It's the son of which podcast. I'm your host, Claude Harmon. This week on the pod we had him on. I think back in twenty twenty two, Mark Blackburn one of the best and hottest golf instructors on the planet. Don't take my word for it, PGA of America Teacher of the Year, Golf Magazine Top one hundred instructor, but Golf died just top instructor on their top fifty list. Works with a number of really really good players, Max Homa, Justin Rose, and we kind of dive into their performances
this year in the majors, breakout years. I think for both of them Majors, it's been a while since you. Obviously, Justin Rose has had a chance to win a major. He made a run at the Open Championship. Maxhoma had a chance on the weekend going into Augusta. But I'm lucky that I get to spend a lot of time with Mark on tour, picking his brain, talking to him. Listen, when we're out on tour, we spent a lot of time waiting waiting for the guys to come out and
hit balls, waiting for him to practice and stuff. So specifically at the majors. I think I get to spend a lot of time with Mark, and he's someone who I've always enjoyed really talking to try and pick his brain as much as I can, and I just think he's got great stuff. I like his perspective, I like the stuff that he talks about. And I figured, seeing as it's been a couple of years, we'd get him back on the pod. So this is a good one. Mark Blackburn, son of a Butch. My guest today is
Mark Blackburn. Mark, we had you on the Pod twenty twenty two. You were PG Teacher of the Year in twenty twenty Golf Magazine Top hundred. But now you are the Golf Digest number one instructor, knocking off Butch harmon my dad, but she had a massive run at the top of that list and you got there.
Yeah.
I mean that's listen. I mean we can joke about it and stuff like that, but from an instructor standpoint, the Digest list was always kind of the gold standards, whether it is now in the social media age or not. But to follow my dad having had that massive run, as popular as he's been and all the things he's done in the game. That must be pretty cool for you.
Yeah, I think the coolest part was the fact that I actually got to hang out with him for a day, so that was a lot of fun. I hadn't really done that that.
Would be that'd be cool for me. I don't get to do that.
So we had a good time, you know, and we probably have more similarities than I probably realized, so I thought it was great. I mean, obviously they call it the Butch Harmon Award, which is great in his honor, and to be fair, they put him and Randy Smith, Chuck Cook and all the legends on another list, so if they still he was still on the list, we all know he'd still win, which is you know, I'm sure he's not very happy about that, but he is
the goat, so it is what it is. But yes, for me personally, for my club, my academy, you know, all the players I coach, is kind of cool to have that accolade. And the coolest thing about this award, as your dad rightly told me, is that you're actually voted on by your peers. So that's that's the one thing. So I guess for the people on the ballot, I was voting number one. Whether I'm number one or not
is definitely up for debate. But I seem to have swown the voters, so you know, like any election, there's some politics. But yeah, no, it's great. I mean to be the guy after your dad for twenty years is very cool. And I got to meet him and hang out and we had a good time. So yeah, I mean, look, it doesn't make you a great teacher winning awards. They're nice because people know what you do. But yeah, never hurts.
I got to number three on that list once and then two years later after it's a two year cycle. Two years later, after Brooks went to number one and won four majors, I dropped like fifteen spots. So it's always good, exactly. We've had a fun summer. I know, it's been a fun year for you. We've spent a lot of time at at Majors and it's been fun watching you weight knuckle your two students, Max home, justin Rose, Rosie having a chance to win the Open Max Homa
at the Masters, Max third, Rosie second. We'll get to Rosie in a second, because I think that's a great story. But is this a big kind of stepping stone for Max, I mean, final round at the Masters, didn't have his best start, shot one over, but he'd been one of those guys that everybody was talking about, when's he going to get in contention to win a major? When is he going to win a major?
Now?
I think it was a huge week for Max at the Masters. I think it's going to do him and his career a lot of good to get in the mix on Sunday in one of the last couple of groups at a major championship. What's your take on the performance and how this could be a springboard for Max moving forward?
Yeah, no, for sure. Now. I think one of the things that it we all kind of forget is when you look at him coming off eleven, kind of in the lead, I believe, and then he hits a pretty reasonable shot on twelve and gets a horrific bounce, which is everybody at Augusta. Hits a firm part of the green and ends up way over there, and now he's in an impossible situation. So he shot one over, but I almost feel like it kind of he was right there, and then he had a bit of bad timing, which
happens with everybody, right we all know to win a major. Yeah, you got to play great, but you've got to get some luck. So from that standpoint, I feel like he put himself in a position, he enjoyed it, he relished it, he was so excited on Saturday. I think he played phenomenal and he came off the course and you could see that it really had meant a lot in terms of he'd put himself under the kosh as we say in England, and he'd been able to deliver the goods.
And I think that that's what for you as your point, that's a big stepping stone, like actually putting yourself in that position in a major. It's one thing after thirty six holes, but being able to be there after fifty four and then having a chance back nine on Sunday, putting yourself and that's what we all want to our students to be able to do, is like put them
there so they have a chance. And I think being there once, like anything right, once you've and it once, you know you can probably do it again, and I think the confidence you get from that is huge. I think sometimes it can also be a bit of a curse because you get to the next major you're like, well, I should win this one because I did really well, and I think then you're going to have that expectation, but you got to be in it to win it,
so to speak. And for me, I think Max definitely showed a lot of maturity there because he was like, Okay, now I've put myself there. Obviously, his performances in the Ryder Cup we were both in Rome together arguably probably was one of the better, if not the best American player there. I think all those things. If I could get him to play stroke play like he plays Max play, it would be incredible. So but again, it's just one
of those things. It's just it's a different mindset for Max play because you're never out of it and you've got seventy two holes of stroke play, and I think it's just a different mindset and I've talked about it, but it's one of those things where he's definitely got a lot of confidence. I'm you know, our job as a coach is a part shrink and we you know, look, there's a lot of evidence here for your student, Max, this guy, look what you've done and accomplished that you've
got the ability to do it. And I would argue that the Ryder Cup has more pressure. He took an unplayable got it up and down to you know what I mean, there's things that if you can thrive in that environment, then majors arguably you should be able to do it as well. So I think that was validation Masters that he could do it. I think twenty four
or twenty five will be even better. I think, you know, we're starting to put some pieces in play working towards that, and I think having been there and done it makes it a lot easier to put yourself back there. As you well know, with all the majors you got.
When you look at Max, how much of getting to that next level and being a guy that is in the mix mark all the time in major championships is technical in golf swing? And how much of it do you think from Max is mental? Because Max always looks to me like he's very much an emotional player. I mean, I think we saw that at the Open Championship at Troon. He hooped it what from like thirty forty feet on Friday to make the cut and showed a lot of emotion.
I think Max where is his emotions outwardly? Honestly you kind of know what you're going to get with him, and I think that's one of the reasons why he's such a fan favorite. But how much of getting to that next level and competing and having chances to win majors, you know, two, three, four times a year do you feel, as his coach is the technique side of things and how much of it do you think is the mental side of things and the belief side of things.
Yeah? No, I think that it's a balance, right. You have all of these ingredients that going towards it. We all think of all of his players got a great swing, and they're just going to be great. But it's not
necessarily all about that. So you've got to be able to understand your swing, know how it works under certain conditions, and what are your tendencies in stress under pressure, and then managing that and then so that becomes mental and emotional, right, And you can have bad holes and bogies don't kill you in majors. You just need to avoid these big numbers, and it's just trying to navigate it. And it's a little bit like where am I going to take my opportunities.
I've used the analogy a lot. I didn't come up with it. But it's like playing craps at the casino. You go in, you cut your chips in, and you don't change your strategy. If you lose in the first you know, twenty minutes, you keep doing it because you know you're going to get your run, just like a deck of cards at a blackjack table. So it's just understanding, I've got to be able to have a sure game.
I call it a defense that you can navigate the bad time, but because you know you're going to get your run and as long as your offense is good enough and you make enough birdies, you should be able to have a chance to play well. And I think for Max it's one of those things. He's got ossive offenses good is really really good. He's not putting maybe quite as well as he did last year, and arguably hasn't hit it quite as well, but it's like he
has in Spurts, played beautifully well. Understanding that you don't have to have your best to contend. That part then becomes very very mental. I mean, you look at Nicholas, you look at wo Stay one, lots of events kind of hanging around. Even your guy Brooks talks about everybody does something different in a major. So it's more a question of being comfortable in the uncomfortable, thriving in the chaos, and knowing I just hang around enough, I'm probably going
to get my run and that. And that's all I think Max has got to do is just put himself back in that situation. I don't think he has to really do anything massively different. Is just be comfortable being uncomfortable and just know that, Hey, majors aren't easy. Got to get a bit of luck, You got to get the right side of the draw, got to be able to you know, navigate more when I'm going to have some bad holes. That's where your short game comes in.
And so that the belief system that you've done it and you've had you've had a chance, that to me is huge because you know what to expect because when you get there again, it's not uncommon to you. Right. That's why I think like all the players once they won once, now when they get in the situation again, they know how to close. So you get guys that are perennial closes of events because they put themselves in that situation. And I think Majors is just kind of the next progression from that.
Golf swing wise, talk to us about what you guys are working on and what are the keys that you think makes his swing good, and what are the things that what are the habits that he falls into that all players have habits and DNA signatures, but what are the things that you guys are working on day in and day out, and what are the things that he is kind of reverts back to that you guys are trying to have him not do.
Yeah, that's a great question. So I think inherently we try and give him a golf swing that's kind of He's a kind of long guy, right, and you would think he'd have this big wide arc, and he tried to play like that way for a while when he first came on twenty wasn't successful. So after looking at in movement wise screening him, you know a lot of the TPI stuff I learned from David greg who was that that's probably not a good match for you. Probably better off with a bit of a Laura arm playing
to match your your body's mobility. And then you know, how do you try and get the club on the ball. What are you doing? And so for him, maintaining his dynamic posture is a big deal. When he does that and he's not standing up and out of it, he hits the ball beautifully well. Now, he also is very powerful and one of the best things he's got is a lot of vertical so when he starts jumping to try and hit it further, at times he can start thrusting towards the ball and he loses that posture and
then he kind of loses the face. So what we're working on is that balance between having enough speed but then also maintaining that posture. So I was actually in the desert for a couple of days with him this past weekend, just working on trying to maintain that. Work on that in the gym, like train that movement pattern, so he has a chance to be able to still generate the speed but maintain his posture. So he doesn't have a lot of play in the club. He's one
of those players that likes to feel a pretty stable face. Now, all golfs are different, but for him, he likes to feel that. So obviously, him starting to move his body the handle gets high, kind of loses the face. You see it more. It's more of a detriment in his driving when the handle gets high and then he starts to miss them out to the right, gets it in the heel. So he's really trying to we live in kind of a more a lower and a cut pattern
to try and offset that. Obviously cutting the driver is a lot better, but that's where kind of we're working on, And I think having a player having a better understanding of that and then knowing their tendency and competition, well, ok I feel like I'm doing it with what are the strategies I can put in place to offset that until I can go get a good feel for it on the range, et cetera. So I think that's one of the things that we're probably trying to focus on
from a technique perspective. But he does some things that are really really well. Is a great iron player, but we build it around okay, knowing I'm not going to have a bunch of excessive movement. He's got that great tempo. But again, he gets into a trouble sometimes when he just comes up and out of his posture, which is a lot of people, but specifically for him because he wants to fade it. He doesn't do really well for a long period of time. If he's got face flash,
some players thrive with that can play really well. That's just difficult for him. So that's kind of our moving forwards Winter PROJECTIV Life It twenty five is to just keep working towards that so that he can hit the middle of the face more often, keep the same amount of dynamic laugh, same face angle, very predictable shots.
For everyone listening that you know that would try and have a picture of what that looks like. The opposite of that would be someone who want to major that. My dad worked with Jimmy Walker. Jimmy had a lot of thrust, a lot of early extension, the handle would get really high, He had a lot of face rotation. He played a lot through rhythm and timing, so that
dynamic posture. There are a lot of people, I mean, that's that's a word that you and I and all the instructors that are listening and the players they're used to hearing that. But for the regular golfer, that's that's listening mark dynamic posture for you and for them means what. Yeah.
Just so when we set up at address with bent overright and anger, we play golf kind of side on and our torsos bent forwards, and we kind of have a little bit of hinge in the pelvis or your hips. So ideally, what you'd like to do is just imagine that you're rotating around that and unfortunately, if you start to stand up and move into the ball, basically now you're losing that sort of axis that you set up and address. You have to compensate. Now, the best players
have the best compensations they can manage. Jimmy Walker, Jeff Ogilvy, there's lots of guys in one majors being phenomenal at it right. But there's a timing element. So what happens is then you get a period of time where you're on and then you can kind of be off. Like and what we want to try and do now we're playing on these elevated events and we want to know
when we want to play well. It would be easier if we could just maintain that axis of rotation our posture dynamically because we're moving, hence the dynamic, it would be a lot easier. There'd be less manipulation needed in the club face. Theoretically we'd be able to hit some shots. But Jack Nicholas early extended and moved into the ball, so you can do it right. But it's one of those things where for certain players it's probably much more
important for them to maintain it than other players. Arguably, if you want to fade it, start the ball left, fall right. As soon as you start moving into the golf ball or thrusting, you're going to kind of open the face up shift things out to the right. It's great if you aimed thirty yards left and hit a push cut, but it's not very good if you want to start the ball online to left and hit a fade.
So that's what why I would call dynamic posture. I think that if you use your body well and you're strong and you do the right things, you guys on the tour. The guys do it anyway because it's the most effective way to generate speed. If you look at long drivers, very rarely do any of them. Actually they all extend and jump, but they don't do it early. They're super strong and get out the way. They're using
a lot of falls. So I think that's the thing. Also, probably what we knew twenty twenty five years ago when you and I were playing golf learning it. Maybe thirty years ago, there was a lot more lateral motion in the golf, like side to side, which arguably might promote some of that thrust and jumping and then tossing the club face equipment could have done it. Whereas now you can work in a little bit more of a sort of rotary fashion, still have plenty of distance and hit
the ball a long way. So I think that's kind of for me maintaining dynamic posture. That's kind of what I think. I'm looking for. Consistency and if I can do some things that help you be more consistent, have less manipulation at the handle, hit the ball straighter, that's a big deal for a tour player. May not be such a big deal for a long driver, but straight it's a big deal for a tour player.
Yeah. And I think one of the things that the average golfer, non competitive tour player, recreational golfer, struggles with is the speed element, right. I mean, when they do have that early extension, the body stalls out and they're not blessed with natural speed like people that are playing at the elite tour level that have a lot of rotation,
that have a lot of fast twist muscles. So the average golfer staying in that dynamic posture is actually almost more important to them than it is for the tour player, because the tour player can get by with one talent. They have good eye hand coordination, they can manage the face through impact, and they have speed, whereas the fifteen to twenty five handicapper doesn't have any of that. They struggle with speed, they struggle with rotation, they struggle with
club face control. As you said, one of the things I like about the way that you talk about golf swings and work with players, but you talk a lot about club face manipulation, and I think the regular recreational golfer has so much of that, but they don't have the other component of it, which is any sort of rotation.
What are some things that you think the regular everyday golfer could do in their practice sessions, Mark to try and manipulate and manage the club better and manipulate it less, because I think everybody that's playing golf at a recreational lever is so golf club centric. They're so everything is about the golf club, the handle, the club face, and they don't work backwards and realize, well, the golf club is never going to be able to move itself unless
you pick it up and move it. It'll stay on the ground, It'll stay in your bag forever unless somebody picks it up and moves it. So, what is something that you think is paramount for everyone listening that can help them manipulate the club face less, which would help them.
Yeah, so obviously your hands are your best friend. The club face is the boss, right and understanding that now, I'm a big fan of peak own probably twenty five years ago as the first person I saw it. We had a I was saying about a lady golf where he was teaching and he was using a Potter grip to try and show her the face. And then I was like, okay, well, I'm the tourists for using Potto grips in loads of different positions to get people aware of the face, right, like it's on the side, on
an angle or whatever. And to me, like club golfers, if you want the hands have to work, right, we talk about no hands in the swing. Will your hands do everything? But not necessarily consciously. There's a lot of this, right. The best players in the world have got this really incredible unconscious competency where they just line the face up and they know where it is. And they say that they don't like to feel their hands, but their hands
are incredible. The club golfer needs to understand how can they use their hands and how can they match them up to their body. So I'm all about, look, we're side onto it. Everyone thinks I have to have all this twisting, like releasing the club. I mean I try and get people to do a lot of hand work, trail hand only, lead hand only, and understand that you know, if you put the club down and you've got loft it and you take it back, if you can bring it back to a fairly similar position, maybe with a
shaft leaning forwards, the face is pretty square. There's not a whole lot of this. We talk about release, but people, that's not really what's happening. So with the club goalver I like split grips, splitting your hands up so you can understand how the hands actually work together as opposed to you put a grip here and it just feels a bit weird. Like the lead hand is very important,
and so the trail hand. But every golf book and we got golf books aol over this academy, you got a lot of players to talk about they fail their lead hand, and you got loads of hands people have said they felt the trowl hand. Neither of them is wrong, but there's going to be one that works best for you. So it's like becoming familiar with that and understanding which is your reference point for your club face, and then
how does your body work. So if you're someone that doesn't turn very well, you may well do well with a bit of throw with the right hand, but if you're someone who turns well, you'll be probably better off with a bit of hold with the left hand. Do you know what I mean? Like trying to understand which one is better for you? And this is what everyone feels. The lessons we all teach to the club golfers that you know, one side we have club players, the other
side we have tool players. It's like the club golfers is a lot more about showing them out a square a club face and what happens so they can then learn to swing in the right direction. Tour players is more about they know what the face is doing. We got to show them whether the planes over here or your eight you know what I mean. It's it's kind
of inverse. But the club golfer, if we can show them how to use these less but in the right way, a lot of times now they have an incentive to maybe use their body a little bit or in the way that's best for them. And I think that's the part that we've got to understand. It's why moving, you know, a movement assessment's massive. I want to know what somebody can do. Some people look like they're not very good
movement wise. They're covered and they are incredible, and then there's some people are like, man, this this lady, she looks really athletic, and they're useless moving right. It's guys girls, So it's trying to assess them and then figure out, you know, which word's going to work better for them, and then what can they do with this? Because club golfers, if they can put the club on the ball and make it go towards a target, they're kind of hooked.
Make it easy for them, but then make them understanding most of them move badly, and then these have to do the wrong thing, Whereas if you can educate these to do the right thing, sometimes their body isn't quite as crazy. But the funniest thing is that club golfers search for speed. Extension itself is speed, right, early extension you can argue get you more speed, but they never hit it in the middle of the damn face sentence.
It doesn't do you any good, correct.
Right, So scentedness of hit is everything. If you can hit it in the middle and have high smash, whatever speed you got, you're putting out to the club. So to me, that's more important than potentially trying to go after a bunch of speed where you never hit the thing in the middle of the face.
You started working with Justin Rose, but I think in no like end of twenty twenty two he was a major champion. I think the work that he and Sean Foley did turned him into one of the elite ball strikers of the last fifteen years. I mean, Rosie was an elite ball striker. What was the remit when he came to you at the end of twenty twenty two and what have you tried me? What's Rosie now? Early forties?
He actually just turned forty four last.
Week, forty four, So you know, when you get a player like that, I mean, he's done everything in the game, right, I mean, there isn't anything that he hasn't done, Ryer Cups, FedEx Majors, big tournaments, number one in the world. But what was what was he looking for? And what was what you to tried to do together and have done,
you know, incredibly successfully over the last two years. You know, to finish second in a major on home soil for Rosie at forty four, that's that's there aren't a lot of people doing that at his age.
And he came through local qualifying too.
He did, that's right local. I mean the fact that the fact that Justin Rows has to qualify from major championships is to me is a joke. I mean it's I personally believe if you win a major, you should be there's got to be a category that can get you in to where you don't have to go to local qualifying having been a major champ. And I know it's a cool part of the story and everybody loves it and it's a great story, but I think it's bullshit.
I think if you've won a major, you shouldn't be going to local qualifying.
I just don't believe that they call it final qualifying. But you're right, so I think it's pretty funny actually, so I had to there's a story to this, I've told it before, but essentially, Rosie's at Houston and I'm at Houston, and I owed Phil Kenny in a favor, so I had to persuade Kennyan to help Homer putt on putting, right, So I owed Kenny in a favor. So anyone who knows Phil Kenyan is he's quite persuasive anyway.
So he's the darn king of putting.
Yeah he is. But anyway, so long story short, he asked me, he goes, I need you to have to have a look at Rosie. So that's kind of how it started. And then Rosie came to me. And I think one of the things that's interesting about Rosie is he's had a lot of success, right, but he's notoriously a tinkerer. And I'm Sean's incredible that he went through that for fifteen years, which is unbelievable. Now, Sean and I have a little different coaching philosophy, sure.
Just a little.
Way different, right. I'm probably I probably would have been terrible for Rosie when he was younger, but Sean was incredible. I'm probably a little bit less tolerable of messing around and trying different stuff. Let's just say that. So Rosie, obviously, to your points, won everything. All he wants to do is try and win majors. So he had a chance to kind of win the PGA this year on a course which typically wouldn't suit him, which was a lot of validation he's doing the right things.
And then obviously because at the PGA you had to shoot crazy low, it was a shootout, it was like a regular PGA Tour event. And Rosie, throughout his career and throughout the peak of his career, is one of those players he wants the golf course to be as hard as possible, correct, right, He doesn't want twenty under
to win, he wants one under even to win. And when he won his major at Marion, I mean nobody could play that golf course and the shots he hit down the stretch there, nobody could find a way to make any pars coming down the stretch. So he is that category of player that wants the major championships to
be as difficult and as hard as possible. And I think you're right, having success in a major that was at Valhalla, which was a shootout, has got to be validation for him to say, Okay, I can go, I can hang.
Yeah. And I think he learned a lot at Valhalla too, because he hadn't been in that situation in a while. And if you asked him, he probably played the last couple of holes slightly differently. But anyway, I digress. So essentially success leaves clues right, And with Rosie he'd had
some back issues. He had a certain goal swing when he won Marion and arguably when he played his best, and he kind of reinvented it again in a seventeen eighteen and then he kind of was all over the place and he'd kind of liked new information, so he kind of went and saw a bunch of a few different people, and I think he was a little bit cluttered, and I basically when he asked me, I said, well, the shot you want to hit is this straight to full left shot or what you're doing that's not going
to work? How you move, you know, what does your body do? So I talked to Justin Buckthorpe at the time and Charlie Marshall there kind of his team, and we talked about what he does well, what he doesn't do well, and I was like, Rosie, you probably need to get back a little bit more to what you did in two thousand and you know thirteen when you won the Open lawa arm playing a little bit deeper, a little bit more, turn, a little bit more in
your body, in your tilts, so to speak. And I think that was really the nucleus of it, and has started hitting it quite well again. But obviously he gets a little bored with stuff, so you've got to reinvent and say the same thing a few different ways. And it's one of those things where we've actually got this blueprint. It stayed pretty similar, we've deviated a little bit. We kind of went back more towards where we originally started
kind of earlier part of this year. So I think it's one of those things where he's a lot of what he and Shured did really really well. I've taken quite a bit of that, especially some of the backswing stuff, and then with some of the stuff we now know about ground reaction forces and kind of how it to generate speed and power, I've kind of married some of that now in his downswing, So he does some different things through the all to kind of stop him sliding
and tilding quite as much. He's another one that has a tendency to kind of pop up out of it and then he has some face flips. So there's some similarities between him and Max. And Rosie's pretty perceptive because he said one of the things that it was interesting to him was you like Max's golf swing, and so it's as a student of the swing. He's one of those people who wanted to understand. But they actually have a few similarities, so it's no surprise that they've both
been somewhat successful with the pattern that they're in. But for me, he does everything incredibly well. He is the consummate professional, so and I for me coach in Max who wants to get to number one in the world, and Rosie's been there. A lot of what Rosie does are things that I can share with my younger players, like Alex Fitz who's in there, Matt's younger brother. It's one of those things where, look, this is what's got
someone to number one in the world. These are the some of the special things that they do that those are things that you could incorporate with other players, and we always say that we learn more from the players than they learn from us. But in this scenario, it's certainly the case is just okay, how can I use that? But Rosie does the right stuff. I mean, he's got this sub Rosa bus that this wing. We're in Greensboro.
Oh yeah, I mean that's David Darbyshire. I mean I remember darbs telling me that years ago at Augusta that Rosie had this idea to make this like recovery bus that I think it was. It just kind of came out on all the social channels of this recovery bus that Rosie's kind of come up with. I interviewed Rosie
when he was working with Sean. It's got to be six years ago, seven years ago at Memorial he shot, you know, a really good score there, and I think they were kind of they really pushed the envelope mark with track man, trying to zero everything out, all this stuff. And I asked him about that and he said, we've kind of got I've kind of gone away from that with Sean. And I had to tell falls, listen, my
feels are sacred to me. What I feel in the golf swing is sacred to me and he said, I think sometimes you can go down the rabbit hole of all of the numbers. So he's a very analytical guy. I mean, I've known him a long time. He kind of came up the ranks with Adam Scott, so I still remember he and Scotti when they were playing on the European Tour. Rosie's always been very very curious, very very analytical. How do you, as a coach marry that
how much is too much? Because he's one of those Trevor Immlman type characters, give me more information, more info, more info, more info. So how how do you as the coach and work with him as the player to say, Okay, how much tech and how much info do we give you versus how much of your feels being sacred to you? You're the player, how do you fly the plane on instinct as well as with all the information.
Yeah, it's a great point. Well, I think what I tell over every player is my job is to be able to catalog and quantify their feels. That makes sense, like objective. So as a team, Rosy's very fortunate Charlie travels with him. He's got dogs out and done as well. And then JB. So we know Rosie's been measured every which way and Sunday and regularly, so we know what's actually happening objectively. And Rosie's feels are subjective and they
are sacred, but feels can change daily. So as long as Rosy's within the pattern, the blueprint that we have from set up, back, swinging downswing and delivery, and he's doing the right things and he's moving well, his fields can be really abstract and radically different day to day for the same movement, which is hard for people to grasp and as a coach I probably didn't appreciate that until the last few years in that my job is
to look at what they're doing. And that's why I talk about having different vernacular with different players, but putting their feels. So when when I commune with Rosie, I'm giving back to him in the fields and the ways
that he teaches. But in my brain it's like, well, that's his wording and feel for this, and so we know what he's actually doing and needs to do, and when he deviates from that, okay, and then how are you going to get him back to that using some of his vernacular, his feels and his words, and so he uses a lot of colors. It's quite interesting. Most people think that these players, you know, they must be
really technical, but I think they're geniuses. They take very technical things and make them so dumb and simple that they're incredible. By Buddy doctor will Woo, he's big on Like, look, the best stuff is super external, super abstract because it works under pressure, technical thinking, internalizing it is rarely does it works sometimes, but very rare. So with Rosie, it's all about understanding his feels, quantifying them, and then being
able to relay them back to him. And so we have copious amounts of notes when you feel this, hey, all this, and he's great to share. And I had success doing this when I was dealing with Sean, So it's like my job is to remember all of that and then be able to bring it up when he's in a pickle. And I think that's the part that people don't really see. And coaching is like different to teaching.
Teaching is like getting someone to do something technically. Coaching is then trying to bring them back to be able to allow them to play the game. And as we often talk about on ranges, we do good warm ups we do bad warm ups, we perform well, we perform badly as coaches, but some of our best work is when we can get the player back towards their fields that they came up with that allow them to be able to master their swing and be able to go play great. And for Rosie, he is abstract. He is
out there. Definitely, I have to pull him up. Don't go down a rabbit hole, buddy. I mean, I'm not going to use it on this podcast, but I'm English, so you can imagine some of the language that get used. And in our team we kind of use a lot of it. But it is one of those things where I think having a bit of a heavier hand and not being scared to stick my neck out there and say, Amy, don't be it is something that Rosie now is very
susceptible to and receptive to older in his career. When he's younger, he probably wasn't and I probably would have been a disaster. And that's why Foles was so good for him.
Even though he didn't win. I mean I went through a similar situation. The shot that he hit on Sunday sixty seven on Sunday didn't get it done. Obviously he's Ander wins his second major, but stand in the middle of the sixteenth fairway. Part five, he roasts driver off the deck because he's trying to win the tournament. I had a similar situation when when I was working with Ernie Els in twelve. He was ready to quit and at the Olympic Club that the US Open that Web won,
he got in the mix. He made an eagle and got in the mix. On the back nine, I think it was sixteen. Pinn was back left. He was in the middle of the fairway, I think he was one or two back at the time, and he went right at the flag, hit it over the flag, hitting the bunker, ended up making bogie. But I remember thinking afterwards and
he said it, he said, we're over the hump. He's because in that situation, it would have been very easy for him to dump it to twenty five thirty feet, get out of there and just but he as a as a guy that's won major's before. Rosie's in that category as well. Ernie was trying to win the golf tournament and I said to myself, I think we're we're over the issues of is he still good enough to win again? And he won the Open a couple of
weeks later. Obviously Adam Scott helped him, but you must have been proud of the fact that he attempted to do that as a coach. Because driver off the deck, they make it look easy. It's not an easy shot. It's sure as hell is an easy shot in Scotland off of that grass too. And then he hit a great shot and didn't but he didn't make the putt. But my point is he's trying to win the golf tournament at that point and he feels like, Okay, this
is the shot. If I'm going to have any chance with two holes left, I have to do something now. And I think it was just vintage. Justin Rowe stand there, driver after deck and he had a beautiful shot. It must have been pretty satisfying for you to see that, even though he didn't get the w Yeah.
No, The ironic part is Charlie and I are standing on the Fairewey and I'm like, he's hitting driver. This is unbelievable, and Rosie so doesn't. But again, he's trying
to win the golf tournament. I mean, He'll be honest, he was trying to win the golf tournament at the PGA, and he probably didn't quite do it the way he wanted to, but again, he's in that situation he's like going to take the shot on and then he actually did, and he goes, that's the first time I've actually hit a driver after deck in a tournament, let alone when I'm in contention. He goes, but I wanted to like prove to myself, Look, I'm going to take this on.
I'm not going to back down. So I think one of the coolest things is he said that he needed to shoot six under to win the Open. He shot four under. He left a couple out there. He didn't play his best round of golf, and Zana said, that's the best round of golf he's ever played. So my thing to Rosie was, look, there's a lot of validation. You're doing all the right things. You've got a chance to make history in the next five years, to be one of the guys who's won multiple majors at your age.
You can do that. The way you take care of yourself, the way you practice, the things, you do, the experiments. I always say, look, if you've got wisdom and experience, but you've got the vitality of youth. You've got this perfect recipe to be an incredible player, and if you can make sure you don't have any scar tissue, now all of a sudden you can put yourself in that situation. And obviously he's finished second in every major right, so it's one of those things where all he cares about
is winning major championships. That is his guy. I was playing the Ryder Cup and win majors. So he's now got that opportunity. We can plan twenty twenty five. He's in all the majors. We're ready to go. So I think it's great as a coach to be part of that. Someone that's highly motivated, a lot of experience, does the right things, and then our job is to frame things
to where we can motivate our players. But for me, I'm just excited that he has the opportunity to, you know, maybe get that green jacket and win a Claric Jug and these other things, which is as coaches, that's the gratifying part. It's more about being a part of the team that helps somebody be successful. So Rosie is a lot of fun to work with. He's highly entertaining. I think he's calmed down a lot in his older age, which is fortunate for me as a coach.
You mentioned ground force reactions. That is a kind of buzzword I think in instruction right now. I think a lot of people listening may have heard that, maybe know what it is. But for you, dumb it down for everyone listening, what are groundforce reactions? There have been some really cool videos. You did one with Charlie hoff and out of TPI, but you did one with Trey MOLINACX with this kind of thing that I bought off the internet,
that kind of sliding thing and stuff. But for you, what are ground force reactions and what do they mean for everyone listening?
Okay, So really simplified is so you have an action force that's us applying a force to do something, and then there is a reaction created from that, right, simple physics. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So if I apply a certain type of force, and if I take one of my foot joys off here, basically we've got up and down vertical, we've got right left, and we've got frictional sort of forwards and backwards. Okay, we call that anterior posteria this would be right left
mediolateral and then that's vertical. You can use those forces, and this is controversial because some golf coaches don't think you do. But the reality is, like you measure people, whether it's conscious or unconscious. These are happening, so they're not some phantom thing that's just I've got a fifty expensive device in there that they have.
A swing catalyst. I mean, I mean it measures. It tells you what people are doing with their feet and how they're moving, pressure and all that stuff. You can I mean, we can argue about it, or everybody can argue about the data, but the data is real.
So the data's there. We use the gas plates that I mean they are they're three D force plates, so it's showing you what happens. So there's ways to you can either put energy into the club or the handle or at your feet. Everyone's putting at the handle, but you can control certain situations and you can put energy into the club by how you apply force at the ground.
So ground reaction forces, so you put an action force in and the reaction is what happens from the words ground reaction forces or however you want to describe it, and Essentially, in the swing, you're you know, you're trying to do certain things to help you deliver the golf club, and movement at the feet can either help or hinder how you deliver the golf club. And so essentially it's a it's a mechanism to help you square the face
up depending on how you move. And to me, that's an advantage that we didn't really have a few years ago, and how you can really help players generate a lot of speed. The best hitters, you know, the really long they're putting about the long hitters I see in here. Alex Fitzpatrick's a long hitter. He puts two hundred and fifty percent of his body weight vertically into the golf ball. Too. Average is about one ninety at TPI. We got a great database between what I got here, what Greg's got TPI.
We got the same system. Como uses it. Steve Goulds the creator of it. But we have enough evidence to say this is what happens longer hitters. Long drivers put a lot more force into the ground vertically, so they're pushing down, they're going up, and that allows them to pull up and on the handle and kind of speed the club up right, because as we go up, the handle decelerates, which feeds the head up. I mean, it's just simple, right, Like, it's not complicated, and it's just
a great way to work and to teach people. Like it's something that you can use. Sometimes it's difficult, sometimes it's easy, but it's also a way to stop people maybe moving in a certain direction. Someone like Trey that has a hip issue, he essentially has naturally created a mechanism to help him rotate really well to hit a cup or he hangs on his back foot and unfortunately that led to his fema getting driven up into his hip and he wore out his labor on his right leg.
So we've tried to teach him in that video you saw to get to his lead leg and use his lead leg, which we see most of the best players being a lot more dominant in their lead side left leg for a right handed golfer in pushing and to try and get himself to rotate, so we take streps off his right hip. So that'd be an example of ways to where you could use ground reactions forces to
help you. And then conversely, lots of players that let's say do lose their posture dynamically, there are certain things we can do to use the ground to flex us forwards, to try and help us stay in our posture. So there's a whole mirror of things. But you know what, it's in all different sports sciences. The golf back biomechanists and biomechanists at soccer clubs, rugby clubs, cricket clubs, they're
all using it. So the golf coaches and people who don't necessarily think it's relevant, well, the rest of the sports science world thinks it is. So arguably I'd say the science generally wins over. I don't claim to be a genius expert at it, but i feel pretty competent with it, and I've seen lots of success using it, and I've seen it help lots of players. So to me, it's my responsibility to educate myself to give people the
best information possible. And as I said, and maybe on this show before, I'd much rather get information now as a cool give help someone another twenty years ago. But like I say, we're practicing golf instruction just like they're practicing medicine. We learn more, we get better, we have
better strategies, better solutions, so we can help people. And obviously our athletes are getting bigger, faster, and stronger, and our job is to keep them healthier longer so they can play for all this cash that's been thrown around.
One of the things phrases that I like that you use is feed the fault. Yeah, feeding the fault. Talk to us what that means and how you use feeding the fault in teaching, because I think it's a fact. I think it's a it's a great it's a great way to think about it. As soon as I heard you say that, I was like, Yeah, I really really like that. I love that kind of concept. But for people that don't know what that is, what is feeding the fault for you?
Okay, so let's say I'm I'm kind of coming. Was just used as real simply let's say my hands are shifting out, I'm coming over the top. Well, I'm going to do some things to make you do that more so that you have to resist and figure out. Okay, well, how would I not make that happen? Just like if you're moving into the ball, I'm going to move you into the ball more so that you have to stop
yourself doing that. So by feeding the fault. I'm kind of amplifying its significance to make it worse and then trying to get you to counter that and intuitively figure out, well, how would I do that? Now, I can lead you to the solution, or I can kind of put you in a scenario where you don't have a choice but to do something different, which then is reflected in how the club's moving, whether it's the club base, whether it's the shaft, whatever it may be. So that's where I
would say, feed the fault. Like I didn't come up with it. I think it's out of the mode of learning world. Greg uses it quite a lot of TPI as well, But it seems to be like if you push someone towards what they're doing, they tend to start to figure out a way to how to remedy that and counter it. And now that internally they've come up with a feel or a queue or when you do this to me, I feel like I'm doing that. Okay, well let's explore that. Now it's internally come from them.
Tends to have a lot more sticking power than if I just give you a queue, right, Because back to Rosie's comment, feels a sacred so it's like, if you come up with the feel yourself, now, all of a sudden, it's much more pliable and it's much more relatable to
you yourself. So that's kind of feeding the fault. I think with anything, any sort of swing issue, whatever it might be saying with chipping bunker shots, I'm always trying to do that because I'm trying to get the person to start thinking and problem solve themselves as to how would I be able to do that right. So, let's say somebody's chunking a chip and they're going down. They're not using their body, they're not extending out to sholler the club out. I might push them down even more
and then they're forcing themselves. They're having a stand up and I'm like, okay, so how does that feel? What are you doing now? All of a sudden they're like, oh, I have to extem my legs in turn as I
come up. Yeah, that's what good pictures do. And you pull up a video Jordan Speith and you're like, oh, wow, he's doing yeah Brett Rumfan, Wow, so now you kind of So that's how I would best describe it as just intuitively making someone realize they probably needs to do the opposite of what they're doing to have the right solution.
Yeah, I mean, I remember when we first started going through all the TPI stuff and going through all the TPI screens. This has got to be back two thousand and five, Ryan Chrysler, who works with me. Ryan and I were talking about, you know, early extension, how to get people to feel like their lower body didn't go closer to the golf course or the golf ball at impact. He said, I've got this idea. I'm going to make
this move club. So he took a seven iron, made it two inches short, and made it way way flat, super super flat. So now if you early extend, the golf club is two inches shorter than your normal seven iron. It's massively flat. So if you do that, you basically can't get the golf club on the ball. You'll hit shanks, you'll hit tops. It just didn't work. And it's it's funny that you mentioned that. I just as you were talking about I was like, man, Ryan was doing that.
No.
Five. You know, I talked to the juniors a lot all the time. You know, when we hit you know, we'll have them set up, We'll have them putting alignment stick down. I'll film them from face on and they'll hit a snap hook, that one you know, that'll go miles to the left, and I'll be like, okay, I can show you the video. Your club face is dead square at address you. We can see where you're aiming, so you're not aiming there and the club face isn't aiming there. So if I ask you, just hit it
forty yards left to your target. Do that again and they'll be like, what, No, no set up, square, club face square, hit me one that starts left of the left bunker. What would you have to do? So re engineering the miss Yeah, And I guess that's my way of feeding the fault is okay, so you're not set up to do this, you're doing it. What is your body doing and what are you doing with the golf
club to do this? And I think reverse engineering backwards from that to say, okay, now what do you need to do to not hit the golf ball over there from this good set up position that you're in. I think it's really powerful, and you mentioned it. I think the power behind this is me as instructors. The best thing for me is when a player feels it themselves and they go, oh yeah. I felt that because I
can give you. You can give a player a thousand different fields, thoughts, moves, ideas, but they have to then take one of them and go okay. I felt that one. Yes, I was able to do that. And I think that idea of feeding the fault and figuring out I think it can help the player figure it out themselves. Lastly, Gordon, sergeant, you work with him. This kid has I mean, go ahead and just depress everybody. What is his club at speeding?
His ball speed is with the driver? What was he cruise at with just thirty six thousand feet take the seatbelt, sign off with the driver not trying to hit it far? What's he cruise at club at speeding ball speed?
Probably eighty seven eighty eight maybe with a he's touching. I think he can get one to ninety knob problem he's not even really trying. And then his club speeds like high one twenties, touching one three.
So I watched him play at the Floridian, and I watched him on our eighteenth pole, you know, hit it one hundred yards offline into the lake and make, you know, make a huge number. So The reason I bring this up is when he showed up at Augusta a couple of years ago, everybody on life from was like, with this speed and as far as he hits it, he could contend here as a college amateur golfer. Everybody is trying to get more speed in golf, right, everybody listening
to this podcast is trying to get more speed. For a guy like Gordon sergent Mark, it is an embarrassment of riches in the speed department for him. So how do you go about turning this f one Ferrari red Bull this massive, massive power and how do you get him to somehow manage it to where it can help him? And he just isn't a player that everybody goes He's got unbelievable speed, but he's not winning five, six, seven times a year. Yeah.
So I think one of the things when Gordon came to seeing he was like, you guys talk supplies about what you do. He's had a lot of success. The kid is a start Yeah, lovely kid, great to work with, great family and you know, really rounded. But it's one of the things that's interesting is like, well, what's your
go to shot or don't really have one. So like the first thing we kind of really worked on was like a tee down driver, like just this little leader and it's pretty funny because it's like one eighty seven ball speed like this.
Yeah, the fairway finders one eighty seven.
Ball speed fairway finder and it, I mean he probably averages one eighty five ball speed with it, and it gets out there and it runs a long way. So I think that was number one. It was sort of a fair way finder. And then really where we've done
most of the work. He likes to play a fade, but he is with his wedges, so his wedges, like most high speed guys really struggling with low launch, had a way too much spin on the ball Shoal Creek where we're both members theorists for spinning the ball off the green right, So using a quad and explain to him which he has like dynamic loft spin loft and I kind of what's going to make it spin less?
Just working through that and building a wedge game, and that's probably one of the things that we've done is like really improve his distance wedge game so that he's understand it's a slightly different technique, not nearly as much riskset, not nearly as much speed, a lot more body driven passive kind of at the handle shaft leaning to get the low launch, some higher spin, but not spin that's
zipping off the green just like I don't. And I think that's kind of where we've done a lot of work and we'll continue to He's going back to school this year, so he's at the US and this over this week. Hopefully he'll get that, which would be kind of the last thing he needs to do as an amateur. He's done everything else that you can do, but he's going back to school to try and continue working on his game. He's at Vanderbilt, so not too far from Birmlingham,
and then he'll turn pro. He's obviously got that PGA to you, but he's got a bright future and he works really really hard at all assets of it. And I think back to the point about Justin Rose and say, working with Max and these great players, over time you start to see what good players do, and then the fun part is then sharing that mentoring these younger players, and they get access to those players as well, do
you know what I mean? Like that, which I think is going to help their game as well, so it's really when you've got that much speed, you have the essential ingredient. It's learning how to harness it and then being disciplined enough to be okay, where do I hit this? What do I need to do? And when you've got one eighty five bull speed with a tee down, there's not many golf courses you can't play with that shot. Now, the hard part is that you can tee it up
and now you can hit it another thirty yards. That's when it's like difficult because it's like, well, yeah, but if I hit this and now I can hit an aid iron into this five hundred and ninety yard part five versus now I'm having to hit a five itn do you know what I mean? It's just it's an ability to know when to use it. I think that's the part that it's going to take some time. That's the coaching part that's fun. But he's incredible. The funny
part is talk about ground reaction forces. I think I can get him over two hundred miles an hour bullsby no problem.
So but it's the DJ model, right, It's you know DJ back in fifteen. I mean, he hit it further than everybody in the game he had. Now everybody hits it. You know, ten years ago there were four or five guys that hit it a long way, really really really long.
DJ was one of them. But his wedge game was terrible, and so by becoming a better wedge player, I believe that helped him win his first major and helped him kind of get to number one in the world and go, you know, plus twenty plus wins and the Masters and all the FedEx and all the stuff he did. He had the power, but the wedge game was horrendous. And if you think about it, Gordon's in the same category
that DJ was in back. Then think about how many wedges he's got in the course of a round of golf.
And that's the I always say that when someone starts to see the difference and the control, but not only in distance but dispersion, and then they say, man, if I use that wedge swing with my aid R, it's unbelievable how straight it goes. And so you start to get these these things where the players know intuitively, okay, well I could apply this to hear. So I think that lots of the things that you can learn this is I've reached this a lot to people with a
distance wedge. Learning how to control loft, knowing how to lean the shaft, but not sticking in the ground. All of these things that allow you to be a great ball hitter happen with a wedge game. So if you could develop a distance wedge game, let's say sixty to one forty, it does wonders for the whole part of your game. And to your point, when a smash is hitting wet, they have a lot of wedges, So now all of a sudden, it's like you're really contributing to
their score. And because they're even if they aren't put great, they're gonna have a lot of shots inside fifteen feet.
Well, I mean, I could do another hour of this, but I'm gonna let you go and I'm gonna go open a bottle of wine. Listen. It was really really fun. I mean, as somebody, and I don't say this to beat you up about it, is someone that's been lucky enough to work with players that have won major championships. When you've got guys trying to win one, it is for us as coaches, it is the pinnacle of what we do. And to have two guys this year have
two legit chances of it. It wears you out, it beats you up, but it's the reason why we do this. And you know, I'm proud of the work that you do. I'm lucky to be able to at tournaments in the players lounge on the driving range when we're sitting around waiting for these superstars, it's fun to pick your brain.
You've always been somebody that has been very, very open with the information that you've got, and you're somebody that I will ask questions to about Hey man, what do you think about this with this player and stuff like that, and hopefully that will continue. We'll look forward to seeing you soon. Good luck in the FedEx with all the boys, and keep hanging trophies.
Man, Appreciate it, Appreciate you, Appreciate our friendship, thanks to everything. Especially appreciate your nice text after the Masters. Didn't have to do that, so you're the man. I appreciate you. Look forward to seeing you soon. Hopefully I see you at an International Cup match at some point soon. We'll see about that. Yeah, hopefully hopefully. Good to talk to you, ye buddy, take care of bite So.
Mark Blackburn listen he's one of the best in the game. He works with some of the best players in the game. I think the work that he does with players, not only on tour, but the work he does off tour as well, is second to none. And someone who I very very much respect and enjoyed talking to. So that
was cool. I hope everyone enjoyed it. I'm at a live event this week and one of the really cool things this morning seeing all the guys that have just come back from the Olympics into breakfast and get an opportunity to just kind of ask them how it was. Some of them are wearing, you know, the workout clothes from their teams. A couple of the guys I saw wac o'neman over the weekend down in Jupiter. He still had the chili bag. I think the Olympics and golf
is really something special. And just talking to the guys and asking them their experience what it was like, everybody was just blown away. They all said it was really kind of life changing for them. Must talk to John Rahm and I said to Rambo, I said, how was it? And he said, one of the coolest things I've ever done. Really one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of. And for a guy like John ram a two time major champion, He's got a green jacket us Open,
the number one in the world. For him to say that, and for him to say that when he blew a big lead at the Olympics, he was leading on the back nine and didn't get it done, but that was kind of cool. Today to get an opportunity just to talk to all of the different players talk about what it meant for them to represent their in the Olympics, I think it's pretty special. Roy McElroy made some comments about he thinks it's on par with kind of what's going on at the Ryder Cup, that kind of feeling.
I kind of think it would be cool if there was an opportunity to have a team competition in the Ryder Cup as well, not just an individual but they'll work it out. But Paris the Olympics this summer, I watched, I watched the men play, I watched the women play, and I am a fan. So really cool to talk to everybody and something that I would just really as a coach if I could work with a player that was in the Olympics, that would be pretty pretty special.
I want to thank everyone for listening, rate, review, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Son of a which comes to you almost every Wednesday. We'll see you next week.