If Tiger Asked Tony Manzoni for Help, What Would He Say?

Hey, this is Fred Green of Golf Smarter with the ninth appearance that Tony made on Golf Smarter episode four hundred and fifty seven that was recorded back in October of twenty fourteen, one week after last week's episode. This was a lot of fun because at the time in history, Tiger was struggling with his game and his life. So I asked Tony what he would say to Tiger if he got a call from his camp asking for advice from a community college golf coach with an incredible record.

Part two of our conversation that picks up right where last week's episode ended for members only, Golf Smarter number four hundred and fifty seven, published on October seven, twenty fourteen. If Tiger asked Tony Manzoni for help, what would he say?

This is golf Smarter.

If just so happens Tiger Woods was listening to this, it's it's I know it's not happening, but he's like, you know what, I'm going to give Tony Manzoni a call. Tiger Woods calls you and says, I could really use your help. I listened to what you had to say. It makes a lot of sense. What would you do for me if Tiger called you and asked for your help?

What would you do?

Well?

After I got up off the floor, no, I mean, I mean what I have to say, The Tiger would take fifteen minutes.

I just think, I.

Just you better charge a lot of money, man.

You know I would, I would, I would. If I did it, I would do.

It anonymously, and I wouldn't want anything for it, because Tiger.

Is really important for the game.

You know, we're losing a lot of players, and Tigers is like the Beatles. He's like he's an icon and whether you like what he did socially really doesn't matter.

He's got a huge following.

And if he he gets back to playing, which I predict, he's going to come back stronger than ever.

Do you really?

I do? I really really?

Because I think he's on the right track physically. The guy's eighteen years old. I don't care what his number is. He's in unbelievable shape, and he's the kind of guy that will always.

Be in good shape.

And if he just figures out his golf swing, and if he figures out how to stay connected through impact and keep that left arm high on the chest as he rotates his body, which he does on his irons, that's what blows my mind. It's like he's got two different swings. If he does that with the driver and he gets the ball in play, what is that?

What is he going to shoot?

Because he's a great putter, he's a great wedge player, and he's a great iron player. But the thing that has always killed him is that getting that first shot in play. And I think part of it is that, you know, he lost distance, but he lost distance because he bulked up so much. Do you remember when he was first on the tour, he had a forty three and a half in titlest driver with a steel shaft,

I mean, I used to be considered.

A long hitter, and now you know I have I can't see well, but I can see my ball stop, which is a nightmare because I'm not hitting it very far. I can hit it square. But listen, when you get to a certain age, that's going to happen. So work on your short game. But I think that's what happened with Tiger. Everybody started blowing him past, it past him, so he felt like.

He was doing something wrong. I think it's just his.

Physicality changed so much. Said, you know, he kind of got in the way of his speed. He's leaned down a little bit more and he looks like he's fast again. When I watched him a few terms, he came back before he got back off because of his injury, started bothering him again. He looked his swing looked really really aggressive, but not out of control. He used to look like it was a little lot of control with the driver.

And if he were to bulk after bulking up the way he did, would you suggest that he go to a shorter shaft driver or are a longer one, or stay with the forty three?

No, I wouldn't listen. Tiger has experts telling them what to do physically. I think that what I have my guys doing, we're doing. We're doing weights, but we're doing low weights and high intensive exercises with very little time between the exercises, where we try to do one hundred one hundred bicep at ten at a time, but with only thirty seconds between each each rep or each each grouping, and we're trying to get it down at thirty. We're get it down to nothing so that you can do

I don't think so, but we're going to get close. But as we progress each week.

I can see that everyone is getting faster and we're taking less time. So the fatigue factor is high, and I think that's the new trend.

In working out.

If you're an athlete, you're not trying to get big, pop by muscles. You're just trying to get lean and mean, and this kind of exercise really shreds you, gets the fat off you, and it keeps and you keep your flexibility.

And I know the Tiger knows all about this stuff.

This guy is he knows a lot about a lot of things when it comes to sports.

He did go to Stanford.

So this is interesting to me because you've seen the eras of athletes, not just golfers, but a lot of athletes who didn't pay that much attention to physical fitness. And now we're in an era where it's you know, even if you're only playing six to eight months a year, you're working out all year long because of competition, so stiff and it's a long season for everybody, no matter what sport you're playing, So you have to be in

Building or core strength? And where would you go with this?

Well, I think I think the trend today and I and I agree with it is that they're working more on the core.

They're working on arms and chest and back along.

With the legs, you know, because we don't we don't drive the legs through the ball like we used to because we're because we're our body's in a little different position.

When when you were tilted way.

Back, your head was way behind the ball. Yeah, you had to drive your legs to get to the left side and then you had to rotate, but you had to make a little sliding move.

Well, no one, no one's, no one is doing that.

You don't see any sliders like like in days gone by. So so the top part is just as important as the bottom part. But you have to be careful. You have to know what you're doing, or you have to have someone help you in that regard so that you don't use the wrong type of exercises. Again, golf is not a game where you need to be bulked up. It's a game where you need to.

Be with what we call cut or you're shredded.

That's the kind of body type you want. No, so there are some people that are bulky and they have to swing the club a different way.

But Tiger was a very thin kid.

I had him in a tournament years and years ago called Kids were Kids, and he was sixteen years old and he was on the thin side. But he hit it out there two miles. He hit it out there. I remember that day. He was sixteen years old. He hit as far as he already did on tour. Now he had a longer swing. But his thing was speed. Tire runs fast. He's a speed person. Okay, He's not a guy that he's not structurally built to be lifting

I think maybe being.

Around guys like Michael Jordan everything or workout freaks. I think he got into body building, and I think he I think a mistake was made there.

And I've seen he looks a little bit more. He's a little bit more cut looking now, as you should be.

And I you know, everyone needs to get into things like yoga, anything, stretching.

If you're really interested in golf, it's range of motion that's really important.

What do you do.

I've been doing a lot of stretching.

I've been doing the high intensive exercises, interval exercises, like I go on the net and look for anything that is related to golf and getting more flexibility so I can get the club back a little bit farther, which gives me more time to build momentum.

You know.

I used to run a lot of ten k's on the golf course every night. I used to go at the football field here at the college and I'd run twenty thirty laps around them, you know, so it's four or five miles.

So I was running probably every day a good ten miles. I don't have the.

Inclination, the time and the stamina to do it, but I'm still I still try to move. I'm always I'm always active. I think I think you've got to do that, just forget golf, just for your overall health.

Yeah.

I'm not a runner, never have been.

If you run on grass, it's not too bad, but it tears you.

Yeah, you know, you know. I'm a swimmer. You're what swimmer? I go swimming.

Fantastic because you have resistance in every action.

You make and it's zero and zero impact.

Yeah.

The only problem is is that a lot of swimming pools have a lot of chemicals in it, so you're absorbing those chemicals. So that's you know, if you if you're going to do optimum things, then you'd be swimming in a saltwater pool and not a typical pool.

Yeah.

Es, Actually the public pool that I swim in is is half salt water half chlorine. Okay, Yeah, I love and I just love a I love the zero impact and and I love the complete resistance. But I also love just getting lost in my head, which I do. I'm sure you do with any kind of endurance thing.

Well, sure, and I think I think every man, uh and well for that matter, woman, but I can only speak from the man's point of view. I think every man should stay strong. There's no reason to be weak. There's no reason, there's no reason to get feeble. You can use light weights, but you can keep your muscle tone and you can keep your strength factor. I think a lot of people die too early because they get weak, and consequently so does their immune system. And I think

So I really I you know.

I'm an old guy, but I don't feel old, and I'm still strong. And when I go out and work on with in the gym with the boys, I can still keep up with them. But that's because I've always done that. And I highly recommend to anyone that's listening that get into a stretching program and get into some form of weight training, because even at one hundred years old, if you can last that long, you can get stronger by resistance, by lifting weights.

You know, all the rubber band stuff. Yeah, yeah, Okay, that's a little bit. But you got to put a weight in your hand and move it up and down.

You're gonna get your you're gonna get your muscle tone back, and you're gonna feel a hell of a lot better.

One of the comments you made earlier on you said, take the compensations out of the game.

Well, a compensation would be if I moved to the right from my original starting.

Position and I've got to move back to the left.

If I if I overwork my hands going back where I cock the club back to where it shaft in my left arm, don't don't create an L, but they create a V because because my wrist is cocked so far that the club is kind of hanging down past parallel, then I have to I have to make a compensation to get it back into that position where I can just.

Turn and just hang on. I don't have to do anything with my hands.

So any anything like that, any any timing element that you're putting in or you're trying to you know, I hear these teachers say you got to roll your hands through.

To hit the ball.

Well, you know, if you're slicing the ball, that's a quick fix. But that's not the way to play golf.

And that's hard to do.

Yeah, it's amazing to me how people these compensations that they try to make.

They do it during the round.

I mean, how many times have I heard someone say, oh, I lifted my head. Oh I know exactly what I'm doing wrong, and they really think that they're changing something. But the lifting the head is the most common one. Oh I lifted my head.

Yeah, you lifted your head, or I didn't get under it. That's another beauty. You don't get under a ball. You head down on it to make it go up, and in most cases your head went up or you lost your spine angle because it's called body propulsion. You're trying to propel an object up, so the body kind of lifts to do it again. That goes right back to trying to do something to the golf ball instead of letting that golf club in the loft and the lie

Going to happen.

Certainly, you have to have some kind of coordination. I'm not saying that you just do that, and you're going to play perfect golf. But the more compensations that you put in your golf swing, fanning the club open, then you got a fan it that close. The more you do that, you're just making the game harder.

Yep, yep, it's so true. It's so sad, it's so true. Tell me, I mean the last one on the on the golf side, before we wrap this up. How can we eliminate that dreaded forty yard shot? Why are we coming up forty yard short of a hole when we don't want to have a forty yard shot in our game and we don't have one in our bag.

Well, the only place that that should happen would be in my estimations on a part five unless you just don't have the strength to get to the green in two.

And a lot of people are in that position.

Then they're playing the wrong tea box.

Then they're playing the wrong tea box.

Correct, And even though I say that, there's a lot of people that are not going to move up, stay where they are because that's just what they want.

That's the ego party golf.

And then in that case, get your wedge and be like Lee Trevino you know, hit five hundred wedges a day, and then you'll hit that forty yard shot.

Okay, you know, the four yard shots not a hard shot.

It's just it's one of those in between shots where it's you're not taking it back really far, so you have to you know, I've got a couple of juniors that I teach and we work on those shots a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I have a friend every time, whether you're hitting from thirty forty to fifty or eighty or one hundred and twenty, if you land the ball on the green, he's gonna go, nice shot. And it's like to me, that's like, no, if I'm inside one hundred yards or one hundred and twenty yards anywhere there and I I A, I expect to be on the green on the next shot. But if I'm going to be that close, I want to be within ten fifteen feet

Yeah, and you have to determine.

I mean, good players know how far they hit a ball and you know how to If they have one hundred and fifty yard shot, they're not going to hit it one hundred and ninety unless they catch a fly or maybe they're maybe they're a little excited because they made two or three birdies in a row or something. But generally they can control distance. And if you can control.

Distance, and first of all, you have to know how far you hit your club.

So when you go through, especially your irons, when you go through your irons, you have to know, well, how far do I hit a seven iron? And then you have to determine, Okay, if I can max out a seven iron, let's say one hundred and fifty yards, and I have one hundred and fifty yard shot, certainly would be smart to hit a six iron because I'm not going to max out every shot and I'm going to

Will you pass the pin? And it's so true, it's so true.

So those are those are little elements that we have to deal with when we play. But distance control is very important, so you have to establish.

Where you hit a ball.

But when getting back to that forty yard shot, look, the forty yard shot, you're connected. You rotate your body in such a fashion that you hit it forty yards, you rotate a little bit more. You hit it sixty or seventy, you rotate a little less. You hit a thirty. But if you're trying to do that with hand action, now you got a problem. Now you got a real problem, because especially when you hit that forty yard shot, there's a little voice in your head, don't thin it, you know,

To do it a harder way than you need to.

And that's when the metal game gets really large because you start freaking out about that shot.

Well, yeah, but if you're a rotary player and you rotate from driver to wedge, it's not going to be so hard because you're not basing the result on your timing. And look, when you're playing for a few bucks or it's a tournament or club championship and you get a little nervous and everybody does, and you get a little scared, and everybody does. The first thing that runs down your

Blockers, and that's not good.

So we've got to play through our adrenaline and we have to have a process that allows us.

To do that.

I want to give you one last chance to explain to us what the Loss Fundamental is, what the book is, and why we should own it and the DVD.

I think the Lost Fundamental Book, I think it's the result of all the years that I've studied this game, and I came up with the thought that you know, who played the game for a long time, who played the game when they were really horrible in the beginning, and who became one of the greatest players shot makers anyway, of all time.

That was Ben Hogan.

I started studying Ben Hogan, and I saw the subtle changes, especially after his accident, and I saw that he stayed more centered to the ball. So he played off of one axis. Or in the old days they say we played off the left side, nothing to do with stack until that's what they called it. We played off the left side, so they played off of one axis. So that's really important not to go to the right leg axis and then back to the left leg axis. That's

Connection of the left arm to the pectoral muscle and how that left arm works as a lever that is being moved back and forth by the turning of the body, turning to the right and turning to the left, and that lever stays consistent in its form so that the club face stay square.

A long time. That's another part of the action. The rest of it is set up. I believe you have.

To set up sixty forty and so forth. So those three elements if I can get you to set up properly and you have a decent grip, a comfortable grip, and I can get you to rotate, turn your right side behind you, and then turn the right side through the ball so that the left side goes level left.

And your left arm states connected.

If those elements happen in the swing, you're going to hit the ball pretty darn good. I've got two juniors. One gal I've been working with three years, and she is crazy good. She just played in a high school match she shot thirty because they only played nine hole matches, she shot thirty, And then she played in a two day invitation. Broke the record in that, I've got an eight year old Chinese boy.

Wait a minute.

The thirty was with a couple of part fives, with a part five and a couple part three. She played yeah for nine Yeah, a regular eighteen hole course.

But yeah, that was the lowess in Arcachella Valley of anybody who's ever played male or female. Okay, and then the next day she played in a two day event. Broke the record in that. So why is all of a sudden she can do these things? And that's because she's learned to play this game without a lot of competitions, compensations, because she gets scared as heck. She calls in because his coach this is really a big tournament, blah blah blah. And I say, look, you've prepared yourself, you work hard.

Because I was trying.

I was trying to get a tip because he's so solid through impact. So when I see when I see that kind of stuff. I can part of it, and I mean that's you know, it's the greatest and their their minds are real clear. You know, the more we know about golf, the hearter the game gets because we complicated with a lot of facts and figures.

If you learn those three little things.

I told you about good setup and connection and wrote and if you can just focus on that and get the feel of that, man, you can go out and play and enjoy yourself.

Lots of times I'll receive emails from Golf Smarter listeners who are saying, Okay, I'm really intrigued by what Tony Manzoni says, and I don't know should I get the book or should I get the DVD?

And I always tell them just get both.

But if they had to make a choice, what are the differences that they're going to notice between the book and the DVD?

Truthfully, I think I would get the book.

There's some nice little stories in the back of the book that I think kind of give you a sense of who I am.

But also in the book, you can under it.

You can line some areas, yellow mark some areas that are very pertinent, and you can keep going back to the book the DVD.

You know, it's a good DVD.

I'm not going to say it's but there's a lot of music and you know fall to roll. I did that because and said you need to make a DVD with the book. But the book is for me. The book is a little bit better. The optimum would be too, because then you can see my stupid face and some of the things I do. But you see my little girl that I that is in there.

That's when I was starting, and you can see how good she swings, and it's an interesting it's an interesting video. But if I could only have one, it would be the book for sure.

Okay, well, I appreciate your honesty since you just lost ten bucks.

Well, you know what, most people can afford another ten bucks.

Yeah.

So if I was buying you know, I mean, I'm not a super wealthy guy, but I buy both. Or if I bought the book, I would certainly go get the tape because I want to see if there's something there that because sometimes we learn more visually.

Than exactly looking at something.

So you know, no one has ever written back to me say you know what, it was a waste of my money. And you've had golf smider listeners travel across the country to come take lessons with you.

I've given quite a few lessons, Fred, And I know I haven't sent your check.

But I'm thinking about it. But I've had a lot of people, and you know what I also get. I get a lot of letters from someone saying, Okay, you know I'm really hitting the driver good, but I'm doing this with the iron or I'm doing that.

And I welcome that because I can give you the answer.

I don't need to see your golf swing. You just tell me what the ball is doing. I'll tell you what you're doing.

Wow.

So I love doing that. And again, I got three areas to hit. How are you setting up levels of the ball center to the ball? Are you sixty forty? Is your left arm drop in first move or is it staying up high on that chest as you rotate your chest? Those things, they're easily said. If someone tells me I'm pulling everything, then I know their arms.

Are going first.

You see what I'm saying, I'm hooking everything. I know their arms are going first.

Their arms.

The clubhead should be last coming through. It shouldn't be first. It shouldn't be going ahead of your body. Your body should be pulling through. So these are real simple fixes. And golf prone knows this stuff. You know, I don't have a you know I don't have I'm the only one that doesn't have a handle on this, or I should say, yeah, I'm not the only one that knows this. There's a lot of good golf pros out there that are good teachers. But I'll tell you what, this is

Yep, yep.

Well listen, I am scheduled to come down to the Palm Desert area just after Thanksgiving.

I'll be there for a week.

And if it all goes well and it's not like my last trip of you know where things got disrupted, let's get together. I'll bring some video, I'll bring my recording gear. We'll sit down, we'll have another conversation with golf smarter, and maybe we will do we'll go out and play golf together and we can do like a playing lesson and we can grab some video of that.

What do you think that would be great? I would enjoy doing that. I want to see your action and find out how many strokes I get. Oh yeah, right, well no, I really seriously, I would really like to do that.

Great we can talk and talk about strategies on the golf course.

I love that that kind of thing because there's a lot to that part of it too.

Well Tony, it's always my joy. I love talking to you about golf. I'm always entertained, but I always walk away with a handful of nuggets that make my game better.

Thank you so much.

Listen, I'm going to tell you for I really thank you. You know, as I've said in the past, and I will repeat that your site is the best site I think in golf.

Really, it's very informative. There's a lot of great product on there. I'm glad.

I'm glad and honored to be part of it, and I do feel like I'm part of the family.

I love that