Hi, This is Rick Patrick or for Laardel, Florida, and I usually play it calling me West Golf Course.
Golf Smarter Nerder four hundred and seventy four published on February three, twenty fifteen.
Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Especially for the guys that are trying to break ninety. There's a lot of simple things you can do to get better. Some of the things I'd suggest for guys. A simple thing like an impact bag is really really good, even with the golf club. If you're really crazy about it, just go to your local golf store. Get yourself a seven nine, Maybe get a mold and grip put onto it, or training grips some people might call them. Get yourself
like an impact bag. If you're at home, what you can do is throw your bag in the backyard and just push it around, make a few small swings, just try to build up that feeling of what the correct impact position is. If you start pushing the bag, it's going to get your body angles better as well your body and wrist angles. And also if you've got a mirror, I get yourself in front of a mirror because what
I generally try and do. A lot of guys anyways, when they come, they set up son't very good, so I try and get them set up the correct way. Obviously when they leave it probably feels a little foreign, but it's like anything, if you do it enough, it just becomes a new normal because you're gonna find with golf the fields are always constantly changing, but visually it's always going to look the same.
Simple tools to breaking one hundred, ninety or eighty with Josh Willard, this is Golf Smarter. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Josh, thanks very thanks for having me here today.
Thanks for coming into the studio. This is great.
We met just a few weeks ago out on the driving range.
Over at Pickoar Gap. That's correct, Yeah, and you're teaching there now or that's right.
Yeah.
I actually work at Pickcock Gap five days a week and I work another day down in Alameter Chucker Rick at Golf Complex.
Okay, all right, I can tell you by your accent, your local that's right. Yeah, No, originally from local to Marine County.
No, originally from Sydney, from Sydney, Australia and been in the US for about four years.
Now, okay, and would write you here? Where'd you leave?
Before I came to America, I was actually working in Austria in Lynz And before that I was working in Singapore for three years. And then before that I played on the tour for about eight years. Which tour I've had status on the Australasian Tour, on the Asian Tour and also on the South African.
Really really and what are the differences between each tour? Is it just another level up or I.
Think with those three tours maybe the Asian Tour possibly slightly stronger because there's more events, there's a bit more money. The Australian Tool of the Australasian Tours, it's known probably they've lost quite a few events compared to say fifteen years ago. But they're all really sort of tours that get the guys starting tour, to get you onto the PGA Tour or to get you onto the European Tour.
And you obviously left Australia a while ago.
That's right. I left about thirteen.
Years ago, okay, all right, and this was to pursue a career in professional golf.
Yeah, you know, I played for eight years before that. I was actually an apprentice golf pro. I got my PGA status in Australia, my Class A status, and then, like most guys when they're sort of twenty one twenty two, when you finish your Class A, you want to go try and play golf professionally. So I did that for about eight years, and then I got to around twenty nine. I figured that I sort of wasn't working out how I hope it would, and I had to pursue something else.
So I really enjoyed teaching, so I thought to go down that route. Yeah.
Very different skill set teaching than being a player.
Yeah, definitely. You know, I guess with well, because he being.
A player, you're in your own head, right, that's true, and teacher you've got to bring it out.
That's got to be able to articulate it.
Absolutely.
So what is the hardest part to make that transition?
I guess it's just trying to get the knowledge on how to instruct people, how to get people better. And I guess that just takes time. You sort of like any skill, you've got to develop it over over years. And I guess I've been doing this for now thirteen years, so I feel like I'm getting better every year at it, and you know, communicating and just getting people to improve.
How are you able to translate your thoughts into instruction. I mean, let me get you were probably a natural player growing up. You just immediately were starting to play really well when you were a kid and fell in love with the game.
Yeah. I think I was introduced to the game through my grandfather. And in Australia when I was a kid, you couldn't you couldn't join a golf club til fourteen. You could still get onto the public golf courses and play, but if you want to join like a golf club, you have to be at least forteing to start.
Okay, all right, So being a strong player as a kid and wanting to succeed and then going to the different tours and then going into teaching. To me, it's natural players are not necessarily the best instructors. I've always thought like the best teachers were the C students, not the A plus students, because the A students it comes naturally to them, it's easy, and they don't understand how people struggle with whatever they're teaching.
So do you have do you get.
Frustrated when you're instructing and people just aren't getting what you're trying to You're trying to teach them because you think it's so obvious.
Well, I guess as an instructor, you have to have some patience. Yeah, you're dealing with people that maybe play golf once a week or once a month or once a year, or they're just starting up. But you know, as far as the instructions concerned, I really feel that you've got to keep it really simple and for people to get better, I just feel that you've just got to keep it really basic. And to me, the way that the tour players play, they've got maybe more flawed.
You know, they've got a lot of compensations in their swings and they can make that work. But for the average person, for me, they need something simpler. You know that they need to have, you know, less motion to it all to make it repeat.
That's an interesting idea is how the pro players. The better players can adjust from shot to shot on their swing, and yet the amateur has to really learn how to have a swing. And then you go out on the course and these guys who are struggling to break ninety or going oh I knew what I did wrong then, or yeah, I got to shape this one around the tree.
It's like, really, you have that shot in your back? Really?
Really?
Come on? Really?
Yeah?
Well, you know, I guess. I guess for the professionals that obviously got more time to work at it, they're a lot more talented, really, they're or more athletic than say the average person. Whereas the average guys, it's I guess he's out there to try and have some fun and and you know he's going to be a little uh, a little more all over the place, I guess, as far as you know, off the tee, and he's gonna have to try and create shots to get back get
the ball back into playing. Yeah, and that's that's that's it. That's why I guess goes so difficult.
You know, Yeah, what what is the So let's let's talk about your instruction a bit. What do you like to focus on with Let's say somebody who's who's been playing the game for a while. They're struggling and they don't know what it is that's preventing them from breaking ninety. You know, they're in the upper nineties, they're occasionally in the broad round, they're in the low hundreds, but they're mid and upper nineties, and they just can't get down
to ninety. And if they break ninety, they it's like that would be a major event in their golfing career.
Well, I feel it with most people. You know, probably they're the short game lets them down a little bit. You know, for a lot of people, when most people come for lessons, what I find is they want to learn how to hit the long shots, the long game. And then when you talk to them about their game, and if they come consistently, you sort of say, well, are you spending any time on your short game? And most of the time the answer is no, not really.
But you know, other people they can come and you know, they sort of chip and put okay, but they're long games rotten, you know, So it just depends on the individual. But I find, you know, normally, if their long game's written, if you can sort of fix up their long game a bit as well. They can drop you know, quite a few shots. Just depends on on the individual.
I guess the long game being after tea.
Well, just just in general with when you've got a long, you know, the long game. As far as the consistency of it, you know, most people tend to fight the right side of the golf course for the right hander, and I think a lot of that just stems from the starts and their concepts of where the power comes from.
Let's let's let me take you on that right there, and let's expand on that.
What does that mean?
Well, you know, for I guess, the way the game's traditionally been taught is is that you know, you're here in the US. We've got the Golf Channel, and that's sort of like the new and YouTube, I guess, and that's like the new golf magazines. You know that the golf magazines screwed. I feel sort of have messed people
up a bit for a long time. But you know, the way the game's traditionally been taught is that you know, you've got to You've got to get it, get yourself over the ball, get yourself comfortable, and then try and make this massive, big turn and for most people when they try and make, the more they try and turn, the more out of position they get. And then once they're out of position, they're trying to recover to get back into the right position so they can hit the ball.
And the problem with golf is we don't have a lot of time. You know, the club's traveling at seventy to one hundred miles an hour, and you don't have a lot of time to try and match it all up and hit the ball straight. And that's why I feel that a lot of people struggle with it.
Off the tee a bigger problem to swing or the club selection.
Well, I think if people were a little more conservative with the selection, you know. I mean, of course some you know, it depends on the course, but people tend to gravitate, gravitate towards the driver and they feel like that's the that's the fun club to hit. But you know a lot of the times they.
Just really that's fun.
Well it's I guess it all ends in tears a lot of the time. But you know, if they sort of maybe went towards like a three wood or a five wood or even a hybrid off the tee and sacrifice a little bit of distance. Sort of their strategy was a little better and just got the ball and to play and sacrifice the twenty or thirty yards you know. Okay, they might have as long as second shot, but they probably find that they're playing the ball more off the short grass than in the rough and in the trees.
Absolutely, And then they get themselves into the rough and in the trees, going oh I can get there from here.
Yeah, Well, they just aren't realistic, you know, get they when they get the ball out of pause and then they're trying to get it back into position. And you know, most people, they're playing a shot that's really I might pull off ten percent of the time instead of so just taking the medicine and chopping the ball back out onto the fairway.
That's interesting.
You call it taking your medicine and getting back in the fairway. And yet it took me a while to realize. But once I started figuring out, if I quote unquote took my medicine and just put the ball back in the fairway, get it into play, I can get the next shot onto the green.
Okay, now I'm putting.
If I two putt, I bogie the hall, all right. So but if I see a slide opening, I'm over on the side there, I'm the right. I'm in between trees and rough and there's a tall tree in front of the green, and there's a bunker in front of the green as well. I mean, there's all these things that are in my way. But I think, but it's only one hundred and thirty yards. I can reach that, right, But there's all these obstacles in the way. And I go for it, and of course I hit a tree.
Then I have to go under another one that I'm in the bunker. Now all of a sudden, I'm putting for a seven. You know, if I to pay it takes me five strokes. Where are we not thinking it through?
Of like what are the consequences here? Oh?
Definitely I feel that, you know, you know, if you looked at that situation, say, like, if you're going to invest money, you know you wouldn't put your money into something that you feel it you got a ten percent chance of making money out of, would you know? You'd definitely be a little more conservative with you the way you think. But you know, I guess maybe that's the
attraction with golf you're feeling that. You know, you watch golf on t you see Phil Mickelson play and he's sort of all over the place and he hits this miraculous shot. So we all feel that we can do that, you know, and it's obviously that's fun when it comes off. But when it doesn't come off, then, you know, then we look a bit silly and we rack up a big number.
Big number, again and again and again. I love to emphasize getting fitted for clubs. I know that when I got fitted for my driver, it really made a big difference in the game because I started finding out that by hitting more fairways, I'm definitely in position for more pars. Whether I have to chip up, you know, close to the pen and try to put in one, or I'm on the green in regulation, it really does make a huge difference when you're playing from the fairway.
Yeah, absolutely, you know, golf's much easier off the shorter grass than when you're in the rough. And like you said about getting fitted for the driver, people tend to have generally need a lot more loft on their driver than what they've got. You know, people like to maybe
it's a bit of a macho thing. But people like to have like a nine or ten degree driver, whereas I feel if people had more like an eleven or twelve degree driver, Okay, if they really had a good one, it may not go as far, but it takes a bit more spin off the ball, well, actually takes a side spin off the ball. Ball gets a bit more up in the air. It's a bit easy to hit. It's easy to get the ball into play.
We've already mentioned a couple times of hitting it far, hitting it far, which seems to be the great lure.
We did an.
Episode a couple of years ago that we called give me ten feet closer than ten yards farther any day of the week? Run are we putting the what is that attraction of watching the ball fly in the air for as long as we can and not realizing and not analyzing At the end of the round.
It's like, Wow, that really was awful.
I hit my driver twelve times today or fourteen times today, and I only made two fairways.
That this isn't good.
Yeah, Well, I guess that's the way the game's going, isn't It's all about power, whether you're talking about golf or tennis or any of those other sports. It's you know, the guys hitting the ball.
Further and only the guys on tour.
Well that's true, but we see the guys on tour, they're the guys that are driving the whole business run.
Well, are they driving it into the ground with that? You know, they were making golf once. Once there was this boom of golf course construction going on in the country in the early part of the century, right, and now nothing's being built in this country because they were making them longer and longer and longer, and that only appeals to a handful of select players.
Yeah, well, definitely, I think the courses are getting too long. You know, if people played off the right t's. You know, Nicholas had a thing out a couple of months ago, maybe six months ago, we talked about you know, I saw an ad on television here in the States and he was talking about play from them from the te's. That fits you, and for a lot of people, they tend to want to play from the back teas. But I think they'd have a lot more fun if they sort of moved up and played more off the members
t's or off you know, the forward tees. Yeah, some golf course have like a senior tea or have like a member's tea, but people tend to gravitate towards the back teas.
We've got to give We've got to stop giving those teas names, because that's part of the stigma that I'm not blaming the ladies teas.
They're not they're red.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, they're just the red tea's.
And they're you know, and I keep going back, and I have this conversation with my friends all the time when we're out playing. It's like, do you are you here to score as low as you possibly can? Then why not play up a little closer? What's the big deal?
Yeah? No, definitely. You know, if you're.
Not a scratch golfer, friends.
That's right. You know, if you if you're if you're hitting like an eight or a nine iron in instead of a five iron, it's going to be a lot more fun, and it's going to be more scorable. If it's more scorable, you're going to want to play more. So, you know, you're more fun if you're shooting lower school.
I'd much rather hit an eight or nine iron than a five or six any day of the week on my second shot, yeah.
I'll go for those.
Well, yeah, I just have a lot more confidence in that shot, and I keep working on the five and the six, and then I get out there and it's like, no, this is I'm feeling shaky about this.
This is not good.
No, definitely, you know, like like that's that's probably the biggest criticism with a lot of people is the new golf courses that they are building. They're tending to get longer and longer and longer, and you know, we're struggling to get people to come to golf, and you know, if they can make it a little bit easier by making it a little bit shorter, I think it. You know, you probably keep a lot more people.
The other thing it's it seems to be so obvious, is that people really don't know the distance they hit each club. They have an idea of what they've hit on the longest shot they've ever had with that club and use that as the standard. But that I think creates more problems than people are willing to admit. Well, people tend to get to sense when you when you're talking about.
Yeah, well you know when you talk to people, say how far i'd hit a seven on and they say, well, I hit one hundred and seventy yards.
Well, no, you don't.
Well maybe if you hit your absolute best one behind Yeah exactly, that's a firm like a runway. But and yeah's you've got a fifty mile an hour win behind you, like you said. But you know, people, the great probably the best tip you can give anyone is just take an extra club. You know, people tend to always under club you know, especially if you played a lot of pro ams in my day, and the biggest thing is they're always they're always under clubbing.
Take an extra club.
Let's talk about your short game intensive sessions that you offer.
Well, yeah, walk me through that. What does that mean?
Yeah, well I do them up at peacock gap and down an alimeter and basically it lasts for about three hours. And what we try and do is we cover all facets. We try and cover the putting, the chipping, pitching, bunker shots. And that's really when people come. They can really pick up shots quite quickly. There.
Pick up strokes are knocked down on your.
Skill exactly because you know, a lot of the time they've just got the wrong concepts with which club to use. And which situation, And if your listeners out there, probably your best tip you can give peoples, it's try and kick the ball on the ground. You know. The club that people tend to gravitate towards is the sand wedge and the lob wedge, And I just find with those clubs they're great in some situations, but when people pull them out in every situation, that's when it gets it
gets a little trickier. You know, first you get hit the ball quite precisely, and then when you've hit, if you've hit a precisely, then you've got to land the
ball precisely as well. So if you can pull a seven and eight iron out and just try and run the ball along the ground, you know, it's still going to fly a little bit, but it might fly maybe, you know, depending on the situation, it might fly twenty percent through the air and a percent along the ground, you know, and you know you can mishit it there a little bit more with a seven or eight iron, and the ball is going to want to release up to the hole.
Yeah, let's pretend we're here now. Peacock Gap is a good example because it's a short game specific kind of course. I mean, if you it's not a long course, but if you don't have a good short game, you're going to struggle on that course.
Yeah.
Absolutely, you know that. We've got a new greenkeeper in there at the moment, and the last few months he's he's really turned it.
Yeah, hude, you got him. You got him up from the Metal Club, which is quite the coup.
Right, that's right. He was the number two up there and he's come down and he's he's really sped the greens up. He's lowering the fairways a little bit as well. And I think once the summer comes around it gets a little warmer, it's going to be a lot more playable.
It's in great shape right now, it is.
He's really he's really turned it around. And like you said, the golf course itself, it's a fun golf coast to play. It's not a long golf course, but it's not some flat. It's easy to walk and like you said before, you can have a lot of eight and nine pitching wages into the hole. So it's quite school where you can sort of the greens are a little tricky maybe, but you know that sort of balances it out as far as you know. That's that's that's the thing I like
about it. It's not very long, but then it's a bit of a challenge once you get around the greens.
The other thing that's nice about playing Peacock is there's not a lot of uphill, downhill lies. You know, the ball being above or below your feet.
That's right, she gets It's it's a pretty flat golf coast.
Pay Yeah, yeah, it is. That helps a lot.
Well, let's say we're on a par for our second shot leaves us four yards off the green. Were but we're in the rough. It's not it's not the false front leading up to the green. We're all in the rough.
There.
There's nothing between us and the green itself except the tall grass. And I see more and more people reaching in for what you were saying is the pitch and the sixty degree and they try to scoop under it and give it a nice loft onto it, and they're not that precise. And why don't we understand? Why don't we get that? And for me, what I would do in a situation like that is I would take an maybe a seven or an eight iron and just putt
with it. So if I do a putting motion. It's just going to get over that rough, gonna get through and over it. But then it's gonna roll.
Is this exactly? It just depends on where the pin's located. But if you got yeah, if you've got a little bit of room to work with, definitely pull out. You nine, you're eight, you're seven on Like you said, almost feel
like it's a big putting stroke. But the difference is she's going to hit down on a little bit more bulls, kind a little flutter, it's going to release up to the hole and you know, it's just a more high percentage shot, you know, then pulling out's maybe people tend to gravitate towards the sandwich of the love witch.
And you said hitting down on it versus.
Scoop, but I yes, you might. Well it depends on the lie as well. That's the other sure thing with it. But you know, if the ball is sort of sitting okay, you know, just just sort of make sure you hit down on a little bit. With the chip shots, people tend to sort of try and help them up a little bit.
And where's the weight on our body? Are we leaning into it or are we holding.
My preference is I mean, depending on the on the on the situation. But normally I try and get people pretty level. I just feel that they're a little more level. They tend to sort of brush it off. But it just depends on on the severity of the life. It's down deep, you know, it's down deep. Maybe you want to lean a touch more foot towards the left side for the right hand and feel like you're going to hit down on it because you're sort of going to get sort of chop it out and get the ball
up onto the green. But yeah, I mean that's that's sort of the direction I try and do with most people.
Anyway, What do you find to be.
Not the easiest shot to teach, but the easiest shot for your student to comprehend and like the light bulb goes ah, I get it now, that makes sense to me and I can do it. What type of shot do you find that works for most of your students?
Well, I guess the short game. You can get the most pop, you can get people, you can fix them the quickest with the short game. You know, whether it's like we're talking about before pulling out the you know, the sandwiche and you've sort of give them a seven and eight iron and say, you know, try try this for you. Drop a few balls down and try this.
You can really you know, I get people I teach and they come back and they say, well, you know that tip you game with the seven or eight iron's fantastic. You know, I'm saving so many shots. You know, before I was like sculling, hitting the ball thin with a sand wage that's going across the other side of the green. Now if I mishit it with the seven eye, it just it doesn't. It's sort of it's not so exaggerated as far as when.
It you know, oh you said the magic word sculling. Okay, so you've just won the prize. As we're recording this, the Phoenix, the Waste Management Phoenix Open is going on, and yesterday, the opening day of the tournament, Tiger makes his triumphant return. Well, we were the media wanted to be a triumphant return. He obviously was looking, you know, a little bit stale, but his not that I want to talk about his score or anything, but his play around the green looked more.
Like someone shooting in the nineties.
Yeah, well, you know, he's interesting. Watch, wasn't it. You know, he's it's almost like he's got the yips with he's chipping. He he was trying to keep the lot of the situations he was in, he was trying to keep the ball low, keeping it on the ground. How he would try and just get a guy that's shooting sort of between one hundred and sort of trying to break that
in the magical ninety number. He was pulling out like a seven and a nine or an eight or whatever it was, and he was you could see he was trying to get on the ground quite quickly. And you know somebody who'struggling with the chipping, that's sort of a lot of the time. How I'll try and play the shots.
Yeah, either you know, he came up short, he went, he sculled one and just rolled right over the other side of the green. It was really quite I mean once, okay, he's stale once, but he did it multiple times.
Yeah. Well, we saw back at the Tiger Challenge in December that he was really fighting his short game. He's chipping. Now, whether that's just something because he's trying to change his swing and or it's something more sinister. As far as you know, he's he's he's sort of getting to that
age you know on the tour they call golf. Once he hit forty, they caught the black hole for most guys, you know, they sort of their game tends to sort of deteriorate and and and sort of sort of not be as sharp as what it was before that.
He hit that a long time ago.
It feels like, well, yeah, he hasn't sort of before before the the Thanksgiving incident. I guess he's he's he's his game hasn't mean the same since.
No, No, this is a game we like to play here a lot. If Tiger called you, I mean, he seems to be trying the lots of coach. He brought down another coach again. If Tiger were to call you and say, I need your help this week, what would you talk to him about?
Well, you know, it's a tough one. You know, Tiger's obviously he's probably the most talented guy that's maybe ever played the game of golf. So, oh, what would I do with him? Yeah, that's a really good question.
I'm not going to let you get away with Yeah, being stumped on this one, it is.
It's interesting, Well, you know, he he's always had the club a bit stuck and behind him, you know, so explained well, you know, for most of the amateurs, they tend to come too much from the outside and they come over the top and they take big divots with Tiger, and you're gonna find with the better players, they tend to get the club more caught behind them, so it's sort of the club's coming too much from behind their body.
And you know, that's why he's always sort of blocked it, or especially with the driver, he's always he's always struggled to hit the ball straight. You know, at this point in time, for me, he's got too much turn too quickly, And that's sort of a little bit of his old patterns with what he was doing. He's working with Sean Foley and the more the sort of stack and tilt or the golf machine stuff or whatever you want to call it, and he's sort of going away from that.
It seems like he's going more back towards you know, his oldest swings when he was sort of back in the two thousand, two thousand and one. You know, i'd sort of just work on the direction of his turn. I feel like he's got a lot of turn like I said, a lot of turn really early.
He's so flexible, he's so strong.
Oh, he's very athletic, isn't he. You know he can do he can, you know he can. As we've all seen, he does some amazing things with a golf call.
Yeah, it really he really does.
Another thing that you offer at least that on your website, which is Josh Willard Goolf dot com w I L L A R D correct Josh Willard Goolf dot com. If you want to check it out, if you know, you can give him a call, talk to him on the phone, or you can even book a lesson with Josh. You talk about on course lessons in addition to you know, private lessons, short game on course and one day golf schools.
On course lessons, what do you find the most common mistakes when you're on course lessons with with let's let's talk about that mid handicap upper eighties nineties player.
Yeah, just course management a lot we talked about before. I just find that, you know, people are sort of grabbing the driver every chance they can. But you know, to me, if they pulled out a five wood or a three wood and just sort of sacrificed a little bit of distance, but got the ball and to play. And then also around the greens, you know that they just they just they course management isn't very good. Yeah, Like I said before, they'll tend to go for shots
that's maybe it's a ten percent shot. They might pull it off ten percent of the time.
What about for the better players? Now we're talking about guys who are single digit or you know, a ten eleven, twelve down there. They shoot in the low eighties regularly. Occasionally they'll break into seventies or even shoot in the mid seventies on a regular basis. When you take them out on course lesson what do you find to be the issue?
Normally they're not too bad.
Again, it just obviously yeah, well that's right.
It's more when you sort of get down to that sort of number where they're shooting sort of low eighties, it's to me it's more of a technical stuff and i'd work more of that on the range. I mean, you can take them on the golf course as well, but I find they'll get more bang for their buck if they're if you're working on their swing or working on their short game. Normally, if they're shooting sort of high low eighties to sort of mid eighties. They're sort
of their cost management isn't terrible. Again, they could probably pull a few three woods and five woods instead of pulling the driver, but they're just not as I guess, they're a bit more sensible as far as the clubs that they are pulling most of the time.
Yeah, and they probably know they're just as much better.
Yeah.
Well, they're more consistent golfers, so they're hitting the numbers, are a little more consistent consistently. But what you will find is again that they're always probably a lot of the time taking They could always take an extra club.
Everybody can.
Yeah. Well, you know, I think even with well, I would say with the two appliers, but with the amateurs, they're always under clubbing.
We're always talking about the amateurs.
Yeah, it's all about the amateurs. They can go to the Golf channel and watch the pros and the single digit guys. They can focus on that, but that's not where we are. We're talking about breaking ninety and hopefully breaking eighty sometime.
I mean, that's what we're about here.
Absolutely, We're always talking about the amateurs. Yeah, it's all about the amateurs.
I mean, that's what we're about.
Here, absolutely, So you know you're gonna find with most suppliers, you know, especially for the guys that are trying to break break ninety. There's a lot of simple things you can do to get better. Some of the things I'd suggest for guys is just a simple thing like an impact bag is really really good, even with the golf, with the golf club. If you're really crazy about it, go out. Just go to your local golf store. Keep yourself a seven nine, maybe get a molded grip put
onto it. You know that they're just really to me, they're the only decent training aids out there that you can buy, and they're probably the oldest and the best ones.
And these are mold you said, molded grip.
Yeah, it's just like a molded grip. So if you went into a gold shop and you see if you've got a training grips some people might call them, get yourself a training grip, get yourself like an impact bag. If you're at home, what you can do is throw your bag in the backyard and just push it around, make a few small swings, just try and build up
that feeling of what the correct impact position is. And you know, fine, if you start pushing the bag, it's going to get your body angles better as well, your
body and wrist angles. And if you can do that, and if you you know and all so, if you've got a mirror, get yourself in front of a mirror, because what you're going to find is when you're training, when you're trying to I always say to my students, you know, they come, we video them, we try and use some models, some other top players, and then when they go away, I always try and email their swings to them, some pitchures, and probably the last thing I
say to them is get yourself in front of a mirror, right because what I generally try and do a lot of guys anyways, when they come, their setups aren't very good, so I try and get them set up the correct way, and obviously when they leave it probably feels a little foreign to some people, but it's like anything, if you
do it enough, it just becomes a new normal. And if they can get themselves in front of the mirror, because you're going to find a golf the fields are always constantly changing, but visually it's always going to look the same. Right. So if you can get the correct set up, you know you're going to find you get the sequence will get better once you start trying to swing the club. So to me, the start positions the most important because that's going to set the sequence to
how everything begins. So you know, for example, you know, if you if you haven't got the right body shape, I'm sort of big on trying to get people get their body angles correct at the beginning, So my preference would be trying to get people more into like an
impact position at the start. Okay. So if you can get that a bit more of an impact position at the start, then all you really got to do is just pull your arms back fully, swing your arms back, and that's going to if you've got the right angles at the beginning, that's going to pull your body and make your body turn the right way, okay, because the biggest thing with a lot of people is they don't start the right way and then they're trying to turn,
and then once they're trying to turn, then their bodies out of position and then they've got to somehow get back into the right position to hit it. So you know, you've really for the right hand or it's going to feel like their left sides a little bit higher than their right side, and that being you know, if you take your grip, if you, if you, if you've got you know, obviously we're all if we're a right hand, you've got your left hand on top, you've got your
right hand on the bottom. So the left side's got to be a little bit higher. To me, you can't really set up in that sort of static, very straight looking bodies which most people tend to have. You know, like we talked about the start, you know, it's it's
got to be a simpler way of doing it. And I just feel the way it's traditional way golf's tour is that it's people have to move a lot hit the ball, and that's why the game is so difficult because they're trying to because they've got to move a lot. It's very hard to coordinate it all and hit it straight.
I'll get nasty letters if I don't ask this question. We talked about your your attempts and your time on various tours.
What's the most amount of success that you had.
How did you do well? You know, I didn't really have a lot of success on the main Tours. You know, I played, I played, I played, you know, I played most of the major events in Australia. I think I made one cut down there. I played a lot on the secondary tours in Australia, pro am tours as well. Yeah, I probably won about I don't know, eight or ten events on the on the secondary tour with the pro ams, you know, I mean, I love playing golf, and you know,
I probably, like most instructors, were all failed players. You know, we all we all got into golf and we want to be tour pros. But there's only very small percentage of guys that actually probably two or three percent of guys that make a living out of it.
And even for somebody with that kind of game and that kind of confidence, you still struggle to make the cut.
Yeah. Well, with golf, I mean, you know the thing when I was playing, I was playing in the mid nineties to sort of the early two thousands, and we'd play like the Australian Open and Greg Norman would be there or you know, obviously there's a lot of top Australian players that now play on the PGA Tour, and those guys would play all year on the Nationwide Tour or the now it's theweb dot Com Tour or the PGA Tour, and you know they're probably playing twenty to
thirty weeks a year, and then you're coming back and they're playing the Australian Tour and you know they might come down play three or four events, and if you play well enough, you might get a chance to play four or five events throughout the Australian summer. And it's pretty hard to compete with those guys if they're playing every week four round tournaments. You're just playing one two day events. But you know, when you get to those
those televised events. The big thing I think the amateurs don't realizes how much how much tougher the golf courses play. They play a lot firmer, they play a lot faster, The rough's a lot deeper. You know you're going to find that if you're off a little bit, it gets everything gets amplified, right Whereas if we went out and played here today or at Peacock Gap, you're going to find the conditions are a lot softer. The greens are probably a lot slower than what they would be if
you're playing a too event on TV. So you know you find if you if you hit a straight shot, it tends you tend to get penalized a lot more for it.
Fascinating. I love it.
Let's wrap it up with the helpful tip up based on today's conversation.
Okay, well fred a really simple tip that I would try and give people. When people are over the ball, they tend to move a lot, They tend to try and shift their weight. They tend to they just tend to overrotate because it all feels like power. It feels like they can hit a long way. Simplest tip by try and give people would be to get your seven nine, hut yourself on the driving range, put your feet together and just try and hit a few shots with your
feet together. What that's going to do, It's going to synchronize everything up a little bit more. It's going to make everything work together a little bit more. As I said before, people tend to move about a lot, and when they move about a lot, it tends to make it really complicated and it makes it hard to repeat