Master Golf Like It’s Presented On TV — One Shot At A Time! featuring Josh Zander

because you have different lives. On the putting green, you have a pretty good lie, but there's so much when a ball is not on a green that you have to understand how your club interacts with the ground, what kind of bounce you have on your wedges? Is it into the grain? Is the down green? The other day I was giving a chipping lesson and I said, you have a couple options here. First look at the grass on the green and part of it was kind of this pale, shiny look to it, and the other one

was deep green. I said, well, the deep green is into the grain, and then you have down green. So where are you going to land it? Because if you landed in the grain, it's going to kill it. You landed down green, it's going to skid on you. How

are you going to manage this shot? And so a big variability to just get where the ball's going to land on the green, and the person's like, well, I never even thought about that, And sure enough, he hits his first one into the downgrain area, skids, goes about fifteen tet pass. It's his next shot a little shorter, lands into the grain, ends about ten feet short, and he didn't miss it either one of them. But he's not going to make it too. He's going to make

a three. So how are we going to manage that?

they're missing more than they make. How often are you hitting an approach shot in the green, say from one even one hundred and fifty yards, and you're going after a pin, you're going to have to get it within ten feet to have a reasonable chance of making a birdie. But it's pretty easy to put from twenty five or thirty feet if you've got reasonable lag you know, lag

piting skills. So why take the risk, Because if you try to go for a tuck pin and you end up short sighting yourself, that's where you start making double bogies. So stop trying to make birdies. Hit the hit the I always like, you know, hearing what Tiger and Jack Nicholas have say, make aggressive, swing to a conservative target, hit the correct part of the green, the fat side

of the green as we like to call it. And if you you know, if you happen to miss, you might miss on the side that the that the flag's on, and then you have your easy birdie putt. But you've got to understand that every shot has a dispersion pattern, and if you aim in a to a dangerous pin and your dispersion pattern, part of that is in a difficult place. As we start making double bogies. I like

Johnny Miller years ago called it. You got your red light, your red light flags, your green light flags, and your yellows, right, so you always go after the greens. Those are the ones that are in the safe parts of the green. You never ever go on the reds, And if you happen to be on, you could do some yellows if you're like, man, I'm dialed in today. That was like

Johnny Miller's may have of thinking about it. I would take it a step further and say, if you're really a smart golfer, like like Tiger, you would probably not even go after the yellows. You'd have the kind of discipline to not go after the yellows because it's so hard to recover from a double bogie. So I use this example. I said, listen, let's say you doubled the first hole. Let's say you're a tour player and you double the first hole because you went after a pin

you shouldn't have gone after. Okay, now you're two over. Part in order for you to get back to even just by the ninth hole, imagine the next eight holes were four hundred and eighty yard par fours, which are kind of short par fours for the tour players these days. From one hundred yards away, actually, from eighty yards away, a tour player will score two point seventy five. Okay, so a quarter of a shot under part like on

a little part three. Right, So imagine the next eight holes were four hundred eighty yards and you could drive the ball in the fairway four hundred yards. Now you're eighty yards away. Now by the ninth hole you're back to even. So nobody drives it in the fairway four hundred yards anyway. That shows you how horrible a double bogue is for a tour player, right to recover from, just to get back to even, and usually even after

nine yard trailing in the tournament anyway. So as a weekend golfer, if you can stop, if you can start taking some of those doubles off the off the score, off the scorecard, just by playing smarter, not by getting any better at golf, just being a better decision maker. You're going to make your birdies here and there. Don't force the birdies. Just play smart golf. Smarter.

that's just that's being super disciplined. I was listening to Russell Henley talk about his practic sessions and he mentioned that when he gets his track men out there, he'll he'll set a target and then it hit five shots ten yards right of it, five shots ten yards left of it. Because he goes we rarely shoot a pins. We're always shooting to one side of the green or the other based on what the what the appropriate shot is. And there's a guy who's like mister methodical and he

plays really smart golf. He's not the most talented guy out there. He's got a heck of a golf swing, but he's not the most powerful. And what he's your ranked top ten in the world now, I mean he's crazy good, but just super smart. So you get these two, you get these two talented players next to each other and one makes a smart decision and one makes an aggressive decision. You can call it it not so golf

smarter decision. Then you know that might be the difference between you know, you're you're winning the tournament or you're missing the cut. Just decision making. So that's a huge part of it. And it's a skill that I think people think, I got to get better golf. I gotta get I got a hit as straighter I go, I gotta chip it better, I get. Yeah, all that stuff is true, but hey, I got to be a better

decision maker. And then hold yourself accountable, Like after the round, think to yourself if you could take like five minutes after round and you know, take the emotion out of and say where could I have saved shots? What just my decision making? What could I have done to you know, save save shots? Could I have saved shots on one or two or three whatever the holes that you quote unquote messed up on? It is like what could I have done differently? There? Just decision making, not talent wise,

not better technique, just what could I have done? And and you might save yourself quite a few shots there so there's a long answer to a short, short question.

It's just it's just it's where it's where scores go to die behind the greens.

don't get it from a club. You get it from your body.

piece of equipment? And they'd be like driver, putter, chip, you know, wedge. He's like, no, it's you, it's you. And then how are you? How are you feeding that piece of equipment during around? Are you? Are you hydrating it? Are you nourishing it? You know all that kind of stuff. It's it's like we we kind of gloss over that pretty quickly.

But if they want to be a better scorer, right, we have to talk about the decision making. I said, listen, what if we I'll ask my question like what's your what's your index and CAAMA ten, your average score whatever. Somewhere in the mid mid eighties, and I said, okay, what if we were doing a reality show? And I said, okay, a year from now, you and I have to go on TV and you have to break eighty and you're counting every shot. How are we going to approach this?

My reputation is on the line as a coach. You don't want to embarrass yourself in front of the world. Right, You've got to break eighty and you're ten right now. But a year from now, let's say we get you down to like a five or six and you can go break break eighty, Like, well, how would we go about that? How do we How would we spend our time? Would be would be would we be out here trying to make your five iron and go straight every time? Where would we spend our time? Would be on the

golf course? You know, how would we actually go about this? Now? The pressure's on, right performance? How are we going to perform? Right? So one of the biggest things how you manage yourself as a human being on the golf course. Because you might have all the skills, and I think we've talked about this before, but it's like, how are you able to access your skills when you know when at times when when it comes time to perform, you know what kind of st date of mind you're going to put

yourself in. Are you nervous? Of course you're nervous. How do you manage your nerves? Are you doing breathing exercises? You know? How do you how do you recover from a bad break mentally? Right? How do you stay in the present. I like to tell people, and forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but I think that you should you should play golf more like how we watch golf on TV. You watch golf on TV, You're like, Okay,

let's watch Adam Scott hit his drive on number three. Now, let's go watch you know, John Ram chip it on twelve. Let's go watch Jordan Speeth Putt's ball on fourteen. Right, So we're going from individual shot to individual shots. So I read shots like its own little adventure, right, and you get immersed in, oh, this is a left right downhill Pitt. He's going to have to hit it softly, and you know the grain's going this way, and so we're all into that shot. We're present to that moment.

We're not saying, oh god, I double buggie the last time. I can't believe I three putted it. Now, it's all this influence is happening on this, on this current shot because you're carrying all this bag. You're not carrying the baggage when you see, oh, Adam Scott is hitting his drive on three, is he going to try to cut the corner? What's he going to do? What's the wind doing?

Your present to that moment. And the more you can play golf like that, like a series of individual golf shots without any emotional baggage, you know, from what's happened before or what you're afraid might happen in the future, which is also not being in the present right. You know. So when we talk about that reality show, it's like, we need to get this person to be a performer, to be somebody who access their skills, somebody who can stay in the present, somebody who, yeah, we're going to

work on your skills. We're going to make sure that you don't you don't chip it, you don't scull your chips, and you know, blade your bunker shots or leave it. You know, we got to do all that work too, but ultimately we have to access it because what good is having it. If you don't access this, access access it. And that's about how you manage yourself as a human being. So I think we would fail on the reality show

if we didn't address that. And you know what, these days, there's so many people who specialize in all these different parts of the game. Right. You have like re Accessing House and and and Pian Nielsen and and Lynn marry On people like that who are awesome at helping people access their their skills right, their mental skills, their performance skills. And you have other people who are amazing and helping

people technique. And then you have the you know, the the uh you know what do you call the Swiss Army knives coaches that kind of help a little bit with everything, which is what I feel like I can. I can help people with all parts of the game. I do not claim to be the biggest expert on explosive power, the biggest expert on putting. There are there are putting specialists there, they're power specialists. But you know, depending on what you feel you need, you can you can.

I think I think of myself when I'm coaching, It's like I can help you with every part of the game. But if there's somebody else who can do something that that helps that, I'm like no ego involved in, Like, hey, let's get that person on our team. If that person's going to help us, you know, win the prize on the reality show, let's call that person up and bring them in because it's just like, just like it takes a village to raise raise a kid, and we have two of them, so we know we've got a big

village around us helping us. I think same thing with with golfers. I think that there are a lot of resources out there, so let's get that. Let's get that sports psychologist, let's get that team. Just because you're not on the tour doesn't mean you can't have a team of people who can help you. And I feel like I feel like we can all kind of chip in to help you get to where you want to be.

getting your two put in. But in our practice sessions, should we spend more time because of being amateur golfers who probably don't have our our distances dialed in the way we should, and so we think we hit the ball farther than we do, so we end up coming up short a lot, right, We're chipping up to get close to try to part of the whole lag putting versus short chips chips around the green. Where should more time be spent working? What is going to be more valuable to us in the long run?

shot deal in both cases. Right. So one of my other mentors, Mike Lebove, you know we were talking about years ago, is probably in the early nineties we were talking about this. He's like, you know what a single digit golfer is? And then maybe I've mentioned this on the show again, So I repeat my stories.

to be a single digit golfer. You can hit four or five greens around if you have a reasonable short game and you don't get penalty strokes and drive it out of play. It's really not that tough of a formula. And then but when you add the fact that we're human beings playing golf and we get upset, and we get we have to manage ourselves and all kind of

stuff get it gets more difficult. But I definitely want all my students to understand how to make solid con attacked on short game shots and how to be able to read lies. Reading lies is a huge skill. What every lie tells a story, So what story is this? Why telling you? So the other day I'm teaching this little ten year old, this whole ten year old girl

who was in from Korea. It was really she's awesome and she would We were talking about uneven lies and weird lies around the greens, and I said, you know, every lie tells a story. So I said, hey, this golf ball is talking to you right now. So I said, I'm the golf ball. I'm talking. Boy. There's so much grass around me right now, it's going to be really hard to get this club to hit me. That player better firm up their wrists so this club doesn't get

twisted by this grass. It's all around me, and I better come in that club better come in steeper, because if it doesn't come in steeper, it's not going to get to the bottom of me, and I'm not going to get up in the air. So that kind of sounds kind of stupid, ridiculous. She's laughing as I'm saying this to her, But I'm like, this ball is talking to you. It's telling you what needs to happen here. And if you don't understand how to read a lie, you can make what you think is a good swing

and hit a horrible golf shot. So being a good player is about being able to analyze the lie, understand how the club needs to be working in order to be efficient out of that lie, and then how it affects your distance control and so on and so on and so on. So that's that comes with some education from your coach, but a lot of experimentation. The great short game players they compete with their friends and they

put balls in. Remember when Noda and Tiger were at Stanford and they used to have short game contests and just give themselves the worst possible lies and see who could who could get themselves out of it and put some put some money on it. That's how you really get good at it. I had a chance to play a Serendifitaucy.

pretty good lie. So you do have to read grain, you have to read break, you have to understand speed and all that kind of stuff, But there's so much when a ball is not on a green that you have to understand how your club interacts with the ground, what kind of bounce you have on your wedges? You know, is it into the grain? Is the down grain is you know? The other day I was giving a chipping lesson and I said, you have a couple options here.

First look at the grass on the green, and part of it was kind of this pale, shiny look to it, and the other one was deep green. I said, well, the deep green is into the grain, and then you have down green. So where are you going to land it? Because if you land it in the grain is going to kill it. If you land it down grain, it's going to skid on you. How are you going to manage this shot? Right? And so a big variability to just get just once the ball where the ball is

going to land on the green. So and the person's like, well even thought about that, And sure enough he hits his first one into the down grain area, skids and goes about fifteen feet pass hits his next shot a little shorter, lands into the grain, ends about ten feet short, and he didn't miss hit either one of them, but he's not going to make a two. He's going to make a three, So how are we going to manage that?

You know? So those kinds of things, and that's that maybe is different than somebody saying I need a chipping lesson because I tend to scull the chunk of my chips. You know, like, yeah, okay, that's part of it. But how are we going to turn three shots into two and occasionally turn two shots into one? Which is kind of cool. I was at a conference one time and Matt Coocher's got a great short game, was hitting some

chips and he kind of looks over at us. He goes, he goes, from where I'm chipping right here, guys on the guys I'm competing competing against will make it more than they'll make a three. They usually make a two, but they'll make it more often than they'll take three shots to get in the hole. So that's what he's competing against. You think he's not going to take care about what's you know, what kind of lie had? House

clubs can interact. I mean, the other thing he did, which I thought was really cool was between every wed shot he hit, he took a tea out of his pocket and he cleaned out the grooves. He never hit a shot without perfectly cleaning groups. Okay, we're like, oh, I'm gonna chip chip for half an hour and you never cleaned your club once. Yeah, So how do you expect to really have your brain understand trajectory, spin all that kind of stuff if you've got variability on your club face.

confidence is shot there. Walking up to the ball, I'm like, oh, no, as opposed to I love this shot right right, and then boy, this is not where I want to go. But I saw a video on YouTube. But it was Phil Mickelson, who is a phenomenal instructor as far as his videos and how he explains things, and he was talking about making sure that your lead hand for right hand golf, it's your left hand, the wrist doesn't break, and you keep it the arm and the hand out.

I don't know if I'm explaining this properly, but I watched him do it, and I went in my you know, I have a short game practice area in my yard, and it was working. And you know, he says, here, if you want to get more height on it, put it in the front.

totally different. It could be swinging on a plane that's so incorrect that they're low points in the wrong place. They could have a pressure shift issue where they're not moving to their lead leg. I mean, there's so many different variables. So I just I did a talk years ago for the Northern California PGA where I said, when I was talking about how I go through a lesson, I said, the first thing I do is well, I interviewed, get information, but then I observe and I just wait.

I wait to see exactly what this person needs before I give them any piece of advice. And it might only be waiting five seconds. I might not need that longer. I might need a few shots to be able to see what's going on and then help them understand why the shot is happening and then what they need to do in order to get the correct contact. And that's

different from player to player. If I have somebody who's got so much lead arm lack of breakdown, so to speak, where they cannot get the ball up in the air even with their sixty because there's so little offt on it. I might actually tell them to break their wrists earlier, which would be heresy if you're talking about Phil Michaelson's thinking. But we might be both trying to get them to

the same place. But you got to understand when you watch it video Phil Nicholson saying how he does it, he doesn't get a chance to see what you currently do. You're in front of me, and I get to see what you currently doing and say, oh, that Phil Nicholson thing is perfect for you. Or if you do more of that Phil Nicholson thing, your ball is going to go racing across the green because you're not going to have any loft on your wedge anymore because you're leading

so much with your lead arm. So again I go back to it, it depends on what the player needs. And I think if Phil was here, you totally agree with me on that. I mean, Phil's a very bright, you know, very very thoughtful person. And ultimately, what you want to do is you want to present the club in a way that helps it interact correctly with the ground and produces the trajectory and role profile that you're looking for for that particular shot, and then what do

you need to do to do that? And in some cases you may need more of what Phil's talking about. In some cases you may need something something different. I got I don't know what the best word is, but I got a lot of grief on the internet when I actually said the exact opposite. I said, I try to get my lead wrist into a little bit more extension, a little bit more cupping position. Especially if I'm trying to get this ball up in the air a little bit more, I need more loft. If I did the opposite,

it would take off. But if I'm looking to get it more up in the air and I've got the bounce sliding, I can do that and get some softness on my shot right. And they're like, oh, you got to have your lead rest or like what Phil Micholson's saying or whatever, you know, more forward leaning your shaft and more downward strike. And I'm like, I'm really good at hitting this high soft pitch shot with a little

bit more extension where the shaft is leaning backwards. So what I tell people's listen, when I set up to hit a short game shot, I present a certain amount of loft. I'd like to have at the moment of the strike, and then I want to make sure my club is stable enough and returns to that loft to produce the trajectory and role I'm looking for for that particular shot. So it's interesting you hear a lot of

I'll share a story with you. I was playing at Olympic Club and I short sided myself, you know, because I went for a pin that I should know, or actually I wasn't trying to go for that pin. I just overhooked the golf ball. It's just not a good golf shot. And I ended up short sighted myself, which happens. And I hit this beautiful, high soft pitch to about two feet and the guy was playing with said, oh, you got such soft hands, and I said, thank you.

And my hands were so opposite of soft. My hands were on their like a vice because I wanted to make sure that the ninety degrees aloft because I laid the lowboage wide open, was going to be there at the moment of impact through the rough, So my hands were anything but soft. The ball came off super soft, fluffy, like a landed like a deflated beach ball, as they like to say, right butterfly with sore wings. It was a beautiful high soft shot. I'll brag about it, but

my hands were not soft. My forms were super strong. I'm very pressurized to stabilize that club face to the position I needed to produce the exact trajectory I was looking for to hit that shot. And I guarantee you I did not have a lot of forward leaning the shaft because if I did, it wouldn't have been a high soft shot. So again, it goes back to it depends on what you're trying to do with the shot.

there's trouble short budget. Accordingly, so we think, oh, I've got one hundred and fifty yards that's going to be my seven iron, right, Because one time I hit my seven iron one hundred and forty nine yards, so I'm going to pull it out and not even considering that I'm maybe in the rough on that, you know, and it's wet and it's against grain. Talk about decision making on club.

your ball goes these days. And back when I was playing professionally in the early nineties, I was working on my distance wedges with you know, I'd gone to the Dave Pel school and it was helping me measure everything. And I literally went out with one of my teammates from Stanford and we went out and measured our yardages.

And we went to the hardware store and got one of those wheels where we'd wheel out and get foot by foot and then put down owls at every five yards, and then one of us would be out there charting it as we hit. Now you can you got a little device you put behind your ball and say, oh, that one's sixty three yards. I mean, you need to know how far you hit the golf ball. And you

need to be honest with yourself. Okay, I'm practicing it's seventy degrees and sunny, it's not going to be the same when it's fifty degrees and you know, thicker air, foggy, whatever, dense or air, it's not going to go as far. So and windy conditions. You need to take all that, all that stuff into account. What's the lie? Is the grass growing with me? Is a grain grown against me? Is do I have a clean access to the back

of the ball. There's all this stuff. It's like, yeah, my seven ar might go one to fifty, but in which condition does it going one to fifty? Right? So you need to be smart about that, and then you need to make good decisions if there is trouble in front. You know, what's what's your You know, you've got to count for the fact that you might miss it a little bit, and you can't account for a disaster shot.

There's no strategy that allows you to account for a disastrous shot right, like total chunking or sculling is like, you can't plan for that. But if I hit a reasonable shot and it's not going to go quite my usual distance, am I still going to be? Okay? You have to take that, take that into account. But in the back of my mind, I always go back to what we talked about earlier today, which is if you flush one and it goes over the green, that's a double at best, right, So you need to you need

to be careful with that. So I don't know if there's a great answer, but just know that you're not You're not a machine. You're not perfect. You're not going to hit every ball on the button. You're not going to hit it always like how far your best shot

would go. So just know that. Just be smart about it, don't you know, put your ego aside and say, you know what, what's the club that's going to get me, get me to where I need to be and help me score reasonably on this hole and not put myself in harm's way by just making again a decision that's ego based. Worried about how come you know, worry about score? What will they think of me? All that stuff that interferes.

It's like nobody needs to know you hit a seven ar and when when people think you should have hit an eight iron their cyc who cares?

and then I'd go to my coach. At that point, it was Rick Roads up at San Francisco Golf Club, So Rick, you know, I'm struggling with this part of my game, and then we'd focus on that. So I'd come to my coach prepared with what my weaknesses were, and those were evident based on what the statistics statistics told me. And for whatever reason, I don't know how

this can be. And I'm like, Okay, if I'm going to play professional golf, if I want to win a professional tournament, if I could average sixty eight for four days and she's sixty under par, I'm going to be in the mix. And then I would see basically what the anatomy of a sixty eight was. And it wasn't anything crazy, right, it was just being reasonable in all

these different categories. And now we've got it to the point where it's even you know, more sophisticated, with all the all the great apps and tools that we have to be able to measure everything and depending on what you are, whether you're you know, somebody's just trying to break a ninety or break eighty, your break one hundred.

There's just reasonable expectations in each part of your game that you can refer to and then go to your coach armed with that, like, hey, coach, you know, I not just what my last round was, but if you look at my last ten or fifteen rounds, there's a trend here, you know, there's a trend that you know, I'm my chips are averaging twelve feet from the hole. Well, it's probably gonna be a two putt. What if we got that? What if we get that to seven or eight and all of a sudden some of those become

up and downs, you know. And so if you get a little bit better in every category, you're going to improve just improving your skill set. It's like what I tell like almost all golfers, but especially juniors, I'm like, what can you do today that makes you just a little better than you were yesterday? What kind of decisions can make what how's your practice going to be a little bit better today just to make you better than you were yesterday? And just keep comparing yourself to yourself

and keep making your weaknesses less weak. You know, it's nice to have strengths. We have to maintain those, but really come armed to a lesson with an understanding of where you should spend your time. So the you know, if you're taking an hour lesson the coaches and trying to figure it out for the first twenty minutes, what's going on. It's like, let's get to work.

And then the best way is just go go take a lesson, and you may not need to ever see them again, but just just go take a lesson. See if the communication is what you what you like. I think there's also a knowis on the player to hold the coach accountable to what they're actually looking to do. I learned early on in my coaching career not to have expectations for where I wanted my students to go. I really want to meet them for what they want to do. I had a student when I was teaching

back back for golf died just in New Jersey. He just wanted to have a beautiful swing. He was a wonderfully dressed person, hair, perfect cologne. I mean, he was a model looking guy and he wanted an Adam Scott model looking swing. And when I met him, he was a four, and when I left New Jersey two years later, I think he was an eight. But his golf swing looked beautiful and he was happy as a clam We

never touched his short game. We just made a swing beautiful now that would not have been my I can't tell you how many times I told him his name is Tom. I won't say his last name, is it Tom? We need to work on your short game. Is you finished runner up in his club championship? You know before I met him, and he couldn't sniff it afterwards and

I couldn't. I could not convince him to work on his short game, putting, chipping, pitching, because he just wanted a beautiful sweat, and he ended up I met his expectations. He had a beautiful sweat if I would have. You know, I don't want to make my students unhappy. But that's not a typical student. A typical student might be might might say something different, like you might. I don't know what your current index is, Fred, but I'm sure you're

a very curious person. You love to learn, and you probably like, what can I do, Josh to make my What are you? What is your index? Thees days?

I never will say anything to a student that doesn't either improve the quality of the contact or the shot. I don't do anything for for for decoration when it comes to teaching. This one case, what Tom was like, I learned my lesson on that, and if that's the person who's coming for lesson, it's not a fit. I want to I want to make my students better, but I want to meet I want them to get out of it what they want to get out of it.

But I think they're One of the things I asked my students when they come see me, is do you want to understand why something is happening or do you just want me to tell you what to do? Because I'm always willing to defend my point of view when I see something. This is why your ball is doing this, this is how to fix it, and the reason it's doing. This is because of X, Y or Z, and when we do this, it will it will go away. And trust me on this, but this is this is this

is how it's going to work. And I'm confident in my abilities to be able to diagnose just about anything out there. We have great tools. Now, I've got thirty years of experience. I know how this is going to happen. Some people say, you know what, thanks for letting me know that. I just want to get right to it.

I don't want to understand it. My ideal student, if I had to, if I had to create one, would be somebody who's super curious, somebody wants to know the why, somebody who down the road wants to fire me because I have armed them with all the things they need to know to be able to be their own best coach. That would be kind of the ideal the ideal student.

And that doesn't mean that student won't stay with me for years, because we enjoy each other's companies and we can always get better at different parts of the game. But base, if I have a student who's been with me for a long time and they're hitting certain shots and I'll ask them questions that This is one thing I learned from Rick Rhads years ago, the Socratic method. Well, Josh, I'm hitting this, Well, why do you think that's happening? You know, why is your go in this direction? Why

is your ball flight start? Why is the ball starting this direction? Why is it spitting too much? So ask a lot of questions because I know they already know the answers. I just need to get them in touch with it because I've taught this to them and they need to be able to when they're on the golf trip with their pals in South Carolina, to be able to, you know, hit a few shots and go, oh, I'm

back to this thing. I need to I need to adjust my grip, or I need to adjust the ball position, or my stance position, or how I'm shifting my weight. Because I know how to fix this now, because Josh has armed me with the skills to be able to do that. And that's when the student goes, hey, I'm I can fly now, right. I I don't necessarily need my coach, and almost to the point, like a Bubba Watson who never had a coach, like Bubba Watson can

fix his ball flight. He knows what to do. He doesn't need he doesn't necessarily need a coach to tell him why. I definitely needed a coach to tell me why I did not have that instruction when I was younger. My coach was not armed with that information. He was the most wonderful person mentor supportive person that didn't have the technical skills. And then I had some amazing mentors

that helped me understand the technical skills. And I want to pass that along to my students so they can become their own coach and halfway through around when they're struggling, then they can turn it around, or after the round they can they can figure it out. And that learning process just makes you that much stronger of a player, because you're like, hey, I can go anywhere anytime, and if I'm struggling, I know how to get out of it.

And if you're the if you're the student who always needs to call the coach because you don't know what to do, then the coach probably didn't do their job in my opinion. So I have kiddingly say I'm trying to get myself fired here, but I kind of I kind of am is that I don't want to hold anything back I want to I want to make sure you understand and then and then I'm going to arm you with some skills to be able to fix yourself because golf is always I was explaining this to a

student the other day. Golf is always a matter of tweaking things. And for those who us, those of us who are old enough to remember there were dials on a radio to tune in the station without the static, right, a lot of kids have no idea what that is. That's what we're always doing. We're always just tweaking little things to get that contact that much sweeter, that ballflight, to just curve that much more. It's always a matter

of tweaking things. And there's no such thing as oh, I got it, and now I don't have to worry about it anymore, because we're not machines. We're human beings, and we change and it's it's a constant. You've got to love the process of going through the process, and if you're not, if that's not fun for you, then you're probably in the wrong sport, because that's what it is.

All you have to do is go to a tour event and follow a tour player through their week, whether it's going to the fitness trailer when its managing what they eat how they eat during the round, whether it's you know, adjusting to the green speeds of that particular week, or the conditions are, you know, where the ball's not flying as far because maybe you're a pebble beach and it's foggy and it's windy and constantly tweaking things, and maybe the ball position has to go back a little

bit because you need to flight your ball a little bit lower, and how that affects how the ball is going to curve, and you're constantly doing this, and then the next week you're in a different place and all of a sudden, the greens are different, and the weather's different, the altitude is different, and you're constantly tweaking and these

are outside elements. And then that doesn't even bring the fact that, oh, you know, you tweaked your back a little bit, you know, walking down the stairs the other day, and so now your body is not quite feeling it quite so that little that feel that you had two weeks ago is not quite there anymore. Now we need a different feel to produce the same ball flight that

you had before. Right, So there's always that kind of tweaking and adjusting and monitoring and dialing in what you're looking to do to be the best golfer you can be on that particular day, and then you wake up the next day and you do it again and enjoy the process of doing that again. Whether you're a fifteen twenty handicapper or trying to make a living doing this, it's your human being trying to constantly adjust that. And part of the coach's job is to help people understand

your ball. Like I was saying, the lie tells a story. Your ball flight tells a story, right, there's a reason why. And so one of my close friends, Jeff Ritter, who's a great teacher. You may have spoken to him. I love when he tells somebody who hit a shot, he goes, that's perfect. What do you mean that was perfect? I just sliced it forty years And that's the perfect way to slice the ball forty yards. If you want to slice it forty yards, that's perfect way to do it.

So there, what you just did is the reason why that ball flight did what you did. We did what it did. So now how do you work back from the ball flight? What did you what did the ball flight tell you that the club was doing, and what did you do to make the club do something to make the ball flight? Do that. That's that's golf, and enjoy the process of doing that.

the ball solidly. You can't get your ball flight. It's like good thing. Nobody told Matt Wolfe that he needed a beautiful swing, or Leecher Vino he needed a beautiful swing. Or you know Bruce Letski or you know, I'm dating myself with some of these references. But you are there, are you know? You start if you look, if you look at the old guy, the old school guys, it wasn't about the swing because they didn't have picture, they

didn't have video. Right, you want it back in the Hogan days, if you wanted a beautiful swe if you want to look at your swing, you had to film it, send it to the lab in two weeks later you could make an adjustment.

But I go back to what I was saying before, how much of that is relevant to you either hitting it more solidly or producing the proper ball flight. That's where the coach comes in the coach is the guide that helps you understand that information. It's the shirtpa that keeps you from going down rabbit holes that you shouldn't be going down rabbit holes. We were talking about this

before we came on the air here. One of my most important jobs is to keep you on the proper road, because think about how hard it is to build new motor patterns. And if you're going down a rabbit hole of trying to do something that doesn't fit what you need to do, you're spending so much time and effort going down the wrong road, and now you've got to come all the way back and start again and try to do something different, and you just put all these

repetitions into something that doesn't work for you. So part of the coach's job is to what's the word I'm looking for, is to is to make keep you on path, streamline the process, make it as efficient as possible. So you're doing you're working extremely intelligently to get to where you want to go. And if you're not getting the proper information or you're doing something because you saw this really cool video on YouTube that I don't know, Ludva

Goldberg is doing this. So I got to do that because man, is it was awesome and I agree this swing's awesome, But why does it work for him? And does it apply to you? Maybe not? You know, if Matt Wolf would have watched Oberg swing and try to do that, maybe Matt Wolf wouldn't finish second in the

US Open to Bryson at wing Foot. You know, it's like, you need to do what's right, what's right for you, and you need oftentimes you need a coach who understands that to be able to make sure, Hey, this is I feel like I'm the I'm the person who can just save you a lot of time or a qualified coach as a person who could help you save a lot of time not going down the wrong path because it needs to apply to you and it needs and a great litmus test is as far as holding your

coach accountable. Ask the coach when they ask you to do something, be polite, but just ask them is this going to make my contact more solid? Or is this going to help my ball flight? And if not, why am I doing it? Because there's no reason to do it if it's not doing one of those two things. One of my mentors, Jim Hardy, The tagline for his company is next ball better. The next ball needs to be better. If you're doing the things that the coach told you to do, that that are gonna help make

that next ball better. And if you're going down the wrong road, if you're trying to you know, bow your wrist because John rom Bose's wrist and he was the number one player in the world, and so was Dustin with a Bode wrist. Well, does a Bode risk help you hit the next ball better? Does it fit your biomechanics? Because for some people it's magic and for other people it's tragic. So you just got to make sure you

understand what that is for you. And that's part of what you need to hold your count, your coach accountable for. So it's it's a you can this. There's so much information available for us, and it's all good information, but the question is is applicable to you? And that's that's I think where you need some kind of a helper, some kind of a coach to help you understand that.

If I was if I was learning a different sport, I definitely would find a coach that would help me understand how can I get to where I want to go and what's the what's the closest point, you know, the distance between those two lines that I can get me there the most efficiently. And you know I have limited amount of time and how do I spend it?

And that's that's how I would go. So when I'm taking a lesson, like I tell people, I'm the hardest person to take a lesson because I'm going to hold the coach accountable because i know the minute they tell me one thing to do, I'm like, well, I've already done the math in my head. If I do that one thing, I know what's going to happen to my impact because I you know, I've been there, done that. I've been doing it for the last thirty years, playing

for the last forty eight. I'm going on half a century of golf knowledge in year, and so you tell me to do something, I kind of know what's going to be coming out on the outcome. It is not and I'm going to hold you accountable for that. So I'm like, I'm not going to bow my wrist or I'm not going to cut my wrist, or I'm not going to tuck my elbow. I'm gonna you know that doesn't whatever, because because I know what that's to do to my ball fleight and my quality my contact. So

that's how I approach every lesson. I help my students understand what they need to do to make them the best version of themselves and try to make that as efficient as possible for you.

go ahead and swing. I'm like are you kidding me? And like you're swing, you're you're really inefficiated swing. I would, I can't swing with all this stuff off. Now you don't have to just you can just do your thing. You do it anywhere on the golf course and the range. It's it's it's a fantastic tool. GA's company is doing awesome of that.

off a perfectly flat lie. It's not it's not necessarily it's a it's a good way to kind of work on some fundamentals, but it doesn't it's not it's not

real life, but it's range. It's it's the range off of a mat and even more control than that, there's not even any win there's it's like golf is a variable game and there's zero variety when you go indoors with four walls hitting into a into a you know, a screen and so yeah, you might have a different whatever, you know, different pictures on the screen they get into.

But so there's some use to it, and and boy is it efficient in the sense that like you know, if you if you had one of those in your house or nearby where you just go practice and you're not worry about weather and worry about you know, it's there's a ton of advantages to it. But just realize you're not really learning golf. You're learning some technique about your golf swing, and you're getting some good feedback because you get spin rates and path and face and a

lot of track man type stuff information. But if you wonder why you do that and then you go to the golf course and you can't produce, it's because you're practicing that. You're not practicing golf. You're practicing how to swing your practice. So there's a place for it.

that they're kind of like different sport. Yeah, but that's okay, that's fine. Yeah, it's just whatever, as they say, whatever whatever makes you, you know, happy, entertained, engaged. It's there's, you know, to each his own kind of thing, right if you. I mean, I understand that golf is it takes time. It takes you know, you've got to drive

to course, you you know. But there's there's in this day and age that I'm talking as a human being slash parent, the ability to get away from your technology, be in a beautiful place, breathe fresh air, get some exercise, socialize, communicate all those things. There's a lot there that I think people need to understand that for your mental happiness, your state of mind, your I don't think we were necessarily designed to be indoors in front of a screen

as much as we are now. That's my personal opinion.

same time. And I didn't even realize I was learning, right, because I was having so much fun just curving this wiffle ball and hitting it high and making it spin on the crab grass in my front yard. And just you know, we had turtles. I would hit it around the turtle. I mean, it was true, it was true play. I was abusing turtles. I was hooking and and and and those those their shells don't don't get hurt by

a whiffle ball landing on top of it. So so I mean, I just like when you when you talk to me about a hitting a ball, hitting hitting hitting ball into a stream, you know, hitting balls into screens, you know, that's that's if it grows a game, great, I would my advice would be at least spend some time out there with your friends and be a full place, spending some time away from your screen. The screen will be there when you get home.

of my information. You can you know, you can take lessons remotely with me through that and so anywhere you are in the world, I would love to I would love to help you. And uh it because.