Hi, This is Fredgreen of Golf Smarter with our spring back into golf season with the late Tony Manzoni. This episode was the third time Tony returned to our show. We're bringing back every conversation we had with Tony in order before he passed away in twenty eighteen. To learn more about Tony and our tax deductible fund created in his memory to benefit the first t of Coachella Valley,
please go to golfsmarter dot com. There you'll find as much as we could find about Tony online and links to his book, The Lost Fundamental, One Simple Move Better Golf Forever. It's available on Amazon and paperback and the Kindle format. His DVD of the same name can now also be seen online through our private channel. To gain access, please write to me directly via email golf Smarter podcast at gmail dot com, or click on the Heyfred button at golfsmarter dot com.
Enjoy golf Smarter number two hundred and ninety one on July twenty six, twenty eleven, One Simple Move Better Golf Forever with Tony Manzoni.
This is golf Smarter sharing tips and insights from golfers and golf professionals to help lower your score.
It's worked for your host, Fred Green.
Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Tony, Hey, Fred, how are you.
I am so glad to hear your voice once again. We had such a great time when we came down to Palm Desert and spent that morning with you.
Thank you so much.
My buddy Neil and I came down to Palm Desert and played some golf. But before we even started our golf, we got a chance about an hour hour and a half to give Neil a lesson Anil had never had. He's been playing golf most of his life, he's never had a lesson. This is the first time that he'd ever had a lesson, and I was able to capture it on video with two different cameras running at the
same time. So I'm very excited to announced that not only is this podcast now available, but a video of Neil's lesson given by Tony Manzoni, the very first lesson on video by Tony Manzoni, has been posted to YouTube and the Golf Smarter TV channel.
I'm so excited. Thank you.
That was great fun, I'll tell you that, And Neil responded, I wish I could get everyone to do it that quickly. Was It really was terrific.
Yeah, And it was funny because all during the round of golf that we had that day in thirty five mile an hour wins, he was like, you know, he was so focused on what he had learned from you that morning, and even after a round it that he didn't say he said, just don't write down my score. I don't want to know about score. I said, good for you because you're working on something. And then after the round of golf we went back to the driving
range and he worked even harder on it. And one more thing, he had never gone to the driving range after a round of golf. Is there a lot of value golf for players because we always see the guys on the tour they go to the driving range after a round of golf.
Is that a good thing for us to do? Oh?
Sure, because you know, you have a real clear memory of what's just transpired on the golf course and some of the things that didn't worked out, and that's where you work a lot. I mean, Ben Hogan was one of the first props to do that. When he gets through on the golf and shout an incredible score in most cases as fills out there practicing because he had a two iron that he didn't like or so forth. So it's very beneficial for people to do that at any level.
Fabulous. Well, let's talk about congratulations.
Your book is now available and we have it on our website at golfsmarter dot com and our golfers Mart. We're going to feature it in the golfers martin it's going to be highly visible. It's called The Loss Fundamental, One simple move, Better Golf Forever, and that really is your theory, huh. It's if you understand the move, you can adjust it yourself and it's going to change your game.
Well, it's very simple. And when you purchase the book, and I hope you will for a number of reasons, I think you'll be amazed at the brevity of the book. And I did that intentionally. I've only had one negative comment of all the people I've sent this book to that I've sent you a lot. One fellow that thought it was more of a pamphlet, and it really isn't.
But when I was writing the book, it was becoming a great American novel and Paul Servante's who is very helpful in the writing of this book helped me reduce my thoughts to make them simple. And I can tell you that I've had more people write me and say thank you for making this thing so simple, because most golf books you start following this leap because they get
it to such a detail. And I really believe that if you do certain things in the golf swing, there's a domino effect that happens, and we don't have to deal with those pieces. The cause of effect is everything. So if I can set you up to the golf ball properly and you have finished in a position relative to the ball properly, a lot of things are going to occur. And that's what I find is happening.
Well.
And it's not just that the book is brief, but the descriptions are fairly brief. I mean you can go through two pages and get two or three descriptions of what you're trying to explain, which again I think is incredibly helpful.
Well, that was my intention is to say it, say it again, and then say it again, because really there's just a few core moves that you have to learn, and gosh, it's like America and you could see what happened with Neil. I mean, he had some tremendous shots and those sites then with great trajectory after just a few minutes of do this, do that, and he got right into it.
Well he did, and when he made a shot when we were playing together, he knew what he did right and what he did wrong after each shot. It was really fascinating because I've seen people who had taken lessons and were working on so many things at once, but it just seems so simple to him, so clear that with every shot that he took, he got it and he knew.
Yeah, as I told him, you can either be a disconnector and rotate the arms, or you can be connected and rotate the body. And and and actually when you pull the arms down in the downswing and detach them from the body, that's when thin fat shots occur because it holds you behind the ball. So you can you can play the game of golf and not blame your swing so much as just one action that you that you're that you're doing that you need to not do, and that would be the stay connected and not drop
the arm. Uh. You know, we all played golf. For those of us that have played golf a long time. We were taught to do that, pull the arm down, pull down on the ball, hit down on the ball, all those phrases, and what it does is it just gets one part working, that's arms and hands, where the body just stalls out. So we're losing all the power of the core. And I wish I had just discovered this a little bit earlier in my life than now.
But it's improved my game dramatically. I'm hitting the most so much farther than I have in say, thirty years, and I find that with all.
My students, that's really unbelievable that you're getting more distance. Neil definitely was getting more distance, although I don't know why. But I was still out driving him that day and he goes, well, how come you're outdriving me? I said, because I'm older than you. It's like, wait a minute, that's so let's go over this. Also, let me just say the other part about the book that I found so much fun.
First of all, there's photographs.
So you have a really clear description of exactly what you're talking about. But then at the end you have stories of people that you've come across and people you've met and dedicated the book to so really the book flies right by. It's really really helpful, and that's one of the things that I think that people should be checking this book out.
It's it's a worthwhile.
It's not an investment, but it's definitely worth coming to golf Smarter dot com and checking out The Lost Fundamental by Tony Manzoni.
It's a really helpful book.
And there have been a lot of a lot of Golf Smarter listeners who have been in touch with you, haven't they?
Oh?
Absolutely, I've had a tremendous amount that I that I talked with via email or that have come down physically and taken a golf lesson from me. We had a we had a golf school called the Single Pivot Golf School, and we did five schools and they were really really well received. But I continually get male for folks that have heard about the golf Golf Smarter, I had no idea that you had such a such an audience. It's incredible.
Well, it's an active group and they're passionate about their golf, and that's why I think that they reached out to you, because you you're pretty clear on what you're taught talking about and it's not too convoluted. There's not a lot going on at once, I hope.
So because that's, you know, that's my intention, I was like a lot of instructors for years, just kind of pontificating all this golf dogma, and you know, you can see the people's eyes just glaze over, and no one was going to say. No one was going to tell you, gee, I don't know what you mean. They're just going to let it go over their head and then you'll never see them again. So I realized early on in my golf teaching that there had to be a better way
than this. And then, luckily for me, I started looking at Ben Hogan and reading everything I could about the man, and that's how I formed this method because it really is borne out of that period of time.
I'll tell you it's interesting because when I'm when I'm directing a video shoot, or when I'm doing the shoot, when I'm the camera person, or i have multiple cameras going, anything like that, and that's that's pretty much what my career has been, is a recorded engineer, both video and audio.
It's very hard for me to concentrate on the content while I'm doing it, so when I'm recording somebody else, I'll miss a lot of what the conversation is because I'm watching the dials and knobs and everything to make sure that the production value is right. I can't believe that I, as far as I know, I only took away from Nil's lesson. I took away two major points that when we played golf that weekend.
We played two rounds after.
That on one day right after the next. How much straighter the ball was the ballflight was For me, I generally have a slight fade to the ball. I was hitting the ball much straighter because of two things that I picked up from the lesson. One is on my backswing. As much as I try to keep my lower body quiet, I still have a tendency to have my left knee bend in, pointing across my body. But what I got from you was keeping the left knee pointed straight, straight ahead.
And that's correct, that's correct.
That was huge for me.
Yeah, it stabilized the stance and it allows you not to put weight on the right side, which where we really don't want to do. We want to stay on the front side weight wise. In fact, when we set to the ball, we brace left and then as we coil the body, display displace the weight backwards via the right show right hip. We actually put more weight against the brace and steep in the brace of the right leg,
and that makes the right leg really light. All you have to do from that point there, because you're at impact already. From there, you just rotate your upper body. The legs stay because they're underneath you, they stay right with you. And it's just so much simpler to get to the left side totally to the left side where your chest is really left with the target. When you're moving side to side. It's really hard to get to that point for anybody.
Really unbelievable.
Now you talked about Hogan shooting into the fifties, you actually have shot in You were telling me this one story. I'm still trying to get the full grasp of this. What's your lowest?
Round sixty one? And it was on a funny day because the day before the club announced to me that they wanted to put some kind of a biography of myself and my past in the paper, and they were hiring me as they head professional. This is going to be my first job as a head professional. I had a big party the night before and a lot of paths on the back and the next morning the manager told me, well, wait a minute, now, we spoke a little too soon. We have to talk to one more applicant.
And as it turned out, they chose the applicant.
Why did he shoot a sixty?
No, he just had more experience. But not only didn't I get the job, but they announced to me that he was bringing his own staff, and so I was going to be out of a job in thirty days. So a couple of them, yeah, I know, it's really I can remember it. A couple of members says, come on, bro let's go out. Let's go play. So we played the golf course and it was kind of a blur to me. And when I put it out on the last hole, he said, you know, you just broke then
Cherry's record he shot sixty one. Well, first of all, we mentioned in the same you know category with Kenney and Urry. You know, I should have been fallen to my knees and thank god, but just like all golfers, the first thing that's eaked out of my pea brain was gee, and I didn't burn you a par five, which I hadn't.
But you know that was my xt question. You really were?
I were satisfied.
Is that really true that you were? You like that?
Oh there was one hole I should have had. I should have would have could have?
Right?
Yeah, we all we all do that. I say that to my golf team all the time. You know, no matter what we do out there, we always we always come back with I could have done this. You know, sometimes we're not really thankful for the blessings we get one of the cups of call?
Did you really not realize how you were shooting during the round?
I had no idea. In fact, to this day, I have very little memory of it. I was in such a funk about not only in getting losing my job and everything, but the night before, you know, I had all these close friends patting me on the back, tell me a great job and all these things. Now I had to go back and tell them, hey, I'm not working at Alimdade anymore. You know, this is going to
be the shortest job career of all time. So you know it really, I mean, now I look back at it and I laugh about it, But then it was it was pretty serious stuff.
Wait, now I got to get the timeframe correct.
Here you had the big party and the next day you went out and shot at sixty one.
Well yeah, the next day, I you know, the next day, I couldn't wait to get to the course. I had all these ideas I was going to do. You know, we just had a shell of the previous protest everything that I mean almost took the paint off the walls. But I had an idea all the things I was going to do. And then I was put on hold until the afternoon. They said, don't worry, We've got one
more African. No big deal. And of course when the manager came in about one o'clock in the afternoon, his face was white because I knew and he couldn't even look at me. And when he announced to me that not only didn't I have jobs.
So the celebration was not about shooting sixty one. The celebration was because you had you had gotten your first head pro job.
That's correct, that's correct, And you went out and.
Tried to sixty one after all that celebrating, and it was a competitive round, No.
It was just around A couple of members just felt so bad for me. Okay, they says, come on, pro Let's go out and play because they heard they heard what had happened. You know, a lot of people at the club had said, great job, We're really happy to have you as our new probe. But the management company, which all in the golf course, had made the decision to hire this fellow that had more experience. And I understood that, but it's still it was like a kick
on the growing I can tell you that. So when I went out to play, and that was on my mind, Uh, what am I going to say? Holly, what am I going? Where am I going to get a job? All these things. So I was kind of playing from my subconscious, which is what we really need to do obviously, And as a turnout, I shot a great score and I think that I'm pretty sure that record is still in place at.
The Almaden Almaden Country Club. Is that what it is?
So you you don't remember the round?
I mean, you can't tell me. Do you know how many pars that you had in that round?
Or I wouldn't. I all I know is I was aware that I had not birdie the par five. That's the only thing I was aware about. But you know, I mean, obviously made.
A lot of birdies obvious.
Yeah, I don't believe I made any bogies. I think I hold out from the fairway ones for two of part four.
One eagle you think you had one eagle, right, yeah?
And the rest of it, Yeah, the rest of it was birdie's I think. And and really I loved it be able to say, well, I had ten berdies, but I don't remember it because it was It wasn't in my mind or in my heart. While I was doing this, I was just thinking of how embarrassed I felt and how I was going to tell all my friends. Well, I spoke too soon, and I really hadn't spoke too soon. I was told, you got the job, okay, but you know,
it was just an awkward position to be in. And then of course, now I'm out of a job in thirty days. I'm a young guy, and he said, be able to go out and have fun time and play golf and do that. And now I'm panicking to you, I don't have a job. So it was just a strange set of circumstances that created this marvels round of golf. I can't say that I was practicing really hard before
an event, and I went and did this. Although I played all this, you know, as an assistant pro, I played almost all the time, so and that was my home course. But sixty one and sixty one I don't care if you're playing minis your golf.
So there's got to be a lesson in there somehow somewhere about not paying attention to your score.
Oh, there's no two ways about it. I mean, I'm sure the listening audience will be nodding their head. We sometimes you don't feel real good, or maybe you've been all a little late and had a few too many cocktails, and the next day you go out and shoot a great round. And I think it's because we're not so conscious of what we're doing or trying to do anything. We're just going ahead and swinging and getting it out
of the way of ourselves. And I think the touring pros have a way to do that, where they let the subconscious take over. Anytime you do anything consciously, I think you get a little bit awkward. And so when we're learning how to play golf, we've got to do the learning of it on the driving range, and then we've got to trust the fact that we know what we're doing. And go out of the golf course and just get target oriented and let it go. And that's
easier said than done. A question of course. You know.
I have a friend John Leland who writes a blog called Joy of Golfing a Joy of Golfing dot com.
Not breaking eighty with joy and learning. He's he's never had the ability, He's never broken eighty in any of his rounds, and just recently he had the round the front nine of his life, and he got he took a peek at a scorecard and started figuring out what he needed to do just to say consistent with this and how he could do it, you know, because I think he shot a thirty eight or thirty nine on the front so he's like, this is it, this is
the round I'm going to do it. And of course he shot in eighty three, which is probably one of his better rounds ever. But still once he started figuring out what he needed to get, the pressure was on and just no way it's going to happen.
Sure, well, you know there's something so much written by someone in the psychologist These people that feel they have to, you know, be happy when you know there was one briller I can't recall his name, but this is a Guruz told him to have a smile on his face no matter what happened. Well, near the end of the round he looked like a lunatic. I mean, this big grin that didn't relate to anything. And he did play pretty well. But then the next week when he tried it, it
didn't work at all. And you know, those kinds of cliched things never work. It's not that and it's not that kind of a button because again, that's a conscious thought to do something. It's just a feeling. It's like putting, you know. I tell my students, if you don't feel like you're going to make the putt, you can have the pier stroke of the world that's not going in. And if you feel like you're going to make the putt, you're not so consumed, well take it back straight or
do this or do that. You just roll the ball like you did when you were a kid and didn't understand put the putting. You just had a stick and a ball and you hit the ball. There's a lot to that, but it's so hard. Once you get some information, it's so hard to digest it and not keep regurgitating it mentally, and that's what we all do. And that's kind of why I like what I by the method
I've gone because it's pretty simple stuff. It's not a lot of the how to do things and and that's I think that's the hard part about this game, is letting go and trusting.
So the last couple of minutes we have available, and actually there's more than a couple of minutes, but I wanted I want to really dig into into your your theory and lost fundamental here and why it works versus what all the other instructors are pounding on us on TV and in print and our videos and everything else. You seem to think that this is the kind of fundamental that once you understand it, you can correct yourself and you don't need to work with a pro all the time.
In a simplest form, we're playing off of one axis and we're connecting the arms to the body and rotating around that axis. That's primarily what we're doing, instead of shifting their way to the right leg and then back to the left leg, which is you know has been preached in the last few years, but many many years ago, it wasn't preached because if you look at Jack Nicholas, if you look at Arnold Palmer, if you look at Ben Holden, those are all great players, and they did
not move to the right. They ain't thought they were, but they were all rotating. They're all in that barrel. Okay. So if we eliminate that compensational move that we have to make from the right side back to the left, okay. And if we brace up against impact and merely coil from that point, if the left arm stay is connected to the body and we uncoil, the club's got to come back to the starting position time and time and time again, opposed to throwing the club off of your
body with your arms. And because the head of the club is here than the handle the club that is going to rotate. So the club is going to be either open or closed most of the time. And therein lies the big problem. So you take that, and then that transitional move of shifting the from almost all on the right side to almost all the left side, my gosh, you know, that's just too much to do in a middlesecond.
And that's why most people they look. If we have a driving range at the college and you watch most people they're on the right side where they hit the ball. They're just hanging back as most people do, and someone will say, we'll shift your weight. Well, that's the problem. They shifted their way to the right side, and that is why they can't get off. You know, unless you Neuia or somebody like that, a young guy that has total control of their body, you're going to be hanging back,
and so you never hit it with your core. You never get the power that's within you. That's the thing that happens immediately when I start teaching people. They hit the ball higher and farther and with no side spin, and they look at me like, why hasn't someone told me this. We'll spit out there for a long time. It just hasn't been articulated in a simple form.
I also found myself after Nil's lesson that I was in a much more ballance position at finish then, especially with my driver, because usually, for some reason.
Why would we do this? When I have my driver in my hand, I swing harder, not faster.
I swing harder, and after the swing, I am off balance and falling away.
From the when the arms go first. When the arms go first, the body goes back that's why in one era, you know, your head moved away from the target on the dollar swing and you ended up in the seat position. But with the rotary swing, everything's moving through the ball. Anakasar And said it was one of the greatest ball strikers I think of all time. Everyone says she looked like she was looking at the target when she hit the ball. That's exactly what she was rotating towards the target.
So she wasn't working underneath, she was working the level through the ball. And you get tremendous power this way, and on top of it, you get accuracy because the left arms out rotating, it's pressed against the chest, the chest turns open the club head hits the ball. You know, the feeling is a lot like how a hockey player hits the puck with a stick. It's that same rotational motion, and that's why hockey players, most of them, are pretty good golfers.
The other thing that that Neil was very impressed with, well, I think it was almost an epiphany is the point that you were making to him about the fact that hitting the ball, making contact with the ball is not the end of the swing.
No, absolutely, that's the middle of the swing. The ball is a point of reference to align the club too, but it cannot be a target. If you're focusing on the back of the ball, hitting the back of the ball, all you're going to decelerate the club. We all accelerate to some form, everyone does, the best player in the world. But you're going to really decelerate. You're going to shift the thing down and your body's going to stop. What we want to do is we want to rotate past
the doll ball. And the last thing that hits that doll ball is that club hit. So you're moving through it as you hit it. Now you hitting it with your core, and you're going to get You get totally on the left side, you know, And like concept, you're sixty forty to start, seventy thirty at the top, but you still got to get to nine plus. You still got to get against that left side prior to hitting the golf ball, not after hitting the golf ball, prior
toting it. So by getting closer to that number, that ninety number by because you're in the seventies, you get against that left side and through it quicker. The center of gravity of the body of every human being is a couple of inches below the navel. The closer that center of gravity is to the pivot leg, which is the left leg, the faster you pivot. That's just that's science.
That's not me. Okay. So Ben Holgan is great players, whether they felt it or what, but they knew when they were against that left side earlier they could hit the ball quicker, faster and straighter. And that's what this is about. It's just it's almost bath and it's simplicity. It helps people that aren't don't have great byhand coordination hit this golf ball and put some compression against it. And that's what that's what that's what this is all about.
You can also hear it.
Once you've made contact with the ball and you've hit it properly, you can definitely hit the.
Ball div it. You know you're not hitting divot ball when you put the club behind the ball. Is I said to you and Nail, if I were to bring the club right straight back to this in motion, I would hit the divot and then I hit the ball. So we've got to be we've got to move a little forward so that we can hit the ball the dolls and then the divot. So there is a forwardness
in the motion on the dolls. You said, if you stayed behind the ball like we've all been told, and then hit behind the ball, because that's that's where the bottom of the swing is. So you've got to move that bottom a little forward.
Uh.
No matter if you shift to the right or the left, you got to end up against the left when you hit it. So this I think a lot a lot of the great left side players realize that if I stayed, if they stayed against the left and coiled their body and then uncoil it, they can make contact more consistently. And I think that's what I see and what I hear when I'm giving the lesson. I could hear ball dud.
And also I need to get this clarified because it was a point that you're making when you were speaking with Neil about having your for a right handed golfer, your right shoulder pointing down the line towards your target when you're finished with your swing. And yet I've heard so many people talking about having your belt buckle pointing at the target.
Well, look, we're un aligned in our core through impact, and you could watch anybody into it, especially the ladies because they're more flexible than the men. But everybody's chest is left of the tarnet, and you want to turn as far left of the tarnet with your chest. As long as your left firm is connected, it'll be coming behind that movement. You want to turn as far left as you can so I can the Bactually, when you coil one way, you get your back to the tarnet.
When we go through the ball, we want to get our chest left of the target with the right shoulder pointing at the turret. And it doesn't hurt the back to do this, because that's how we're built. It's when you drop those shoulders down, okay, and you and the left shoulder goes up and the right shoulder goes down differently at address. Now you're going to be tweaking your back. I don't believe in tilting the shoulders at all, and the and the Dolson because I think get rich you're back.
And not only that, but the width of your swing gets narrower and the wider the path the farther they hit. So when we're rotating a little bit more level, then the arms foul the body around and you end up around the body instead of in front of the body. You know, when I first learned to play golf, we finished real high with the hands. Not anymore, and you don't see anybody finishing high with the hands or most of not very many if they do at all.
And we should also, you know, establish some credibility here beyond your sixty one and all the work that you've done. You're the coach of the College of the Desert golf team. And you were telling me about the dynasty that you have with that program.
What is it? The program has won the regionals? How many years in.
Rowow twenty three years straight? And keep it And remember this is a two year school, so we've got a new golf team every two years. So we're doing something pretty good now.
And you've been with the program for eighteen years.
I've been teaching the golf team for eighteen years, been with the college twenty five. So for my eighteen years, I won three state championships, eighteen conference championships, and numerous regional championships. And it's not just me, obviously, you know, it's we have great weather here and great golf courses. I get some good players, but I think that I'm good at mentoring. I'm good at making them feels comfortable with themselves on the golf course.
And that leads us right back to want to wrap this up and let people know once again, go to golfsmarter dot com and please purchase Tony's book for a number of reasons. One, it's going to improve your golf game, you know. Number one, it's going to improve your game. Also, this is self published by Tony. He's doing this on his own. That's why we don't have it on Amazon. That's why it's not inaudible, but it is right through Tony himself. The book is twenty dollars and it's four
ninety five for shipping within the United States. Outside the United States, it's going to be a little more for shipping. But it is so simple, so clean, and so helpful, so clear, so concise. It's called The Lost Fundamental, One Simple Move Better Golf Forever by Tony Manzoni with Paul Servantes. Tony, as always, I really enjoy having you come on to golf Smarter. Thank you so much for sharing all your information with us.
Well, I thank you to you. Your program is just fantastic and what a wonderful thing. Review will be able to download crazy people like myself and other people and get some golf information and have some fun on this wonderful sport.
Well, you know, these crazy people, we flock together.
That's right. Now, take care of yourself.