure adds a lot of tension, adds a lot of you makes makes the water bigger, makes your hand squeeze tighter, make your shoulders go up even higher. You know it's not a relaxed, loose, easy swing. Then there's a lot of tension behind that.

Speaker 1

Well, if you know how to gamble, it is.

Speaker 2

I had a clubmaker. I had a clubmaker who once made me fill out one hundred and ten question survey before he would discuss making clubs for me. And one of the questions was do you bet when you play golf? And I said, no, I don't. I don't find gambling entertaining. And he said, you don't gamble when you play golf. Why do you play.

Speaker 1

That? Now that might be a problem on the other side.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know, this guy wants to take your money exactly.

Speaker 1

I don't bet either. I'm just learning. But if you want to bet, I will know.

Speaker 2

And to me, it's more score scorecard watching than anything. And it's that's what I don't want to do when I'm playing, is keep looking at the scorecard.

Speaker 1

Yeah, you know, And we're just just commenting on on how do you how do you you know? Uh, just when somebody if you did say a thousand dollars question with the water, it can work in reverse. As well. And I think I think that's the key is we all have to figure out how to live with ourselves or compete against ourselves and and and succeed. You know, That's the key is we have to be able to

That's really all we're playing against. Is my thinking going to take me in a negative direction today or a positive one?

Speaker 2

Interesting? So is my thinking said or is it working against me?

Speaker 1

Yeah? Yeah, And I think that I don't know. I get a chance to golf with a lot of different people, and I've golfed with some guys who are pretty good golfers, and you know, they're they go crazy on the golf course, throwing golf clubs and to the point where I'm like, man, I don't I got to say something because I don't want to get hit with a golf club.

Speaker 2

You know, Well, the first lesson there is stand behind the other guy.

Speaker 1

And I guess I I abuse my position in golf a little bit on those scenarios. And I just I asked them, I said, what are you getting so angry for? I mean, really, you're you're playing at the level that you're you that's pretty good for you. I can't play like me or like a PGA Tour player, So why are you trying to get mad when you don't hit a shot like one?

Speaker 2

I actually got an email from a listener ones who said that his dad used to say to him when he was a kid, you know, and he was a hot headed kid, and he would regularly throw his clubs and his dad said, you're not good enough to throw your clubs yet.

Speaker 1

Right, that's right. I love I do too. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Golf Performancecanada dot com.

Speaker 1

That's right.

Speaker 2

Okay, make sure.

Speaker 1

We're gonna have lots of golf tips coming up there too this year. Well, one thing we know today with the track man that when people swing a golf club, we talk about swing path and club face angle. And I ask people all the time, if your face points over here and your path goes over there, where's your ball end up? And people are pretty sharp when you ask him that question. They always tell me that the golf ball basically follows the face, which is the truth.

So wherever your ball goes, it's because that's where your face is pointing at the moment of impact.

Speaker 2

Club face, not your face.

Speaker 1

Yeah, exactly, clubface. Yeah. So what happens when people are swinging is they don't realize that when they get to impact, the faces either open or closed, or very rarely is it square. And I find that the best way that people can influence their club face because it's a seventy five percent influence on the ball. The path of the golf club influences the ball twenty five percent, and the face of the golf club set is seventy five percent.

So the best way that you can make an impact on your game is to actually work on your grip. My saying that I always say is if you're not working on your grip, you're not working on your game. So what I want to do is try to give you some sort of idea of what we can do

in the left hand. So in the left hand, what happens with a lot of people, so this is their top hand, what happens to a lot of people is they get the golf club too diagonal in their hand this way, and what they need to do is get the golf club running more across their knuckles this way so that it's deeper in their hand. You want to be able to hold it with this pinky back here

and then that gets on this way. So if I actually turn that this way for you to have a look at my hand gets turned over so that there's a bit of a bend in the wrist here as well. Okay, so that's in my left hand. I always want to do that. The other way I can think of it is I want to put the toe of the golf club up this way, so when I'm holding it, I want to feel like I'm grabbing a motorcycle grip, like

I'm going to race the motorcycle. And then what that should do when I hold the golf club is I actually turn the glub face down a little bit and close the face. So the big deal is getting the golf club deeper in your hand, running more across your knuckles. One other way you can think of it is how do you hold it? If someone brought you the golf club this way? How do you hold it? You just grab it in here and it goes right across your knuckles. So you can see how it goes across my knuckles

this way, And that's how you want to grip it. Lefetime, you want to get it more across your knuckles, less diagonal in your hand, clay around with your grip, make it either close or open and watch what happens with your golf ball.

Speaker 2

Awesome. That was an amazing tip and the video is so important on that. So people are just listening from this one, you've got to go check out on golf Smarter TV the YouTube channel so you can see what he just explained because it's going to have an impact on the results of your ball flight and your swing.

Speaker 1

Awesome.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's great, Garrett, thanks so much, Buddy.

Speaker 1

Hey, thank you, bred I appreciate it.

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