Ryan, you and I have worked together for I guess going on about fifteen years now, two thousand and five. We met in Austin, and you know, it's been a pretty fun journey. How much do you feel like golf instruction has changed, you know, just in the time that you and I have known each other and been working together. Well, I think.
For me, we had a little bit of a shortcut because we knew Dave and Greg from TPI. From TPI, yep, definitely, you were one of the early adopters of kind of the Titleist Performance Institute. How did you get exposed to what they started to do and how do you feel like that kind of changed the way that you saw golf instruction, Because, I mean it definitely changed the way I thought about the way the body worked, the way
golf swings worked, and how they're all connected. But how did you get exposed Because to Greg and Dave at TPI, just from the top, I was a titleist professional and we became a top titlest account and that gave us access to bringing in groups to titleists beginning in two thousand and four, and those guys would go through the process screens, the fittings, the workouts with Dave and Greg.
At first, I was watching them how that all unfolded unfolded and what the screens correlated to swing traits, swing faults back at the time, right, So if you did a certain move and a screen, most likely you'll have a certain fault in the golf swing. And that just kind of went blew me away, And so selfishly I wanted to go through it first to help my game.
And yeah, because at that time, I think when you and I met, I was still trying to play. Yeah, you played college golf at SMU. You and who was on your who was part of the team when you were at SMU.
And Kny that's probably the big star you Sam Chance yep. And then in my time freshman year, we had Jason and who going on to be one of the coaches there, Chris Parr who's the current coach, Josh Gregory who is a great tour coach.
Right now, who was the SMU coach, the sm coach as well, and Hank Haney was your.
Course, Hank Caney was saving him for last. He was my head coach.
What was that like?
Very tough, very tough, and for me personally, I went to SMU because I knew I would go there if I didn't play golf, and it was in Dallas. I'm from Austin. I stayed in Texas, Cowboys Stars, all that stuff, Rangers. I wanted to stay in Texas, and it was just his graciousness to let me on the team because I was a walk off. I had a pretty good record my senior year as a player, but that's how I got to SMU. It would be the graciousness of Hank Haney.
And I actually gave it up and worked on becoming an FBI agent at the beginning of my sophomore year, which is a different tournam events, but.
From college golf to being an FBI agent.
Yeah, it was the dream, and that took a lot of time, and I didn't have time for golf and those pursuits and being a regular college kid too.
Yeah, being a regular college kid and trying to be in the FBI probably doesn't go hand in hand, No, it doesn't.
So I had to bridge that gut too.
So how did you get from trying to be a college golfer too, trying to be an FBI agent to now having a you know, almost you know, decade and a half of being a golf instructor.
Yeah, I'll keep it short. Paul orII won the British Open in ninety nine. Ye and PAULARI, Uh, who the hell is Paul ar Yeah, he was like a driving range pro. I came out of nowhere.
Now he wasn't a driving range but he played. He was He played tour.
He played on the European Tour for a long time. Yeah, but he came up from you know that those ranks and we're like, man, if he can do this, I can. He came back from ten shots that Yeah.
Right. So I was working and I think Paul gets a lot of you know, because of the way he won that Open championship. I mean, yeah, Paul Lurie was a legit player on the European Tour and played and just happened to be the last man standing.
Yeah, And most Americans didn't know he was, and I certainly didn't know he was, And I think it was a great thing. He inspired my decision to change back to golf. I mean, because I was working for the State of California and Medicaid. I was literally on my way to becoming an agent because I worked in claims, but I also helped the fraud team and that's what I was working on. And then I just saw him win. I was like, Man, I'm gonna go give this another shot.
I'm after about a year or so saving money, and I came to the Golden Bear Tour in two thousand and one, got my ass kicked, went back home to Austin, went back home to Dallas and played around Texas for a long time and ended up at Austin Golf Club.
That's where we met.
That's where we met. Still trying to play but also be an assistant pro section events blah blah blah. But because of our relationship with Tylis, we became a good titles account for him. We were able to go to TPI and we were also able to get in touch with the Harmins as we found out that Colt Harmon wants to come back to the States.
Yeah, that's I was living. I was working on the European Tour at that time, and I was researching. You know, while you Line was gracious enough early on in my career to make me a part of the titleist organization, which was a huge part of my development. And and you know when I met you. You kind of you know, i'd just come. I just moved back to I moved to Austin to work at the Austin Golf Club for a year. I'd been on the European Tour for like three or four years. And you know, you were this
person that had all of this new information. You were really the one that kind of introduced me to TPI. You know, that introduced me to Greg and Dave, and through you know, getting to know them, you know, you and I kind of pushed all in on that kind of whole body swing connection.
That's the difference because most golf structures either have a lot of experience from plan or just a lot of experience just connecting dots over the years. What Dave and Greg were able to do basically and maybe fifteen seconds was diagnosed as only basically hack what you needed to do to work on your swing.
To what they were doing and what is now normal in golf instruction, it's normal now twenty twenty three, correct, But they were really kind of coming up with life hacks for and I've talked about this, you know, on the pod before. I've talked about that. I've had Greg or Dave on a couple of times, and I'm all
about this too. You know, the idea that when you look at a player, and even a player, you know, we look at players, you know, from an instruction standpoint, But there are so many people listening to this podcast that are trying to self diagnose their own game. Right You're trying to figure out how to hit the golf ball better, how to hit the golf ball straighter, how to hit the golf ball further more solid, whatever the
fix is. And some of the life hacks that I think the guys at TPI came up with were, Okay, if you're not doing something in your golf swing, there's gut. It's two things. It's concept problem in that you don't understand the concept of what you're trying to do. But I think most golfers that are playing a lot and practicing a lot, I think i'd say they have a good idea of the concept that they're trying to do.
I think most people that are playing golfer slicers of the golf ball, I think most people have a fairly decent understanding. In twenty twenty three, with all the information that is readily available through social media on the Internet. I mean, you can kind of come up with a pretty good game plan if you're a slicer, just off of going and watching YouTube videos and things like that, you come up with a pretty good game plan on what you need to do to try and draw the
golf ball. I mean, there are a ton of videos that you can go online, which was a tune which wasn't around in two thousand and four. I mean the content that is available now. I think for the regular golfer that is just trying to lower their handicap is
we've never had that much information. But what I do think is that one of the things that the average golfer doesn't think of is Okay, could there be something that is limiting me from a physical standpoint that isn't allowing me to do the concept that I'm trying to do.
That's why I used to put a lot of stuff out, and that's why I do not put last stuff a lot of stuff out because you have to be able to physically do the thing you're trying to do. And you maybe just bang your head against the wall because you can't lay the chaft down because your right shoulder neck doesn't work like that.
Yeah, I think it's important that I'll you know, specifically, you know, in twenty twenty three, social media a lot of people are getting their golf instruction information and info data, whatever theories, it's coming from social media, it's coming from people making videos. But I think it's it's what you
said is really important. You've got to understand first and foremost what your body can and can't do right based off of the things that you're trying to get your body to do to swing the golf club.
So you can go through trial and error, and I mean to years. I think what Dave and Greg were able to do in a minute it was diagnosed everything and come up with the corres corresponding plan to fix everything. And that's that's the heck. And I've been doing that since I think got certified officially two thousand and eight, all three levels, but I think they started a programming two thousand and six, but I was doing that before I got certified.
So for people listening that haven't been screened and haven't gone through and by.
The way, this is all this is applayers with all sports not too right. So even if you're a baseball player, there are certain things that your body cannot do and pre emulating a certain picture or a batting style. It's the same thing. And I think that's very relatable to a lot of a lot of golfers that played other sports. Right, I wasn't successful in football because I couldn't do this,
or I wasn't big enough or fast enough. Well, we can train for speed, we can we can screen your power, we can do all this stuff, and we can hack into why it's happening or why it's not happening, and that can make your program or you're lesson got much more efficient.
So obviously we live in the lesson world. We live in the instruction world. But there are a lot of people listening to this podcast that don't have a golf instructor that they see on a regular basis. Right, right, a lot of people are going to a driving range, They're going to the golf course. But I would say I think a large percentage of people listening are not
in the world that we're in. They don't have a trainer, they don't have someone to screen them, they don't really work with someone on a regular basis from a golf standpoint, from an instruction standpoint. So for that person. What are some things that they can do? What are some of these life hacks that you could give someone that's a mid handicap golfer, you know, a ten to twenty handicap golfer who's just trying to break ninety eighty for the
first time, maybe break par for the first time. But that mid range golfer who's just trying to break eighty for the first time, who's just trying to break ninety, who's trying to break one hundred, what are some things that they can do on their own, without an instructor, without a trainer, without all of the stuff that they see the player have.
Right, this is kind of the greatest challenge for the industry, right, So first and foremost, you don't have to have your best stuff to score your best I think that is a realization that some professionals are just not understanding, right, meaning that you're able to break eighty, and maybe you didn't drive it well the day that day, but you're able to get around through short game. We're putting, right, so you've got to be able to almost be able
to rank what you have on a great putter. I need to set myself up for some great putts, meaning I need to get on the green with every.
Chip right, regardless of how far away from the hole.
I don't care if you've got a wedging you hand in your ten handicap, you should be able to hit the green more than ninety percent of the time if you know how far you are and what kind of yardage you can hit that witch right. I don't care what it looks like swing way. And so for me, I'm I'm very as you know, I'm very systematic in my approach.
Systematic. I mean you're systematic in every approach of your life. Don't just give it to golf. I mean you're the ultimate process.
I'm always trying to hack and systematize and everything. But you know, if you go out and block practice and find a favorite wedge number right, then that should be a go to wedge number.
So how does a player do that? Right?
So I like to basically start backwards. So I'd rather you have a whatever swing it is, like a shoulder to shoulder swing, or like at ten o'clock.
Nine to three or whatever. If you're in the clock through, waist high back, waistide through. I think I think a good wedge distance kind of baseline is if you take the golf club back, you know, think about your hand position. Your hands are, you're standing in the dial of a clock. Your head's at twelve o'clock, your hands are at six o'clock. So if your hands kind of went to that waist high position, we would call at nine o'clock on the on the dial if you're a right handed golfer, and
then three o'clock on the follow through. So I've always thought that that's a really good baseline to say, Okay, waist tied back, waist tied through with my lob wedge, my sand wedge, my pitching wedge, whatever that is, go whatever distance, go that. So how many balls do you think someone could could come up with and use it? I mean, I think everybody. I think the majority of golfers now have a rangefinder, right, So go out on a range, find a target that is fifty yards, well backtrack.
To break eighty or to break ninety, you got to have some level of short game propiciency and you can't make the big mistakes right. So for me, it's really easy for a player to just learn the small shots first, the putting, the pitch shots, the bump and runs, the
punch shots. You have to have an understanding of how far you hit those shots, and for me to systematize it, find those numbers nine o'clock to three o'clock, right, ten o'clock, one o'clock, whatever your numbers are, make those religious and apply those to the course. So if you if you're a number with like a nine o'clock swing that you've found basically by hitting no thirty balls to no target, like, just work on the position, the distance of the swing the lane.
So take the target out of the ear. Take the target out, because I do think that golfers are so outcome oriented, they're so target oriented, that as soon as we implement a target, then the golf swing they're making.
Would we ever teach a quarterback to throw to the five, the ten, the fifteen, the twenty, when you're six years old, we teach them to throw.
It tennis, all you're trying to do for a beginning tennis player is just have them get the ball over the net, having them put it in a specific place on the court. You're not having them go down the line, You're not have them go cross coreps, or you're not hitting into the squares. All you're trying to do is just say okay, yep, get the ball consistently over the net.
So head to a space, use your range finder and laser the center of the space, the spread of your balls. What is that number eighty five? Even if it's not exactly eighty five, it's a generalization. And that's like your favorite position. Let's say it's a kind of a shoulder to shoulder fifty sixty three ways, use eighty five yards, right, Take that number and make it religious right. So when you have a target that's ninety yards, don't hit it ninety hit it eighty five, get it on the green.
You got five yards fifteen feet, hut it out done. So if you can do that with three or four wedges. Now we have three or four numbers, maybe you can add a different length swing. Now we have eight numbers. And I really pledge this and pursue this with the juniors and pros that I woke with. It's like, what are your numbers? And if they don't have an answer, I've got a problem.
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don't forget about their award winning combines. I'd say a large majority of golfers and a large majority of people listening to this podcast fundamentally have no idea how far they hit. They really hit their golf clubs, their golf ball consistently. And that's where I've talked about this in the past. I think, wouldn't you agree we are so influenced by television because the average golfer watches who's big
into golf? They watch a lot of golf on TV. Right, They spend an enormous time on the weekend watching golf, and so they're influence and spy that, right. You know, Hey, you know John Wood? You know they throw it down. The NBC guys throw it down to John Wood, the CBS guys throw it down to Dottie or Colt or any of the on course guys. Is say what's he got and they spin out on a par three, or if someone's laid up, they spit out a number. Okay, he's got one oh five and he's going to hit
this club. And I do think that a lot of golfers. When they are playing golfer, they're on the range, they take those numbers as if those are the numbers that they're going to hit that club.
Well, but I I've had this conversation many times. It's like you're watching Pat Mahomes, he scrambles, throws the dime to one of his receivers, and that fan of the game thinks they can go do that on the football field the next day. And a golfer thinks they can be Jordan Speed. He hits a wedge to from one oh five to ten feet all day on Sunday because he's playing great, he's on TV, and they think that's
what they need to do. There's no chance that that type of basic fan of the game can throw the ball like Pat Mahlmes.
Or shoot a three point air like Steph Curry, or take a free kick like Leonel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo or any other sport. Why do you think that golfers unlike any I mean, we all marvel when we watch, you know, whatever your sport is, whether it's football, where it's basketball, baseball, cricket, rugby, you know soccer, which I call football. But there's no other sport to where people
fundamentally believe that they are. They're thirty five years old, they have a regular job that they think they're going to be able to go out and do the identical same things that Lebron does. But all of these great athletes, but for some reason in golf, we all think that, oh, because it's I have a theory that I think it's because it's very very hard for if you love let's say you love American football, it's very hard to actually
ever play. You can't. You can't get a team. You can't get your own team and then go get another team and then go to a regular sized football put all the pads on. Get how about this?
I can't call any read and say, hey, can you tell me how to play like Pat Mahomes.
Yeah, can't do it right. So why do you think do you think it's because you can go to the same golf course. Let's say we live in South Florida. They have you know they you know they up until this year they had to Honda here. Every year we
could go to PG National. We could go on the weekend and watch someone play the bear trap, you know, hit it in the water on fifteen bogie sixteen, bogie seventeen, bogie eighteen, and then you could go play from the same tees and somehow make a par on a hole where they made a bogie or make birdy on a
hole where they made up. Do you think, because the rules of golf are unlike any other that you can go play the same venues from the same teest and there's that suspension of disbelief that you go play a part you could play golf with. You could go play golf with Rory McElroy and he could make a bogie. You could be a fifteen twenty handicapper and make a par, somehow sneak it in there, make a par, and the belief system is, oh, we're playing the same game. Yes,
but we're not. And I think that most golfers, and I've talked about this enormously, you know, add nauseum on the pod is I think a lot of golf for regular golfers. And to me, regular golfers are ninety nine percent right. The people that you're watching that are competitive golfers, they make up very I don't know what them, but in my mind, they make up one percent of the people that are going to play this momme right, especially when the golfers that you're watching on television right. So
to me, I've talked about this so much. I think for everyone listening, managing their expectations, but understanding what it is that you can do.
Yes, find some reality, know what you have. If you're fifty six becues eighty five instead of Jordan Spieth's one five, that's your number, right. If you can carry your driver maybe two thirty. It's not gonna go three hundred, right, And the uh that's It's a big part of the industry is tackling that from from a wide from a wide view.
And I also think it's incumbent upon the player. My dad's always said, check your ego at the door when you go to the golf course, of the driving way, for sure of your ego in the car. And I do think that if everyone listening had a more honest approach, but an honest evaluation of what their strengths, but all so what their weaknesses are. What do you think is a good kind of golf life hack for players to
find what they're good at? Right? Because I mean, we've got driving, we've got irons, we've got short game and then we've got putting right, and then you want to throw in course management. But to me, those are the five areas. Sure, you know, because if you look at what we're looking at from a tour standpoint or from a competitive standpoint, I'm looking at how Brooks DJ, the players that I work with, Brooks DJ, Pat Perez, Marine Alex. I'm looking at how they drive the ball. I'm looking
at what their iron game is like. You know, from the tour standpoint, we're looking at short irons, mid irons, long irons. Then we're looking at short game, then we're looking at putting, and then we're looking at course management. Give me some you know, basic life hacks that a ten to twenty handicapper can use in their practice. It can help them evaluate what elements of those five things are good at and what elements of those five things they're not good. Right.
So we've covered chork in right putting the same way. I think, you know, give yourself three feet, make a circle, knock them all out. You need to be one from three feet right. I don't care want your handicappings right, break it out six feet, ten feet. Maybe i'd find out what your percentages are. Use ten balls make it easy, right, Just give yourself some level of expectation. Don't look at the tour stats. What's what's your stats?
And also, I think the average goal for vastly overestimates how good tour players are, right, because they think they think every fifteen footer. The percentages show that a tour player should make every fifteen footer, so they get a fifteen footer, whether it's for par, whether it's for bogie, whether it's for double weather, it's for bird or whatever. They I think the average golfer thinks, Okay, if I miss a fifteen footer, I'm a terrible putter. What is it?
What is? It's right around seven to eight feet On the PGA Tour, it goes fifty to fifty, right, that's right inside of I think seven feet. The numbers incrementally make wise go up the closer you get. But it's right around that seven to eight foot mark where it's fifty to fifty on the PGA Tour. The best of the best or half the time they make and half the time they miss.
Right, So start with butting, start with chipping too. You know eight foot circle you did inside eight f circle?
Hey, I don't even think eight feet. I think if you know you can get it inside a ten foot circle, right, if you could just around the greens, regardless of how close you are two flag distances right now, two flag distance, you could just say, okay, let me get this anywhere inside of ten feet. Yep. If you're a fifteen handicapper, if you're a twenty handicapper and every chip shot you have gets somewhere inside of a ten foot I'd even
go fifteen foot circle. You are going to be gaining massively. Correct, you're gaining strokes.
Let's put you in six times out of ten balls, right, yeah, right, and then take that to a full or swing. Irons create boundaries, whether you use like a name point little two fingers, how many times can you get it through the field goal?
Right?
When you're practicing basketball, you know if it goes in the hoop or not. But when we're hitting golf balls to a random target, we're thinking about, hey, is it solid, which way to it go left or right?
While was the curve? Just get it? Then the uprights. Yeah, if you've got a golf course where if you've got a driving range where you practice and they have greens, those are awesome, Like if you're lucky enough to have a drive I know not everybody listening has that, but if you're lucky enough to have a driving range that has flags on a green rather than I think what everybody does, regardless of their handicap level, is they go to the driving range. If they've got a a target
and it's on a green. They're aiming at the target, but they're not just trying to say, okay, whatever that distance, let's say it's one hundred one hundred yards away, let me just hit ten balls and just hit the green. Don't even worry about where the target is. Correct. Wait, if you've got a.
Twenty yards wide, maybe yeah, maybe it's two trees in the distance. Chimneys like here, the.
Two flags whatever. Give yourself barriers, barriers on either side, like a soccer goal, like a football goal, like a rugby goal. Give yourself barriers on either side, and say, okay. You know it's a thing that we say a lot in They say this a lot in hockey, they say this a lot in soccer slash football. If a hockey player is close to the goal, if a footballer is close to the goal, they always say, make the keeper make a safe hit the target right, regardless of whether
you're going high, whether you're going low. Make the goalie make a safe regardless of where that is. And I think if that concept, you say to yourself, Okay, I just need to hit the target, and let's make the target big to begin with, and then start to shrink it after I get proficient at hitting the target.
But then once you achieve all these segments from putting to full swing to driver whatever, you have a base level of expectation.
Right.
If you take that expectation to the course, now, you're not going to get upset when something goes wrong. And I think that's a huge part of this. People have these expectations of a tour player. They can't back it up. They lose focus.
Shots one that they don't they've never practiced correct that they've never done on a driving range. Now when they're on the course playing the game, they're going to try something that is going to have a significant effect on their score, which is the object of playing golf is your score, yep.
And if you've been just working on hand position for two hours, then you go to play nine holes and you're trying to work on hand position during the nine holes, probably not going to score your best, much better off kind of testing yourself either in the warm up before the round. Get it through the gates, get it through the targets, make them from three feet, make them five give yourself hard specific data, a system that you will that you can apply to the course. Now your expectations
are grounded. Now you can play eighteen holes, face the challenges, play the game and you're not getting upset over and some sort of simple shower or some imperfect swinger whatever.
What handicap range would you say is you need to be below this handicap range to actually aim at specific pins. So you've got you know, you've got.
To be a loaded question based on what we did last week.
Right, you've got eighteen holes, right, and you've got eighteen greens. Give me a for you. You've been doing this, you know, you've been teaching as long as I have. What is your threshold for you need to be this handicap or lower for you to as a player to be aiming at pins as opposed to just trying to get it on the green.
I would say zero handicap, get it on the green.
So you need to be a scratch golfer.
You need to be a scratch golfer.
To be going at specific targets on a green yep.
And you know one of the Brooks stories is the four or five hole in US test.
Yeah, we've talked about that on the pod before.
And if you go out and play a four or five holes, you're playing great. You've got maybe a green light. And for me when i'm coaching, you've got a green light from maybe one or two pins that are perfect scenarios, perfect numbers, perfect registances, whatever, perfect side of the green.
That's it.
And like at a major, zero pins, for Brooks at a regular event, maybe four or five maybe maybe right, and then if he gets if he's too aggressive, he backs it off, right. I think it's a scratch in a cap.
So if you're a five, I.
Will give you a green light, but you won't.
But the green light would only be man.
It's going to be one perfect scenario scenario per round, and.
It's probably going to be with a club that you can control. So it's probably for let's say you're a if you're a five, ten, fifteen handicapper, it's probably going to be a scoring club.
Your objective is to eliminate the mistakes off the tee, the mistakes entered the green and just get out of there every hole. That's what's pointing. That's how we play the game right. And if you're making these decisions going after pens and you don't have the right numbers, you're not gonna perform, well, you're not gonna score.
Well, well you were, you were part of you were giving a lesson last week when when Brooks was here with and I talked about this on the pod last week with Boggle Laro, the kid that's trying to play professionally, and one of the things that you I'd forgotten that Brooks said this, but you messaged me this, yep, and I remembered it. You said, Brooks said to Boggle, I am ten times more disciplined.
It's how I opened the conversation than you are.
And then you will ever be on the golf course with regards to they were asked targets, club selection, go no go green light versus light and he was like and and I forgot to mention this in the pod when I was talking about it, but I thought that was fascinating that Brooks was like, I am more disciplined than you are. And I'm one of the best players in the world, and I've won five major championships and
have been number one in the world. I'm more disciplined at picking conservative targets than you are.
And what does discipline mean? I mean, it's basically meaning that he knows his game that day, that and minted better than anyone else in the world other than maybe Ricky is caddy. Yeah, and implying that nobody else has that level of awareness and discipline in the room that day for sure, and a majority of professionals.
So how do we how do how does a fifteen twenty handicapper go on the golf course and have discipline to not go what we call I mean, And again I keep going back to this. I think it's so much television bias. Yes, I mean, he can go flag hunting here, Johnny, he can go flag hunt here. This is a green light pin. If you're a fifteen handicapper. There are no green light pints. No, there are no green light pints.
I don't okay, I but it's your perfect redge number. Just get it on the green find the center of safety, put it there, right. We have if you're a fifteen handicapper, you probably have top problems with alignment, Bob posishan whatever before we even get to the technical part. So you got to knock out all that stuff first, right, you gotta have an expectation that, hey, I just got seven out of ten within eighty five yards when I was warming up. I've got a pen at ninety. I'm not
going to try to hit a ninety. I'm going to hit it eighty five. And you have a seventy percent chance, based on what you did earlier, to hit that job.
And I also think that people forget. The average golfer forgets that unless you are lucky enough to be a member at a very elite, tournament style golf course, right, you know, like a very elite The majority of golfers play golf on greens that aren't running thirteen. They're not rock hard, the rough isn't massively up. The greens don't have the undulation that we see at places like Augusta or a major championship. So the greens it's a general station.
But I think most people play golf courses where the greens are relatively flat because the majority of the greens that they're going to play. They might have some subtle slopes, but they're not going to have the slope that you know, the first green at Augusta has to where if they put the pin in certain positions, there's no way to actually even get at those positions. The greens are massively there's false fronts, there's a lot of rof, there's a lot.
Of nobody plays. Nobody plays golf like that.
Most people don't play golf like that, and they're never going to play golf like understand golf like that. So right, you're lucky in that you're not a fifteen handicapper and your home course is Augusta National, because you'd quit if you had to play Augusta National every day because the golf course is just too hard if you had to play you know, TPC Sawgrass where they play the Players Championship. I mean that golf course is next to impossible to play for tour players when they set it up under
tournament conditions. So I think most golfers are lucky in that they play golf courses that they can just basically should scorable. If you do have the discipline to say, listen, let me just get it anywhere off the tee.
And make sure you choose the right tea to begin with.
Sure, So how do you give a life hack golf life hack to for everyone listening? How do you go about that? How do you choose the teas you play? Because everybody wants to play.
Let's start simple with if you're a junior, play all the way up and take and break par and then you work your way back to the next team. Can you break par from there?
And if you're a fifteen handicapper, if you want to go back and play the back teas because you want to be you want to feel like a trope, you want to feel like you're a player, blah blah. But until you can consistently yeah, I think you know. If you're trying to break eighty for the first time, rather than do it from the tea box that you want to play, go to the go to the forward, t
the furthest shop tree. Historically that has been the Ladies team whatever whatever, now different colors, whatever, but you know, red, white, blue, whatever. Go to the front, go as far up as you can and try and break. If you're trying to break hundred for the first time, go to the furthest forward t and try and break.
Trys how fun it is, right, And if you put it like that is a raised from those teas and we're covering distance right as fast as you can, and it's a race. And when you play from the wrong tea or the furthest tea back and you're just making that race so much more toughly. Yeah, right, And.
So it's I mean, to me, if you're if you're trying to play golf from further back than you should, to me, it's the equivalent of trying to climb Mount Everest and basically starting at the bottom and just thinking you're just going to climb all the way to the top. You're not going to Camp one and then not go So to me, the tea boxes are like climbing Mount Everest.
Go to the front and just try and get acclimated at Camp one, which is the furthest forward tee, and once you get comfortable there, once you feel like you can kind of make good rational decisions there, get acclimated, get kind of in a good place, then you say, okay, Camp two is one tee further back. And if you're trying to break I mean, I think that's that's a
great way to think about it. Right, If you're trying to break one hundreds for the first time, go to the forward t go to the closest possible, the shortest distance the golf course can be played from, and see it. If you can break a hundred.
From the surprise, how much funny you would have.
You would have a lot of fun because there would be a lot of par fours that you could get two and two. As opposed to saying, listen, I can't even get to this par four and two because I just don't hit it far enough, you could probably get to half of the par threes you might be able to get. You know, if you're playing a golf course where there's four par threes, you might let's see, if you could get to one of them, you might have
a legend of two of them. Would say, but if you could just hit one of the greens, yes, out of the four, as opposed to missing all of them, Yes, that's a gain, that's a win. You're making progress, big time progress. So consistently breaking one hundred, consistently breaking ninety, consistently breaking from a variety of different tees, I think is a really good baseline instead of stand, instead of just going, okay, it's your course. You've got. Let's say
you've just got red, blue, and white. Right, go to the red, see what your score is. Next time you play, go to the white, see what your score is. Go all the way back, see what your score is. If you do that, I think you'd have a pretty good idea of the tees that you should be playing. Shared.
You're gonna have some perspective, some data.
Because I'm guessing you're probably going to shoot lower scores from the more forward tees and you're probably going to shoot exponentially worse from the back tees. Correct, and then figure out where you need to be based off of that. I mean, when you and I go out and play, we never I mean I hate playing golf from all the way back. Yes, I mean it's brutal for me because I don't hit the golf ball far enough right, I don't. I mean, what here at the flow, what's
sneaky speed? You know? But I mean if we play all the way back here at the flow, what is seventy one hundred seventy one hundred?
You play some of the unmarkedees? Yea, right?
And so on days that it's windy, there were going to be par four's. Where if I hit a good drop five hundred yards, Yeah, our ninth hole is five hundred yards. If I'm playing that from the back t and I bust a driver like I might be able to hit it to eighty. I mean, if I really catch one, it's rolling out to two ninety. But you know me, I'm bad at math. That's to eighty. That's gonna leave me a lot. I wouldn't have got that right. But you're now I've got two twenty, which is hybrid?
Which hybrid? I'm trying to bust a three wood. I'm terrible at hitting three.
With the wind.
Right, who's getting h The prevailing wind is normally the on our ninth hole, right, So I've urt. Whereas if I play it from sixty, So we've got four t's at the flow right are five? Yep? Okay, so let's see five t is it's the shortest. So let's say I played five. Let's say I played it from the
three tep. So a hole that is five hundred yards now is I think it's four hundred four hundred, right, So it's one hundred yards in distance yes, right, But again, if I hit my drive to seventy two sixty to two seventy instead of doing that from all the way back where now I'm looking at hitting three wood or going I probably can't even get to the green here if it's into the wind. I'm looking at a mid to a mid iron where I've got a much better chance to get to the green for sure.
And that's more fun.
Yeah.
Who the hell practices three woods off the deck all the time?
Right?
No, I didn't dour players at all.
No. Right, good golf life hack for figuring out the shape that you're trying to hit right to left, left to right. How does someone identify, regardless of their handicap level, how do they identify what shape they should be trying to hit?
Well?
I think you got to go through our testing, right, put us some barriers, put up a mark. We need to curve draws in there on the drive page. Yes, on the drive wrench.
Do it with a seven, nine iron, eight iron something that you know obviously the higher the loft, the harder it is to curve the golf ball. I think kind of that eight iron to seven iron is a good golf club to use. That is going to show you whether you can curve the golf ball the way you want to or not.
It'll be solid practice, nonetheless, but you know you do ten draws, ten fades who went right?
And then so ten ten shots where you're trying to swing the golf club from out to in, which would be more of a fade shot. Ten golf balls where it's trying to swing the golf club a little bit more pathwise from in to out, which would be more of a draw shot. Yep, your ten balls, maybe twenty if you want to push it and say, okay, out of these twenty, how many of them had the shape that I was trying to hit. If it's left to right,
if it's right to left, just start there. And I think one of the things I think is important is and I don't care how you do about it, and don't care how you do it, and don't have the running commentary in your head on okay, well that was too much. Can you move the golf ball left to right? Can you start it left of the target, have it curve back to the right. Can you start it right of the target, have it curve back to the left, and just get and then basically based off of that,
you're probably going to have a good idea. I think the majority of golfers will struggle mid to high handicapped golfers, the majority of golfers, if they did that ten twenty balls trying to hit a fade, ten to twenty balls trying to hit a draw, they're going to struggle to hit the draw.
Yeah, I mean they might do the exact opposite, right, and I'd be trying to draw it and it's just a push last every time.
So based off of that, what does a player do.
You gotta find the centers, fafety and hit it straight at it and don't try to curve it.
You got to find a level.
You got to have a base level of proficiency that you can yourself believe in instead of the TV or whatever. Right, bit's three out of ten draws, four out of ten fades. Then let's go play fade only off the tee, fade only on the greens for nine holes and just see what happened. Right.
I think so many people are unwilling to actually go out on the golf course. Something that you and I have talked to our student. It's very difficult to go out on the golf course. Bob Rotello wants you to go to the golf course with no swing thoughts, right, but he'll allow you to have one right right. And I've told you the story. We've you've seen it in action. Trevor Emmlman. You know we love Trevor. Too smart for golf, way too smart for golf, and one of my favorite
things about it, and would overthink and overanalyze. And Rotello said, listen, I don't want you to go with any swing thoughts, but I'll give you one. And Trevor was dying. This is like four, We're at the Masters, and Trevor's like, there's no way I can play golf with just one swing thought. And Rotella wants you to take one swing thought right and keep it the entire round, which is
very difficult commit. So my point being to go play nine holes and commit to just hitting one shape, whatever that shape is, right, But do the test on the range and say, Okay, it's easier for me. It's hard for me to draw it. I tend to slice the golf ball, right. I think most people listening will fall
into that category. They tend to slice the golf ball. Okay, So go play nine holes and play for that shape, play for that miss, play for the ball to go left to right, adjust your aim, and don't try and go to the golf course and hit a draw which you aren't able to do on the driving rude. Just go to the golf course say, okay, I'm gonna fade it, slice it around. I'm gonna slice it rather than fade it, I'm gonna slice the golf ball around the golf course to aim for that. Yes, bang on it right now.
Football players, if they're injured, they understand what they have that day and they go out and play anyway. You need to understand what you have that day and go out and play anyway and just commit right and try to be perfect out there and try to hit every shape.
Yeah, because I mean it's something I preach on the pod all the time. I think for a regular golfer, just have one shape. You don't need to hit the golf ball high, you don't need to hit the golf bowl, you don't need to have all of these tools in your toolbox. You just need a hammer. And if you've
got a hammer, you can hammer in a nail yep. Right, And then if you can just every time you see a nail and you've got a hammer, and you can just hammer that nail in perfect perfect Now to do other things, to do advanced carpentry, but you could have a hammer and some nails and some wood, you can do something and you could make something. Yes, with just a hammer and just some nails, not screws, nut saws. You could put together some pieces of wood that could
make something right. And if you could think about just going out and trying to play nine holes and saying, listen, I'm just gonna hit the golf ball with the swing that I've got this direction for nine holes on every shot that's not going to aim at targets.
Great example discipline right there.
I don't care where it is on the fairway, whether it's on the left side, the right side, the middle, just anywhere in the fairway, anywhere on the green, add up what you shoot and get out of there. Because if you could do that right, I think, wouldn't you agree if you could do that, if you could just go out and say okay, let me get the ball and play off the tee, and you could do that right.
You just say okay, it might not be pretty, but I am getting the ball in play in the fairway, off the tee, and then I'm not really aiming at any flags. I'm just basically hitting this anywhere on the green. Right. If then you look at your score and you've got forty three putts, then you could say, Okay, maybe you need to just learn how to put better because you're hitting some fairways and you're hitting some greens, and okay, now maybe we need to go look at speed control.
Maybe we need to look at that. But again, I think everybody looks at their golf game and thinks that they need to have all of the shots, right. They do not.
Very few people in the world have all the shots. I think maybe Ernie ELS's peak, you saw it right, Tiger, he had all the shots, you saw it in person.
Rory kind of. Rory has a lot of shots.
I can tell you Brooks doesn't have all the shots. Brooks kind of has that the shots that he have man or might right, and he's very disciplined to use it.
Give me some contact hacks. I think something that I've preached a show the contact Yeah. We had We had an old show called Yeah we had a show that we put up on YouTube that years ago. It was that fifteen years ago called the Contact Show, and nobody watched. I will say this one year, one year? Is it the twenty eleven? We just it was right around that time we started the Contact Show, right, two thousand and eight, two thousand.
And Joe Haiferic and China something around there.
Well, we had the show called the Contact Show. And I was at the PGA at Atlanta Athletic Club. I was getting my credential. My wife was with me, and some guy came up to me. It was a club pro and he said, big fan of the of the Contact Show. And my wife Lisa said, oh, you're the one. You're the one watcher. But contact, right, How do golfers what are some easy life hacks that they can do to improve quality of strike and contact?
Yeah, for putting, I need a gate, put it through the gate.
So the tiger, So the tiger drill. You put two t's on either side of your putter, depending on how much, give yourself some room right on either side of the putter. So the toe, put a tea outside the toe, outside the heel.
Target, no target, no target, and then begin to challenge yourself when you.
Get to that, and just feel like you're give yourself no target. And let's say you're trying to hit a ten foot putt and see if you can control the putter and the speed and the speed and have a saneness. I mean, one of the great drills that I like to do is have someone in your mind do the gate right, do the gate drill right. You're gonna give yourself room to hit the putter and then say, okay,
I've got a ten foot putt. I'm gonna hit five balls, ten balls, and I'm going to see if all of them kind of have a saneness to them, look the same speed wise, give yourself a t walk out five steps, ten steps, and say okay, I'm just gonna hit ten balls and see if I'm I've got five balls or ten balls that look somewhat similar to each other from a speed standpoint, from a distant standpoint, from a dispersion standpoint. Yeah,
I like that one. How much of putting contact wise the way the club contacts the ball do you think can be cured and you can benefit from by taking away.
The target all of it, especially the higher they anicap. I mean, no hole, you go to pop shroke, you go to miniature golf and get those little bullseye style putters.
People hit those great shitty golf balls through the clown's mouth and they get to the golf course, they got your fancy spider putter and holes and brakes and maybe, I mean sometimes it's slower than actual putt put golf course and it's a complete freak out.
So make sure you gamify it a little bit too. And then for you know, for chipping, I preach even for pros, you got to have like a ten yard shot, one that goes high, one that goes low. I don't care what wedge it is. And usually hit a shot the ghost ten yards and we're like like a soft, kind of floppy type of shot. The ghost ten yards stays within ten yards, and one that flies about ten yards and rolls out.
However, far so life hack for players to hit the golf ball with their ten yard wed shot. Easiest way to hit the golf ball higher, and easiest way to hit the golf ball lower. Correct, Just give me ten yards, but you give me so what's a good way that someone can train themselves to do that? Right?
So usually fifty five fifty six degree wodge can accomplish this, especially in Ford, you get enough bounce, enough loft to do both. I like the ball back for low and ten, the ball up for high and ten, and it doesn't have to be super high.
It is to be super low else to you as the player, to be able to see the difference between what the trajectory looks like with the ball back in your stands Yep, the shaft's going to be leaning more forward, yep, right out of dress.
And then so in general I like a small for small shots. I like small stands, small body, small swings right. So we're just small and we're hitting in ten ten yards right. And if you can hit that one hundred times in a row from the green that's ten yards off the green, one high, and one that rolls a little bit, you've got almost ninety percent of the scenarios on the course figured out. Consuming you get on the green and you get within ten to fifteen feet.
So I think a good pack would be three ball positions yep, neutral ball position, middle of your stands, and then you can go that's under the shaft more forward, two balls more forward, three balls more forward, and then based off of a middle of the stans ball position.
You get a one ball further back, two balls further back, three balls further back, getting very systematically and just and just basically say, okay, if I move the golf ball one ball further back in my stants, two balls, three balls, Okay, I see that golf ball going.
By the way.
This is new targets. Targets, this is distance just on the driving range. On the driving range, propecate, you don't even need to go to a short game green and just see the trajectory change. Yep. And I think if you could do that, then you could say on the golf course, okay, I've got this shot. I've got this shot. I need to hit the golf ball a little bit lower. I'm just gonna move this one ball, two ball, three balls back in my stants, I've got to hit a little bit higher.
Or how about this, you don't have this shot and I need to hit it over here somewhere to the right, or should have left, bump shot whatever right, and then maybe throwing an extra pitching witch. And now we get two options.
What handicap level is your cutoff in short game for opening and closing the face.
That is loaded right? In general, I always like it a little bit.
Open, okay, okay, just a little just.
Like you know, one o'clock, just ten degrees, open it, then take your grip and then take your grip.
Don't take your grip and then open it, because if you take your grip and open it, you're gonna come back to square.
In general, I like it just a little bit open, and why I want to make sure the bounce doesn't get too high or too low. And I want to make sure the loft stays the same that you said at address, meaning some people open it and close it, some people close it, some people open open whatever. Try to keep it the same right, try to return the club to the same position you started with one from.
And don't be don't be Nichelson. Be a strigger. Get it on the green, be efficient, and you can change trajectory with ball position to some degree, or.
You can change trajectory by choosing a different wedge pub selection. Yep.
So I like to dumb it down. Maybe that's not the best word for it. Just really simplify and be less dramatic or less exotic, because I.
Do think most golfers are trying to be three Michelin Star chefs trying to make fancy, fancy food. They don't really know how to just make a basic cheeseburger, basic omelet, and they're trying to be They're trying to be an abstract painter as opposed to just painting by numbers, just drawing inside numbers, right, just draw inside the all the red goes into number ones, all blue. You can paint a picture by paint by numbers.
The goal of the game, or the short game shot is to get up and to get down, right, That's it. I don't need height, I don't need spin up and down. Two percent is the up, fifty percent is the putt down. Just get it up and down. Doesn't have to be a lob over the bunker. If you don't have that shot or have practice that shot, put it out there and metrojector you give yourself fifteen feet and you might get lucky and make it right. You can made four from ten feet in your earlier test.
Lastly, I mean I've said my you know, views on this, playing versus practicing for the average golfer, right for the ten to so for the golfer trying to break one hundred and ninety and eighty for the first time advice on how much they should be practicing versus playing. Right.
I think this is a big problem with my coaching and I'm going to change it. But we need to be playing more likely practice and playing as much as possible. It's a game.
You don't.
You go play tennis, you go play golf, right, you play catch?
You're playing.
That is the game, right, And I hate my tripod and a track man and a practice too. To me, no other sport does that as long as we do. So I'm gonna change it.
Well as always. Great info, and.
Thanks for having me on man.
You got it.
Man, it's I owe just about the entire life and career to you.
Well. I couldn't do what I do without your help and your dedication. So we're in the same boat. We're indispensable. We're like an old married couple. It's funny, great talking to you, all right, sir. Thank you for everyone listening. Thank you all so much. It really means a lot to me. And we're gonna keep trying to put out content to help you improve your game. Son of a Butch comes to you every Wednesday. We will see you next week.