Hi, This is Larry Heckner in Wilmington, North Carolina. I play on the beautiful Pete Die and Jack Nicholas courses alongside the Atlantic Ocean at the Country Club of Landfall. Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Golf Smarter number four hundred and seventy two, published on January twenty, twenty fifteen.
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I think one of the worst clubs that might have been invented.
Was the sixty degree wedge because everybody wants to use a sixty degree around the green because.
They can't stop the ball.
I think there's spots for that club, But I think the first thing that you look at is what kind of a lie do you have?
How's my ball?
City?
Is it in deep gras is it's sitting up? Do I have a nice lie? You know? Can I get to it?
Then the second thing you look to is, once my ball lands on the green, how much green do I have to roll the ball out to the hole. So you're trying to use the terrain of the green. So you're going to use a golf club that's going to lift the ball enough to get it over the fringe, get it on the green and start rolling. So if you're five feet off the edge of the green and you've got a pretty decent lie and you've.
Got thirty forty feet.
To the pin, and you hit a lofted club like a sandwich.
You get no chance because you have to.
Carry the ball too far out onto the green, and then you really can't control what's going to happen when it lands. So you take a nine iron, maybe a pitching wedge, even an eight iron, and just get the ball onto the green and let it start rolling like a putt. So if you approach it like that, I think you just have so much more success because you're using the terrain and using the slope of the green and rolling it like a putt.
How to Minimize the Damage Part two with Tom Good This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Tom, Hey, Fret, how you.
Doing I'm doing fine. Thank you so much for continuing this conversation, because I have a lot more to ask.
Awesome, and I love it.
I've got, I think a lot more that I can contribute and try to help some people.
Oh that would be fun. Okay. So what I really wanted to find out from you to start is tell me what is your method or your teaching philosophy.
Swing the club head and if anybody goes and tries to find out what that means.
Ernest Jones.
Ernest Jones was a proponent of swing the club head and Ernest Todd in the late nineteen twenties, thirties and forties, and his whole philosophy was on that freedom emotion and feeling the golf club and feeling the clubhead swing. And I think for the average golfers a great way to feel the body getting involved in the golf swing, feeling everything work together.
And it's based around perfect motion, which is a pendulum.
If the club hit swings back and forth at the same speed, it's in perfect motion. And if we try to interfere with it by trying to make it go faster, try to guide it where it's going, we're going to destroy that natural motion. So I try to use that as my base, and then depending on the individual I'm working with and the experience level and where they are, I kind of can branch out from that and expand on what that individual can do.
You know, I would love to play the devil's advocate and try to get you to flush this out, but I'm just being plain old stupid. I don't understand what you mean by swing the clubhead.
Well, there's one thing in the golf swing that contacts the.
Ball, and that's the clubhead.
Correct.
We don't do it with our shoulders. We don't do it with our hands. We don't do it with our elbows, we don't do it with our hips, we don't do it thing. It's that golf club is our connection to the golf ball. So if we can feel that weight swinging and feel that motion and let our body work with that motion of the golf club, that's perfect motion.
And how are we supposed to feel that?
Get rid of the.
Tension in your golf swing, lighten up your grip pressure, and actually feel the weight of the golf club as it swings. If you let the golf club swing back and forth, you'll start to feel the weight of the club head.
You know this.
I deal with this a lot where people say, well, can't I can't feel the clubhead. Well, most of the time you're holding out of that golf club too tight.
You're trying to control where.
The golf club's going rather than letting it swing freely.
If you just relax your hands and arms, you're never going to.
Lose the golf club the golf club because most of the people hold the golf club too tight anyway, they're gripping it, you know, death grip on it, trying to You're trying to control that motion rather than getting getting your body tuned into that motion of the swinging clubhead.
Are you familiar with Fred Schoemaker.
I used to teach with Fred for a couple of years. We taught at the same facility.
Okay, because to me and Fred's been on the show a couple of times, and he's truly amazing extraordinary. Golf is remarkable stuff. And if we've got some new listeners who have not heard Fred Schumaker, you've got to go back into the archives and hear stuff because you'll be blown away. And we also have his DVD here to if you're interested in buying it. But I don't want to get too deep into him. But if I can interpret what you were saying, what he's saying is you
know the feel of what's going on. To be able to feel it, that's kind of hard to do.
It's it's not as hard as you think, Fred.
When you when you get someone to relax enough to where they can actually get a sense of the motion, and you start with small motions, small movements back and forth, and once you get the person swinging the golf club with nice tempo and nice chiming, and the trick is swinging the golf club the same speed back and the same speed through, which goes completely against our human nature and what we're trying to do because we're trying to hit the golf ball.
Did yeah, that you just completely baffled that we did same speed?
Kind of interesting, isn't it really interesting?
Because the golf club will actually, on its own be going faster at impact. But if we try to put speed into it, we change the natural motion of the golf swing. So if the swing is going back and through in your mind at the same speed, then right at the bottom of that arc, which is where we line the golf ball up, it's going at this maximum speed. So the swing really it starts out slow to fast to slow coming through the ball, so it's fast right of impact, and then it will start to slow.
Down as it goes to the end of the golf swing.
So if you kind of focus and a good way to feel this is if you hold a golf club in your fingers thumb and forefinger and just let it swing back and forth. You're going to feel the weight of the golf club. Sure, the golf club will swing back and forth. Okay, So now if you take that motion and just let your body get in tune with that motion as the club swings back and swings through, Now you're going to create some timing in the golf swing. You're gonna keep you know.
Get some rhythm.
You're gonna you're gonna just feel the complete motion of what's going.
On where you're in tune with that clubhead. Hmm.
It's an interesting Yeah, it definitely makes me and I apologize for the dead air. I know this is not a good place to have dead air. But when I get you know, and I hear something like that, I got to think about it.
For a moment.
So I'm trying to because that's why you.
Know, when I kind of when I start talking about, you know, swinging the clubhead and feeling that you're swinging the same.
Speedback because.
Of the average golfers that play, they try to put speed into the club and usually it starts at the top of the back swing, right, and so that's when you're going to come over the top. You're going to release the club early. You're going to just have all kinds of timing issues of when is the golf club releasing. So if we focus on releasing the golf club right at the ball, okay, well that's maximum speed is right at impact.
So as the club starts away from the ball, starts.
Slow, the speed increases as the club comes down through impact, and then it decreases as it goes to the end of the golf swing.
Wow, I know that. In our last conversation, you talked about not your students, working with your students in getting the most out of their natural swing, their natural ability, not trying to compare them to anybody else, but because they're the tour players are high profile and we get to watch them more than we get to watch ourselves. Is there somebody's swing that you actually love and think
it is the model? Or is it? Or should I ask is there somebody's rhythm or tempo that you think is a model?
I mean, I think you could look at Ernie El's and Fred Couple's something you'd say that, And I think I think one of the best swings that I ever, ever, still continues to work is Watson because what you what you're looking at is a constant pace. Okay, it's not slow, you know, it's not a slow swing. It's not a fast swing, but it's a constant pace. So the swing goes back and comes through it. There's a rhythm to the golf swing. L's is a slower rhythm. Couples is
a slower rhythm. But if you watch L's and Couples hit the ball and watch where the acceleration is, you know, people are amazed, They.
Go, how can Couples? How can you hit it? The far doesn't even swing at it.
Yeah, but if you watch impact and you watch where the speed is, there's no effort in it and it's a smooth acceleration through impact.
So rhythm tempo is important? Or are those two different things?
I think rhythm and tempo are very similar. If you don't have rhythm, you can't have tempo. They work together, and I think they're they're critical to the golf swing. I think I think they're probably the number one thing in the golf swing is rhythm and tempo.
Is that the number one thing you find in air with a lot of a lot of amateurs.
Absolutely, And I think the number one thing that the average golfer tries to do is hit the ball. And you know, and I use this a lot when I'm talking to people, is that if you go down to the driving range to practice, what are you going to do?
When somebody said I'm going down.
To the driving range to hit balls, nobody ever says they're going down to the driving range to swing right.
So it's a swing.
And what I like to try to convey to people is to try to get them to swing the golf club.
The ball gets in the way, I'm not going to try to hit it. I'm not going to try to guide it. I'm not going to try to lift it. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to try to get the golf club to swing through the ball. Let the ball get in the way.
I found that the impact is just the middle of your swing. It's not the result. It's not the end result exactly.
How many times have you hit a shot on the golf course that was just felt so soft that the ball just took off and you're going, dang, I didn't even swing at that thing.
Yeah, I mean, the ball just ripped.
And always and it always has that perfect sound too. You can always tell by the sound when it strikes it.
And then so what do you do is you go back and try to figure out what you did.
And try to recreate that.
And you recreate it. Well, it's a swing.
You can repeat that swing if you can get that swing moving okay, and feel that golf club, feel that weight. And the only way you can feel it is to get the tension.
Out of your hands. Don't pull it so tight.
And that leads me to, you know, my two pet peeves in the golf swing are the two things that people try to do all the time when they start is keep your head down and keep your eye. You know, I'm going to say right hand or here, keep your left arm straight. How many times have you heard that one?
I mean, all the time when I'm playing with friends. Is like when whenever there's a bad shot, it's like, ah, I lifted my head.
Yeah, And I think you lift your head because your body's swinging out a rhythm and your arms go faster than your lower body, and then your head has to move because your.
Shoulders are hitting your head because you're keeping your head down.
So when you keep your head down, you put your head down and your chin gets into your chest, so it gets in.
The way of the shoulders rotating through.
So you didn't lift your head on purpose, but it had to lift up or you're gonna break your neck.
How do you find tune your rhythm from? You know?
There? There are several drills. I think one of the one.
Of the really great drills to do, and it's really it's probably very difficult for the average player is to actually try to swing a fold.
Let's say if you took a five iron out, okay, and you have your normal yard you know what, Okay, try to hit it one hundred yards.
I'm sorry, Tom, I broke up. You broke up on that last sentence. Please repeat your lessons.
Sorry, Try to hit airn in slow motion and try to hit a five iron one hundred yards with a full motion, you can't accelerate through it. You've got to let it just be a natural motion, so everything is moving at a slower pace.
A lot of work with with short shots.
Hitting hitting little wedges, I mean, and I think this is where a lot of people chunk wedg shots and and and have a lot of trouble around the green is because they get short and quick and they get they get fast.
They don't have rhythm in those short short shots.
Yeah. I've always noticed that that on those on the short pitch shots that you know, chips around the green and whatnot, that I'm always the back, especially on the backswing, it's going a lot faster than right then right, and when slowing that down, yeah, I have better results.
Think about that that Grandfather clock that you've seen with that pendulum moving back and forth, sure perfect motion times all the clocks in the world.
Yeah, So why can't we use that to time the golf.
Swing Because that pendulum has never hit a ball, and it never follows through.
And it goes back the other way all the time.
It's like, come on back, Nope, come back that.
Way, No going the other way, And there's always that little hesitation before it goes back the other way, and you can incorporate that into your golf swing, where at the top of your back swing there's a hesitation before you go the other way. Okay, yeah, hesitate to rotate back.
Through the ball.
But it's not it's not a conscious hesitation. It's not a hold right, not when.
You get it going right right at first, it may have to be a conscious stop. Okay, when you're when you're practicing it, when you're kind of trying to get a feel for this. I don't think there's anything wrong with stopping a little bit longer just to feel it.
You get it to the top of the.
Back swing, everything stops, everything moves back through, and then as you start to feel that rhythm, then you can pick up the pace.
Of the swing just a little bit. You kind of pick up your tempo. So there's there's that constant pace, so it's not slow. You're not swinging that.
That real slow back and through, but it's back up to the top and back through.
You know, it's a constant pace back and through.
And then you have the concept or you have fourteen clubs in your bag and they're all different lengths, so how does that impact your rhythm? How does that impact the speed or swinging the clubhead or does it?
It shouldn't. It's going to be exactly the same. The longer club just has a little longer to travel. So if you're taking a driver and basically in your setup position, you're in the same setup position because the club is built to move further away from the ball just because of the li.
Angle of the golf club.
So if you're swinging the driver at the same rhythm as a wedge, okay, you're just going to have a consistent, repeating golf swing day in and day out.
It's going to be the same. It's never going to change.
Have you ever been introduced to a scene or even tried the one length set of irons?
I saw those years ago when they first came out. PGA made those golf clubs the PGA Golf Company, and they're not around anymore, I don't think, so it must not have worked.
Well, yeah, I mean, because you know, the theory I guess is that the club head itself is the angle that's going to be where the ball comes off. So why and it would make it I guess for you know, high handicappers. It would make it a lot easier if they just had the same length to deal with every time, as opposed to being too close to the ball, being far away from the ball.
You know, well, I think that's where, you know, coaching and instruction comes in.
You know that that.
People need to really get some guidance, They need to find a good instructor, they need to find a good PGA golf professional that can guide them, you know. And that's where people will do that. They'll they'll change with every club. And I don't I personally don't think that you change your setup position with every club. If your arms are hanging in the same position, you say, with an eight iron and a three wood. Okay, the golf clubs are built to take care of that distance.
So if you repeat that setup.
Position, just change your ball position longer club ball moves a little bit further forward. You make the same motion with the golf swing. The length of the club creates a little more speed and you and the loft of the club combined with the length of the club creates more distance.
Let's get back to what we were finishing up with on our last episode, and you were talking about golf course management and course management, which has nothing to do with working at a golf course. I like to just call it strategy. It's easier for me when I say strategy.
Golf course. Yeah, management, what do you?
What do you work in the exactly? I'm a bartender. So i'd like to talk about You talked about going out on the course and sticking a person at one hundred and fifty yards and you know, seeing how they approach and whatnot. Let's talk about course management from within one hundred and fifty yards and then from there. Let's talk about this for a while, and then from there before we leave, I'd like to also pick your brain a little bit about what you say is one of
your specialties, which is working around the greens. Okay, so let's the critical time inside one hundred and fifty yards. It's more important than most people realize. I think. I think that they're so set on hitting the ball as hard and far as they can off the tee and not realizing that you really can improve your scores. If you don't focus on that, you can get away with
a lot of garbage. I had. I had a shot this weekend where my te shot went forty yards I just I hit four inches behind the ball, the big piece of dirt. The ball rolled and I parted the hole. Luckily it was a one putt. But I mean, you can get away with a bad tea shot, but you cannot get away with bad shots inside one hundred and fifty.
I agree.
And when you look at a green, you know, most of the bunkers or most of the trouble on a hole is around the green. You know, there'll be some fairway bunkers and things like that, maybe a lake near some water at one point, you know, depending on the the difficulty of the golf course.
But when you get in that we call that the scoring zone.
When you get inside that one fifty, that one hundred yards, okay, that's that is where you're going to make up a lot of strokes, So you know, and I think one of the things again goes back to the player really knowing how far they hit the ball, knowing your real yardage, you know, and knowing you know not just how far is the is the pin, but you know it's it's if you play a course a lot, you'll know how big a green is. And a lot of the times
there's not a lot of trouble long. There might be a bunker somewhere back there, just for a cosmetic thing that they show. But usually a person is not going to knock a ball unless they kind of blade want to knock it really long. Very seldom are they going to miss a green long. Most of the time they're always going to miss the green shorts.
So you know, I.
Would say, you know, just error on this on the side of being a little bit longer than really trying to you know, maybe be really precise with that, you know, one hundred and forty five yards shot right over the top of the bunker, you know, hit it one hundred and fifty five and get it to the middle of the green and tupots.
We had Dave Stockton on the show when his book came out earlier this year, and he gave this piece of advice that I have found incredibly helpful, and that is he never takes just one club to the ball. You know, it's like, Okay, I'm at one hundred and fifty yards. That's generally my six iron. Not for Stockton obviously, but you know, but but that just doesn't mean because you're one hundred and fifty yards that is the club
to hit. So he takes a couple of clubs and decides, you know, he looks at the lie, he looks at the wind, he looks at where the the you know, the pin is placed on the green if you want to attack it, you know. And I find that I go, I'm short a lot, and that recently I'm clubbing up more often than I ever have, and I'm having a lot more success.
It's great, No, and yeah, because they put most of the trouble in the front of the greens, because they just seem to just realize that the average guy's going to go out.
There and lady and they're not going to hit enough golf club. And part of it is not really being honest and being you know, for.
The guys, I got to let their ego go a little bit and say, you know what, I don't hit my seven iron one hundred and sixty yards, you know, I hit it one hundred and thirty.
Five, and you know, and use a little bit more club.
And the other thing that happens when you use a little bit more club is you're going to swing a little smoother.
And not hit it quite as hard.
And that might lead into why I think the real short game, the chipping and pitching are so important because if you're really.
Good at that takes.
A lot of pressure off of you out there one hundred and fifty yards. If you're a bad chipper and a bed you've got a really bad short game and you're one hundred and fifty yards. You put so much pressure on yourself because if I don't hit the green, I've got triple bogie here or something, you know, because I can't chip, I can't hit bunker shots.
I can't do this.
And that's the way people think I've got to hit the green because it's I guarantee it's a double bogie if.
I don't hit the green, and that that kind of pressure it itself is just not going to help exactly.
You know you, I mean, you might get lucky once in a while and hit one, but when you put that heat on yourself, you're just you're gonna you're gonna miss the shot. In ninety percent of the time, you're either gonna hit it fat, you're gonna pull it, You're gonna you know, push it. It's it's it's going to end up in disaster. But when you do, when you can get it up and down from the edge of
the green. When you can chip it up and make the putt, you can stand out there a one hundred and fifty hundred and forty yards and you take a huge amount of pressure off of yourself in the game and just you're going to enjoy it a lot more because you say, you know what, I don't care for, miss Green, I'm a great bunker player.
Yeah, and walk into a bunker going, oh, this is going to be fun instead of going oh no, no, no, I don't want to.
Be oh my god, yeah, change your attitude and you hit it in a bunker. I got no chance, you know, I might as well take a triple right now because I can't play bunker shots. Well, how many times do people practice bunker shots, you know? And that's that's kind of one of the things. I think a lot of golf courses maybe don't have that good practice area where you can practice your bunker shots and practice your short game.
And you you know, you surely can't practice them on the golf course while you're playing because.
You got to keep up with the group in front of you. You know, you can't hold up play and hit extra shots. So it's it's really hard for people to practice that short game. So you know, again, finding finding a good.
Facility that's got a place to practice that short game is really important.
Kind of bird you have back there, Oh.
That's a little Senegal parrots.
He's about two rooms away and you can still hear him.
Oh yeah, he broke a glass in here.
I moved him to the other room. You know, he hears me talking about him right now.
So okay, let's let's say, uh, we're one hundred and fifty out. I hit my seven iron is my is my one forty two club, and my six iron is my one fifty five club, and I'm one hundred and fifty. You know the whole I'm between club's dilemma? What do I do? How do I how do I deal with that? How do what do you advise on that?
Go with the longer club. Hit the ball a little longer, and you're gonna be on the green because you're gonna you're gonna take that that club that's just not quite enough.
It's going to force you to swing a little harder. You're and you know, you may not be conscious, you may not be out there saying okay, you know I it's gonna be on the front of the green. But then right there, you know it's not.
Quite enough, so you try to goose it a little bit, try to give it a little extra Generally, it's gonna end up with a poorly hit.
Shot, right because now we're going back to what you were saying about your adding tension because you're trying to swing harder, right right.
I gotta I gotta hit this one really good, because if I don't hit this one good, I'm in the bunker or I'm short of the green. So I'm going to jump on it a little bit, and that throws your normal timing out of whack.
It throws your rhythm out right well.
And I think that this is part of what like like a front pin creates a situation in your head where you're trying to you're trying to get the ball in the hole, so you're going to come up short, you know, instead of just going for the middle of the green and coming back right.
And I think if you know where people hit, they try to.
Hit shots that they're not capable of hitting, and that's why they're a twenty five handicap, you know, And that's why they make the triples and the you know, the quads, and they're just going, what's wrong with my game?
Well, you know, they're not playing at their ability level. They're there. They saw this shot on TV exactly I can. I think I can hit this shot right over that bunker with a little draw.
And they've never hit a draw in their life, you know, but they're gonna they're going to hit that draw because they saw, you know, Tiger hit it right, and you know, and so it ends up they you know, they yank went over in the bunker somewhere and they got a big number. It's just you got to take those big numbers out of the game, and you got to take the lost balls and the penalty shots.
You know, keep the ball in play.
And I apologize to the audience for being so redundant. But one of my favorite favorite all time lines was actually told to me by a Golf Smarter listener when we were all playing together. He says, never follow a bad shot with a stupid shot, right, Yeah, And so it is so often where you hit some you hit your drive and it goes errand and it's over in the trees and there's an opening and you can see the green you can see the flag. There's nothing in
the way except there's trees lining the entire area. But there's this small opening. So you're like, I can go for that. You've gotten double bogie all over that, right, double making.
Yeah, there's a there's a one percent six best rate in going through that opening right again. You know, so they're you know, they're just leaving themselves. Knock it out in the fairway. Take your medicine, you know, and you'll see you'll see the really good players.
You'll see the tour players. Take their medicine. Okay, I hit it in the.
Rough here, I'm chipping it out, and you know, they're they're very seldom they're going to hit the master's one hundred and fifty yard four hundred forty forty yard hook around trees with a wedge. You know that the bubble hit. You know, that's that's once in a lifetime shot, you know, and people.
Say, you know, I think I can do that. Yeah, right, you take your medicine, chip it.
Out, and really it's like you're sitting there in that bad position and you're going, okay, I can get there from here, and it's like, wait a minute, think about the results before you take that swing. If you don't make it, and chances are you won't, but I know you think you can. So now you're looking at double bogie maybe at best, but here if you just go ahead, put it back in the fairway. Now you've got a shorter shot to the green. You put it up on
the green. All of a sudden, you're now you're playing a bogie. That's okay, right.
Exactly exactly. So you know, if you if you made a bogie in every hole, you shoot ninety.
Hello, it's like if you get a five on every hole, you shoot ninety. And so many people are struggling to break ninety and they don't see it. They keep trying to do things that, like you said, they're not practicing. You know that in practice.
Right, But you've seen the other one is where the you know, you're in the rough to the right, it's long grass and you hit it. You're going to hit you know, it's you know, one hundred five yards of
the green. So I'm going to hit a four iron out of this rough and you know, you hit it about fifty yards and it stays in the rough, you know, and then you try to advance it and you keep trying to advance it up the rough rather than Okay, let's hit something with loft, get it out in front of the green where I can knock a nine iron or a wedge onto the green. And you know, it's just minimizing your damage, just trying to look at it
and say okay. And I think if people would approach that shot and take just a few extra seconds, it doesn't take very long and they start with it, look at it.
Okay, if I if.
I go through that opening, you know I could hit you know, that's a possibility. But my success rate there is one percent. Okay, if I chip it out to the fairway, that's ninety percent. If I kind of take a little bit more cut off of the you know, around the edge of the tree, that's maybe a fifty percent kind of rate.
You know what I'm going with the ninety You.
Know, it's you know, if you just take that just a little bit more time in looking what your options are and not being the hero heroes to turn into you know, it doesn't work most.
Of the time.
Zeros. Yeah, yeah, let's spend the last couple of minutes here about working around the green. Okay, So now you've taken that one hundred and fifty yards to the hole and you've hit it. Actually, you've pulled out the wrong club and your ego is too big, and you hit it one hundre and thirty five yards. Now you're five yards short of the hole and the pins in the middle. The key here is to not chip and then two putt. The key is to make that chip, get it as
close to the hole as possible for taping. That would be the goal, well, right, the goals to make it, but chances are that's not going to happen.
Okay, So simply the way I kind of approach this, I mean most people, and I think maybe one of the worst clubs that might have been invented was the sixty degree wedge because everybody wants to use a sixty degree around the green because they can't stop the ball.
Okay, you know, I think there's spots for that club. But I think the first thing that you look at is what kind of a lie do you have?
How's my ball sitting? Is it in deep grass? Is it sitting up? Do I have a nice lie?
You know? Can I get to it? Okay?
Then the second thing you look to is how much ground is there? How much grass or how much ground between my ball and the front edge of the green where I'm going to you know, from the green or the edge of the green to the hole. How much green do I have to work with? Okay, so first of all, how much how's my lie? How high in the air do I.
Have to get my ball? And how much ground do I.
Have to carry to get the ball onto the green and let it start rolling like a putt? So I think when you start looking at once my ball lands on the green, how much green do I have to roll the ball out to the hole. So you're trying to use the terrain of the green. So you're going to use a golf club that's going to lift the ball enough to get it over the fringe, get it on the green and start rolling.
So if you're five feet off the.
Edge of the green and you've got a pretty decent lie, and you've got thirty feet thirty forty feet to the pin, and you hit a lofted club like a sandwich, you get no chance because you're trying to you know, you're trying to carry that you have to carry the ball too far out onto the green and then you really can't control what's going to happen when it lands. So you take a nine iron, maybe pitching wedge, even an eight iron, and just get the ball onto the green
and let us start rolling like a putt. So if you approach it like that, I think you just have so much more success because you're using the terrain and using the slope of the green and rolling it.
Like a putt.
And then there's the whole concept of backspin or making the ball check, you know, making it getting enough where it's gonna hit and just hold tight, which is so hard to do well.
And particularly if you're close to the green because you're not creating enough speed to spin the ball. I heard a you know, just kind of going on backspin, and I believe it was mister Venturi who said this at.
A clinic one time. He was talking about people.
Asking questions, and the guy asked him how.
Do you back the ball up? How do you put that backspin on it? And he was at Venturing asking him how far do you hit your seven iron? He said one hundred and twenty yards. He said, why do you want to back it up? You know it's a hitting balls with backspin is.
Hard to do because, particularly around the green, I don't think you can create enough speed in the club to create backspin. You can create check if you're using the loft of the club, and you know it has to do with.
Keeping your your lead arm ahead of the club head.
So you're pulling the golf club through the ball and you're not flipping it with your backhand right and that's where you flip flip the club.
If you're a right hand it's your right hand.
You kind of your club head gets ahead of everything else and the ball goes up in the air and there's no spin on it at all.
Okay, So it's it's really keeping your hands.
Ahead of the club head and letting the loft of the golf club create whatever height is going to come out of it, and.
The ball is actually going to spin.
Okay, if you're in long grass, you're not going to spin it out of long grass.
It's it's almost impossible to do. You have to have a clean light to get any kind of spin at all.
So and so many people just try to get it up in the air and let it kind of float down. But really, are you advocating that you want to keep the ball as low as possible, let it roll as long as you can.
Absolutely, you know, if you were standing on the edge of the green and it wasn't a it was a game of toss the ball and get it to roll as close to that hole as you can or as close to that target out there, okay, and you.
Had to throw it with your hand.
I'll guarantee you that ninety five percent of the people are going to toss it low, and they're going to get down low and they're going to roll it along the ground and they're not going to throw it as high as they can up in the air.
That's a great way to envision it. Yeah, that's awesome. What would you do if you were just throwing the ball? Would you throw it?
And I'll do this with a lot of beginners or a lot of intermediate golfers that really are having trouble with their short game, I'd say I'll hand them a ball in their hand. I said, just toss it to that hole, and they'll toss it out hip higher or less and it'll roll out to the hole. Very seldom will they stand there and they'll throw it, you know, twenty yards up in the air, thirty feet or whatever
you want to call it. You know, nobody's going to do that because they're looking at that hole and they're just going to roll it out there. So if you can get that concept and so the next time i'd say to anybody that you're really struggling with, you know what kind of a shot do I want to hit?
Here? Is put a ball in your hand and toss it out there.
And now you can't really do this when you're playing within a game, you know, but sometime maybe you're playing nine holes by yourself, get out there and toss the ball around the green, or go to the practice green, if you're around the chipping green, you know, toss some balls and see what the ball does when it's when you're rolling it, and all of a sudden you're going to start to get a really good fee fell and a really good dea on the type of shot.
And you want to hit.
Information.
Well, you got all those clubs in your bag, use them, yeah, because they all can create different things.
I mean, people get stuck chipping with one.
Club, right, what's your favorite club to chip with?
Uh? Probably a pitching wedge degree, probably.
Fifty fifty two, you know, the fifty eighth versatile if you're in longer grasp, you know, fifty eight to you know the fifty eight to sixty, you know, but you can take your if you've got a fifty six, you can open it up a little bit, just lay the club back and all of a sudden it's a fifty eight. So you know, you can you know, you have again good feel of what you're trying to do.
You're looking at that lie, You're looking at.
How much ground I have to carry to get that ball rolling, And that's that's the swing I want to make.
Awesome. Hey, Tom, you are a wealth of really fun information and really valuable information. I really appreciate your time. This has been a blast.
I've had a great time.
I just love I know how hard the game is for the average player. And I think, just in closing so much of the knowledge that or the information I should say, that's put out there in the magazines and stuff. As they always you know this is you know, they they tend to talk to the advanced player and not the average guy that's going out on the weekends and playing.
And my my goal in this game is to show people, you know, how much easier the game can be they can make it much easier and not trying to do the stuff that is impossible for them to do physically or mentally.
It's something that that, to me, was got me motivated to do this from the very beginning because I always felt in watching the Golf Channel as they were talking to single digit handicapped golfers and I didn't understand what they were talking about. So I just went out and said, Okay, I'm just going to be the weekend hack that I am, and I have a lot of questions, so I'm going to start asking.
And I think it's it's awesome. It's awesome, and you're absolutely right. It's you know, they're talking at a level you know of advanced players who understand certain.
Things, and and you.
Know, the the average, the average golfer, which is the majority of people.
You know, they need you need to simplify it. You need to make it make it simple, awesome. It's a hard enough it's a hard enough game.
I mean, and you put a four and a quarter inch hole, you know, and you got a one point six eight inch golf ball and it's five hundred yards away and you're supposed to get it in that hole. It's you know, and you look at it like that as kind of crazy. So let's make it as easy as we can.
It's so true. I mean here, I've done, you know, ten years worth of this stuff. I'm still talking about it, and I'm still learning stuff that I'm I have aha moments on a regular basis with these conversations.
Well, and I do too. Standing on the lesson tee and listening, I see stuff, and I hear stuff, and I see things that I I you know, you continually learn and see things, and that just kind of, you know, makes me more more motivated to make it as simple and as fun as I can for everybody.
And that's why we love the game.
Absolutely. They named it wrong. It should let's go play fun.
But that was taken fun was yeah, yeah, let's go a little with relaxation. Right, Well let's just go play good.
Yeah, there we go?
All right? Tom Good?
Perfect?
All right?
And that's Tom Good at the Good Goolf Connection dot com. Is your email address. If anybody wants to reach out and talk to you.
Some more, absolutely, please send me an email and I'll be glad to shoot one back.
Well, Tom, we are not We're not that far from each other in proximity. So I hope I get a chance to come down and visit with you and play down there and we'll get more chance to talk. But I hope that I can invite you back on the show.
I'd love to you anytime, and you've got a free wind coming, just come down and see me and we can talk about more about my stupid philosophy about how swinging you clubhead.
I'll show you how you do that.
