The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters. I just love that I can hit any shot I kind of want.
We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Welcome back to the Pink Proving Grounds podcast here at the PGA Show. I know this is coming out a little bit later than the show, but if you listen and you're hearing the acoustics, that's what it is. And Marty Jerts and I've been waiting for this one for a long time. We got a legend with us today.
Yeah, this is fun.
One of my favorite people in the golf world, the short game master who's touched and helped so many golfers, Stan Nutley, with us here today. Stan, I want to start with the first question. How many putters do you have in the gold putter vault?
I have four. I'm waiting to get a wedge in there too, though.
And why should there be a wedge in there? Stan?
I made two bucker shots and had six putts and nine holes. I thought I could get my wedge, but.
In there, I don't.
Do you think your record So Stan's talking about his record Shane for least number of putts and nine holes on the PGA.
Yeah, two thousand and two Aeric Canada Championship. Stan out least six putts and nine holes. It's so unfathomable that I actually googled to make sure that that's the right number. Six putts of night holes. So you had two. So so walk us through that round.
So to night.
Let's get to the most impressive record that I know that I have. Okay, you gotta do some math here. I'm certain that I have the most shots ever hit from off the green in an underpart score on nine holes.
What's that number?
Well, I was good enough to have six putts and nine holes and only shot one under. So that's twenty nine shots.
Now, if that's not spoken like a true golfer, Marty somehow finding the negative in something positive. But uh yeah, we appreciate you taking a little bit of time with us.
It's a good for the rest of the story comment.
That's exactly right, uh Stan, When you were playing, I've always wondered this about coaching. You're playing, and you're obviously playing and having some success, when do you decide to make that switch when you decide I'm not going to play anymore, I'm going to get into coaching, and how do you navigate that new endeavor in your life. Obviously with so much focus being on in myself and how I.
Play, well, there's a couple things that I could tell on that story. But my daughter Tatum, sitting over here to the side as we shoot this, and my wife and my two kids one day when I got back in the car, made an announcement. They said, we don't mind you teaching that guy on the putting green while we're waiting, and we don't mind if you're practicing while we're waiting, but if you're teaching him, he's got to
pay you. And that was really a moment that changed the course of my career because prior to being able to tell people they had to pay me, because my wife said that only my buddies asked for help, and when they were okay to pay me, then guys started asking for help that weren't my close friends, and that was part of the transition. But the real moment, the defining moment of my switch over was Jay Hass asked me for a punting tip, and prior to social media.
The only way to become a kind of a notable coach was have a tour player say something nice. And that moment when he did better and said I helped him, it became apparent that I probably needed to move toward coaching versus just keep playing.
What year? What a round year? Do you know what that was?
It was a two thousand and one when he asked for a tip, and by two thousand and three I was coaching a bunch of teur players. I didn't really hang the clubs up until midway through two thousand and five.
Yes, Dan, you've touched so many golfers, not only tour players and your peers that you've coached, right, but also a lot of you know, your everyday golfers, high handicappers, males, females, juniors.
That's who I teach every day.
Yeah.
So, what are some of the big things and short game you know from maybe a principal standpoint that you like to see, say in general, or a common pattern of the high handicapper to help them improve around the greens.
Well, a couple. I do have to say this. One of my sayings I like to throw out is best questions wins so we think that that kind of applies to all of life. Like, you're in the business asking questions. So I asked my students right off the bat, I said, if you had somebody come to you that had never played golf, how would you tell them to make a putting stroke? And all of a sudden, if I can get them to answer that question, I get in there with their mind and I start to learn what they
know and think about putting. And like, one truth that people I think misinterpret is people think you should accelerate through the ball when you hit a putt, and yet I see the majority of best putters have short fallities.
Yeah yeah, so I don't.
Think they're speeding up when they hit the ball. They speed up early in the downswing. An impact is more of a coasting action. One of the things they say sometimes is the clips should go straight back and straight through. Well, I have to explain that the tool that I used to putt with has a stick coming up out of it at seventy degree tilt. It's not really designed to travel in a straight line.
Yeah.
Yeah, it might be a pendulum, but the pendulum's on a seventy degree tilt or somewhere near that. So that's a couple things that I look for right off the bat that the majority of bad putters are missing the boat on those two aspects.
That approach of asking your player a question like that, was that a skill you learned because you're so good at it, You've done it with me, you've done I've seen you do with a lot of of players. Or is that something you picked up from a mentor or teacher of yours.
Well, I don't know where I came up with it, but I really figured it out when I was giving a guy instruction and I feel like I had told him the same thing for a year. Yeah, And in one moment he turned around and said, but I'm gonna whiff it. And I realized it wasn't that he was terrible or that I was telling him the wrong stuff. He truly had a belief that would not let him hear my message and try my message.
Yeah.
And when that happened, I realized, I have to understand what my student believes sometimes to get through the door that they've put up. And they've put up those doors consciously as well as subconsciously. They might not even know they believe there. And that's where I really got honed in on making sure I asked the right question so I can figure out what they know and believe.
It's probably that Wall is probably bigger and stronger in the short game space, you know, chipping and putting.
I think it's true in all aspects of life, Like the businessman coaching a new employee. The kid's gone to college and learned something that's just absolutely not true. But the guy hired him didn't know that he wasn't going to do what he said.
Yeah, Stan, when did you fall in love with the short game? What was it like for you growing up? And when did you realize you had this kind of incredible ability?
Well, I have to say that my golf came out of a failure. I did not make it into the NBA. I intended to be a professional basketball player.
How was your outside range? Was it good?
Well? My ability to throw it toward the goal was high. I don't know about making it, but I was good at putting it up.
You're a high volume shooters, Yeah, that's right.
What I learned about basketball, though, is if you're not fast enough to guard to anybody, you kind of sit next to the coach no matter how good you shoot ye. But why I would say that is I was just sneaky competitive enough in basketball that I learned to shoot left handed as a little boy, so I could win all the horse games. Because my buddy wouldn't learn to shoot a left handed layup and the ability to put spin on a basketball and then transition that into ping
pong and then start playing golf. It didn't dawn on me. I wasn't supposed to use my golf clubs the same way I used my ping pong paddle. So I understood English on a golf ball or a basketball or a ping pong ball really early in my golf career. And I think that, along with the fact that my mentor, mister Landing, taught me of basically a perfect golf grip, led to being very creative.
So do you feel like the short game is creative? Is that the way you kind of look at it?
That's how I saw it, because every situation truly is different in some aspect. If you thought about it that no two lines are identical. They're closed, they're similar, but they're not identical, so you have to analyze the situation. I can actually see the trajectory the land spot. I think I have a tremendous sense of the spin I put on the ball. And mister Lanning said, to master the short game, you had to master the first bounce. So I could make the ball make do in the
first bounce what I wanted it to do. And I always had a knack for it. But there was a back end how I got there.
What's the back end?
The story about being a basketball was very creative. I played a lot of sports. I was the pitcher, I was the quarterback, I was the point guard. I think it helps to play a diverse amount of sports.
It's like that book Range I've been reading that.
You know now that we have kids, and stand's gonna be inspirational in that regard what stan Let's transition a little bit. We just launched our new S one fifty nine wedges a little bit to how you marry finding the right grind for your player with their instruction. You know, how does course conditions, turf conditions come into play grain.
You know that's kind of a big question.
But then also how do you marry getting your player into the right grind with their instruction.
Well, we're still trying to master the answer to that. Question.
It's a never ending question, I think.
I think my first response is if it's an experienced player that's ever been any good, their hands are already accustomed to a certain feel of the club in the dirt. So although I probably fit into the S grind best, yeah, I play the E grind Yeah, because I've hit countless shots with an old I to wedge, So that's an easy one for me. And I think guys that are fifty years old and older that have played a lot of golf, they kind of have a feel in a sense.
So I'm gonna I'm going to marry them towards what they've probably always had. The person that's just really horrible, I'm probably gonna lean a little bit toward more bounds for them. Yeah, So I'm going to lean toward the toward the w or the age, Yeah, a little bit. I'm going to give them more more kick off the back. There's certain people that like to maybe release the club a little earlier. They're going to like the new B groun.
Yeah, But.
I don't know that you can really answer that question without getting them to hit some shots.
Yeah. Yeah.
My My issue is most people that see me that come to see me are broken. So I spent a lot of time trying to put them back together before. I worry about fitting them a lot. But the thing that amazes me is is our wedge is at Peen truly managed spin better than anybody in the industry. And
for no other reason. The young players that are coming to me, I'm trying to have them understand that you need to be in control of your golf ball when the conditions aren't perfect, and that's the one aspect we're going to always win.
Yeah, we put a lot of R and D into the friction between the golf ball and the club face. That's a mysterious thing.
When when I was back at the plan and I saw the I don't know how many times you blew up the face. But what's the answer to that.
Yeah, when we magnifies and look at these basically Shane what Stan is talking about. We blast the face, We mill it, we blast the face.
And when you say blast the face.
Like like like a media uh that's engineered to maximize the stick between the cover of the ball and the face.
Okay, and we scan it with this special scanner.
We blow it up and we three D printed and it looks like the sharper than the Himalayas.
Really, that's what's grabbing.
It's unbelievable. If you're not playing a ping wed, you're cheating yourself out of control.
Oh yeah, super sharp, and that's what's grabbing the ball. That's what's grabbing the ball. Now we've done some videos with Stan he's talking about the conditions not being perfect where he's chipping out at the proving grounds on a nice, beautiful, dry summer day. It looks it looks dry. We zoom the camera in and what's getting squeezed? Uh, when when you're landing the club on the ground before it hits the ball.
Yeah, it's it's it's amazing.
Yeah, water getting squeezed out of the ground.
So that's something you told me when we first started doing this podcast, was there's in theory, there isn't ideal conditions because even ideal conditions, some debris or something's gonna be between the face and the ball. It's one of the reasons it's so important to be playing a wedge that you can be as confident as stands talking about.
It unless you're unless you're hitting off a tee or maybe some very nice Zoysia, you know, but.
I've played a couple of courses. I thought we should have played Matt Golf, but they don't let you do that.
Exactly off of Matt.
Maybe you could get it to spend Stan.
What do you think? What do you think is the role of bounce? I mean, I've heard you describe it as the skid play some kick off the back. What do you how do you think about the timing of that turf interaction?
And I really think about it as I go back and I talk about Gene Sarazen. Did he mean for the club de land steeper, shallow relative to the front end to the club or the trail edge of the club. And when a plane lands, I want that plane coming in kind of shallow, landing on the back tires. And if it does that, it might bounce a couple times, but it stays close to the ground. And I think people misinterpret steep and shallow like today it's a big buzzword. Do we need to be steeper? Oh, the body needs
to be steep, but the club. I don't want my club coming in with the shaft so much forward that I land the fleet edge very often because the front edge has almost no forgiveness.
Yeah, but if.
I can get the clubhead, the club head releases shallower at the bottom. I steep an impact at the bottom with my pivot, my body, my upper torso. But if I can land the trail edge and keep the lead edge up it just a little bit one or two or three degrees, then I get a glide effect and I have a lot more room for air through impact.
Yeah, I can.
Hit perfect, or I can hit a little fat and still have the ball react very similar. Yeah, And I'm looking for grace. I don't want to have to be perfect.
Yeah. Well put, yeah, well put.
And depending on the guy's swing, like the guy that's really steep, he might need a little more of that grace closer to the lead edge. Like for me, I don't know if this is right to say, but like the w wedge doesn't fit my land, yeah, because it's rounded and I'm used to the bottom being flat and getting the kick out of the back edge.
Yeah.
So everybody's got a little different feel in the bottom. But I'm excited about the new S one F nine because we have five different options. They can find it now.
Yeah, five and the E so six total total.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Yeah, Stan, you mentioned that a lot of the people that come to you are broken when they come to you in terms of their golf game. You famously worked with Charles Barkley, who I would say probably fits the mold of a broken golfer when he came to you. How was that experience and how did that come together?
Why? I once have to say God is good because what's the chance of a short game coach kind of helping the worst swing and go.
That's a great point, right Like.
And it was funny when I ran into him at Tom Layman's charity event in Phoenix. We had crossed paths a couple times, but I didn't really know Charles, and I said, look, I'd really like to have you hit some balls. I want to watch it. He's like, man, I've worked with everybody. I'm like, I hadn't watched it.
So he rambled out to Greyhawk. A few days later, my son Jake and I watched him hit some balls, and I kind of already knew what I was going to tell him, but I asked him the questions about what he was thinking, how he got to where he got to. He was so confused.
He didn't know too much information.
He didn't know, he didn't know how he became broken, because at one time he was pretty good. Yeah, and I think he didn't like getting beat, so he tried to get better and he misinterpreted information or he got bad information, one or the other. But honestly, I gave him one tip. It took about forty minutes for him to spit the tip back at me. But he said, everybody knows he pulled down on the handle. And you
probably know, Michael Jacobs. Yep, he said something to me a couple of years ago that kind of related to this. He said, golf clubs have balance points, and the physics makes the club kind of teeter taughter around the balance points. So if I influenced the grip, it has an influence on the head. Well, if you think about it, Charles pulled the grip down so hard that the head kept
going up on the downswing. That's why he got stuck. Interesting, so there's a point where the head needs to go down and the grip needs to go up, and I helped him feel the head go down instead of just the grip go down. And I did that by having him use his wrist and basically throw the clubhead backwards. Some people get worried about when I tell them to use their wrist to throw the clubhead backwards. But the way I get them to do that, it actually puts
pressure on the shaft. It creates proper lag on the club, but it gets the club head moving away away in the See in the end of the backswing, the clubheads going toward the target. If you want the clubhead to circle, it's got to go away from the target on the downswing first.
Yeah, it's counterintuitive though, right, So it's.
Going away from the down it's going away from the target on the downswing.
It's the start of the downswing. All of us go forward with our hands too early. Often it's just human nature. Our mind's over there. We ain't supposed to go over there first in the downs. So he turned around and looked at me, and he said, you want me to use my wrist to throw the clubhead back toward the trees. We're on the back of the range at Greyhawk. He's gotten better every day since then. One tip I've always I've only I've only seen him maybe five times in
five years. We do not hang out, but he does practice hard, and that was the one message he needed and then he really went and dug it out of the dirt.
So we go from Charles Barkley, who was a relative broken golfer. You're somebody that studied golf for a long long time. I know you mentioned Jean Says and earlier. Who is on your mount rushmore of great short games? If you had to put together a list of those four names, I know I'm put you on the.
Spot here, that is, but I would think of savvy Okay.
Yeah, uh.
I think one of the prettiest short game players of late maybe going back a few years, would be Ricky Fowler. I think of Let me think who Jeff Ogilvie.
Oh yeah.
If you talk about pitching the golf ball, the pitch he had to win the Open was amazing. Like I think of it in terms of someone who free swings ahead and doesn't accelerate the grip very much, Corey Paven would be amazing. Corey Paven came for a putting lesson one time, and so I'm asking him questions and I figure out, Corey Paven, it doesn't matter how he grips it or how he stands he's a full on wrist putter.
He had added shoulders, so I don't really teach people to be all risty, but like Corey Paven just he just tapped it. I said, they should have banned his stroke because they banned anchoring. He anchors the top of the grip at the top of his hands. He doesn't have to put it on his belly. He just uses his wrist and it's beautiful.
Stan, it's been awesome having you is engineering research brand ambassador. Tell the listeners a little bit about about your role some of the fun things we've worked on in terms of research. I mean, one of one of the things for me has been that you've come in and you asked us such good questions.
Shane, We've talked about this.
They usually don't like my questions.
Well, no, I asked you.
The best questions are the ones where you you you you guys stump us right. I mean we're frustrated, but then we're like, ask God, that's a great question.
But the truth is all of us that teach golf, we're looking for the right answer.
Yeah.
Yeah, and a guy like me who was really a player, I feel like I use my intuition about what I thought happened and what I thought I was doing. For a long time, I would say my gift as a golf coach really is my eyes sees the sequence of the movement. That's a gift. But I've tried to learn the engineering and the wise. So because of your team, you guys are always measuring. Like one of my favorite questions I asked was, if I swung the driver clubhead one hundred miles an hour to impact, how fast is
the top of the grip going. Because I see my student the sequence of his swing. The top of the grip's going so fast. There's no way he can get the clubhead to speed up past the grip handle fast. Now, the long drive guys are studying deceleration. Yeah, if you can't put the brakes on something above the clubhead, you can't get the clubhead to go fast.
Yeah.
Yeah, we know that the handspeed max is out about when the arms parallel to the.
Ground, it starts slowing down stars. The average person doesn't know that, and everybody that sucks at chipping is not slowing the grip down soon enough, the grip's going fast, you know. I like to ask questions about path and face like you guys put me on a really fast camera. I wanted to know which direction was the club going in, which direction was my face pointed on a low shot, And I believe what the data said was my face was nine degrees close to my path, So that's nine
degrees aloft. I took off of the club before I leaned the shaft.
Forward to square it right.
And that's what allows me to be still shallow at the bottom and hit a load chip and run. I don't have to have the shaft twenty degrees forward to make it come out low and run.
Yeah, but I didn't know.
I just I knew I did it, but I didn't really know the math.
You knew you could do it. You'm not exactly sure why it was happening. Yeah, yeah, I was. I was gonna ask you.
We talked a little bit about the average player. People come in that are broken, and I know it's player to players circumstantial, but you know, we talk about the chipper a lot on this podcast because it's been such a great addition to the golf back for so many players. What's a mistake players do even before they make a move on a chip shot or a pitch shot around
the green. Maybe the club they pull out, or the decisions they're making in terms of the shot they're attempting to pull off that might not be the right shot.
Well, the first thing is it really helps to be able to make solid contact. So that's really what I try to teach.
Now, can you teach solid contact? Is that something you can teach?
That's a skill? Okay, gaw never forget golf is a skill sport. Yeah, people way over emphasize the mental aspects of it. Barnard took a lot of grief recently because he said golf wasn't that mental. His point was, you will never beat him if you're just because you're stronger than him.
Right.
I could not agree more with that.
Stam Now, it doesn't mean it's not a mental contest if you have all the skills, but you can't beat the guy with the skill with your mind.
Don't matter how strong your mind is.
There's some brilliant people in the world that are terrible golfers terrible.
Now back to the question. The next piece of it, besides hitting it solid, is you need to assess the situation. So part of the situation is your skill set. So the person that doesn't have the skill set to pitch it with a lob wedge like I do. But they could take the chipper and pitch it and run it most of the way. They're gonna shoot lower with the chipper.
I still want to teach them the skill to pitch it. Yeah, But just because you give them the chipper doesn't mean they have that skill either, because I would give them the better technique to chip with the chipper by swinging the head of it versus pulling the grip half. The people can't use the chipper if they got one. If they're making the grip in go faster than the clubhead in an impact I love people say I decelerate on it.
The only way to decelerate the head is to over accelerate the grip and impact.
The club.
Doesn'self golfer say that wrong?
Is what you're saying?
Well, I'm not sure that clubhead isn't decelerating, but it's not decelerating for the reason they think it is interesting, it's a it's a different reason.
Is that a similarity standing in your in your coaching, in in pitching and also putting? Where do those two differentiate a little bit? In terms of maybe how.
You it's less than you think in my world, and I realize there's lots of ways to accomplish a good putter, a good chip. People putt good differently. But I like to say, if I was just looking at how to make it look most mathematically correct, I want to swing the club on plane. If you swing on a seventy degree plane or a little steeper, the bottom is going to arc. I want the face to go square to the arc, and I want things to move in the
right sequence. Sequence means from the bottom up, things move less if you truly swung a pendulum. I love to ask this question, what is the rate of acceleration at the bottom of a pendulum? Don't mess this up?
Zero?
What would you say, Well, I mean I would just follows.
Most people would say maximum.
What do you mean? The engineering scholer was zero acceleration.
So but but see my student heard accelerate through the ball.
Yes.
And then the next question I asked him is, so, let's let's say this putney at four miles an hour club at speed. If you really needed to hit the ball at four miles an hour, would you rather be coasting or changing from one to six at a moment.
Of impact, yeah, with no margin of error.
So what happens is I think the person that comes up short and says that hescelerated, they just hit the ball about an eighth of a inch too soon and they were only going two instead of four. Yeah, because the same stroke, if you hit the ball in eighth of and inch too late, goes way back because you're running six.
Now, your ball position has to be perfect.
But the great putters, you know, the factions, the ben Crenshaws, they speed up early in the coast, so their touch at impact is incredible. And when you're coasting. It's funny when I'm giving clinics and getting people to do this, they all say it feels so solid. Well, it's easier to hit it solid if you're not surging.
M yeah. Yeah.
And this is a question I gave you guys one time. I said, does the ball leave the face faster if it's coasting or speeding up? You guys didn't want to answer that question. But when I can get them to say the answer, it actually leaves the face quicker on a coast than it does on a surge, because a surge, you're sticking the ball in the face.
Interesting.
It might be a little bit, but a little bit matters.
Yeah, I know a little bit matters of golf, Sam, no doubt about it.
All right.
So as we're wrap it up, one thing I've taken from this interview is we're gonna have to get one of your wedges in the vault.
That's number one. And b is I don't.
Field leaning for that for a while, so good luck.
We talked to some people already knows some people at ping I've heard. And the second is I feel like I don't know as much about the short game as maybe I thought I did to start me neither.
But I mean you seem like you still love it. I mean you still up teaching.
Yesterday I saw you do two hundred plus lessons.
I went to do clinics hardy this morning. I learned stuff from David Orr about putting this wall go.
I mean, you you can never you can never want to never learning.
You can never quit learning. That's what's so great about golf.
Seeing I know recently you've come out and you've been vocal about, you know, battling Parkinson's. How has that been, When do you find out and what have you been doing as of late to you know, try to hold it back as long as possible.
Well, it wasn't something I talked about in the moment, but in the early twenty nineteen I was diagnosed with non Hopkins lymphoma after going through four rounds of a big chemo one. I'm happy to say I sit here today cancer free.
Yeah, beautiful.
But the neurologist said the trauma from the chemo kicked in Parkinson's earlier than it might. It might have surfaced later in life, but it kind of kicked it in. And so it's just now to the point where I take meds that managed the shake. But as we sit here and did this interview, in my left hand shaken. Sometimes I I feel a little conscious about it. I'm not worried about it, but I don't mind people realizing why shake now? Because it is a public thing and
I'm in the public eye. It doesn't really hurt my day to day life. I still made four birdies on Friday.
There we go.
The cool thing is it only shakes when I'm still. It doesn't shake when I'm swinging or hitting the putt.
So golf is good.
It's not hurting.
Golf still can pitch it like he used to.
Well, no, I can't do that, but it's it's not terrible.
Stan.
We were chipping at the proving grounds. I never told you, just you help me. You give me a few tips. I was super steep. You help me get a shallower, changed my body movements. I played that weekend. It was cold in Phoenix, and I missed six screens. I got every ball.
Up and down.
It was just so big cont so that reminds me of hosting it in there.
I learned two things the first day, I say with a sports psychologist. He was a track coach of Missouri, my friend Rick Maguire. He said, there's there's one main difference between winning and losing, scheduling.
Scheduling.
And he said, there's one way to be a great track coach coach fast kids. I was coaching a fast kid.
You had the quickest.
He was already the quickest guy in the room. It was easy.
He might have got five out of six up and down if he hadn't had the conversion for you the next day.
But he's six out of six.
Ja.
I still like. I'm still like hearing the stories.
It felt good.
Yeah, well stand we appreciate the time.
Always interesting to hear you kind of talk about short game and diving into it and obviously from great player to great coach, one of the great that's ever done it.
So thanks for taking the time with us.
It's a pleasure.
Thank you so much. That's stand out. This is the Proving Grounds Podcast.