The Single Pivot Swing - In Detail with Tony Manzoni (RIP)

order they were originally published. Tony's book The Loss Fundamental, One Simple Move Better Golf Forever is once again available on Amazon, including the Kindle format, and his video of the same name can now only be seen online. If you'd like to gain access, please write directly to me at golf Smarter podcast at gmail dot com or click on the Heyfred button at golfsmarter dot com. To find out more. Please visit Golfsmarter dot com. Thanks so much for your support and enjoy.

I received many emails wanting more in depth information. So I called him and luckily we caught Tony before he left the country for meetings in China, and he was more than willing to discuss his theories in detail.

my wig here or have I really found something? And it took a while for me to realize that this is valid, this is what Hogan did, because there's been a lot of people saying they knew what he did, and I think this is an aspect to it. I'm not sure it's everything he did, but I know that I know that in watching some of the film that I have of him, especially in this later year, this is exactly what he did. Wow.

a single pivot golf school. They have the Golf Illustrated has just gone online and they have a pretty large website, and we're going to be doing kind of golf viignettes that we'll be putting on there myself, Al Geiberger, Mike Lyons, and Brian Geiberger. That's the for some of us, and also a young lady by the name of Karen Gottwald who's our female instructor about to single pivot, how you have to set up to it, because setup is really

important in making this happen. What we're eliminating in the single pivot golf swing is we're eliminating the lateral move, the shifts from the right leg to the left leg. And it's not an invention. There have been many great players that played off the left side, but no one has ever really explained it in detail how you do

it and what are the functions and so forth. So that's what that's what my role has come has happened, is that I've I've watched this and of course I give lessons to a lot of people, especially elderly people, and now that this doesn't work for young people because my golf team are all you know, they all kill the ball and they're all playing off of one axis. But I saw that older people people that always said I can't get over the left side, I can't finish

the swing anymore. I can't get any distance. I've increased their distance just two to three clubs by just putting them in the right position, by setting them to the ball correctly, and then keeping them there throughout the motion so that there's not a lot of weight on the right side, so they can clear their left side. They can turn their chest left of the target and get the right shoulder pointing at the target. And while they do that, the left arm stack is connected high on

the chest. And that's the secret of this. It's playing off of one axis. Now we're not tilting the shoulders, so this is not stack and tilt. And I don't mean to infer that what they do is wrong. I don't like to get into those things. But you can't hurt your back doing this. When you're tilting your shoulders, especially on the through swing, you're going to end up in what we used to call a sea position, and there's a little bit of strain on the lower back.

And all the people that played from that era that finished with the head back and the body kind of in a sea position, they all were troubled with their back in later years. And Hogan, if you see any pictures of him, he posts it up so that he was on a straight line because he didn't work that way. He didn't work down and under to hit the golf ball. When you do that, you have to turn your arms over.

There's two ways to square the golf club. You can turn your arms over and hit it, or you can rotate your body and keep your arm connected to your body like it's a lever connected to a gear. So when you set up to the golf ball, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to set up sixty forty sixty percent of your weight on your left foot and forty percent on your right. And why you're doing that is because you're aligning your left hip to the outside of your left foot, and that's impact.

Is when we hit the golf ball, whether we sway off the ball and come back to it, that's where we're going to end up. But with this concept, we're going to get against impact to start with. So we've positioned the legs in the proper position, and now all we have to do is rotate the upper part of the body and we're gonna coil the body without moving that center, and that's our head we're going to stay.

Our face will be right down on the golf ball. Okay, So the right shoulder and the right hip are going to turn behind us, and that's going to pull the arm around the body with the rotation.

it's turning, it's turning around. The right shoulder is now being displaced behind the spine, and the right hip is being displaced behind the so your right side is turning. There's no there's no lateral move back. There's no there's no sway back to low power. You're coiling. Imagine a wall against your right shoulder. Okay, you're going to turn inside that wall with your right side, and that movement will take the club back into a position. And everybody

is different because we are all built differently. Some people have a lot of flexibility, some don't. Some are short waists, some are long legged. So there's no position you can say you have to take the club here. So by connecting the arms slightly on top of the body at address, we from a single axis, which is the left leg, and we we stay against that brace, almost the feeling of there's an imaginary wall on your left side. Okay. So now from that position, you're going to coil the

upper body staying centered. Okay, so when we coil, we're not going to tilt our head to the right. We're going to stay right on that ball. So the right shoulder, right hip go behind us, and the club, the arms will follow. The left ear was going to go across the chest. This is a big this is the big key. It's going to go across the chest, and the left arm should sit fairly high on the left pectoral muscle. Okay. Years ago, there was a great player by the name

of Dick Mayer. He won the US Open, the World Open. I had a little problems with alcohol in his later years. And I met him and he used to watch me hit balls, and he used to say, son, you've got to keep your left arm on your tit and he meant the nipple. Okay. And and he wrote a book subsequent to that that gerald Ford was in the gerald

Ford Library. He gave me the book, and in that book it says that everybody has an area in the body that defines where the left arm should be in that'sh the left arm should be right above that nipple of the on the man on the left pectoral muscle. Okay. And he would watch me hit balls and say, you

got to keep your arm up on your tit. And I used to think this guy's whacked out because I had no idea what he was talking about, until I learned that that was position is paramount to hitting the ball solid and straight, time after time after time, because when the left arm stays high in the chest, the only way it can move because it's connected to the body.

Is the rotation of the body opening up through the target, kind of like if you've ever seen Anika Sorenson play, Anika was very It was a real rotator of the golf swing, and it looked like her body was facing the target at impact. And that's exactly what it was.

So if people in the audience would stand up, if they can do this and put their arm right across their body and then take their right arm and hold their left arm high against the chest, and then just turn the body and see how the arm moves with it. It's not coming off the chest, it's still pressed against it. But if you keep turning left, the club will square itself.

I'm not doing stretching. But what I found is that all all, if you put your arms across your chest like you see guys criss cross their arms, and you get in swinging position, you set yourself off against the left side brace and just turn the top part. You're going to turn it enough to where your back is to the target. Even less than that is fine, okay, But if you're turning your right side behind you, this

is the ticket. If you try to turn your left shold over to your chin, it's harder to do if you take your right side and pull it back behind behind you towards the target. That's the keyword, towards the target. Because at the top of your swing, your weight is now seventy thirty. You're braced against that wall and on your left.

on the pectoral muscle. Okay, we just unwind our chest through the target around the left leg, and we finished with the chest pointing left of the target and the right should're pointing at the target. And trust me when I tell you I have a I've got an eighty six year old man that when he first came to me and he took the club back, he looked like a tree falling to the right. He had no conception

of turn. I've got him on his left side now and he's hitting the ball farther now than he did when he was in his fifties because he's hitting it with his whole body. He's not working down under so that his arms have to flip over so that the arms leave the body. He's hitting it with his chest, his core, his hips, and the last thing through is the clubhead, so as his body unwinds, the clubhead hits the ball. Now, if you're on the right side and you try to do this, you're gonna you're gonna spin

out open. You're gonna spin open, but you can't get open enough. When you're on your left side. As you as you start unwinding, you can open up as early as you want, and you're just gonna hit the ball harder. Okay, Now, Now the key here, the key as we do this is that the left arm must stay on the chest as you open. Okay, So you're gonna be turning level. You are not gonna work be working down. You're gonna stay level like Hogan did in his later years, and

you're gonna smash the ball. And the by product of this is that whether you pull it or push it, and we will do that for our life, no one's going to hit it dead straight at the pin every time. They're gonna push it a little right, but there'll be no side spin on the ball because the club the clubhead is held square throughout the heating area. There's no rotation to square it. It's square from the beginning to the end. Okay, So you'll pull it or push it

dead straight. So your your shot dispersion is going to get real narrow, real narrows. So you're going to start hitting. You're gonna hit a lot of greens and a lot of fairways, and you're going to hit the ball much more solid, which will make your average hit further. See you when we move off the golf ball. And it's a trend in teaching. At one time, the Nicholas's the Palmers, they stayed right on the ball their head and did not move. It didn't move because they didn't make that

little lateral move on the backswing. And then all of a sudden, instructures start saying it's okay to move your head, and I'm here to tell you that's a bunch of bs. It isn't okay to move your head because you got to move it back to the place you started, because that's your center before you hit the golf ball. And you know, unless you're neurria of or somebody like that, how do you do that, especially when you get past fifty.

So that's why so many people. You know, we have a driving rain chair at the college and you see people and they're just locked back on that right foot. The ball goes right and their instructor says, will shift your weight. Well, that's that's the problem. They did shift their weight. They put too much weight on the right foot early. Yeah, once you get back on that right side unless you unless you have an athletic body. And even the athletic guys that are arm swingers every now

and then, they're all all over the place. I mean, you look at Dustin Johnson, a tremendous athlete, tremendous strength. He can hit the ball two miles, but every now and then he can hit it so far off the Fairwey Mickelson another arms swinging around the downswing. But you can see it when the when the arms come down, the body can't. The body can't rotate and the arms

come down at the same time. One. So if the body doesn't, if the arms come down, the body is going to follow the arms when they when the when you're a rotator, the arms always follow the body. And and and because you're not turning the club over, the clubhead isn't going to be opened a long time, closed a long time, and square for just a moment. So now you're you're eliminating one of the things that happens to all of us as soon as you get anxious,

as soon it means something. You know, our eye hand coordination runs down our leg I mean that, I don't care who it is. Uh. You saw Dustin Johnson in that one tournament where he stood in a bunker. Well, he didn't have to be in that bucker if he could have just hit the ball in the far away. But because he's he has to square that club with his arms. As soon as it gets really important, you're gonna you're just you're gonna hang on or you're going

to release it too early. See. And that's what Hogan, that's what he really figured out. And in his later years he made statements, I square the golf club with my body. Okay, well that's how. But he didn't tell you how to do it. That's what the single pit was school and concept is about. It tells you how to do it. And I want to tell you. Uh and I don't mean to brag, but I am going

to brag. Since I've been teaching. Yes, since I've been teaching this, I have had nothing but repeat business and nothing but referral business, and people tell sending me emails and tell me I never hit the ball like this. I haven't hit it like this since I was a kid. Blah blah blah blah blah. And it works. I've got al Geiberger, who's a pretty good golfer in his day, doing this. Okay. Al geiber was voted as having the top one of the top swings of the top five

best wings and he is now a single pivot player. Okay, I have a terrific teacher from Canada that was reluctant to this at first, although he tried to stay centered to the ball, But once he got all the pieces together, his following now is expanded tremendously because you get instant results. I know, one of the guys that heard your podcast came down to see me. Really yeah, oh yeah, I've had two actually I had two lessons, and there one young man. He said, great to hear, thank you. Yeah,

And what do you shoot? He says, well, I'm about a twenty handicap. So I said, well, I hit a few balls from me, and then immediately I saw he had his hands out of position and he's just swinging back on the golf ball and with no power. And then here he's in this probably early thirties and well built guy, and here I'm this over the hill pro and I get up there with a nine iron and I'm hitting the past where he's hitting the seven, and I mean way past. And he's where you getting on all that power?

And I said, because you're hitting it with your flick of your wrists and I'm hitting it with my whole body. And I got him in position, and I'll tell you after about the fifteenth golf ball, he was blasting the others. I've never hit a ball this far in.

But she's she's blessed. But she's also she's also lucky that she got a fellow like me that didn't teach her shift to the right, shift to the left, because she'd be chasing that monkey for a long long time.

what was your secret? What really was it? Because there's been a lot of speculation, and he said, they're going to have to dig it out of the dirt like I did. And I just love him for that because he had no gruz, he had no real video and nothing to work with. He had to get out there and just beat balls. But he got an idea in a dream state. And I know what that I really believe I know what that idea was. And it wasn't weakening his grip and all that pronation and suppornation stuff.

I mean, he may have done that, but I've got film and you can look at him at the top of his swing, and his weight is on top of his left side. His right leg is so steep and so braced, and you can see he's right there ready to rotate. So he eliminated that transitional move that I don't care who you are, whether you're a tour player or a high handicapped player, it's difficult. You've got to move laterally onto the left foot and then rotate, and you have to time that rotation in a split second

when that club is really really moving. And for some of these young guys that hit three or four ferris then blowing out of bounds right or left and never knowing what they know what I'm talking about because I was one of those guys. When I was a young man, I was a very good player. But every time I got into a tour event one hole or two holes, I'd hit the ball left and it'd be out of bounds or into some real trouble where I ran my score up, and I always thought, well, I just don't

have it. And I just want to pass this information onto people, for those young people that are out there that really want to play this game. You've got to be connected and rotate that body so that you can control that clubhead. You have to know where that club head is through impact. If you're just guessing and hoping, you you got a long road and a rough road to go through.

Your hands and wrists are much more appliable. They can they can flip over and flop and hang on and so forth. The body really can't do those things. And the body of the nerve endings are right at the edge of the body. So when you're nervous, the last thing you want to try to do is to do something with your fingertips or your hands. It's just not doable. You know when your handshake when you get nervous, but

your chest doesn't shake. Okay, So if you can take that club and trap it across your chest and then the only way that that arm can move is for your chest to rotate, that clubhead is going to be in the same position time in and time again. I mean, I'm writing a book, I'm going to China. I run a golf management program, and the coach of the Ben's golf team. I don't have any time to go out there and hit balls. Okay, but when I go out

to hit golf balls and to demonstrate this. There is no question in my mind that I can take a driver out seven iron witch. I don't care what it is. I'm going to hit it one way. I'm going to hit it straight. Now. I may tow it a little bit, I may heal it a little bit, but the ball is going to hold its line because my club head is not turning over, it's not tumbling.

the desire to pass this on. Now. I can tell you, as a golf coach, a lot of the young men that come to me, they have they're pretty good players, I mean plus ones and scratch and so forth, and when they hear this and they don't hear it from a lot of people because this is kind of this is not new, but it hasn't been talked about. Let's put it that way. They're always very suspect, and as I tell them, look, I am not going to try

to change the way you think or to play. I'm going to just show you the way I play and think, and then you make your own mind up on what you want to do, because I don't want to disrupt anybody in their game. And obviously there's a lot of ways to play this game, but I think I've found a way that really makes it easy for the advanced player as well as a high handicapper. I think they

both profit from this. I mean I I I would get on the golf chair, I would talk to whoever on the tour and not be a little bit nervous about what it's about telling him this, because if they're an arm swinger, I can improve them. It's just it's just that simple.

because he left out the parrot. The part in the letter I have by Ben Hogan to a friend about how to hit the driver, he states emphatically, at the top of my swinging, my weights on the instep of my left foot, not my right foot, my left foot. And when the first time I read that, I just blinked and said, well, Ben must have had a cocktail that day and or maybe a little dyslexia kicked in,

but he meant right foot. And then as I continued my research and looked at film of him, and then saw quotes where he told Mike Austin, who was a pro from Los Angeles, from now on, I'm going to play off the left side. And then one time I'm with a conversation with Lee Trevino, Lee said, I've seen a lot of great players play off the left side. I've never seen anybody great that stayed for any length

of time on the right side. But I didn't understand what he was talking about, and like most people, I was too embarrassed to say, I don't know what you mean by that. So through this period of time, this learning experience, and then also there was a lot of self doubt. Who am I? Who am I to say some of these guys are wrong? But then when Jack Nicholas made a quote in Golf Digest after the second so people pointed out to him that he was staying on his left side. Jack made the statement, and it

was a very you know, brash statement. He said, anyone that teaches you to shift your weight on your right foot on the backswing doesn't know how to teach well. Led Metter and a lot of these guys hairsit straight up. Okay. And I know when I first wrote, you know, when I was writing my book some excerpts of it. When in the local sportsbook here a little golf book, a couple of pros wrote skating reviews of what I said.

You're insane, You're a fraud, blah blah blah. You know, in the South side of Chicago, and me wanted to go over there. And punch somebody in the nose. But you know, at my age, I watched that stuff. So I just wrote back. I just wrote that, and I just said, well, you have your you know, you have the right. I don't think you should slander me, but you have the right to not agree. But but Al Geiberger and Jack Nicholas agreed with me, and that's pretty

that's good enough for me. Yeah, but there really was a lot of self done. I must say to you that you know, I've been a hand player all my life. I had no formal training. I was a kid and I caddied like most of us did from my era, and that's how we learned to play golf. We got to play on Mondays at Caddy's Day and we had

hand me down clubs, but we prevailed. And because I could play baseball pretty good and I was kind of blessed with eye hand coordination, I got to the point where I can play in a tour event, not to stay out there, but I was good enough to qualify, let's put at that point. But the game was always elusive for me, and I just said, I just came to the conclusion, well, I'm just not good enough I've put my tie in, but I'm just not good enough

and I just didn't understand connection and rotation. And then a lot of people think that Jimmy Ballard was the one that was the first one to say that, but that's really not true. I've got books that were written in the twenties and thirties that talked about connection and rotation. And there was an argument at the time. Do you face the ball when you're hitting it or are you

facing the target when you hit it? Because your face on the ball, your arms have to cross over in front of you when you when your body's facing the target, then your your arms are being pulled by the body, so that this this this argument has gone gone on for a while. Okay, and Hogan, you know, he was a very bright man. He had like I S one seventy five IQ, so he was close to genius. He he figured it out, He got a thought and figured it out and worked on it. And I don't think

he ever really divulged his secret. But you can see it in his later film. You can see it so clearly. You can see his rear end is totally on his left leg, as was Nicholas. Even though Nicholas hoisted the club upright and Hogan took it around him. They were still against that brace. And I think that that is, you know, the playoff of one axis is it really eliminates a lot of the air made on the transitional

move and then the coupi gra on. That is, if you can keep your left arm connected high on the chest so that the movement of the body rotation brings the arm into impact, then you got the best of everything. And that's what we teach. I mean, there's some finite things like when you set up to the ball, your right hip has to be on the inside of your right foot head address, and then when you go sixty four do you find that the left hip has to be in line with the outside of the left foot.

So the legs are going to be reactionary to this winning You're not gonna have to drive the legs. You're not gonna have to move the lower body and then the upper body and all that stuff. That's all very very difficult. And really when we use the legs for power, that leverage comes from the ground up. It doesn't. It doesn't come when we're when we're moving laterally, we're actually not totally on the ground. So the more you're grounded,

the more power you can get from your legs. But your legs have to be in a certain position so that you can so that they can stay grounded as you rotate the top part and then they just react. Unfortunately, you can't see what I'm saying, but hopefully your listeners are getting a labor for this. And and you're.

And we're not trying to stay behind the ball, We're trying to move through the golf ball. Again, that's another concept. See when you drop your right shoulder down, your head goes backwards, it goes away from the target. Your body arches and your hands turnover and you hit the golf ball. But the true rotational person doesn't drop down and hit the ball. His right side stays level and he and he just slams his right side through that golf ball. He hits it, hits through the golf ball, his right

side goes past the ball. If you're using the golf ball. And this is what I tell all my students. The golf balls a line. It's just a point of reference to align your club hit at the target. But you've got to move past that line. Your divot has to be on the other side of that line. It can't be behind that line when you put your golf club behind the ball. If you brought the club right to that spot each and every time, you'd be hitting the ball fat because the club sets behind the golf ball.

So we've got to catch that ball and then the divit forward of it. Okay, so we've got to be moving through it. The more underneath you work. For all the people that hit it, thin and fat and thin and fat you're behind the ball, so you have to be in position to hit the ball with power. And most people are behind the ball too far, so the only thing they can fire is their hands, and they hit and fall back. They step back in the box like a lot of baseball players used to do. I mean,

that move is prevalent in golf. There's PhDs with that movement. I can tell you that.

I can honestly tell you that when my article article came out and Golf illustrated, I got a lot of email from people that bought their book and bought their tapes and said, I can't do this. It hurts my back. But when I tried your method, I could hit the ball. Now does that mean I'm right? No, It just means that some people think that my method is easier. I do know one thing. Ben Hogan rotated through the golf ball. He didn't tilt. He was stacked. He was what we

call posted, straight up and down. When he hit a golf ball, he did not tilt back. His chest was left with the target, and he was always in perfect balance. He didn't go down and search for that golf ball. He didn't need to do that. He could turn to the ball. He cleared his right side and his early swings, he was very long with the swing, and his swing looked the same, but there was a big change to his golf swing. His knee position was more towards the ball.

As he turned. In his later years, his knee jetted straight out to the left foot, as did a gentleman by the name of James Barn in the twenties with

Hickory Chefts. So again, that wasn't Hogan's invention. It was I'm sure Ben found that if when his knee worked that way, he was more balanced and braced, because that's the whole key here, is that your body has to be ready to make a really athletic move, and when it's drifting right and drifting left like a willow, there's nothing athletic about that.

You kind of wind up, but there's no specific position that you put your arm, and your arm goes to a place where your body feels strong so that you can make a hard throw, and I think the golfing it has to be that way. I think that when we set up properly, and if we're not changing our spine angle, if we just rotate the body and keep the arms connected to the body, that they're going to find the position that you should be in. I have never believed that you should try to get your wrist

hinged at the top or flat at the top. I think that I think that that hurts people primarily because they're thinking about their hands and their position, and you can't shut that off. At the top, you're going to be thinking about your hands and trying to get that club flat at impact. And I've got scores of film of me hitting the golf ball where my left wrist is flat, and I can tell you that I have

never tried to get left wrist flat. I believe lag and all of that are they're the consequence of doing something before that. So as I rotate and that club is being pulled, that club is going to be lagged and my left wrist will have to be flat. When my body stops and the club goes forward, that's when my left rist is going to hinge and it's going to cup. That's when you hit the ball weak, but that's because the body stopped. Okay, but there's no way that you can bring your arms out and try to

keep your left wrist flat. I mean, that's insanity. I see people hurt themselves doing that and they hit everything weak right, And yet there are people that are teaching that today. And you know, that's one of the things that I've always said. I'm a pgm ember since nineteen sixty five, and not one person from the PGA has ever come over and said, Okay, let me see what you're doing to make sure you're not making people crazy here.

And I think that a lot. There's are art teachers that are teaching out of a book and they're just not cognizant them Why things happen. There is cause and effect, and the left risk being flat of impact is an effect of something else. It is not because you purposely try to keep your left frist flat. I mean, that's just that's ludicrous. You're moving too fast. There's too much weight forward, especially when you have a driver in your hand.

Even though it may be fifteen ounces or so, the weight of that clubhead is enormous as it's moving through time and if you're if you're if your body stops, that weight is gonna is gonna flip your hands you, I don't care how strong you are, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna cup. And that's why a lot of people when they go to hit the ball hard, they hit that sky shot, they go straight up in the air and they get that mark on the top of their club.

I know there's a lot of people out there now nodding there.

I'm from another era. I played with per Simon woods and I'd have these pure woods and I'd take I try on a par five to kill the ball, and there there'd be a big white spot on on the top of my club. And I just hated myself for that. But I never knew why I did it. I always thought it was going underneath the ball, but you can't go under the ball.

solid players. I've got a fifteen year old that's blasted in the sixties all the time, and he hits about three twenty off the tee and he's fifteen years old. I want to slap him when I'm trying to tell him to do this a little bit more. I've got to get up there and be able to produce. I've got to get up there and say, Okay, we'll watch this. I'm going to hit this fire and it's going to be dead straight. I'm going to hit that yellow flag and I'm going to make it fall right just a

little bit. And I can do that. I have no fear about doing that in front of anybody, because I know there's a mathematical thing going on. If my left arm is trapped against my chest and I rotate my chest, my club's coming into that ball square. So if I align myself properly and those conditions stay in place, I'm going to hit that ball. Now. Have I ever hit it when I was trying to do this? Have I

ever pulled one or push one? Absolutely, but I knew exactly what happened, and I'll say my arms went first that time and I reconnect bam. I hit it perfect. So there's no doubt in my mind that this works. There's no doubt in my mind that anybody can do this, male, female, young or old. And I think that it's I think it's what the Master figured out. And I've just kind of add little signature things in there that that I think are very really you know that that relate to

what he was trying to do. And then make it easier again. The setup. You have to be set up against the wall against the brace and you can't you can't let your lower body go underneath your top top of you. So the slides under because it's got a slide back the other way. And then you're just you're you know, you're in Chinatown. I mean, it's it's it's over sell the clubs, buy a dog, go for a walk.

I looked up and I sa, are you sure? Are you sure? You looked up? And they see why? Yeah, I looked up and I said, well, let me show you something. You watch my head. I'm gonna be I'm gonna hold my head dead's still, and you're going to see my eyes are going to be a neck gulp ball and I'm going to hit the very top of that golf ball. Now you know, I don't have time enough to swing this club seventy miles an hour with an iron and hit the very top of that skin.

But I'm going to do that, and I'll top that ball. I'll make a really hard swing and then the ball will go four or five feet and they'll say, how'd you do that? It was really easy. I anticipated impact. So what happens when you anticipate the impact you clinch. So when you tighten your hands, your arms get shorter, they pull in towards you, and that's why you top the golf ball. So for people out there that are top it a lot, especially with that faraway wood, it's

because they're hitting to the golf ball. So there's only one cure for this. You got to be brave. Number one. You got to set up to that golf ball so that you don't get way behind it and then you're trying to catch up. You kind of focus on where you're going to go with your body and the club head and not the golf ball. So when you get it the coil, let's just say that's phase one of a two part swing. Then you got to unwind to

the second part and hold that position. Look, you know, look pretty, look like someone's taking a picture of your follow through. And if you get your mind off of impact, then you'll quit trying to hit and when you hit, you won't have that response. So for everyone that's top of the ball, I can promise you you're tightening up, not looking up.

been said forever. There's a lot of great players. But Anika David did the ball at one time, and it's a shame that he moved away from his original swing, but he was that left arm was so across the chest. He had that club face shut at the top. But it didn't really matter because he just rotated through the golf ball and his eyes were really down the target line. When he was hitting the golf ball, he was looking

where he wanted the ball to go. And Anika did the same thing becausefully in your spine angle, you don't want to focus on the golf ball anyway. I mean, they're old saying a good player sense where the ball is and bad players stare at it. And there's a lot to be said about that, because if you get stuck looking at that golf baller looking at a dimple on that ball and all that blowing that we've been

told to do. You're gonna stay on that ball and you're gonna shut down your swing because the ball is not the golf swing. The ball is the center of the swing. You're going to decelerate like crazy if you're focusing on the back of the ball or anything, and you gonna use your hands. Your body's gonna stay behind the ball. I mean, you're going to be You're going to be just still when you're hitting it instead of active.

And that's why so many people hits so short. I mean, I had a guy recently come up to me about six foot three and he says, well, I you know, I'm fairly new at the game. I've been played about a year. I said, okay, well tell me a bout you. So how far do you hit a How far do you hit a driver? He says, oh, I hit about one sixty five, one seventy And I said, you should be able to throw it that far for God's sake,

with your size. And when I got through with him, you know, he was two thirty two forty because side was there the length, you know, he had a very long arm and then a club on top of it. So he had a huge lever, but he didn't know what to do with the lever. And so all of these things you know, are are they all relat If your body's in the wrong position. I don't care how strong you are, you can't hit the golf ball very far. I used to give lessons to gene Upjaw years and

years ago when he was with the Open Raiders. Jeane was a massive man. I weigh one hundred and fifty pounds and I just drilled it by him, I mean one hundred yards okay, And he'd say, how can you hit it so far? My leg's bigger than you. Didn't blah blah blah. But when he got to when he got right, when he figured out where to be instinctively because he was an athlete, you know, he hit it two miles And I didn't know all of this then. But you get there. Every now and then, do you

understand what I mean? Every now and then you clock one, you say, what did I do there? Your body is in the place. Well, now I know where that place is. That's the thing. I know. We'll put you and you're gonna you're gonna hit the ball farther. You're going to hit the ball straighter, and it's it's and it's not hard. I have people say, well, how many lessons do I have? And I say one, maybe two, and then then then

I can pass it. I'm pass it on to you, and then you'll know every time you hit the golf ball, what that ball is doing will tell you what you did or did not do.

I'm not going to mention, but I just wish I could have a conversation with him. I don't want any money, I don't want anything. I would, in fact, I would do it anonymously, but unfortunately Egos they're not going to say, hey, there's a guy on a driver that could really help you. You know, it's just not going to happen. But just for the sake of the game, you know.

don't that their own people can't operate them. Doesn't make sense to me that they have to get somebody from Australia or America or whatever to run their golf course. So they should build their own base of employees, you know, so it benefits them just like we have we have here. We don't have to call someone in Australia to run a golf course here, and that's what they need. So they need junior programs and they need some management program so they get an understanding. You know, this is not

rocket science. The golf industry is a service oriented business. To accommodate people. You anticipate what they're going to say before they do it, and you're ready to form that accommodation. And that's it. Learning to fold the shirt or sell a set of clubs. Come on, we can all do that. But the secret of this business is to make people feel welcome and not when they walk through the door and look at them and say, well, that guy's not

going to spend any money. You know, you don't qualify people in this business, nor should you in life for that matter. But that's a secret of this business. And I've been lucky because that was taught to me as a young man. And I've made a lot of money in the golf industry and times when people didn't make money, and and you know, it's it's what I pass on to mysch students so that they can go out there and they can become successful.

they want more information. They are intrigued by what you're saying and want to know more, So we've got to get it out there.

know I did for many years is ridiculous. If you get the right amount of information, it isn't that complicated. We're not building a rocket here, Okay, we're swinging a club. And if we just play on an access and rotate around that access, it makes it so much easier