Letting Go of The Bad Shots

Hi.

This is Mike Pokowitz, a golf instructor in Philadelphia, PA, and I coach at Five Iron Golf and Play Around Golf.

This is golf Smarter.

Golf Smarter number four hundred and seventy one, published on January thirteen, twenty fifteen.

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You have to take them on the golf course. I don't think you can teach that management standing on the driving range. What I would do is get that person on the golf course, stand on the tee and look down the fairway and have them tell me what's out there, What do they see? Where's the trouble? Where don't you want to go? And they'll convince themselves they say, well, it's all water down the right hand side. I definitely

With bogie.

Letting go of the bad shots with Tom Good.

This is Golf Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers and golf professionals to help blower your score. It's worked for your host, Fred Green.

Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.

Tom.

Hey, Fred, thanks for having me.

Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for reaching out to me via LinkedIn. Nope, that's interesting how many people will do that. But I appreciate you doing that because there were a couple things in your introductory let that really stood out to me. That mostly which is that you teach golfers how to manage a golf course. And I think that is such an important part of the game that most people don't really get and I want to spend some time on that.

Okay, that sounds good, but before.

We do that, let's establish who you are, where you come from, what you're doing these days, and why in the fact, why in the heck that I'm talking to you today.

Well, I'll tell you it's been kind of a long, fun journey for me. I've been in this business all my life, pretty much as a child.

I grew up in it. I've played professionally.

I've played in college, and when I ended up not being able to make the money I needed to make professionally, I figured I could probably teach the game better than

Very good.

So, when you said you played professionally, tell me a little bit about that. That always is intriguing to me.

Well, it was you know, I had worked in the club business for a little while as a young guy right out of college, and decided that I'd like to try to play the.

Game for a living.

So I did the whole deal of going through the tour school qualifying after working for about five years, you know, not playing a lot of competitive golf, and I went and missed the first stage of the tour school by one shot. So I thought, hey, you know, maybe let's pursue this. So I played mini tour golf in Arizona and around California for about two years, and I'll never forget my first first round as a professional. I shot

So one of the best rounds of your life. And it's like exactly, and you're not.

Thinking, that's as boud as good as I can play, and I was six packs. So and that was quite a while ago. That was when everybody wasn't quite as good as they are today.

So but I did play for a.

While, and you know, then when kind of that kind of served its purpose, I got back into the club professional business and concentrating a lot on teaching. That was when I really decided that was what I wanted to do. And so I've been teaching pretty much off and on for forty years, the last thirty years exclusively teaching.

So great, Great, I want to go back to that first round that you had when you were playing professionally. Is that one a three or four day tournament?

It was, I, you know, my memories, that was quite a few years ago, but I believe they were three day tournaments at that time.

Okay, So you know, it's so fun to watch recreational amateur golfers who get frustrated that they don't get better every single round, and they'll go out and shoot a eighty five and be ecstatic about it and think that they've got everything figured out. And the next day they'll go out and shoot a ninety seven and you know,

Yeah, I believe it was somewhere close to PARR. But I think what happens is you go out and shoot around like that. Then the next day you go back out and try to do the same thing.

And as soon as you start trying to.

Do something in this game, that's when you get into trouble.

Oh please expand on that. That's really an interesting concept. It's when you try to do something exactly.

And I kind of use the analogy a lot in teaching. When we get in on a car and drive down the road or down the street going to the store or wherever, we really don't think about the mechanics of driving the car. We don't think about getting in, fasten our seat belt, doing all those things that need to get us there. We just end up at our destination and sometimes you stop and wonder, oh, wow, here's my exit.

Just had a really good round.

You go back to the course the next day and you say, now, what was I doing?

You know, I think I was.

I think I must have been turning really well, I was using my body well, and you start thinking about the mechanics of the golf swing rather than just playing the game, looking at the golf course and picking your target and.

Just letting your swing work. What you've been teaching it.

Are you telling me that we think too much when we're on the golf course.

Oh?

Probably got ninety nine percent of us do that.

Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, you're just trying to figure out And I think as humans we have this tendency to always be trying to figure things out. Whether we've hit a bad shot, we try to figure.

Out what we did wrong.

Then when we hit a good shot, we try to figure out what we did.

Well.

Or you have a good shot and you think it's an anomaly and you're going, yeah, but I'm hitting bad shots today, and you keep focused on the bad shot exactly.

Yeah, Well that good shot wasn't me. That was a mistake, you know.

So I'm the guy that hits it out of bounds and left all the time, So right right, that was someone else in my body.

Yeah. Where'd you play in college?

I played at BYU Okay, very good.

I played for a couple of years there and then went to work at my family golf course after that, and that was kind of when.

I got into the business.

At that time, wea a family golf course. So you said you were in at your entire life. What is a family golf course?

My family, my father was a golf professional, and we grew up. I can remember as a kid ten eleven years old picking the driving range, doing all the work, washing the carts. So I've been in it pretty much all my life, which is I'm sixty three years old right now, so I've been around it a long time, seeing a.

Lot, done a lot.

Yeah, okay, all right. So now I'm thinking, you're a teenage boy. You're working in You're working for your family, You're driving the golf, you know, picking up balls off the driving range, and you're saying to yourself, I am not.

Going to be in this business. This is ridiculous.

I mean, were there times that you were going, Okay, this is not going to work for me, I'm going to be an accountant.

Nope.

Never never had that thought I was going to play I was going to play professionally. It was I think I've had maybe two other part time jobs in my entire life outside of golf, which were that was when I was in high school. I sold men's clothing for a while, and then I got a job one time for a fencing company, and I found out that I was the only they hired me because I had a driver's license. It wasn't anything about building fences.

I could drive the truck, so you know, that was why I was about eighteen years old. So anyway, and that was it.

Then from then on, it's been golf, all aspects of golf.

Wow.

Do you have siblings.

I do.

Did they go in the business as well?

Or are they the ones that said I am not going to do this.

Let's just say that they started in it. We were all in it one time, and they got smart and got out of it.

Yeah, so you're the bad good right, the bad member of the good family.

He Yeah, I had an older brother that went into the superintendent business, taking care of the golf courses rather.

Than than being the golf professional. But yeah, we were all in it one time.

That's awesome.

At one point, all four of us, my father and my two brothers, we were all pros at the same time.

So awesome.

Well, that's great, great story, Thank you. Let's go back to us. Let's let's figure out what we're doing wrong here. And I love the idea of talking about thinking too much and and you know, I know that there's times where I'm playing well and I'll focus more on the fact that I'm feeling confident as opposed.

To knowing what I did right.

Okay, So because I I just you know, I hear so often and talk talking to so many instruction instructors that confidence is such a key to every shot.

Tell me your thoughts on that.

Well, I think, you know, confidence obviously is vital, but I kind of look at it like which which comes first, the confidence or the consistency of doing something. You know, in a routine where you're you're practicing the right things and you're practicing your tempo and all that, and then so you start hitting better shots, and then out of.

Those better shots comes the confidence.

So you know, it's you know what came first, the egg or the chicken, you know, So you have to have that consistency in the golf swing and be practicing the right things.

To create the confidence.

So and then once you feel that confidence on the golf course, the hardest part is just just trusting yourself and believing.

In what you're doing.

And also, I would think it's really important to understand and be at peace with yourself and knowing things happen out of your control, that there are going to be bad shots, there are going to be bad results to good shots.

Exactly exactly.

That's one of the things that it's really hard to work with younger players sometimes because.

They're you know, they think they're.

Immune to ever hitting a bad shot. So they could be really really good players, but.

They, like you say, they bad.

Shots are as much a part of the game as the good shots. And I would sometimes like to have people look at the golf courses. If you're playing an eighteen whole round, it's eighteen games and it's maybe going.

Like going to Las Vegas. The house is going to win most of the holes, so you've got.

To just kind of manage your mistakes and just realize that that's part of the game and the hole is going to beat you sometimes, so it's you know, you.

Got to just roll with the punches and have amnesia.

Let the bad shots go and focus on the next shot that you're looking at.

How how do you have yeah, how do you get that amnesia where you know, how do you focus on the good and eliminate the negative and not overthink this?

I mean, how do you teach that well.

I think I think you've actually got to practice it. It's again, it goes back to what I mentioned there before, is that we're always trying to figure out what.

We did wrong.

And I just share a little story with you. One time, I a couple of years ago, I had a young high school kid come out and he was he was pretty pretty big kid. He came out very very quiet, wouldn't talk very much, and so I had him warm up, getting some nine irons, and so he hit the first nine iron abou one hundred and seventy yards absolutely.

Perfect and seventy yards?

Is that what you said?

Really? Yes, that's exactly what I said.

I watched the ball and I went I said, okay, Nathan, I said, is that a pretty normal nine iron?

And he looked at me and goes mm hm.

And so he had another one about exactly the same thing, land in the same spot. And so he hit five shots in a row that.

Were within five to ten yards of each other.

And I'm looking and I said, that is you know, I says, that's your normal nine iron and he's and again man of few words, he said mm hmm.

So then he hit one.

I hit about three inches behind it. Okay, hit this big chunker. So I said, so, Nathan, what happened there? And he looked at me like I was like an idiot. He looked at me, he said, well, I hit behind it. And I said, okay, go on, you know. So it wasn't why did I do that? Why did I hit behind it?

He just accepted that he hit behind it and that was what it was. So he went on to the next shot and.

Probably hit the next one one hundred and seventy yards.

Yeah, he just hit it out there again.

Right, So it's what we have to practice, is and I don't I don't think you can just go out there and say, okay, I'm you know, for every bad shot I hit today, I'm just going to forget it and go on to the next one, because that's not our human nature. It's something that you have to work at.

To talk yourself through that.

You have to say, all right, miss that shot, all right, I'm moving on to the next one, and you start focusing on the next shot. And that's going to help you train yourself to get out of what you just did, because you know, there's so much time between shots on.

The golf course.

You're either waiting for the people that you're playing with or waiting for the group in front of it, and the whole time is you're thinking about that last shot you just hit. So I think you have to actually mentally and physically just say okay, I'm going to the next shot.

I'm moving forward here. And it takes time. You might be able to do it for three or four holes.

In around and then gradually the many the next time out you're able to kind of stay in that present for six holes. So it's just something that you have to work at. It's just like practicing the physical shots, you got to practice the mental park.

We've talked so much on this show about outcome versus process. We never forget we had one called Nato, which was not attached to outcome. And I find that a lot of people get upset. People that I play with, they get upset with the result of where the ball landed versus their swing, their contact with the ball, and I, you know, I my friends kind of look at me like,

Exactly?

Take on the challenge of trying to get it out of the ball.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh boy, this is exciting something different.

That's why they you know, they put bunkers out there for a reason for people to hit into them. So you might as well just say, take on the challenge of being able to hit the bunker shot.

And what cracks me up is that you'll play with someone who's played that course over and over and they go, God, I hit into the bunker every single time, and you just want to go, well, let's there's two things you can do here. One you can go from a different tea box maybe you're playing the wrong tea box, or two just try a different club this time. If you're going to do that every time, why are you taking the driver out every single time to do this?

Are there other options that I missed?

They hit right? You know it's I got two things I was thinking of.

One one story college coach was talking to me the one time about one of his tail players was standing on a part three, one hundred and six bole water on the right, Arizona on the left, so there's tons of room on the left.

Right.

First ball goes in the water, right, second ball goes in the water right, So three free balls in a row into the water to the right of the green.

You're under a coach and said what do I do? And the coach said, aim left.

You know, if you keep making the same mistake, that's you know, you just you got to look at it and say God that that you know, you don't have to hit driver off every team. You don't have to hit three wood on every part five for your second shot.

Just because it's a long waist from the green.

But what you're trying to do is keep the golf ball in play and hit the club that you have the most confidence in.

And you know, and I think another thing.

Another mistake people make a lot is they don't play the way they hit the ball. So you know, if they'll stand on the range and they'll practice, and their driver ninety eight percent of the time has a left to right shape to it, sometimes more than others. Okay, So they stand up and they aim down the middle of the fairway and the ball slices into the trees on the right.

Okay, so I know it, well, yeah.

If you do it ninety percent of the time, So why don't you just aim down the left side and play the fade rather than trying to hit it straight, which you can't do right. So I think it's it's people have to understand their game.

Know their game.

Okay, if you're a twenty two handicap and you hit your ball off the tee one hundred and eighty five yards, but in your mind, you should be hitting at two hundred and thirty. So then you start trying to hit it two hundred and thirty yards and it goes further into the trees, further left, missing shots, Okay, rather than just playing your normal game, play what your your swing is it it's your perfect golf swing is what you create, not the one that's in Golf Digest or on Golf Channel.

Is that something that you teach is that everyone has their own perfect golf swing or you try to recreate what you know Rory does.

No, I absolutely I do not teach everybody a method. In other words, this is you come to see me. You're going to learn to swing the golf club this way. What I'm going to do is I'm going to see what you can do physically. You know where you are in the game, what you want to try to do. You know what are your goals and can you physically do some of the things that you read about or you know you have certain restrictions to your body, the flexibility,

Well, if you really analyze their game, their driver may.

Not be that bad, but they just had forty seven putts in eighteen.

Holes, you know.

So it's not your driver, it's your putting. So you have to look at your game and analyze your game. Is that you know I'm horrible from fifty yards in. It takes me two shots to get it on the green, and then I can't get it close on the third shot.

So you better start working on your short game.

That That actually is what happened to me and was a huge made a huge difference in my game once I started focusing on my short.

Game in and around the green.

Is what is the most common problem that you come up with? Is it people don't know the distance they hit each club that they have. They think they're better than they are. What do you find not what people ask you like, I want more consistency, I want to hit the ball farther. What do you find is the most common amateur mistake that's going on that they don't recognize their making?

Well, I think you.

Know the first thing you said there was their distance. I think a lot of people really have a.

Misconception of how far they actually hit the.

Ball and how far you know, they they think the ball is going when it's really not.

And then they're you know.

They're always coming up short, or they're trying to hit the ball harder than they need to rather than playing within themselves. But I think it's a it's a misunderstanding of their of their true yardages.

How do you get their ego to accept that.

That's the problem.

I think if I'm working with someone consistently, we're going to take them out on the golf course and put.

Them at a certain yardage.

It's it's sometimes really hard to see that actual yardage on the driving range, and then well it's a range ball. It doesn't go as far as my regular ball that I play, And then it's so I think the answer to that is actually getting them on the golf course, putting them at one hundred and thirty yards and having them hit their nine iron and dump a twenty yards short in the bunker. Say, okay, so you're nine iron really goes one hundred and ten.

No, it doesn't.

I really had no I hit it one thirty exactly exactly. Hit the ball.

I hit it one thirty once exactly.

It's that, Okay, I can't hit it one thirty and something happened.

But it's you know, that's not you know that. You know, it's where you.

Hit the ball, where you hit it on the club face and all that. So you've just got I think it's just in coaching and teaching, you you've gone to get that.

Have the student gained the confidence, you know.

In their coach that that I'm there to help and and and you know, they've just got to accept the fact that that numbers don't lie, you know, and you just have to convince them that if you you might have to take them out two or three times and show them that, hey, here's now, you can knock this seven iron from one hundred and thirty yards. You can knock it on the green, you know, eight out of nine times.

And you're going to play better from there.

And you know, if they accept it, they accept it and they go on to play better golf.

And if they don't, they just keep struggling.

This is a great lead in for something that we talked about in the very beginning. And I do want to get to it, and that is how to manage your game on the golf course. And you said, you know, I'm sure this is just a start. When you put the ball one hundred and thirty yards out and say, give give me your best shot. What does it mean to teach someone to manage the golf course?

I think you have to you, first of all, start with their game and their shot shape.

What kind of shots do you hit off the tee? You know, how far do you hit it? And what first you know?

So once they understand that, okay, I do play my ball.

Left to right, that's what I play.

Okay, then you actually you have to take them on the golf course.

You can't.

I don't think you can teach that management standing on the driving range. But then you what I would do is get that person on the golf course, stand on the tee and look down the fairway and have.

Them tell me what's out there? What do they see? What you know?

What's where's the trouble? Where don't you want to go? And let them tell themselves. They'll convince themselves. They say, well, geeze the water, it's all water down the.

Right hand side.

I definitely don't want to go there. So you get them to actually see a picture of the hole and where's the best place to play that now? And then start working on club selection.

You know, where's your you know, this is.

A little tight driving hole. What club do you have the most confidence in? You know, I really like my seven wood? Okay, so hit your seven with off this te put it in play, with the next shot in play, get it inside one hundred yards to the green, and then get it on the green to walk away with bogie.

You know. So you just I think you have to show it to.

Them and prove them. Prove to them there's other ways to play the golf rather than always hitting driver off of par fours and par fives, and you.

Know, just understand.

How to back off a little bit, play more within themselves.

Yeah, yeah, And then the whole shot shape idea. There's a natural shot shape that everybody has. But so often I'll see middle handicappers and I'm talking, you know, fifteen to what do you consider a middle handicap?

Probably fifteen to twenty two.

We're in there, all right, So somebody who's shooting high eighties, nineties, okay, and they're out there and I've seen it so many times it cracks me up. Say, all I need to do is hit a slight draw here, and all I need to do is hit it low.

And it's like.

I've admitted to myself, I don't know how to shape my shots.

I don't know how. I don't have that many tools in my bag.

If you will, that my ball has just a natural fade to it.

And I've accepted.

That my irons go farther right, farther right than I want them to, and I'm working on that. But there's so many people that these middle handicappers that are talk about shaping their shots and talk about knowing what they did wrong.

I lifted my.

Head, but really, yeah again, but it's like you really should people be trying to shape their shots if they're not a single digit handicap.

I don't think so.

I mean I think if you're you know, and I'll if I really feel.

Confident with my students, you.

Know, and they're and they're talking about, you know, shaping shots and doing this, I said, if you want to.

Do that, you got to get a lower handicap, you know.

So yeah, I think, you know, if if people who are averaged to higher handicaps, just trust themselves to play. What again, their perfect golf swing gives them When they're swinging right, man, it's a little left to right boom that goes right in the fairway every time.

I'm never out of the fairway.

And you know, they're just going to play so much better and have so much more fun.

But I think we're in this.

You know, you've got Golf Channel now and you watch you watch any of the tournaments on TV, and this whole Okay, he's got to hit it out there right, he's got to bring it in right to left here, and they talk about this. So as a human, we're out there and we're thinking, man, okay, I'm going.

To hook this ball. Well, they don't have.

First of all, they don't know how to hook it. They don't know how to do that, okay, but they're trying it on the golf course. So if they want to start learning how to work the ball, they've got to do it on the driving range. And most of the time, no one ever practices shaping shots or trying to make a ball go right to left, So they have no idea how to do it, and they don't

It brings out I'm going to go a little sidetrack here, because this came up in my round the other day with a friend of mine and we were talking about, uh, fade versus slice or a draw versus a hook, right, I mean so like so a slice is an exaggerated fade.

Correct. Correct, It's a left to right.

It's a left to right shape and usually starts left of the target ends.

Up right of the target.

Is this is a slice?

That's a slice, Okay? And a fade A fade, A lot of fade.

A lot of times will be just it's a it's a a softer curve maybe starting at the target and then just drifting off to the right.

Okay, and then going that's left to right, now going right to left.

We have go ahead, you got the you got a hook, okay, hook, big big curve right to left. Usually you know, I think most hooks kind of start at the.

Target in a.

Curve way left or just a slight draw, it's usually a little higher shot drops softly down left.

Of the target.

And a cut. What's a cut?

That's that's where this conversation led the other day. We were like, that's a cut. Well, I don't know what's a cut?

Okay, A cut is is more it's it's kind of an intentional slice where you never release the golf club, you hold on really if you're a right hand or you hold on really firm with your left and you actually try to hit the ball left with a with a h swing path that comes across the ball and puts dramatic left to right spin on the.

Ball, and going the opposite way would be called.

What a pole hook right to left and kind of a pole.

Draw where you're actually but that's an intentionally.

That's intentional where you're really trying to close the club face over the ball, keep it low and get it going around a tree left or something like that.

Is it dangerous for us?

I watched tournaments on TV and listen to these guys because then we walk out going okay, I got.

It, yeah, because I think the I'll probably get in trouble here to tell you, I think they talked too much instead of just letting us watch the tournament and uh, you know, they're they're just you know. And the one I love when the golf tournament tournaments is when he's got no chance here to get this up and down.

He's in the deep rough.

He's got it here, he's got green sloping away from me, water on the other side, and the guy.

Hits it up two feet Well okay, well, okay.

Right in my wildest dream.

Yeah, But you know, I think most slices, and I see this so much for for I'm kind of talking right handed player here, but most most slices come when the player is trying to hit the ball straight. And I guarantee that everybody that's gone down to the range to practice, they're trying to hit the ball straight.

And you should not try to hit the ball straight.

I don't think so. I think it's the hardest shot in golf to hit.

Really.

If if you if you take okay, just picture and iron, you know anything, seven iron, six iron.

Okay, the face is flat, the ball.

Is round, and if you look at the contact point between the ball and the club face, you know there's not a lot of.

Room for error there. So as soon as you start.

Trying to guide that ball straight, you get tension in your hands. You're trying, you're trying to to keep the golf club going straight at the target rather than letting it release naturally. And if you happen to line it up with good timing, the ball goes relatively straight, but it's much easier to curve the ball one way or the other.

Hey, you know what, we're out of time, So here's what I'd like to do. Can you hang around so we can have a continue this conversation. We'll do part two. Sure, awesome, absolutely, okay, but before you go, please tell me if people want to get in touch with you.

Do you have a website?

What's the best way If they're living in the South Bay of the Bay Area and they want some lessons, or if they want to they've enjoyed this conversation, they want to travel to meet you and work with you, how's the best way to get in touch with you.

My website is Tom Goood g o D one word at the Good Golf Connection dot com.

That's your email.

I'm sorry, A right, sorry, and that's my I'm sorry, that's my email. See huh, San Jose golf lessons.

Okay, wait it's Tom Tom What wait.

I'm talking way too fast here.

That's okay, I do that all the time. Okay, not a problem.

So I just gave you my email, okay, that which is Tom Good at what.

The at the Good Golf Connection.

Good Golf Connection okay dot com dot com.

That's your email, all right?

Right?

Phone number four zero eight four six zero eight zero two five.

Okay, good. And do you have a website?

I I do.

I'm going to give you it's it's San Jose, San hyphen Jose hyphen golf dot all right, I'm sorry, hyphen again lessons dot com.

Should I be interviewing your wife, sir Sam?

All right?

I have.

I have about three three websites, and I never get the right one going because you wanted to if you wanted to.

Go to another.

It was golf MDS dot com slash Tom Good golf MDS okay, uh slash.

Tom Tom golf MDS dot com.

Okay dot com lash slash Tom Good Okay, slash Tom Good. All right.

That's that's in my calendar and the whole thing and some other information on there.

That's great.

So I need to ask you more about that when we got for our next show. All right, well, thank you so much for your time, and I really appreciate you agreeing to do part.

Two of this, and I hope you're enjoying talk to this.

I'm gon enjoin me. Thanks for letting me babble. Mhm