This is Ray Cipriano out of full Ward, Texas, the home of the late great Ben Hogan. I play out of Rockwood Golf Course in Fullward. This is Golf Smarter number nine sixty seven.
On Sportsbox, you're able to pull the ball data and the club data from Foresight devices directly into our app, so you can see everything we measure on Sportsbox alongside the outcome data. But what Bryson specifically Data Dalkwist, his coach, has been using sports Box for a couple of years now. Bryson and Data were like, we need to use this
to figure this out for Bryson. So what we did was we collected hundreds of his golf swings the week before the US opened, by the way, and we were able to see what in his motion correlated highly with a spin axis going positive because that's a fade shot. And we used our sports science team and our data scientist got to work on the data sent and figured out that there were three things that are really highly correlated with seventy percent plus correlated with the push fade shot.
And so through data, not how it looks or not someone's opinion, we were able to tell Bryson when you do this versus this, you push faded. He acted on this information at Pinehurst the week of the US Opened this year, and Dana and our team we were there with Bryson measuring every swing to see if he can hit the ideal ranges on sportsbox on the range, and he got his swing to a place where it felt perfect, like, wow,
this feels like when I shot fifty eight. This is how free my swing felt, and now I can do this. And he won out and won the US Open. That's how the game should be played. Like we shouldn't go in a search. We should let the data tell us what happens when we miss it versus hit it.
Great the impact AI is already having on revolutionizing golf training.
With the entrepreneur g Ha Lee, this is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
Here's your host, Fred Green.
Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast, Jere.
Thanks for having me friend. Excited to get this conversation going.
I'm excited to hear about what you're doing. Because if Time magazine is going to come up with the person of the Year in twenty twenty four, it's probably gonna be AI. And usually with technology, golf lags behind a couple of years at least, right, And here you are bringing AI into golf in a way that benefits almost everybody, if not everybody.
Absolutely, So.
Explain to me what it is that sportsbox dot AI is and does for all of us.
Yeah, so there's never been an easy way for me to explain this. We've been using forty five minutes, I know,
but in the shortest possible way. What we do is make measuring the golf sling and the movement in the golf swing possible through just your mobile phone, pointing and shooting the camera that's installed in your phone to be able to get full accurate three D motion data on everything that's happening in your swing, which is, by the way, an extremely complicated thing to do with your body, which
is why golf is so infuriatingly difficult. And we're hoping that we can make that process a little bit easier by giving people a tool that makes it easy to measure and quantify what's going on.
And is this for coaches or is this for golfers.
It's for coaches, it's for club fitters, it's for average golfers who may or may not work with a coach to practice with. We're not a quote unquote AI coach. We're not here to displace any golf professionals out there. We're simply making it possible for coaches and golfers to learn and teach in a better way. Well, I mentioned the measurement piece, and the reason why we think that's so valuable is because in anything in life, if you
want to improve, you have to start by measuring. So if you want to improve your fitness, well, what do you want to improve? Do you want to lose weight in pounds? Do you want to gain muscle? Do you want to change your body composition? What do you need to do? First? You have to know exactly where you are and where you want to go. If you're not a measuring Yeah, if you're not measuring it, then you're
just dreaming. You're just hoping I want to lose weight, I want to look better, but you're not actually putting it into action without any any measurement. So same thing, and we in golf, we started with where the ball is going, right, We started measuring that about twenty plus years ago with the advent of launch monitors, we're not able to measure. Hey, do you want to hit it higher? Well, how high do you hit it? Now? How much higher
do you want to hit it? Well? That looks spinny too, spinny? Well, what does that mean? You know? Like, you need to be able to measure where you are and where you want to go in order for you to actually make progress on it. Why are we not applying the same logic to the most important piece of the equation, which
is you're swaying how you move in this swing? Right, let's start measuring it so that we're not just describing what we're seeing with our own eyes, which is subjective by the way, Like what I see and how I would describe something that's happening might be completely different from how you see it. Right, what looks like not enough turn quote unquot maybe look like a lot of turn for you, or feel like a lot of turn to you for you. Right, So let's get on the exact
same page about what's going on. And that's the only way to do that is through measurements like inches and degrees and not through descriptions.
I've talked to so many amateur golfers who struggle with getting a lesson and understanding the communication between the teacher and the student on what exactly the teacher is trying to explain. They'll take video of you. They'll put you up against Brooks Koepka or Bryson De'shamba or Tiger Woods, and they'll put you side by side and they'll draw
lines and say here's what he's doing. Now, this is what you should be doing and what And my own experience and from people I talk to, they walk away from that going I'm not sure what he was talking about. I think I get it, but I don't know what I need to do with that. Yeah, does sports Box AI bridge that gap or widen it?
We absolutely Our number one value two coaches and golfers is that we are bridging that communication gap. Because, like I said before, if you're talking about it in terms of theories and descriptions, it's in the ivy beholder. But if you're saying you're at eighty degrees and I want you to get to ninety degrees, there's no other way to interpret that. Two people looking at that information is going to get the exact same thing out of it, versus I want you to turn more is going to
have leave a lot of things up to interpretation. So that is one of the biggest values that we provide for coaches and how they teach and in students and how they know learn how they learn.
So you're saying that for the student, for the golfer, this is easy to comprehend what we're looking at or easier.
Yeah. Absolutely, And especially for golfers who may be new to some of the jargon that exists, like we just throw around like casually, oh that's reverse pivot and like that's side bending to like create too much torque and all this like language that you know really doesn't say anything to somebody who doesn't who's not familiar, and so let's talk about it in terminology that is universally understandable. That's one of the biggest things that we care about.
I completely understand that because when I started doing this podcast back in two thousand and five, and I was somewhat new to golf. I'd only been playing a couple of years. There'd be times I'd be doing interviews with people and I'd be going, oh, wait, wait, what does that mean. I'm not sure now. I kind of feel guilty in some ways because after doing this for almost
completing nineteen years, I get some of the jargon. Now I understand what they're saying, but I feel like I'm possibly leaving people out of the conversation.
Yeah, exactly, I've I've had the pleasure of teaching my own husband from scratch, you know, five years ago, and now he's a you know, a ten handicap. He's a long way and I've I'm at that stage in my life where my friends around me are at that age where they're like, well, tell me this golf thing, tell me more. How do I get into it? And so I go through this experience with brand new golfers pretty regularly, and when I try to throw around terminology that you know,
I'm now used to, it goes nowhere. It really does, like and so you have to distill it to the things that are universally understandable. So I think I feel your pain. I've seen it happen multiple times with my friends and my family.
So yeah, So again, let's break down what sports box AI does, where it lives, who uses it at how, Starting with again the user golfer on their phone, what happens a.
Golfer can download the sports Box app. We're live on Android and iOS and.
Is there a few for the app?
There is, but there's a free experience if you want to try a few of our features out see if it's helpful to you. Then you can try pretty much everything on the free app, and if you go beyond certain number of swings, well we'll have you convert to a subscription at fifteen ninety nine a month or one hundred and ten dollars a year for the average consumer.
So you know, a bucket of balls will get you access to the highest quality motion data you could possibly get in the game and unjust your phone and so yeah, and we recommend that you use a tripod that can keep the phone still in front of you position the correct way. Of course, if you have a friend who can take the videos for you, that works as well.
And if you take a swing for the first time, we'll give you a few things that are out of range of what we typically see in really good golfers, so such as if you are not turning more than you know this eighty degree number, you're at seventy, that's something will flag and say, like, think about getting this to eighty five or ninety, so that you'll go through that process and you can turn that into a goal
that you work towards. So going from assessment to a practice flow within the app so that you can, you know, set a range that you want to work towards with a specific movement pattern and and you know, we'll get you into this flow where you can take swings and get immediate feedback on whether you've hit eighty eighty five, eighty two, ninety with every single swing you make.
I just mentioned a moment ago about setting goals and that the app helps you to do that. I went through your website pretty thoroughly saw some video of people of a professional LPGA player who talked about her specific goals. What are the goals that you can set and how can sportsbox AI help you achieve those?
Yeah, what you really believe in is that there is no one swing for all, which is why we've developed a product that allows you to customize the goals that you want to work towards. So in that video you saw, Marina alex is an LPGA Tour winner player. We'd like to call her veteran now and she doesn't like that, but she's a veteran on tour, and for her, turning more isn't the issue. She tends to overturn and that gets her into trouble where she gets a little stuck.
So her goal is getting her chest turned to a certain certain threshold that doesn't go above that. For most amateur golfers, they have the opposite problem. They don't get enough turn so they're probably, you know, somewhere in that's like seventy to eighty range, and they might want to go into a higher range. So we're not here to say this is exactly how you should swing. These are
the goals you should work on. Here are some suggestions, but at the end of the day, we built the product for you to explore what makes you you swing your best, what makes you hit it the best, figure it out, know your numbers, and make it easier for you to go back to that good swing when you're struggling. And I you know, I mentioned the reason why I
started this company. I was a professional golfer myself, played on the LPGA Tour, and I've obviously grown up playing the game, taking thousands of hours of lessons and what really ultimately drove me crazy and drove me to quit the game.
And now You've really teased it up.
Yeah. I would hit it great for a period of time, and then I would go through these like little cycles where I'm like, wait, that doesn't feel the same. I'm hitting it funny, I'm peeling it off to the right. What am I doing? And you don't always have access to your coach right when you're on the road playing. You just have to play it. You have to make
it work. And so I would start doubting myself. I would start tinkering, and then and then I'll go through a three month dip where I'm just searching and I'm not able to hit it the way that i was doing. Like, and that should sound familiar to everyone listening, right, you hit it gray and on the range you get to the chorus, you hit it crappy, and you have no idea why and what is different in your swing when
you hit a grave versus not. We want to shorten the cycle of your search by giving you a tool that allows you to know exactly what your numbers are, what makes you operate at your optimal range, and help you get back to when like, instead of a search, go look at your swing data doesn't match up with
when you were hitting it great. And so while that might sound like a really you know, overwhelming process, it's not if you're going to go through much longer cycles of searching and going through bad golf if you don't have a way to get back to like the ones that the swings that work for you.
You had mentioned that, you know, the turn that didn't go all the way that they thought or she was overturning. Are you talking about shoulders or hips or.
For her it was the trunk trunk rotation, So test rotation.
Okay, So what I understand that it does is it just takes one video and then converts it to a three D model from all different angles. I mean, this is obviously utilizing AI to the fullest in a way that has not been done before.
I'm guessing exactly. And we've been doing this for you know,
we've had a product out there for three years now. Yeah, pioneering this this field of single camera to detail three D and our three D includes the ability to see an avatar representation of your swing from all different angles, including you know three six D rotation, but also from is if you were you were to hang a camera from above you to see kind of top down, or if you are standing on a plane of glass and you're able to see what's going on from below, and
so so you really get this full, full picture of what's going on in the swing, Like what does your swing look like from up here? Like that separation of the trunk and hips, Like what does that look like from top down? It looks very different from there versus a face on angle or down the line angle. Where is your hand position relative to your shoulders? Like again, that top down view gives you this incredible visualization to know exactly what's happening to the different body parts.
And you take your video from you can either do it down the line or face on, or you specifically need to do it from face.
On, face on or down the line. We give you different data sets if you took a video from here to hear, but yeah, you can get three D from both and it's.
Not creating this random generic animation. It's actually creating your swing. It's you, but in a three D rendering without your face and.
Just yes and has all those exactly.
I'm trying to I'm trying to comprehend all. This is really amazing. Yeah, but it's really hard to get without you know, seeing it in action.
I guess, yeah, it's it's it's hard to describe over a podcast. So I so, does everybody download sports Box to see what it looks like?
Yeah?
But yes, it's it takes. I mean, it's still like when I describe it to people, it still sounds like black magic. How do you do it? I'm like, well, it's magic, But actually it's pretty advanced AI that we had to develop train AI models to know exactly where those body boards are in three D to be able to do that accurate representation in a three D avatar. Yeah, we have to invent a lot of things along the way to make that work.
And is that what's happened? That this is something that no one had done before? What prompted you to go? I got this? I know what we can do here?
Well, I can't take credit for the technology. I have an amazing tech technology and AI team led by our CTO, Sam Meneker, And we also have a team of sports science experts led by doctor Phil Cheatham, who's spent his entire career in three D by mechanics, three D motion capture. He even built his own three d emotion capture system. So we've got this kind of I call it the three legs of the stool. We've got a AI technology team that's world class. We've got a sports science and
by mechanics team that's world class. We've got a world class team of golf business and golf subject matter experts represented you know by yours truly, but also our amazing group of advisors and golf coach ambassadors that are constantly providing feedback on how to make our product better. Wow.
So you said you played LPGA, but then you went to an advanced degree, so you have a business sense, business mind. I can't imagine that this is your first venture into doing something unique in the golf industry. Since you've gotten your degree, What is your history on how you got to hear?
Yeah, so I've taken a little bit of an exact path to where I am, and I'm sure it'll continue to is exag a little bit more. But I grew up playing golf, went to Yo for undergrad played golf there briefly, and then played professionally between two thousand and seven all the way through twenty eleven and nine. Ten eleven were my years on the LPG Tour, so I
was incredibly lucky to have played at that level. And then afterwards I I represented my good friend Michelle Wee West at IMG her agency before going to business school, and after business school got great training on the kind of the business side of things skills that I needed
to develop. I joined Top Golf, which at the time in twenty fifteen was going through this incredible transformation as a brand and a company, and I got to see and have a part in them building out Top Tracer through an acquisition of co Tracing.
Where's the connection.
Yeah, so I got to see, you know, how technology could really transform. I mean, Top Golf in itself was doing this, but Top Technology could truly transform the way people interact with the game, how they get introduced to the game, and how it can help golfers develop. So it was a great experience there. In twenty twenty, I started sports Box with Sam Okay.
Well top Top Golf definitely had an impact on getting more people interested in playing the game, whether they played or not, or just went to the bar and you know, had fun at Top Golf. But then with top Tracer, I think that Top Tracer really changed golf on television more than anything, besides the fact that now you can go to your local driving range that may have top tracer technology set up, which is just wonderful to have there. It's like having your own what's the word I'm looking for,
but here, your own launch monitor. Thank you, your own launch monitor right there. But watching being able to watch a ball in flight and seeing what it does. Top tracer technology on golf television is mind blowing, absolutely and really has made a big change in the way we view view the game.
Yeah, and even you know the way that we talk about ball flights now, I mean five ten years ago, if you were to ask what's where McIlroy's ball speed, nobody would feeble to tell you what the number was, and so just the level of familiarity with the data would not be there with that top tracer. And we're doing something similar. We're getting integrated into golf broadcast where the analyst talking about the golf swing with sports box data layered on top of it, showing people what they
avatar looks like. And we are seeing that people are more and more curious about motion data for their own swing after watching a pro pro swing being analyzed. So yeah, we're very bullish on motion data being kind of the next big frontier for the way that people consume consume golf content.
Did I just get the sense that there's a possibility that we can be watching golf on television and automatically the analysts and the announcers are going to be able to pull up sports Box AI and see a breakdown of the swing in a three D rendering.
Absolutely. And if you're if you're in a region where Sky Sports is available too, they're already doing that. They've been doing it all of this year.
Oh congratulations, Yeah, thank you. So they're licensing it from you exactly, and oh my god, that would be huge to get it here in the States as well.
Yeah.
Sky Sports is.
In the UK, isn't it Exactly? They're the ESPN of a europe Yeah. And on the state side, if you're watching any of the Golf Channel's instructional shows, such as The Golf Fixed by Devin Bonebreak, who is one of our ambassadors, every episode features an analysis on sports Box where they break down fully, you know, what is going on in a pro swing as an example of a move that they want to teach the audience.
Wow, Okay, So you talk about Devin bone Break, who I've tried to get on the show before. We had an email exchange and then my emails disappeared from him. So I'm going to continue to try to get him back on the show, get him on the show first time, because I'd love to talk to him. But let's drop
some other names here. As I look through your list of people on your website that are utilizing sportsbox dot AI or the app sports Box AI, I see names like Terry Rowles, Mike Adams, Vision fifty four, David Ledbetter, Bryson to Shambo. How are people like Bryson utilizing what you're doing? How did he get involved?
So when we before we launched, even before we launched, we barely had a prototype, we were able to show what we had to David Lebetter and Sean Folly, and immediately they wanted to invest their own dollars into the company. Congratulations,
thank you. And we have Michelle Ee West, mel Reid, Patty Tabatanakt, and Marina Alex We're also investors who put in their own money into into sports Box because they believed that this was that important for the game of golf and they wanted to be a part of it.
So that's one one part of it. But what Bryson specifically, Dana Dakust, his coach, has been using sports Box for a couple of years now and he recommend One of the things that the two of them wanted to solve for was Bryson likes to hit his stock draws and occasionally he would battle his kind of push baits, which he does not like, and they've been trying to figure
out what in Bryson's swing causes those pushbaits. And so when we announced our product integration with Foresight Sports, where on Sportsbox you're able to pull the ball data and the club data from Foresight devices directly into our app, so you can see everything we measure on Sportsbox alongside the outcome data. Bryson and Data were like, we need
to use this to figure this out for Bryson. So what we did was we collected hundreds of his golf swings the week before the US opened, by the way, and we were able to see what in his motion correlated highly with a spin axis going positive because that's a you know, fade shot. And we used our sports science team and our data scigence got to work on the data set and figured out that there were three things that are really highly correlated, you know, with like
seventy percent plus correlated with the pushfight shot. And so through data, not you know how it looks or not you know someone's opinion, we were able to tell Bryson this is exactly why when you do this versus this
you push faded. And he acted on this information at Pinehurst the week of the US Open this year and we were you know, data and our team, we were there with Bryson measuring every swing to see if he can hit the ideal ranges on sports box on the range, and he got his swing to a place where it felt perfect, Like literally it was like, wow, this feels like when I hit when I shot fifty eight. This is how free my swing felt, and now I can do this And he went out and won the US Open.
So that's how we use it with with Bryson. And it was a lot of work, you know, there was there a whole bunch of the team who was dedicated to pouring through all of his data. But that's that's how the game should be played. Like we shouldn't go on a search, we should let the data tell us what happens when we miss it versus hitt it grades.
And he used it for a couple of days and then went out and won the US Open because of the data that you fed him.
I mean, we would never take crime for Bryceon went in the US.
Of course he had to hit the ball, but yeah, he's a science kick. He loves this stuff, right, And I know that there's people like I can't pay attention to him because I'm lift. Okay, fine, so he's on lift. We got to move beyond that if we possibly can, please. But anyway, he won, and he was adorable afterwards and kind of made me fall in love with them even more.
But this is the kind of data that anybody can take and use, especially if they have a coach exactly, But they can do it without a coach, too, right, I mean, yes, yes, But.
What Dana was able to do, I mean, we were part of Data's team, you know, just as much as we were part of Bryson's team. We were helping Data communicate the things that he already wanted Bryson to do. But backed with Data, he was able to get through to Bryson better than without Data. So like it's what we showed Dana. There were some things that he hadn't thought about in certain ways, but they were like they were just part of what he wanted Bryson to already do.
It helped him communicate those things and turn it into data that like actually made it precise what he wanted to wanted Bryson to do. And a coach can also turn Okay, I want you to move like this, and not that this is the data, but a coach can turn that into Okay, try this, feel, try this, drill, try this, and like that process of iterating on the input that allows the golfer to move in the correct way is an incredible part of the process, the important
part of the process that a coach. Only a coach can do. Right. Our data can give you the information, create the ideal ranges, but at the end of the day, a player or coach needs to decide how they want to take that information and turn it into something they action on.
What about other professional golfers who've had success with it, that have experienced it and learned from it.
Yeah, I mean sportsbox is now at a point and I can't believe I'm saying this. There are enough like there's so many users at various different skills where we're not personally tracking like who's using it and who's not using it. It's not something that we would go out and you know market right, Like we're not gonna go out and without the correct rights and we'd be able to like market that relationship. But there are a lot
of plays. If you go to a tour event, whether it's live or PG Tour, there are a lot of coaches and players that are using this on a regular basis. One more one more ambassador of ours Jeff Smith, who is one of the smartest people I've ever met. He has a large group of tour players on the PG Tour who he I mean, he's using sports Box in every lesson and he has sports Box built into his teaching studio where his players come when they have a swing,
you know, swing change they need to make. They get into this environment where every swing is measured on sports Box and they're able to more quickly make the swing change because of the immediate feedback they're getting on every swing. So there's a webinar that he did recently where he talks about his players, Davis Riley and Max Grazerman on exactly what they wanted to change and how they did it using the data, and it was really fascinating to listen to.
Does the app make suggestions as to what you can do to improve your movement and your swing or you really need a coach to understand what it's showing you.
Yeah, we do make recommendations. There are you know, top twelve most common swing faults that we see in amateur golf swings that we filter for, and it creates these
recommended goals for you. But obviously, you know, there's a lot more value that you can get out of it if you are able to customize those ranges that work better for you as a golfer, and that can come from maybe your own understanding if you're a total golf geek and you've you've taken enough lessons and you've watched enough you know, educational content out there to know what
those are. But we also provide you know, links to connect with one of the sports Box coaches if they want to go deeper and really personalize what they can get out of sports.
Box, and you can do that remotely with the coach.
Absolutely, I think sports Box is I mean, humbly it has been one of the most impactful tool for coaches who have a remote coaching service offered because one they're not dealing with there's a lot of bad videos out there that golfers send, you know, from bad angles or shaking whatever, and you know they're having go back and forth on hey, can you send me another video, a different video? Can you do this? There's a whole process, a taint, that's a time suck. We don't process videos
that are that don't fit our criteria. So when a coach gets a student to send a swing, they're only looking at good videos. Second, because we have data and goals that you can create the student, you're not having to go and look at, you know, a bunch of swing videos comparing if it looks different from the original video,
which is a whole time consuming process. If you wanted them to turn to ninety degrees, we just show you the data, right, is a ninety degree Did they average ninety degrees in the last you know, three sessions that they've practiced or is it eighty five? Or are they trending in the right direction. You can see that immediately as soon as you open the student page. And so that there's been so much positive feedback from coaches that
spend a lot of time with remote coaching. They've you know, two x three x their monthly revenue from using sports Box because of this engagement.
Wow, And is it the type of thing like a couple a couple episodes ago, we talked to Keith Scally about his golf Live app where you can have a teacher can give video lessons live. Well, you know, with a person as opposed to sending the video and then waiting to hear back. What does sports box they do? Is that something you need to send to the coach and then they'll get back to you, or is possibly do it live?
Yeah, I wouldn't say it would be live. It's just when. So let's say we're working together and you sent me a goal to work on. Every time I practice on sports Box against that goal, it creates a record. So you know, let's say I took twenty swings in my last practice against this goal. It shows you where every one of my swings they landed as relates to my goal and an average and so and every time I take a sling, you're notified in the app, and so you're able to just quickly.
Check Okay, who is the coach?
You as the coach, so the coach can quickly check that this person practice and you know, and as a coach, you also have this comfort of knowing that they are getting feedback on every swing. It's part a huge part of value of working with a coach is that there are a set of eyes that give you immediate feedback on every swing. And so this is doing that without you logging into a zoom session or whatever, without you
physically being there to watch every swing. Sports Box is providing that lends through which you can give feedback, give of the student a pair of eyes to provide that feedback on every swing and help them learn in that process.
So you kind of joked about did you practice right, which you know, I can't tell you how many times, and I'm sure you've heard it more than me that people are like, yeah, I took a couple lessons and it's not helping. It's like, did you practice?
Did you practice?
Did you? I mean, like are you just like you take the lesson and then you two weeks later you go play golf and you're like, my lesson didn't help, Well, did you do anything in between?
Right?
Yeah? And more importantly, did you practice correctly is personally? I believe the biggest thing that separates a good golfer versus a professional is in how they if they get thirty minutes to spend on the range, how they would do it. An average golfer would go out and beat a bunch of balls and get nothing out of it, or they're quote unquote feedback is did the ball go straight? Or whatever? That is, like, if did the ball do what I wanted it to do? And we all know
that you might have done that by accident. If you're trying to make a swing change, the shot may not go where you wanted it to go, but you still need to commit to the swing change for you to change. And so if your only feedback mechanism is where did
the ball go? You're not making a swing change. I'm sorry, Like you just you're probably treading water because you're always going to try to go back to what feels comfortable that you know accidentally hit a good shot, you hit a good shot from So if you're not practicing with intent, with motion motion based feedback, you're likely not going to make progress on the things that you learned in your lesson.
Yeah, I get that. I mean I think about being on the range and like, oh, you're just looking at the ball flight and how it felt when it you know, as you made contact, But you're not analyzing your swing. You're looking at the ball flight and what it felt like. It's just not enough information to improve.
Yeah, And like I said, if you are trying to make a swing change, then you need to have one hundred percent of your focus on that during the part of your practice session where you are focused on mechanics, right, and no matter where the ball goes, you need to commit to that swing change and know that the reps
that you're doing you're doing the correct movement. If you don't have feedback loop on whether you're making the correct motion, then you're practicing against the wrong thing in a way, right, because you're like, if you are making a swing change, you're probably less likely to had good shots with that new move then you would be with your old move. Like your old move, it's comfortable. You could probably be athletic enough to make a shot with the old move
more reliably than with the new move. Does that makes sense? So you need you need to commit to working against your motion based goals before you get to the outcome oriented practice.
One of the other things I noticed on your website that I'm really curious about. What is Sportsbox University.
Yeah, so we have a wealth of knowledge and educational material built for the purpose of coaches to learn how to use our data. So doctor Phil Cheatham led the effort to creating this university program for people to get certified. Level one two are available now sports Box Certified to be able to more fluently teach with our data.
If you had not gotten an MBA, would you been able to develop as much of not just oh this idea for showing video as AI, but expanding it out to so many different ways and so many different licensing venues opportunities. Did the MBA really help expand your mind to fill in and fill in the blanks?
I mean, first of all, I met my husband during my MBA, so I wouldn't trade that for the world. But I mean, everything that I have done in my crazy life, I feel like has prepared me for what I'm doing. I don't think what I could what I'm doing.
I'm sure I would have figured it out eventually. I feel like the things that I've experienced from the playing career, you know, going through f centaur, the ups and downs, the relationships I've built, the lesson, every lesson I've taken, the coaches I know to like, the hours and sitting in classrooms, building relationships with the people in my my and at Warton who are currently doing amazing things, learning from them, the professors I learned from, every little thing
I think has helped me prepared for what I'm doing now.
Well, it's an amazing journey and luckily we get to take advantage of the results of it. And I'm really impressed. I'm really excited to check this thing out to see, you know, because i think I'm feeling really good these days and I've gotten I'm actually kind of terrified to see what it looks like.
More about what it looks like. Measure it if you're feeling good, so you have it documented and you can always go back to it. Compare it if you're not feeling at great at some point down the road.
So great point, well, congratulations, I would wish you good luck, but you're so far along the way and we'll be seeing more and more about this. And I'm sure that listeners when they're watching TV, whether it's the golf channel or a live event. They're going to go, Oh yeah, I know about sports boxing. I heard about it. Golf smarter, j Hey, thank you so much and the best of life.
Thanks so much, Fred for having me on.
Well at a really interesting round this week, But it wasn't about my game. I played with a gentleman, probably in his late forties, maybe early fifties, I guess, But as a teenager, he was a passenger in a car that lost control, rolled over multiple times, and threw him from the car. For the next few weeks. After that, he was left in a coma with little hope of survival. And yet he did survive, but the doctors weren't sure about his quality of life going forward.
Well.
During his recovery, he had a stroke where he lost the use of the right side of most of his body and seriously impacted his speech and left him with a limp. But fortitude, attitude, gratitude, and hope are truly amazing things, and there he was decades later, walking the golf course, pushing his cart and playing golf with only his left hand, except on the greens, where he was able to use his right hand to stabilize the putter.
He was able to make solid contact on most of his shots and had an impressive touch in his short game. But most of all, he was out there playing with this amazing attitude and not really caring about his score, although he did concede that he's always happy to break one hundred. He was truly an inspiration. So just the next time you're having a rough day on the golf course, remember how lucky you are to be playing at all now.
Later this week on Golf Smarter Mulligans is part two with Jeff Ritter from November of twenty twelve introducing us to his make the Turn challenge.
I'm thinking this is perfect, this couldn't be better. I missed my first ten. There's no way I can miss and letting give the ball. And that's what the mentally tough athletics. They always want the ball. They always see the next shot as an opportunity, and they keep on shooting, shooting, shooting, and people in golf that are not mentally tough don't do that. They're defeated when they get to the course.
They are defeated.
If they get three holes in and they started bogie double bowie, it's all over. And they don't think that way more. We help people in this program understand that the whole ball of golf is to be able to walk up to your golf ball and see an opportunity to do something amazing. The highlight reel is virtually never from the t box or the center of the fair with the highlight reel is from impossible situations, tough lines, no view of the pin, and you got to hook
it around, go over something. You made a long putt to save par, you were down that you weren't out, and you came back and you made five verdies to finish the round. I mean that's the stuff that highlight reels are, right, So instead of hitting the ball somewhere that you don't like in saying this sucks or now I'm screwed, and why not say.
This is perfect?
This couldn't be better, because when I hook this ball around the tree in a bounce between those bunkers and a cost that they cut, this crowd is going to lose their mind. And that's how a really tough athlete. Thanks.
This was originally episode three hundred and fifty six for members only, but was behind our paywall, so it's never been shared publicly before, so even for long time listeners, chances are this is a brand new interview, so please check it out. And I want to thank this week's Golf Smarter Ambassador, Ray Cipriano from Fort Worth, Texas and as he said, with pride, the home of the late
great Ben Hogan. Not only did Ray record his episode opening on his phone and send it to me, but he's the only Golf Smart I think he's the only Golf Smarter Ambassador who had to record an opening for two different episodes because I screwed up. He was my clerical air. Thank you, Ray for your cooperation. I'm glad to get you out there and brag about fort Worth now, starting this month through the beginning of next year, you have multiple ways to become a Golf Smarter Ambassador, as
Ray did. You can record a show opening and choose from one of our three great gifts, or if you'd like to get all three gifts at once, then write a review for Golf Smarter on any podcast app you're listening to right now. I haven't asked you for a review in a while, but it always helps for new people to help find the show. Now, whether it's Apple
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