Playing Lessons with CH3

big golfer, seventy five years old. He's had some he's had some health issues. He's two knee replacements, open heart surgery, he's been diagnosed with some early stages of Parkinson's, so he's got a little bit of a tremor. But you won't find someone that likes golf more than Mike does. And he watches golf, and he used to be very

good player in his mid seventies. Now obviously his body isn't allowing him to do the things that he wants to do from a golf standpoint, But and he doesn't get to play nearly as much golf as he'd like to. He certainly doesn't get to practice as much as he'd like to. But we had some really good weather. We went to his club, the Wellow Golf Club, which kind of just a little bit outside of Southampton, and it

was a really really nice day. It's good to see him get out on the golf course, but no warm up, We didn't go to the driving range. We just went straight to the golf course and he played nine holes and so I kind of rode around with him, and it was just it was a really interesting day in that I think Mike is he is. He is the average golfer, right, he is the epitome of the average golfer. He's just used to be a good player. Handicap isn't what it used to be. Handicap probably certainly isn't what

he wants his handicap to be. But we went on on the golf course and listen, there are a lot of things that we could do with Mike's golf swing, from a grip standpoint, from a club face standpoint, from a path standpoint. So there are a lot of technical things that we could do with his golf swing. And occasionally when I do get to spend time with him, we work on some technical stuff, but I spent nine

holes riding around with him. Has to take a cart now because you know, with the double knee replacement, walking nine holes, he just can't do it. He tends, like a lot of people listening to this podcast, he tends

to slice the golf ball. The ball moves from left to right, and I would say compression is as much an issue as the direction the golf ball is going, So the quality of the contact, the quality of the strike for him is as important and one of the reasons why he hits good shots and one of the reasons why he hits poor shots. But from a real world standpoint, I watched him hit every shot for nine holes.

I didn't say anything about his golf swing. And the reason I didn't say anything about his golf swing is, listen, he doesn't get a chance to practice that much, and we were actually out on the golf course and he was actually playing golf. So I kind of make a big distinction between practicing golf and playing golf, and I think that's something that everyone listening should really do as well. There is practicing golf and then there is playing golf. And it's a theme that that I stay on on

the pod. But I think most people focus all their time on practicing golf and never really focus anytime on playing golf. So I got to go out play nine holes with my father. The golf course was in really good shape. The greens weren't super super fast. It's fairly flat, but if you did hit it off the fairway, the rough was quite it was quite peenals, quite thick. It was very very hot, which is rare in the UK,

but I mean it was in the nineties. The golf course was firm, the golf course was fast, and the golf course was a little bit bouncy. But after we played nine holes, I think Mike was really very surprised that we didn't talk about as golf swing and where I feel like when I go out with players and I watched them play golf on the golf course, I think that's from an instruction standpoint, I think that's where you can make so many changes in so many gains.

So we got to the first hole. Mike had a really nice drive right down, pretty much right down in the middle of the fairway, didn't hit a great shot on the next one, ball came up just short of the Green ended up making five right next hole par five. I think he ended up making six. But the third hole was a par three that was kind of up the tea box, one of those tea boxes that's kind of below where kind of the the rise of the

hill is you could see the green. It was right around one hundred and ninety yards, pretty pretty flat, no breeze, so it was playing the actual and Mike got up and he said, uh, I'm going to hit three wood And I said, listen, why don't you hit driver as opposed to you know, Mike can probably carry his driver right around that one ninety to two hundred two o five. Maybe if he really really catches one, he's going to carry it, you know, two ten in the air. But

he wants to pull a three wood. And I said, listen, is there trouble around the greens? And he said, really, not that much trouble. And we when we got up there, there wasn't really a lot of them. So there's no water. I mean, I think there was one bunker, but it wasn't really kind of in play, if you know what I mean. It was a bunker that you'd have to almost hit a really really bad shot. To get into.

So his first inclination is to pull out a three wood, and I said, listen, you tend to slice the golf ball, and when you do miss it, you tend to miss it to the right. It gets a little bit spinny, you're losing a lot of distance. So takes driver. And his initial reaction was, well, what if it's too much club? And I said, well what if it is? I mean, when's the last time you were really really upset with yourself on a par three by hitting it over the green.

That doesn't happen to most people listening to this podcast. Doesn't happen to me a lot when I play that, I don't hit it too far. If anything, I come up short. So he was I think he was a little bit tentative to hit the driver because I think he thought it was a little bit too much. If he caught it. He had a pretty decent drive and it came up just short of of the so he probably was about five yards off the putting surface, but was pin hives just a little bit to the to

the left, about pin high. And so when we got up to the green, he had a pretty easy chip and he chipped it up on the green and made

a par. And so when we looked back at the at the at from the green to the to the tea box, you know, we're looking back, and I said, listen, if you don't hit your three wood really solid, if you don't hit it really really well, and you hit the shot and have the miss that you normally miss, you're going to miss it to the right, probably in the rough, and it's probably going to come up twenty thirty yards short of the green. We hit driver where he's pin high. He's got an easy chip, and he

gets out of there with par. So we go to the next hole and dog leg from kind of kind of downhill, a little slopey fairway, but pretty straight, maybe just a little bit of a dog leg, not too much to a dog like, but maybe just a little bit from right to left. And again he tends to fade the golf ball and the miss is a slice. And so standing behind him and I look where he's aiming, and he's aiming basically right down the middle of the fairway. So if he hits a good drive and hits one straight,

he's going to be fine. But if he hits the shape that is consistent he's going to miss it into the right rough, maybe into the trees. He's going to get into trouble. So I said to him, listen, go ahead and take your set up and tell me when you get comfortable. And he took his set up, got comfortable, and I said, okay, I'm just gonna put a shaft down on your foot line and you can see where you're aiming. And he said, wow, I'm pretty much aiming dead center of the fairway. If I miss this golf

ball at all, it's going into the right rough. So I said, listen, just aim a little bit more to your left. So he hit the first one and i'd let him hit the first one, and he kind of hit a little bit of a pole, and I said, okay, now let's hit another golf ball and go ahead and name what you feel down is the left side of the fairway. And so he set up and I said, you know, go ahead and aim down the left side

of the fairway. And he set up and I was like, you can go more left, you can go more left, you can go more left, and he was very surprised at how far left I got him. And then I said, listen, you tend to Like most people, when you do slice the driver, you're hitting down on the ball and your path is from out to in. And so I said, the goal in hitting the driver is to take how much you're hitting down on the golf ball and hit

a little bit more up on it. So I teed the golf ball much higher than he normally tease it, and I put it a lot more forward in his stance. And I said, okay, so we're going to move the golf ball a little bit more forward in your stance. We're going to tee it a little bit higher. We're going to get you to aim a little bit more, you know, probably twenty thirty yards more left than you initially aimed. And then go ahead and hit it. And he hit a really beautiful high little fade. The ball

went a lot higher. Because the golf ball was more forward in his stance, he was able to catch the golf ball a little bit more on the op as opposed to hitting so much down on it. And he hit the golf ball with the same golf swing forty yards further than the drive he hit previously. I didn't tell him to swing any harder, and fundamentally, his golf swing didn't change, And that was one of the things that I did say to him on the golf course.

And I think it's really important for everyone listening. In a nine hole round of golf and an eighteen hole round of golf, and if you are in that kind of fifteen to twenty to twenty five handicap range, I got news for you. Your golf swing isn't going to fundamentally change that much in the horse of playing nine

holes or eighteen. So whatever your golf swing is, whatever your swing tendencies are, whatever your DNA is of your golf swing, the shape that you hit, kind of how you hit it, that's probably not going to change a lot in nine holes of golf. And I got news for you as well. You're probably not halfway through your round exponentially going to start hitting the golf ball a

tremendous amount. Further so, your yardages are kind of what they are when you start, and your DNA of what you do from a golf standpoint, regardless of one of whatever it is that you're working on, regardless of what you're trying to do in your golf swing, it's not really going to change that much once you get out on the golf course and you start playing. And I think he was a little bit surprised when I said that to him, and I said, listen, it's that's that's

not a criticism. That's not saying that you're doing anything wrong. You have what you have when you come to the golf course. And I think so many people that are listening to the podcast go to the golf course and fundamentally think that in nine holes or eighteen holes that your golf swing is going to dramatically change and it's going to dramatically change for the better. That doesn't really happen. And I don't see that a lot. Now do I

see that at the tour level. Yes, I see players go out and get off to bad starts and shoot over par on the front nine and then find it on the back nine and go back and shoot, you know, shoot two over, three over on the front, and then shoot twenty nine on the back, shoot thirty on the back. I've seen that more times than I can count. And you will see that if you follow any players on the PGA Tour, you'll see players that play really really

good on the front play poorly on the back. You'll see players play not that great on the front and play really really good on the back. The talent level at the tour level, at the elite level, is so much greater than the talent level that we all have. But I say this all the time. We are incredibly influenced. All golfers are incredibly influenced by what they watch on television.

And so your golf swing isn't going to change. So my father in law's golf swing in nine holes isn't going He's not going to miraculously start not swinging out to end. That's his DNA, that's what he does. That's what he does on a regular basis. So what I'm trying to do on the golf course is saying, hey, let's allow for the miss that you've got right so, and let's also look at where you're setting up from

a tea box standpoint. So I think, like a lot of players, he just comes to the middle of the tea box, which really kind of allows him or gives him more license to aim neutral and aim square. So he's aiming down the middle of the fairway. He's set up in the middle of the tea box. So again, you've heard me talk about if you're a regular listen to the pod. I'm always trying. I'm always trying with players, whether they're someone like my father in law, who's, you know,

in his mid seventies. He's got some body issues. His golf isn't nearly what it used to be. I think he's one of these players, like a lot of people, as we get older, that we look back to the glory days of what we used to be able to do as opposed to being honest with ourselves as to what we are able to do now. And your golf swing as you get older is going to I mean, your golf swing's always going to be in a constant

state of flux, right, It's constantly changing. But I do think that you can make gains by looking at where

you're setting up on the tea box. So what I asked Mike to do, I said, listen, as opposed to coming over to the into the middle of the tea box, why don't we go over to the far right hand side, Because you slice the golf ball, so in a lot of ways, I think it's easier for people that slice the golf ball to see more of the fairway, to see more of the golf course from the tea box by coming over to the far right hand side, which

allows you then to aim more left. Because then if you're curving the golf ball, and you've got the golf ball curving from right to left, like a lot of people listening to this podcast do, your ball can be curving back towards the middle of the fairway, even if

you still have a little bit of slice. But if you set up right in the middle of every fairway, go straight down the middle tee it up right in the middle of the tea box, you're eliminating a lot of the usable space that you've got from an aim standpoint, but also the usable space you have from how your golf ball curves. So if you are someone that slices the golf ball, don't be afraid to come over to that far right hand side and then say, Okay, now I'm going to aim a lot more left than I

normally do. Right, I'm going to give myself room. I'm going to have the shape that I have, but I'm just going to set up differently. I talked to Mike about, you know, the concept that with your irons you want to be hitting down on the golf ball. I mean, obviously, the golf ball's on the ground and as we hit down on it, and that helps the golf ball get into the air. But with the driver, the ball is already on a tee. And I think so many golfers

struggle with the driver. They're losing so much distance, they're losing so much direction because they are hitting so much down. So Mike had the golf ball a little bit too far back in a stance, and so I said, just move the golf ball more forward, te the golf ball a little bit higher, and then you're trying to swing a little bit more on the up and hit the golf ball a little bit higher. That was the only real technical thing I said to him. In the course

of the nine holes that I watched him play. All I tried to get him to do is say, okay, listen, let's look at where you're aiming. Let's look at where you're trying to land the golf ball. And then one of the things that I did was every time he went to pull an iron, whether if it was an eight iron, I told him pull a seven iron. If it was a pitching wedge, I said, pull a nine iron. And what I was trying to get him to do was play for the miss, not play for the great shot. Again,

most golfers their yardages. I don't think the average golfer really has any real concept as to how really far they hit their golf ball. They don't understand how far they hit it. They maybe think, Okay, I hit it once on a part three and I had a really good shot. And let's say I had an eight iron

and I hit it one hundred and fifty yards. So now, regardless of how my body feels, regardless of how I've been playing, regardless how I've been hitting it, I think golfers have these arbitrary numbers in their head that they hold on to, and I think those numbers are probably influenced a lot by what they hear on television, a lot by what they see other people play with. It's very important that you have an understanding as to how

far you hit the golf ball. It doesn't matter what the people you play with on a regular basis, doesn't matter how far they hit the golf ball. The only thing that matters is how far you hit the golf ball. So what I started to do kind of midway through the round is. I just said, listen, every iron you pull, I'm going to have you pull another one. So we got to a par three. It was about one hundred and sixty yards. It was a little bit downhill, and I think Mike pulled out a club the first time.

There was a little bit of kind of gorse area and a little bit of stream running through the front of the green. There was a bunker to the left, There was rough around the green, so there's nothing over the green, and there was really only one bunker on the left hand side, so there wasn't any bunkers on

the right. So I think the first club that he pulled out from one hundred and six yards was his five iron, and he kind of topped it and you could tell that he was trying to make a swing that was a very very hard, fast swing because he didn't have enough club. I think instinctively, we as golfers know when we don't have enough club, right. I think it's I think it's something that's really I think if

everybody was honest with themselves. I think a lot of times you pull a club, you know it's not the right club, and then what you try and do is especially on par threes. You try and swing so hard because you're trying to hit the golf ball a specific distance that you don't really hit it. Maybe you once did, maybe you do occasionally, but that's not the real usable distance that you hit your club and you make too hard of a swing. So that's what that's what he did.

He hit it into the into the water. He's staring at making double triple bogie in the face. So I went back to his golf bag and got a seven wood out and I said, hit me the seven wood. And so I think five iron is maybe does he have a feign he might have a foreign I think I did mention something about the fact that he had a four n four iron, and I said, what the hell do you have a four iron? Four? I mean,

that's you're never going to hit that club. You're not going to hit it well, get you know, hybrid replacements. But he took out. It was either seven or a six wood. Hit a beautiful shot again, just missed the green. Was just off of the fringe on a flat lie in the rough. The ball was sitting down a little bit, but again it's pin high. So the golf ball is

going thirty to forty yards further. Again, same thing that we did with the driver, by having him aim differently, by having move the golf he hits the golf ball a little bit more solid because one he catches the

ball in the center of the face. So when I'm looking at launch monitor technology, I think everyone is obsessed with clubhead speed, which I do think is important, but I'm looking at ball speed and I think that if you can start to hit the golf ball a little bit more in the center of the face, sometimes your clubhead speed might go down, but your ball speed will massively jump ten fifteen miles per hour and the golf

ball will go further. So by choosing a different golf club that he doesn't have to hit as hard, he catches it more in the center of the face, gets it to the green. So now he was over in just a little bit of the rough. He was in that kind of go no go zone that a lot of people are in. It's just off the fringe. He could put it the ball sitting down a little bit.

The instinct was to take the putter because he doesn't feel comfortable with the chip, and I said, listen, keep the six wood, the seven wood in your hand, and why don't we make an exaggerated putting stroke with a seven wood a six wood. You could do this with three woods, four woods, five woods. Play the golf ball in the middle of your stance, get a little bit closer to it, so the shaft gets a little bit

more vertical. And then because the length of the club that you're using is so much longer than your putter, you don't necessarily have to have that kind of kill putt stroke through the grass. And he had a but, and so the first one he hit a little bit too hard, but it was only maybe five to six seven feet past the hole. But as I said to him, when is the last time you were in the situation and your approach shot to the grid? I went past the hole, not bladed over the green, but just past

the hole. And he was like, it doesn't really happen that often. So we put a couple more down and I said, again, it's just an exaggerated putting stroke. And after two or three of these, he hit some beautiful, little, effectively kind of a bump and run putt with a seven wood a six wood, and it basically rolls a lot like the putt, and he was like, listen, I'd

never really thought of doing that. I would either putt it or then I would take my lob wedge, try and open the face and hit some sort of lob shot, which is the complete wrong shot to hit right. I mean, it's just such a risky shot, a shot that he doesn't need to hit. But because he doesn't have a tremendous amount of confidence in his chipping, he likes to

putt from everywhere. So again, just trying to give him another option up to a downhill par When we get to downhill par four, probably around two eighty, which you know from the back tiase a lot of people could drive. But again had him come over to the left hand, to the right hand side of the of the tea box, aimed down that left hand side, moved that golf bole a little bit more forward in the stands and just

try and hit up on it. And he hit a beautiful high almost just a little bit of just a high straight ball which landed just in the left hand side of the fairway. And he had a shot that initially so it was downhill, nothing in front of the green and no rough in front of the green, and the fairways were a little bit firm and bouncy, and

so we had some rooms. So initially he wanted to hit a sand wedge and I said, okay, go ahead and hit the sand wedge, and again it I think again instinctively he didn't think that it was enough club but the yardage said okay, I'm downhill, I can hit my sand wedge. Hit it really really high, ran up the face, super spinny ballooned on him, went a little bit to the right and came up, you know, fifteen twenty yards short. Not a good shot. And I said, okay, why don't you go get me a pitching wedge or

nine iron and land this golf ball. So he probably had about you know, he was playing from the up tee, so he probably had about one hundred yards. And I said, listen, why don't you try and hit this golf ball between fifty to seventy yards. It's going to land on the fairway in front of the grass. It's downhill, it's gonna get some gravity help to it, and it's going to roll and it's gonna you don't have to carry the

golf ball all the way to the flag. It's exactly what he did, and he rolled it up about ten feet, had a legit birdie chance, missed the putt, but got out of there with a four, So a shot that he probably wouldn't have tried to hit, but a shot that gave him a legit chance because he's trying to carry the sandwich all the way to the flag spin it. When I asked him, he was like, I was trying to carry it all the way to the flag and

you'll hopefully get some spin. But in my head, I'm asking myself, Okay, what are you actively doing to try and get any of the spin? Right? Tell me what you're doing that you're going to to do in your golf swing that is going to impart some spin on this golf ball. And you know, we create spin with our irons in short game with speed, right, and most people just don't get that good quality contact. They're trying to hit the golf ball too high, they don't catch

it solid. The ball speeds all over all over the place. Where they catch the golf ball in the center of the faces, they're catching on the heel, they're catching on the toe, and because they're trying to hit it so hard.

Mike is like a lot of golfers. He's trying to hit the golf ball so hard that as he makes this rapid fast move on the downswing, his balance gets off and he falls backwards, which you know, I was saying, listen, if you want a swing thought on all of your iron shots, just try and at impact feel like you have more weight on your lead foot than your backfoot. And he did that. You've start to be able to take some divots and started to hit some better shots,

which to me is what is the most important. I think it was eye opening that we weren't really talking about technique. We weren't really talking about what he was doing in his golf swing. We were talking about club selection, we were talking about where you're landing. So next hole was a shortish part four, and I didn't give him any audio prompts on where to aim, where to set up, just to see if if he would, you know, absorb

any of this. So we got up hit a really nice drive that had his kind of patented shape, which was a little bit from left to right. But because he had teed up in the middle of the tea box, and because he'd aimed right down the center of the fairway, he missed the golf ball into the left rough or into the right roff. We never found the golf ball, and I said, okay, now hit another one. Aim a little bit, come to the right hand side of the

tea box. Aim down that left side. He had a much better drive, still a little bit on the spinny side, still a little bit on the left to right curve side, but just got into kind of the first cut. We were able to find the golf ball, and the lie was sitting down just a little bit, and the natural inclination is for him to take some sort of lofted wood, and I just said, listen, you're probably unless you hit an absolute hero shot, you're probably not going to get

the golf ball onto the putting surface. Because I think he originally went to choose his five hybrid, and I said, you know, that lie, the ball sitting down. I said, you don't need to try and go for this green, right, So why don't we just take a seven iron something that's got a lot of loft on it. You can kind of gouge us out. The green again was a little bit downhill, and I said, you know, maybe you roll this thing up and get it on the front edge.

He had a really nice iron shot with the seven wood, didn't quite get to the putting surface, so he had a chip shot. The pin was kind of cut on the left hand side of the green. There was a bunker left and there was a little bit of a mound about five to ten paces in front of the flag, and then he had about twenty five you know, so from where he was, he was probably about five to five to seven yards from the putting surface and then he had a lot more about thirty feet of green

from there. So what I did to him is I said, all right, why don't we think about this logically, is let's I'm going to walk to where the front edge of the green is and then I'm going to continue to walk all the way to the flag. So we had a shot to where it was about about thirty five steps from ball to the flag. And again his first inclination was to take a club that lands the golf ball next to the flag, try to carry it

all the way. But I said to him, listen, I'm going to walk to where from where your ball is to where the front edge of the green to the putting surface started. And that was about fifteen steps. So it's a round a thirty to thirty five ish shot. But I said, if you think about it, you only need to carry the golf ball fifteen yards in the air. And rather than take your sand wedge or your lob wedge and try and carry it all the way to the flag, we've got some green to work with. Take

your pitching wedge, your fifty. The golf swing is going to be smaller. Try and land this sink fifteen yards in the air, fifteen to seventeen yards in the air, and then it rolls like a pot. That's what he did. He took a pitching wedge, landed at about fifteen sixteen yards in the air, and it rolled up to about five feet and he made the pot. Again. I'll keep

saying this. Your technique once you get out onto the golf course is probably not going to massively change, and it's probably not going to massively change for the better. So you've got what you've got. So learning how to play with the shape that you've got, with the distance you've got, can very much improve your scores because you're not trying to do things you can't. You're not trying to do things that aren't you You slice the golf ball.

That's the miss. When you hit a good one, you hit a fade, and if you hit a really good one, you hit kind of a straight ball, right. But the majority of the shots that a lot of people hit with the clubs, especially with the driver, is the slice. That's unfortunately, that's not going to get better. And if you spend eighteen holes trying to go out and work on your golf swing, work on your technique, if you're going to do that, that's fine, but don't keep score.

If you're going to do that, then because that's not playing golf. That is playing golf swing and working on your technique, which I think has a time and a place. But I believe that if you're going out to the golf course, you were going out to play golf. You were going out to play the game of golf, not practice. If you're in a practice practice on the driving range. And I do think it's a habit that it's an

easy habit to get into. Right, you go out on the golf course, you hit a couple of bad shots, you say, listen, I'm just gonna work on my game. And I think it's really important to go out on the golf course and say, Okay, I didn't necessarily get off to the best start today. I didn't get off to the start that I wanted. But what I am going to do is play with what I've got. I'm going to maybe take one or two clubs more than

what I want on my iron shots. I'm gonna do that on par three specifically, so that if you don't hit the golf ball perfect, if I don't hit the golf ball solid, it's gonna come off. But it was just a one. It was a great day to get out there and spend some time, you know, with my father in law and you know, who hasn't been able to play golf the way he wants to. You know, the health issues that he has don't allow him to

do what he wants to from a body standpoint. But as someone that is lucky enough to play with the best players in the world, the games we were able to make with his game where we were able to shave strokes off by club selection alignment. If you're out and you're not playing in a tournament, right, it's not a tournament. Put a club down. Put a club down on your foot line so that you can see where you're aiming. Don't be afraid to hit shots on the

golf course. You know you're not playing a competition. Okay, don't turn your scorecard in if you're doing that, But put a club down and say, okay, this is where I would want my feet to aim. Maybe go out and play nine holes and use an alignment rod and say, okay, let me see where I'm aiming. Okay, yeah, let me aim and don't turn the scorecard in. But maybe if you're shaving two three shots off of your round, by just aiming better, aiming for your shape, you can make

some big improvements At the highest level. We are tweaking golf swings right. We're working a lot on technique, but I think regular, everyday golfers could benefit so much from what I was able to do with my father in law. Listen, aim more left, take more club, try and have more weight on your front foot. Don't worry about your golf swing.

Just your golf swing is your golf swing. Just make sure with your irons that you've got more weight on your front foot than your back foot when you hit contact, when the ball contacts the club, more weight on your front foot, and I think my father in law was really surprised at how many better shots that he hit. We didn't talk about his golf swing. Your golf swing isn't going to fundamentally change that much, so just wanted

to share kind of a real world experience. Tour players aren't in the real world for everybody listening, right, we don't hit the golf ball like they do. We just don't, So stop trying. Try and hit the golf ball like you hit it. Try and hit the golf ball more solid, allow for the miss, allow for your shape, and really remember that your golf swing isn't going to change that much on the golf course. So the golf swing you have on the driving range, that's probably going to be

the golf swing you have on the golf course. Allow for it, learn how to play with it, and I think you can make some gains by aiming better club selection and just thinking better on the golf course. I want to thank everybody for listening. Son of a Butch comes to you every Wednesday. We'll see you next week.