The Myth and Misconceptions of ‘Keep Your Head Down’

If I'm at the range all day, I don't seek anybody that practice as well. I mean nobody. If you want to get better, you have to have a good solid plan. Arrive with a good solid plan. Don't just rake and rip. You're going to get exercise, but you're not going to get better. You might even get worse. And there's so many books

out there and YouTube videos about how to practice well. I try to drive it into my students, but got it come out there some days and there's a guy that took a lesson a week ago and he's just beating ball after ball with his driver and not doing anything else and not getting better. Hi, this is Charles Palmer from Naples, Florida, and I play at the

History and at Golf and Country Club. This is Golf Smarter number nine hundred and thirty five, The Myths and Misconceptions of keep your Head Down with John Marshall. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. There's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast. John. Great to be here, Fred. I just discovered your podcast about a month

ago, and I am the president of the Atlanta Chapter fan Club. Thank you very much. And you're friends with doctor Grenna Anderson, who we love talking to. So you're both down there in Atlanta. And she told me that she was just talking about you, said that you discovered the podcast, and I'm like, well, let's get him on the show. Yeah. We teach at the same place. We go to lunch a couple of times a year. And she's an awesome lady and a great teacher too. Yeah,

she's a phenomenal human. Really really like her. That's great. So you got your your whole thing going and go. I mean, you've been playing golf a long time. But as a younger man, you started out with long drive or is it as a senior you started out with long drive competition, not even senior, super senior, what is super? I don't even know it's super. It's like supersalid. Do you remember Remax World Long

Drive Championship. Yeah, So back in it was like Christmas Day of two thousand and two, they announced that they were going to have a super Senior division beginning in three and it was for fifty five and up. And I was about ready to turn fifty five, so it just worked well. And I'd always been pretty long, so I just got the juices flowing. I got excited for the first time in many years. And uh, long drive

back in those days was like the US Open. There was local qualified and then regional, and I went to eight local qualifiers and won them all and figured I was going to waltz all the way to the World Championship. And had a couple of episodes of, to put it, mildly choking, and I realized rolling the club face open a little bit and then trying to roll it closed, which I had been taught when I first started playing when I was fourteen years old, did not work under the pressure of long drive.

So really I was hitting it a long way, but it would sometimes come down in the same state that I was standing in, but not always. So the worst thing that can happen in long drive you get six balls hit him in two and a half minutes. If you don't get one in, you know, you leave with the tail between your legs. And that happened twice, and the second one was really bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know sometimes sometimes it can happen just because your swing is off

that day. But this was a legitimate joke. There's no kitting around it. So I came home and imoked around for a month and then I decided, well, I'm going to fix this. So I contacted Mike Austin, whom you know his name from Jacob Bowden. We talked on the phone. He had stopped teaching, he was like ninety five. He put me in touch with his protege, Dan Schauger in La. I flew out to La spent a couple of days working with Dan, and he kind of gave me.

It sounds weird, but he gave me permission to swing the golf club like I did naturally in terms of the club face. So instead of rolling it open, I kept at square throughout and I never had a six in and out again. I won some stuff, had a good time, made a lot of friends. And at what age were you doing this that you started winning fifty five? And you know I was flying at three ten then and it was just a quot with basically a standard link driver. I don't

know where the eighty yards have gone since then. They disappeared a little bit. This aging process is cruel. There's no getting around there. Yeah, but if all we have to do is complain about aging, we're well ahead of the game. Absolutely, I totally concur so. I had a lot of fun, and I really I had been teaching kind of informally before that, but the range that I went where I went to practice, people would watch me hit balls and they kind of come up to me and say,

how does a run like you do that? So I would give in formal lessons and the guy that owned the rain said, you know, you ought to be charging for this. So that's kind of where the teaching started. And I often think back to those early days and if I could contact all those people that took lessons the first couple of years and said I would say to them, you deserve a refund, give me your address and I'll mail you a check. But things have progressed over the years. I kind of

think I'm doing pretty well with that. There's I was thinking the other day there was a point where golf was starting to go downhill a little bit, teaching was going uphill a little bit. I was trying to think of maybe what year they kind of crossed in the night. It is probably when you say going down. When you say going down, does that mean your score

was going down? What do you what do you know? Distance was going Oh, your distance was scores have kind of stayed the same because I just keep I just keep moving forward, like you know, like I should be doing. Yes, absolutely, yeah, So I shoot my age pretty much every time I play, and uh and have fun with my buddies. So you're shooting in the mid seventies regularly. Yeah, yeah, nice. Yeah, you know that's kind of where I was when I played college golf and

high school golf, and he kind of reached your own level. I was never good enough at golf to do anything professionally, and that's why long drive was so much fun. I could do something on a you know, on a bigger stage and be least marginally successful. My last, my last competition,

I was on the tee. This was Remax twenty ten. I was on the tee with Rick Barry, whom I'm sure you remember because Area, Yeah, Bay Area I and and a lot of people don't know this, but he won two World long Drive Championships too in the older guys groups.

So yeah, it was fun. Fierce competitor, Oh absolutely absolutely, and he you know, we less that that competition that was blowing about twenty five in the face at eight o'clock in the morning, and he was ripping these low draws that were probably getting twenty five or thirty of yards of roll. But none of us old guys said at three hundred that day the wind was so strong. So anyway, we had fun. Oh that's okay, then you win again. You're having Yeah, you said you were a runt.

How tall? I know you're going to say, well, I'm shorter now than I was then, but and that's that's the truth. How tall are you? I'm five ten now. I think I was six feet when I started. I weigh about one eighty five, and you know, the everything is kind of sinking. You don't know what that's like because you're still young. Oh no, I do. I'm having a lot of compression issues in my back, so I get it. Yeah, I totally get it. So you know, I work out a lot and I try to stay strong.

But boy, it's it's tough as you get older. But yes it is. No complain, no complaints. But tell me about your workout. What is it that you focus on. I do cardio, I do weights, I do a lot of flexibility work and just try to maintain my range of motion as much as I can. If you could only do one of those three, which would it be probably flexibility, Probably range of motion flexibility. I do that every single day. Try to do cardio most days,

and weights maybe three days a week. Okay, And what is your cardio workout? Elliptical? Okay, I've had I've had. I ran marathons forty years ago, and I've had seven knee surgeries, so even walking is not particularly fun. Elliptical is perfect. You look like you're in shape. I'm sure you do a lot of stuff too. I never do. I'm not big on cardio. Yeah, and I've never really done weights at all. I really focus a lot on my flexibility, my cardio. My cardio is

in the swimming pool. I swim. Yeah, that's fantastic, which is all in existence, and you know you're not pouring sweat, which I love. Yeah. Yeah. When I mentioned to you being in San Francisco three years ago and I went down to the waterfront one day and there were people out there swimming and got sixty degree water maybe less. Yeah, it's no. I'm a swimming pool guy. I can't swim dark water unless I'm wearing a mask and then I'm underneath the water. Yeah no, Alcatraz to the

orlane. Yeah no, No, I have friends, but not me, not yeah, no way. Yeah. So you runt like you you're five ten, You're still taller than I am. But you've always been a long hitter. Yeah. I was a baseball player at like nine, ten, eleven, twelve and then and I was a good hitter and all of a sudden, somebody threw a curveball. I was going to be Mickey Manna was in my wheelhouse. I was going to replace the MinC in center field. And I saw that first curveball, and I thought, you know, maybe

we had to look into a different activity here. So moved over to golf. And the ball wasn't moving at all. The ball wasn't moving, And I don't want to say it was easy, but it was. You know, I went from zero to break an eighty and thirteen months in upstate New York. So something was working, right, I guess, I don't absolutely, But then you know, I got to the seventy five range and kind of found my level of achievement for golf. But I know a lot of

people would like to shoot seventy five. Oh yes, oh yes, yeah. Well hopefully what's working here is our sponsorships, and we're going to I encourage people not to fast forward through them, because this is part of how I make this thing work. So please stick around because we'll be back in

a minute with more with John Marshall. John, you just mentioned to me, and I want to bring it up that you've got some people that have been featured on the podcast here that you really admire the work that they're doing now, and i'd love to hear your thoughts about that. Who are we talking about, Well, Scott Fosset with a decade golf and John Sherman with four foundations of golf, who wrote a wonderful book and he has a podcast

too. Yeah, another book on the show, right, But I just think what they're doing can help any level of golfer, certainly elite players, but even fifteen twenty handicappers to make sound decisions based on Scott Fawcett puts it based on math and not on intuition. And I don't know if he mentioned this when he was on, but Stuart Sink, who was one of his early disciples, said I finished rounds not fatigued because I don't have to think.

I just do everything from a math standpoint. Of course, he was at Georgia Tech grad, so maybe that really fit in well with him. But he said, I don't have to think. I I you know, I look at the numbers, I realize what my dispersion is. I pick out a target that works with that dispersion. But the greatest thing to me about these two things is that we all beat ourselves up playing golf, and

we most people just have real expectations that are totally unrealistic. And I'll say to my students sometimes sometimes what's the average PGA Tour dispersion with the driver over the course of the year all players far right miss, far left mess except typically they'll guess thirty yards and it's more than seventy five Sure, And you

know what's the average make rate in the PGA Tour from eight feet? People will say seventy five percent because they're watching golf every weekend and they're all making those But it's nine And people need to pat themselves on the back a little bit and not be so hard on themselves, because, as Scott says, I keep going back to Scott but I just love what he does. Golf is a shotgun and it's not a sniper rifle, and we have to figure

out what our dispersion is and plan accordingly. So I'll get off my decade golf soapbox here. But I just love this stuff. Yeah, yeah, it makes total sense. It's definitely worth going back and hearing Scott. He was on just recently episode nine hundred and thirty back in January. That's amazing.

He's great, he is, and he's passionate about it, and it makes so much sense, exactly exactly, and he kind of came up with this from according to what he says, from playing poker and just looking at expectations and using math and figure out a way, figuring out a way to maximize his chances of being successful. And you know you're not going to be successful every day. But what's the one thing I hear from all new students, typically the higher handicappers. I just want to be consistent? Can you

help me be consistent? And I say no, I can't. You're not going to be Nobody is. And once you realize that, you've got a chance of having fun playing the game. But God, who wants to you know, you don't want to beat yourself up all the time. I saw people when they tell me I want to be consistent, I'm like, well, tell me, tell me what scores you shoot. I'm always between ninety and ninety and ninety five. It's like, dude, you are You're consistent?

Yeah, what is it that you want? You know you are consistent. It's probably your short game can use some work you're putting, you know, but it's also your approach to how to approach a golf course. It's not hitting golf balls is not going to make you consistent. It's how you play golf. It's going to make consistency. That's you kind of led me into another area here. If I'm at the range all day, every day for weeks and weeks and weeks, I don't see anybody that practice as well.

I mean nobody. And if you want to get better, you have to have a good solid plan. Arrive with a good solid plan. Don't just rake and rip, as I call it. You're not. You're going to get exercise, but you're not going to get better. You might even

get worse. And there's so many books out there and YouTube videos about how to practice work well, and I try to drive it into my students, but got it come out there some days and there's a guy that took a lesson a week ago and he's just beating ball after ball with his driver and not doing anything else and not getting better, and it's frustrating for me, and I try to talk it into him, but not too many people want

to hear it. I do hit balls sometimes in between lessons, and I try to set a good example if anybody's watching me, but I don't know if it works. Do you teach golf full time? Yeah, you know. I'm getting up in years, So I teach like fifteen hours a week something like that, and takes me half an hour to get to the golf course, half an hour back, and when I get home, I'll spend twenty minutes per student and writing a lesson summary which i'll email to them.

I'll do voiceovers on their videos and I'll email that to them. So if I do three or four lessons a day, between the drive and then the follow up stuff, it's a six or seven hour day, which is all I want basically. But it's a good situation. I love it. And then it's nap time. So, I have you ever had any instances during your playing career where you had to take some time off due to injury? You know, other than that I mentioned, I've had seven knee surgeries,

so that's required some time off. But in terms of expected injuries with a golfer, bat, you know, lower back, upper back, not really lucky, man. I think I've been fortunately. I think I was decent flexibility still, do you think that's more of the flexibility or that it's more about the weight exercise, the maybe a little bit genetics and then you know, yeah, and then you know, trying to stay in shape, and

well, I bring it up and I'm curious to get your advice. I got an email from a listener this morning who in his early sixties he just had back surgery, and he's like, I, you know, how long do I need to take off? And do I need to change my swing now? Should I go stack and tilt? I'm like, everything I've heard about stack and tilt is not good for your back. I'd love to throw this out to a golf instructor. It's like for somebody in their you know,

early sixties back surgery needs to make changes not swing as hard. As he has been. What would you recommend? Well, I hate to disagree with the affable host here, but I'm actually in the right circumstances, a big stack and tilt fan. You are, And I think a lot of people have back problems when they side bend a lot in both directions. And you may or may not know this, but I was like everybody my age.

I was a big Nicholas and Palmer fan growing up. And when I look at my swing on video, there's times when I kind of throw up. But I do have a very steady head. And the only way you can maintain a steady head in the golf swing, both back and down is by side bending, side bending left in the backswing, side bending right in

the downswing. Not a lot, but a little bit, but that's the only way you can stay centered and tilt your shoulders a little bit if you look at Sometimes I say to students what do you think of the older guys? I'll say, what do you think of Arnold Palmer's golf swing? And they'll say, well, you know, he did this funny thing here at the end, and of course he did, but everything he did before that was just mechanically perfect. Basically in terms of tilting and staying centered. His

dad. His dad and Nicholas's teacher, Jack Grout, both of them said, put your hands on the club properly, don't move your head, and swing as hard as you can, and we'll figure out how to hit it straight or later on, and then it's fine for a kid in their twenties and thirties, yeah, or eight and ten like they yeah, exactly, But fifty years later, the people at TPI Titleist Performance Institute documented that that's

absolutely the perfect approach. Whatever the swing speed that you start with is, to a great extent, is what you're destined to have the rest of your life. So I'm not going to tell a seventy year old to come out of their shoes and try to get one hundred and twenty mile an hour club that speed. But for a young kid who's got some athletic ability, God,

go after it. And you know, you stand on the rain sometimes given a lesson, and you'll hear a well meaning dad in the spot behind you saying stuff to his son or daughter, and I think, to myself, you're setting this kid back, you know, twenty years. The worst instructor in the world is apparent. Yeah, or keep your head down. Keep your head down, worst piece of advice in the history of golf. Oh all right, well hang on to that thought because we're going to discuss

why that is right after this break. All right, we hear it all the time. I lifted my head. I lifted my head, or you hear from down to the bay, you know, another bay in the in the driving range, keep your head down, keep your head down. You're saying bad advice. There's a difference between keeping your head down and allowing your head to rotate. The two of the examples that I use with students who you know, they finish their swaying and they're still staring at where the ball

is. First of all, you're completely stalling your rotation. Secondly, you'll end up with a chiropractor on speed dial very quickly. But if you look look at David Duval and on Akasare and Stamp, their heads were gone way before impact. And I say gone. They weren't looking down at the golf

ball. They were rotating. And it's a wonderful thing to do because you know where's power come from and the golfs rotation, and you just really kind of unlock your unlock yourself in terms of being able to rotate more thoroughly and create more power. So whenever whenever a student shows up, you know, doing this, and they're still looking at the grounds and their hands are up here, I'm thinking to myself, this is not working. We're going to

make some changes here. I mean, how many yards are we losing if by having our hands up there and our heads still down? Hard to quantify, but a decent amount, no question about that, right. But then the other factor is hurting yourself too, which you will if you do that long enough, physically hurt yourself. Physically hurt your back. Yeah, you're really stressing the back when you do that. If you let, you know, keep keep rotating, you're going to be kind to your body. I

think doing that, but not keeping the head down forever. What about tennis elbow? Is this something that you know, there's golfer's elbow and there's tennis elbow. I've been dealing with tennis elbow. What might and I'm not even asked anybody what might have caused that other than being at my desk all day? Is it? Is it the golf swing that has impacted that well? You know, I'm not I'm not an orthopedic surgeon, but I would say so many, but you act like going on TV. Yeah, so many,

so many ranges nowadays our mats only just because it's less expensive. And you know, if you're trying to lean the shaft and compress the ball, and maybe the MAT's been there for four years and it's getting worn and there's no cushion. You start beating on those with irons after a while, and that the elbows can start to hurt, and those are as, you know, they it's tough to get rid of that. You really have to take

some time off. Yeah, I'm taking you three months off, and I'm realizing I've got a ten year old mat back here I'm hitting off of. Yeah, and that could be it right there. It's my own mat. Yeah, but I think that it was on a driving range before it was given to met it. Yeah, yeah, so it had some mileage on it already. And I thought, oh boy, this matt must be getting old because I'm seeing all the remnants of the mat on the bottom of my clubs. It's like, yeah, now I'm like, oh wait a minute,

my arm's killing me. It's probably from hitting in this mat, I think, so, I think, so time to get a new mat. Maybe maybe get a new mat and see if that helps the elbows. Yeah, yeah, there's great advice, thank you, you know, when you stop, but think about maintaining a grass surface range with all the divots that are being taken. It's a it's a pricey situation. Place I teach, they used to use grass on the weekends and they stopped that five years ago,

so it's it's only matts now. Yeah. And plus when you're hitting on a a driving range that's grass most of the time, it's very sandy. It's what there's a lot of sand they're using to you know, and so it's not really grass. So it's hard to get a good sense of

what you're doing when you're hitting the ball. That's what I've found. A lot of people can hit the ground an inch and a half behind the ball on a mat and still get a serviceable shot, and they think, well, I'm really doing wow, and they get out on the golf course and it doesn't work quite as well. I can't believe how many golfers that I've come across that are lifetime golfs that when I say, okay, so if

the ball is here, where should the bottom of your swing be? Thinking that the swing is a circle, so there's a bottom to that swing, bottom of the circle. Where in relation to the ball should it be? Should it be you know, three inches behind the ball, right at the ball, in front of the ball. And I can't believe how many people are shocked to hear that the bottom of the swing should be in front of the ball, you know, past it as far as where your swing is.

They're like, what are you talking about. It's like, no, no, you hit the ball first, then you hit the ground. That's how you get a good divot. That's all. Also how you get your compression on the ball at the risk of at the risk of antagonizing you further. Oh, go for it. You're never coming back on the show again anyway. This is what Steck and Tilda is all about, is bottom point

control. And when you're not when you're not moving laterally in either direction and you're right on top of it, your bottom points going to be in the same place all the time. And you know, every person that shows up for a lesson, to me is totally different. And I have a bag full of tools that I use, and I'll pull out, hopefully the right

tools for the individual's issue. And if somebody is swaying off the ball in a big way and I can see they got ninety five percent of their weight on the outside of their trail foot, I'm not going to say stack untilt. I'm just going to say, let's kind of stay centered a little bit

more. I've got a video that I send to a lot of serial swayers that's of two great LPGA Tour players and at four different places in the swinging it shows weight distribution percentages fifty to fifty in the setup at the top of the back swing, fifty to fifty, which shocks every wow, seventy thirty

lead footed impact, and then ninety eight two. But there's kind of a buzz term in recent years in golf instruction where people talk about going into your trail foot and not onto your trail foot, and there's a big difference there. To understand what I mean, no, please explain. Yeah, you're keeping your weight on the inner half of your trail foot in the back swing

rather than getting it totally on it. So if you look at if you look at Hogan top of backswing, Nicholas top of backswing most all good players. There's not a ton of weight over there. There really is not. And that's why I think stack and tilt can be valuable for the right person, for the right person, the right person, but not everybody, Not everybody, No, everybody. I played golf out in Vegas a couple of

years ago and I met this guy who was the director of golf. I won't mention the name of the club, but he'd been teaching Fred Couples for forty years. And I'm thinking, I think, to myself, you know, what, what are you telling Fred Couples. I actually I did say that to him, and he said everybody has an issue. Everybody has an issue. And I didn't ask him what Couple's issue was, but oh man, yeah, I don't think he would have told me. Well that's different.

Yeah, I think we'd all like to have Fred Couple's issues, right, I have the issue of the name Fred. So yeah, yeah, all Fred's. All Fred's are good guys and talented. Yeah, better Fred than dead. Oh all right, Well, let's take one quick time out here, another sixty seconds and we'll continue on with John Marshall. John, I'm really curious to see if you can help go through a long drive swing

on competition. Break it down of what you're feeling in your process, your set up, your thought process, and what it feels like when you're competing and going for as much distance as you possibly can. And accuracy. Well, I certainly struggled with the accuracy part initially, and when I was I did this for god what eight years. I basically didn't play golf at all, maybe ten rounds a year, but I would practice, especially leading up

to a competition. I'd hit one hundred drivers a day in addition to working out a lot, and you know, you just kind of train yourself to get to maximize your speed as best you can. I I've always done the doctor Shoul's foot spray on the on the club face to make sure I'm at least somewhere near the center of the face, because that's a huge deal. But yeah, it was. It was always. I don't want to say it was easy, because nothing's easy related to golf for long drive, but

it was fun once I started figuring the club face out too. And we you know, you and I joked a week or so ago about the manual de latora guy who said toe up and towed down up here. No no, And I'm not I'm never critical of other teachers, but I'd like I'd like to have him find out someone who agrees with him nowadays on that Okay,

that doesn't work, doesn't work. No, no. And that's what I love about doing this podcast is somebody's going to come on one week and say this is the only way you're going to have consistency and distance, and someone will come on next week going no, no, doesn't work that way now. Well, so that's a warning to all listeners. Please, if you don't like what you hear on this show, come back next week. You come back next week because you hear something different. I mentioned starting at

fourteen. Are you ready to come back on now or are not out a break? Oh? We we're in man, Oh you are? Oh yeah? No? No, no, I love No, We're This is part of the show. Surprised. So when I was starting at fourteen, I took two lessons and the guy said, when the shaft's parallel to the ground halfway back, toe up, I want ninety percent of your weight on your right foot, and then I want you to shift your weight to the left and roll the hand, roll your hands closed and squared a club face and

hit it a mile that's straight. And I tried that and realized it didn't work, so I kind of worked things out on my own. I still rolled the club face open a little bit, but not to that extent. But so shaft parallel to the ground halfway back. Club face should be parallel to the spine angle. Why is this a square club face because if you think of the arc of the of the club going back. When I'm in that position with that club head tipped forward, it's indicular to my path.

You with me, that's square And I'm loving hearing this. Keep going. And then at the top of the back swing, I want a flat left wrist. I'm going to have a flat left wrist that impact. If I've got a flat left wrist up here, I don't have to do anything. And this is a little harder to understand or visualize, but I want to have the club face parallel to my left forearm at the top of the back

swing, I'm right into the golfer. That may be tough to visualize there, but definition of square club face over the last ten, twelve, fifteen years has changed dramatically for the better. For the better, Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, what are you doing when you when you're in positions like I talked about your Every golf swing requires timing, but you're chopping a lot of that need for timing away. If I'm not rolling the club fase open and closed. That's one one factor I don't have to worry about.

And I don't hit it as far as I used to by any means. But I mean, I don't curve the ball two inches. Typically everything is is pretty much dead straight because I zero out my path and zero out my club face, so ball just goes straight and doesn't curve at all. I can make it curve if I need to. But yeah, that was gonna be my question. Are you do you have the ability to shape the shots if you need to. You know, it's harder to do nowadays with the

technology of the golf ball, but yeah, I can. I can still do it. Yeah, It's it's not going to curve as much as it did with a blot of ball thirty years ago, but you can. You can still curve it. I'm sure you can curve it. No, I mean, like my drives, I either hit a small small fade or straight. It's like, I haven't played month, so I'm like, what do I do? But uh, I just in the last couple of months that I was playing, I was just starting. I rolled, I brought my

right handed golfer. I brought my left hand a little bit rotate clockwise right, yeah, on the on the grip, and I was starting to hit a draw for the first time, and I'm like, okay, and then my arm started hurtating And I'm like, is that when my arm was hurting because I moved my my my hand on the club. No, because I'm Matt. When you say you hit a draw, is it starting out right of the target and then moving back to the target or starting out left?

No, It's it's starting where I'm like, I'm aiming and then and then going a little bit to the left. It's not got your going guard left. It's it's you can see the ballflight going up and then it's starting to move a little bit to the left, which is like, Oh, I'm hitting a draw yay after all these years, Like really do I want to

do that? Yeah? I hit a student last year who was a lifelog slicer and not a real talented golfer, and we're working on grip and club fase control and he's got this big out day in path and he hits this pull hook that Marlon Perkins couldn't find, and he just lit up and said, I mean the guy from time, Oh my god, I hit the first draw in my life. And he was just so giddy, and I didn't want to break it to him that you're never going to find that golf

ball. But uh, you know it's all about You probably know this from talking to instructors, but the longer the club the greater the impact of the clubface. With driver, it's eighty five percent of where the ball's going. His clubpase with a wedge probably more like fifty percent of where it's going.

But controlling the club face is what golf is all about. I'm a huge Victor Holin fan, and he talks about when people ask him about why he's so successful, he says, I have a very very stable clubface, and I don't open it, I don't close it. It's always square all the way through here. Works pretty well for him, Yes, it does, the problem is we go, Oh, I saw Victor Holin hit shots on

TV. I can do that, and you just go out to the golf course, not even practice it. You just go to the golf course going, I'm going to channel Victor Hovlin today. It's like, no, you're not, probably not, probably not. Yeah, no, don't. I saw this shot on TV. I can do this. Yeah, exactly. I so frequently I say to students, you don't have any idea how hard the golf courses are that they're playing, and you have no idea how good they are, even if you watch them. You don't have any idea how

good they are. And you're talking to a guy who's a scratch golfer and they still don't have the clue. No, no, exactly. Well, you know, Larry Nelson is three time major champion. He's a local Atlantic guy. He won two PGA's in the US Open. But I remember him saying one time that the difference between and eighteen and scratch is smaller than the difference between scratch and tour player. Wow. Yeah, I mean those guys with the USGA index would be plus six, plus seven, plus eight.

I mean it's yeah, Tiger was a plus ten at one point. Yeah, it's it's crazy. They're good. They're talented and they're they're good. And but they also have a seventy five yard dispersion with their t shots from one hundred and twenty yards they average roughly twenty three feet according to Scott Fawcett. And but they they they picked the right targets, they understand their dispersion.

They're dialed in on how far they hit each club they have they have, you know, from equipment standpoint, they have a lot of advantages over us normal people. But they're really good. They're really good, and that's why they make a lot of money. Yeah, well they try or they go play for the Saudis and make a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And that's a I decided to actually at the first week of January, I decided I'm going to go on strike.

I mean, I'm a huge golf and I have been my whole life, just like you. But I said, I'm going to go on strike and I'm not going to watch. And I didn't watch the first two weeks, and then last week I didn't watch. This is at Palm Springs. I didn't watch Thursday, Friday, Saturday. But then Sunday I wake up and I realize what's going on with Nick dun Lamp And my best friend and I go to the NCAA's every year because we love ouch golf, and we

watched him playlist year, so you know, the guy's good. But I had to watch that, and I mean, that was an amazing story, so amazing story. Yeah. Yeah, And I'm sure I'm sure Live has probably come after him. I know he's he's on the PGA tour now, but I'm sure they've come after him. Didn't you love how he said the next week He's like, yeah, I'm not going to plan the tour event this week. I want to go home. Yeah. Yeah, good for

you kid. That's the That's kind of a mature decision right there. And I think he wanted to go back and do the right thing with his coach and his teammates and very admirable. Yeah. I'm a fan, absolutely, absolutely. So you're teaching, now, do you teach online or do you only teach in person? What do you I'm only only in person, But I'm actually thinking about trying to do a little bit more than I have in the past informally that I may try to set up some kind of a system

to do that. I've already proven to you that I'm a master of technology. So we're here. You're doing it. You figured it out. How do people get in touch with you if they'd like to get a lesson? Our website is jmlong drive dot com, jmm yep, grive dot com. Phone number and email addresser on there, and love working with everyone, Love working with everyone. Well, I really enjoyed working with you today. This has been awesome. Thank you very kind. Fred. It was fun for

me too, and hope our paths cross again. Maybe you said you're coming to Atlanta, assume maybe we can break bread or I can give you a golf lesson if you have a little time. That's great. Thanks so much for being on today, John, I enjoyed it, Emncho, thank you for having me. Well. I was wondering when AI was going to start having an impact on this podcast, and it has arrived after recording this interview with John. The platform I use called Riverside FM, and if you're a

podcaster, I'd seriously recommend it to you. They offer a new AI service where it reviews the entire interview, then gives a summary of the conversation and provides bullet pointed takeaways on the topics that we covered during the interview, so beginning today that will be included in the show notes and at our blog post for you to review before or after you listen. Would love your feedback on

whether or not this is at all helpful. This week's Golf Smarter Ambassador is Charles Palmer of Naples, Florida, where he plays at the Esplanade Golf and Country Club. Why don't you become one of our ambassadors then you can take advantage of getting a free gift, unless you think having a free podcast is the gift, Okay, but actually you'll get a choice of three great gifts

to choose from. Like Charles, you can choose Tony Manzoni's video of the Lost Fundamental, or you may want a glove and glove storage compartment from redroostergolf dot com. And your third choice is an eight pack of flightpathgolf keys from flightpathgolf dot com. All you have to do is introduce an upcoming episode by telling us where you're from and where you play. Just write directly to me

and I'll send you simple instructions on how to record. Check out today's show notes to find the links about each gift that you have to choose from. If you have any questions, comments, especially about our AI generated show notes, or suggestions for upcoming episodes, right to golf Smarter Podcast at gmail dot com, or click on the Heyfred button when you visit golf smarter dot com