It's the Son of a Butsch podcast. I'm your host, Claude Harmon. This week's guest a Trillium Rose, one of the really good up and coming instructors out there just giving really good quality golf lessons. I really like her approach. I've gotten to know her over the years. She's a Golf Magazine Top one hundred instructure. She's thirty six on the Golf Died Just Top Teacher list. And listen, it's easy to just look at all of the people out on tour coaching players standing behind them. You kind of
know who they are. I've had some of them on the podcast. That's golf instruction at the highest level. You have to get lucky to get a player. You have to be in the right place at the right time. So there are so many instructors that maybe you don't know their name. But Trillian is one of the good ones, and she works hard. She really is blending that kind of mix between classic golf instruction and technology, and I think she's someone that everyone will really enjoy listening to.
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cool stuff, kind of the how she blends. She's got a degree in kind of how people learn, and I think that's really important, the way that golfers learn, and we talk about that and how she uses her base of knowledge in how people learn and then applies it to how players can get better. So really good interview which I think you all are going to really like. My guest today is Triliam Rose Trillium one of the up and coming golf instructors I think in the game
right now. But before we get to all of your golf instruction superpowers. This injury that I've seen on Instagram. I mean, you're on crutches, you had surgery. The hell happened?
This is a little embarrassing. Well, it was playing ice hockey.
That's smart.
Yeah, Well I like ice hockey. You play it, and I.
Play with the group of women in the winter, which is fine. But these are a group of guys and they're on the like one to five years into it, so not not total beginners.
But you know, guys are a little bigger.
I was.
I was on d in front of the net, loose puck, someone kind of body weight on my back. I'm supporting, little weight. I didn't fall, and then someone else whacked the standing leg I know, soft ice. My skate didn't move and the anterior fhibula is snapped.
If one of your golfers told you the story, what's the first thing that you would tell the why are you playing ice hockey?
No, the first thing you'd say is ice hockey? Why are you playing ice hockey? Exactly in that voice.
It is injuries. I think there are a lot of people listening to the podcast that they have their big golfers. They love golf, golf is a huge part of their life, and they get injured, they tear their acl playing basketball or stuff like that. How do you feel, as adults, the best way to come back from an injury.
You know, I've learned it quite a bit about bone breaks. You know, I'm well into my forties, and I think after the teenage years, our bones just start to become more brittle. We don't have as much blood flow or injury recovery timelines or longer. You know, kids. My surgeon called it like green green shoots.
You know.
The bones are almost not rubber, obviously, but they're different. So we've got to look at this. And I've been looking at this on a slower timeline with a lot more patients. And I think what's helped me specifically is taking my expectations out of my day to day. So usually I'd expect to be able to take a shower quickly. No, it's not happening or everything.
Everything.
Expectations are just out the window, and my priority is healing and doing the best thing I can do in a day to day with whatever I'm supposed to do.
I think a lot of golfers when they do get injured, I say this to players all the time. No athlete has ever taken too long to come back from an injury, right, everybody takes the minimal amount of time. They come back early. We see this a lot in our golfers that have
shoulder injuries, risk injuries, knee injuries, back injury. They get told the rest, maybe they have some surgery, but they immediately want to push getting back out on the golf course, getting back out to hitting golf balls, especially now as we're in the middle of the summer. For you, you live on the East Coast in the United States, you spend a lot of time to where a lot of your students aren't able to get out and play golf. They have to hit balls inside in simulators things of that nature.
It's hard to be patient when you're coming back from an injury to do the rehab, to listen to kind of your body, but also to listen to your doctors as well.
That's totally right, especially if you don't I don't know. I don't My threshold for pain is probably higher than it should be, right, So I'm one of these people that I don't want to take the pain meds if I don't have to, because I know that the signal for me is really important, the signal being ouch, right, So if I don't feel that out, I'm just going to I'm going.
To keep going. I'm going to keep I'm going to keep pushing it.
Oh I can put a little weight, Well, maybe I can put a little more weight.
Oh I can go fast.
Why don't I see if I can go a little faster, right, And I don't you know, I know, I don't begrudge myself for wanting to push it and be competitive and move forward to a point right if it's going to hurt the process.
And I think that's really hard and Lovy, like.
You said, you want to you want to get out there and you want to play, you want to be part of it, you want to be relevant, you want to keep going. So I think there's definitely a push and a pull mentally on that.
A lot of people listening to this podcast will be coming out of whether they're in Europe or whether they're, you know, in a cold climate in the United States. So we'll be coming out of a time to where, Okay, we're getting into kind of the middle of summer. How do you talk to players troll about the difference between when you can't get out on the golf course, when you're hitting golf balls inside. You feel like there should
be kind of winter training and then summer training. If you live in a climate where you have to deal with both.
I don't think people always have a choice, Like that's sort of the way the way you are personally. I have a hitting bay in the winter. We can open the bay door we can hit balls into the snow or ice, or we can close the door and hit it into a net. So I've seen both cases be incredibly useful. What I've seen as an instructor is having an off season where you can, as I call it, lift up the hood, get into the engine, replace some parts.
Do you.
Your changeovers that you need, you want to change, you know, an issue in the takeaway, It's a great time to do it. Why because you can really think about those technical changes. Not a great time to be thinking when you're leading up to a big tournament. So I mean it's classic periodization right where you're going to try to peak for your highest performing you know, stuff on your schedule, and you don't have to peak all year round.
It takes a lot out of you.
So I kind of like having I don't know, im Florida's toughy Florida, Texas, California, Southern California, those warmer climates, I mean, those areas don't really have off seasons, and some of these players you know you're working with, you don't really necessarily have off You just kind of have to fit it in when you can fit it in. I think you know, based on your tournament schedule. But yeah, for the recreational golfer, I'm a huge fan of having
those times where you can hit into a net. I'm a huge even in the summer, you have a net you can hit into, you take away the outcome, and you take away a player's you know they're trying to make a change and suddenly they hit a bad shot. That feedback of that bad shot can be very misleading that maybe they didn't do what they're trying to do. However, you could be doing what you're trying to do. You just happen to hit it on the puzzle, so you
think you did a bad shot, right. So, but if you have a net, you take away that outcome and then you give someone a chance to really get into the feel of this wing. So yeah, I'm a fan of the net, and.
I think golfers are so outcome oriented, right, It's always thinking about what the outcome is. And one of the things that I try to say to students is to just listen. If we stick with the problem, you know the process of what it takes. If we kind of know the recipe of what you're trying to do. If we follow the recipe, we've got a much better chance to get to something that tastes good as opposed to if we have no idea what we're doing and we're just going to try and throw a bunch of ingredients
at it. I know that motor learning is something that you are very very passionate about that You've spent a lot of time doing the research and doing a lot of work in that area. Why do you think golfers don't get better? Truly? I mean, I think taking lessons a big part of it. But golfers, I think are so hard on themselves. Their expectation levels are so high.
But I'd be really interested in your take on how golfers learn and things that people listening could say, Okay, if I'm going to try and take a lesson, I always try to talk about taking a lesson from the students standpoint, what are the questions you should be asking, what are the things that you should be looking for in an instructor? But from a learning standpoint, how do you think golfers learn their best.
This is my favorite topic. Everybody. We didn't even talk ahead of this. Yeah, he just knew what to ask.
Done this before.
You've done this before, and we all can relate to this no matter where. You aren't on this level of skill with any sport really that you're playing.
You're playing in a certain.
Whatever your sport, let's call it golf, and you have some level of competency and you know you have a certain feel for things. But then you look at the result and you said, well, I shot an eighty four. I don't really want to shoot eight. I want to shoot a seventy four. Okay, we've got to look at why why things aren't right. So this is why I like arcos, I like repsodo, I mean, I like these, I like track man, I mean I like ways to figure out why we're not doing what we want to
be doing. You can look at your stats, you can look at your you can look at your club data, your ball data. Okay, so you figure out what you need to do and then you figure okay, well I need to move the ball differently. We need to change our behavior, our motive behavior, you got to change something you're doing in your swing. And let's say you have
a fundamentally risky motor pattern. Let's suppose it's like, I don't know, you're not rotating your pelvis very much and you rely on a lot in your hands and some some wrist angles for example. To make a change is hard and it's uncomfortable. So if the very first stage of that is is, well, I've got to think about what I'm doing differently, and you're and you're about to go and play a lot of golf that summer, thinking
about doing something differently doesn't really jive with playing golf. Okay, So right off the bat, you've got to be realistic with yourself about ay, how much you're going to play, or how much you're going to play and the line on the score, or how much you're going to be able to practice until that that feeling becomes less uncomfortable.
Right.
That is a big amount of work, and I think a lot of people either don't know how to do it, or they don't have someone who can help them, or they don't know what the feel needs to be right, or they're not willing to actually put the work in to make that change. I mean, those are all just right off the top of my head. There are people that are totally willing to commit to make those adjustments
and those motor pattern changes. And those people tend to have a very disciplined sense of how to set their practice up so that every time they are hitting a shot and they're making a repetition, they're making a quality attempt to do it the way they're trying to do it, as opposed to like you said, which you were spot on hit and then respond hit and then look at the look at the outcome.
Because if you're waiting.
For the outcome to give you to give you like, oh I did it right or not, you've already lost You've lost the point. Because the point is not to just swing the way you void's done it and hope for something different, but actually to have a plan, like a clear intention and then make a change. And like on the front end another orson, you're going to think you're going to do something differently, I'm going to do something differently. I'm going to I'm going to initiate my
pelvis or whatever. Back to that one example, and then do it and then figure out whether you did it or not right afterwards, like give yourself some good feedback. So you can do that with video if you want, or you need someone to or you need a training in aid, or you need something to give you a good sense of whether or not you can adhere to your intention on that.
I remember watching my dad teach once and he was having someone try and work on the backswen was going a little bit too inside, so he was trying to get him to take it a little bit more outside. And the player said, now that just feels terrible. And he said something that's always stuck with me, and he said, well, if it didn't feel terrible, it wouldn't mean that, it would mean that you weren't changing anything. It didn't feel very very different, very very foreign to what you normally do.
That shows you that you're making a change. And I think so many golfers are reluctant to kind of go through that period. I don't I don't believe that when you take a golf lesson you have to get worse before you get better. But I do think there is always going to be kind of that betting in period to where okay, my fields are different now I'm used to you know, I've got that kind of slicers inside backswing and then come massively over the top. That gets
ingrained in your golf swing. And that's why people do what they do, because they form a habit of the way they move and the way their body moves and the way they move the golf club. So I do think that it is hard for a lot of players to stick with it long enough for a change to happen. Is there a time frame, Trillium that you've kind of looked at through all your studyings of motor learning and stuff?
I mean, how long do you think it takes for players The average golfer who's going to play golf maybe once a week, maybe hit golf balls once a week. That's not what we see from professional golfers who are making changes in their golf swings all the time.
All the time. It's their job, and they go out every day. They go every day. And you know, if you played any high school or college sports, you went out every day too, right, let's not forget every day. So for some reason, we've got this idea that we can take a lesson once a week, and once a week would even be a pretty quick cadence for a recreational golfer, they're like, what once every two weeks, Well,
what are you doing within that two weeks? So there's no definitive repetition timeline about pattern changes because every pattern change is different for some people. So for example, if you been swinging a certain way for twenty years and you're then trying to make a change, that's that is a deeply ingrained habit. Like you just said, that's going
to take some time. So I respect those I respect those players, and I respect those patterns greatly because you know, it's got to be worth it got to be well worth making that change, right, because it's going to take a lot of time if you're sort of still green, or you're still new, or it's or you know, I always love the player who's always tinkering and so like, they could do lots of different things. I kind of say that sarcastically, because sometimes that can be very, very dangerous.
If someone's may makes lots of changes all the time, then they're capable of, like anything's capable of bubbling to the top. I'd almost rather see somebody not make drastic swing changes all the time. So they kind of have a big It's like if you're water coloring with lots of colors, you end up with just brown. So timeline, Hey, it depends on the player if you want to go, if you want to go pretty quickly and making that
change and not telling you anything you don't know. But from a motor learning standpoint, you want to do small doses frequently as opposed to massing your large time of practice infrequently. So ten minutes every day. If you can get ten minutes, if you get fifteen minutes, if you can get an hour every day, that's better than doing
a big massive It's like going to the gym. Go to the gym every day, do something every day, even if it's little, rather than go to the gym once every two weeks for two hours.
So yeah, because I do think when players are trying to make swing changes, they don't realize. I mean, first of all, I think golfers, recreational golfers are so influenced by television. I think the only real negative effect of Tiger and his career have been how many different times he's changed his golf swings. We're always talking about when he is changing his golf swing, and people think, okay, yeah, I'm just going to change my entire golf swing with
what I do. Get Number one, how talented professionals are that do that, How frequently they are practicing playing hitting golf balls. So I think it's it's somewhat at times it's like it's glamorous to go through a swing chains and I'm thinking that's the worst possible scenario to be in as a golfers where you have to make a massive, massive change.
On that point, I love Dustin Johnson. I love when he says an oppressor, okay, what do you think about when you just shot sixty two and he's like, not much, and then you've got two million club golfers saying, well great, I'm not going to think about much either.
What helps to be? It helps if you're DJ, it always helps. The talent level with DJ is always it's always helpful to have that. But no, I think you're right, and I think that. I also think it's important, truly to understand part of our job as instructors. You know this, we're part psycholog just as we are instructors. You're trying to figure out what type of learner the student is. I think for those of us in the instruction business.
You take a lot from what that person does for a living, right, if they are an engineer, if they are in finance, if they are in you know, R and D, or in any sort of development in tech. They're wired differently than someone who's a musician, an actor, someone who's much more creative. So I also think it's incumbent upon instructors listening to this. But you have to
know what type of learner your student is. You have to ask the right questions so that you can say, Okay, what type of approach am I going to have with
this player. So as much as we're trying to figure out how players from a motor learning standpoint, for the instructors out there listening, what are some tips some tools that you think you could take from your background in all of this motor learning that instructors could take and say, listen, Okay, maybe I should try and phrase this a certain way. Are there any tips or tricks that you use that you think could be helpful for the instructors listening?
Sure?
Sure, and I'm sure there's a lot of good we pulled. Everyone everyone have their own processes that some of them work too. I always ask, right, off the bat. Why somebody is with me? Because I know you don't see that many You don't see that many new players, right, Claude, No, I still do.
Listen, I've got I've got academies in Dubai, just opened up one in Thailand. Anytime I go there, I'm giving golf lessons. Yeah, I mean, I tend to work with
some of the good elite juniors. But I was in Thailand about a month ago opening up my new academy and I had I think, I think we had seventy jew years who were not elite juniors, a lot of which were beginning golfers that I had to that I had about an hour and a half to two hours to get through all seventy and so I always say when I'm in that situation, in my head, I'm thinking, Okay, this is to me as an instructor, this is speed chess.
This isn't me sitting there having tons of time to look at a chessboard and kind of plan my moves and stuff. I'm probably going to see each of those players for maybe three to five minutes, just because I've got to try and get through a lot of them. And I'm always trying to figure out, Okay, what can I do very very quickly that can make a significant change to the ballflight, to the sound of the contact really really quickly. So yeah, I mean, listen, I'm not
Sean Foley right falls only works with superstars. Now, if you're not a billionaire or an elite golfer, Sean Foley isn't teaching. And he'll tell you that. I mean, it's not a it's not a disc on Seean. But yeah, I still I think I don't ever want to get to a point where I'm just working with elite players. That's not the reality for me of what golf instruction is. Golf instruction is helping people at all levels. So yeah, I know I still work. I still I mean my
club at the Floridian, it's a private club. I still have to teach the members their wives, girlfriends, uncles, kids and stuff. So yeah, I still teach you. If I love.
I pick it up right there. And you said in the initially you said type of learner, And I'll pick up right there, you know, because people are wired, they think differently, and they want different things.
And they and they love.
I love the idea that I could find somebody somebody's job. Initially if I asked, always care, not caring about what they do necessarily because I want to chit chat as much as I want to find out how their brain works.
And I have taught a NASA scientist who work on rockets, and that person would happen to be really receptive of the numbers, really receptive and understood numbers way more than the average person very quickly, probably better than I understood the numbers is when I first started working with them, right.
But then at the same time, somebody who hasn't really played a lot of sports, they may need to have some feels and may even if they are great with numbers, they still need to have some examples of how to get the feel going. So I like giving a lot of demonstrations. I like, and I also put my hands on people after I ask, but I might and I might break the and might break the move down, so
it's smaller. If someone's having a really hard time getting a sense of something, I might give them here's your goal. Finish at this point, finishing follow through with your shoulder down or listening to the ground or your arms out. I might give very internal feedback, like with ways to think about moving as opposed to external feedback.
And there's a lot of discussion.
There's a lot of debate on internal versus external feedback, and I have with beginners, I tend to use a lot of internal feedback, like I might give them really hardcore examples of where they body could should and feel certain things.
For people listen that don't know the difference between the internal and external. Explain that so that I think people get a better understanding of what that is and how they can apply that to their own game and their own sway.
Yeah, so internal feedback would be a direction that that I give someone like your that's internal to their body. So a specific movement that somebody could feel like your elbow, to your to your side, feel your you know, real weight is.
Set off on your toes or your heels.
Right right, like how to do emotion. I may not do that. An external feedback would be feel balanced at the finish or let's see let's see the ball go higher, right, or let's let's have something that's outward of the actual how to do the motion.
Okay, So the external would be more of a concept. If you say, listen, we're going to try and get the club to work a little bit more from into out. Yeah, so you're going to try and feel like you're swinging out to right field or swinging to first base. The internal would be something that you would be giving the player. Okay, you're going to try and get more pressure into your right foot earlier. So that's something that they have to
feel themselves. It's not a it's a concept, but it's not a kind of eighteen thousand foot looking down on it concept. It's something that they can actually feel.
And I'd say that usually athletes do better with the external, So I might, and I might even start with external with people and then if they really have a tough time doing it, give them some internal. Okay, here's here's the big concept of what we're doing. Let's see if you can do it first. I usually do that with with with elite athletes or really really athletic folks, and then and then give them some help with the with the internal. If it's not working at all, Okay, well how do I get there?
All? Right?
Well, let's get here's some here's some ideas.
Give people some ideas.
So is one better than the other. No, I think they're both good, but I might dose them differently.
I'm always fascinated by people that have been playing golf kind of their entire life, and a lot of times they'll come in for a golf lesson and the concept of what they're doing or the concept of what they need to do to hit a good shot, they're not even aware of the concept. So in my head, I'm always like, Okay, is this a physical issue you is this a talent issue? Or is this a concept issue that they don't know they're supposed to do that. I think a lot of the work that you know, Greg
Rose and Dave Phillips mentors of mine. I know they're big mentors of yours as well. I've had them both on the podcast. I think they were the first ones to kind of talk a lot about early extension, how the pelvis, how the lower body works, what good players
do with their lower body. I think a lot of people listening to this podcast really don't have a real understanding as to how their lower body is actually supposed to work in the golf sway, right, talk to me about how you feel players could get better by controlling what their lower body does. Because I learned from my dad he used to always tell me, listen, golf swings start from the ground up. He said, I look at golf swings from the ground up, from your feet up
to the top. And I think so many golfers, especially recreational handicap mid handicap golfers, they have so much movement in what their lower body is doing, how the pelvis works. What are some things that you found that can help players understand the role and the function of their lower body in the golf swing.
This is another great topic.
So my original training, when I really decided I wanted to be a golf prone in my twenties, was with Jim McClain at the Jim McClain Golf School, and Jim and your father have always been great friends, a lot of mutual respect there, and Jim always came from the same perspective that it and your grandfather was one of Jim's mentors, which is just a nice lineage. The golf school had robbed Neil, doctor. Neil's a biomechanist who did a tremendous amount of research on three D and just
measuring folks. Rob Neil, an academic PhD in biomechanics, comes from a scientific process of just measuring, you know, like, let's just measure and see what happens. Jim to two
with two D and two D is great. Two D and three D combined kind of led to a tremendous amount of validation that any like you and your father and lots and lots of other great players at Jimmy Ballard, that that the energy in the motion comes from It's a chain reaction from from the ground up, from your feet to your pelvis, to your torso to the hands to the club in that in that in that order. So I am just a big proponent also of look at look at throwing a ball. I played lacrosse in college.
I mean there's a lot of similar sequences in different sports, especially throwing. So I look at that first, and I look at it first because I think people have stronger muscles that aren't going to break down. I call it a blunt instrument, your your sort of quad flute, hamstring, abdominal area, that lower area where you're really creating the torque with your pelvis and the ground. And I've just
seen it the players, even the older ladies. Had a lady in her eighties who just still crushed it because she had a great kinematic sequence and she can use the little body. So where are we going with this? Why it's important? I think it's really important. I think it's really important because if your lower body is doing some work, then your hands at arms don't have to
be so responsible. Now side note for a sec Someone recently showed me a video of a golf instructor online and he was talking about how important it is, like the power comes from the hands and you start. Remember even Jack Nicholas talked about this you.
Tube, I mean Jim Jackson structor. Jim felt everything in the golf swing was what happened with the golf club.
In your head, right, So okay, I hear you. However, I don't think Jack Nicholas needed He had so much leg drive he already had.
So for those that.
Are really making big points, I mean, I think even Tiger at one point said I feel like I'm starting with my hand. Well, probably because he had a tremendous amount of hip rotation and he was trying to catch them up.
That's my guess.
I mean, So for those that.
Are really pointing out hands first, I would ask, respective respectful, does that player really need is that player already starting with the hips, right, and maybe they're getting two outfront with the hips.
Yeah. I mean, I think there's a constant battle between golfers when they're swinging. It's I think most golfers are hyper hyper focused on the golf club and swinging the golf club, so they're always focused on In my opinion, just in what I've seen over the years, it's kind of from the hands to the club head. The focus
is on what that's doing. And like you said, I think one of the easiest ways to gain better control over the club head and gain better control over the golf club is to move the golf club effectively and efficiently with your body and your bigger muscles. I think most average golfers, wouldn't you agree, kind of rely on their hands for life support. Whereas the best players. I've never worked with one tour player on the men's or women's tours that have asked me, I need to get
my hands more active in the golf swing. Yeah, and every single one of them is saying, listen, under pressure, I feel like my body gets slow, my hands get really really active. That's the world that the majority of people living in this podcast the body is slow and the golf club in the hands get very very active. If you are one of those players, and I think there will be a lot of people listening today till that will feel that. Okay, yeah, that makes sense to me.
My hands get really active. I can hook it from there, I can slice it from there. What are a couple of drills that you could give basic drills to help people feel that they're activating their bigger muscles as opposed to their smaller muscles.
Ooh, I love it.
So I'm a big fan of like the fifty yard shot, the fifty yard pitching wedge shot. That low trajectory could even use a gap wedge where and I stay pitching wedge because you're not expecting it to go very far to begin with. So the drill is set up on a driving ranger. If you're near a green and you're going to make some swings without having a whole lot of extensionflexion with your wrist, you're basically going to make some big chip shots.
This is the kunt of the way Steve Stricker and Jason Day to where there isn't a lot of wrist action. It's almost that kind of oar motion instead of anything happening with the wrists.
That's that's right.
So if you're going to set up with the ball middle, you've got your pitching wedge, maybe favor the front foot a little bit, You're going to activate your abs to bring the club back. You're going to activate all of these bigger muscles to rotate. I didn't sometimes call it a y, like if your arms in the club are making a letter, why.
Just kind of keep that?
Why intact back and through?
So in order to get.
The club through, you're going to have to rotate your trunk and everything. So that just wakes up the body and quiets down the wrists.
I also think what you said there is a great way of doing it. The shorter the golf swing. If you've got a pitching wedge and you're let's say you could hit your pitching wedge one hundred, one hundred and fifteen,
one hundred and twenty five, whatever the distance is. I think the advantage of doing that is anytime we're asking players to make a shorter, more abbreviated backswing and a more abbreviated fullllow through, we're taking a lot of their ability to get energy from their arms and their hands for power. So I think when you do make that little of nine o'clock waist tied back, waist, tied through swing with the pitching wedge, it kind of puts you
in a battle between your lower body. Your bigger muscles are battling how much your smaller muscles, your hands, and your arms want to move. And so in order to hit the golf ball solid with a pitching wedge that you could maybe hit one hundred and fifteen yards, we ask you to hit that fifty and have the follow through the short, have the back fling short. You have to figure out, Okay, where is the power going to
come from? And I think it's a great way for you to If that's hard for a player to do, then I think that's a really good example of saying, Okay, you're probably someone that's probably using your smaller muscles more than your bigger muscle. Yeah, because that's hard for you to do. So to control the golf club in this short period of time and in this short kind of backswing and follow through, you're going to have to get the power from somewhere else.
From somewhere else, that's right, And ding ding, ding, If that's hard, that means you should probably keep doing it.
Exactly the balance in twenty twenty four with technology, we have so much tech now drill in golf instruction, there's so much technology available, launch monitors. You and I are big fans of Rhapsodo, but there are loads of launch monitors out there, force plates, three D, all of that. The balance as an instructor in balancing how much data you give to a player, how much data you use, and what are some of the tech out there that you think are very, very beneficial that can help golfers
across a wide spectrum. They can help the average golfer and help the elite golfer. The role of technology today, what it plays in golf instruction, and then what tech do you like to use to kind of make changes faster with players.
I think tech has been a huge, huge help to golf. And there have been some double edged swords in this, but generally speaking, the the amount of information we know now about the swing and about the outcome of the swing with data that the you know, data crunching on tour in our own swings has been monumental. So I'm
a huge fan in general. Now when we're looking at something on you know, a still photo like we started with still photos right, or we started cartoons practically, I mean, my dad taught me how to play based on some hand drawings and magazines, so you know, get to that position at the top, Okay, get to this position, you know, leading in Okay, P six scarring to be here?
So is that was that bad?
No?
I mean I think my dad gave me some pretty good info. But we know more now when we see it in motion, and we can we can understand when we see the swing, we know even more if we can see it in three D and we know even more we can see the force vectors and the pressure we can and we know more. We can actually measure where that swing direction of the club was coming from, or the angle of attack or the point of contact,
or the spin or the launch angle. So I'd say if for the first step is I think as a player is find an instructor who's willing to accept technology and has done their job, you know, using launch monitors or understanding kind of where where things are as a player. I don't think every player needs to hear and see and look.
At all of their data.
It just just in the same way that I'm going to let my surgeon do his job and I'm not going to ask him to tell me exactly what he's thinking in every step in the way. Because I didn't go to medical school, I didn't do a residency, he didn't spend twenty years doing surgery. I don't actually need to know all that. I just want him to do his job right. But if he were doing surgery in an office with no instruments, that would be on me that I didn't do my homework to find a good surgeon.
So I think the same way about instructors. Are there good instructors that are on a driving range and they haven't used everything? Yes, I can think of one, maybe Bob Tosky. I mean he's pretty dang good, right, I don't think Bob Tosky's using a lot of tech.
So my dad doesn't use a ton of tech. I mean he believes in it, he sees the value in it. He grew up in an age. You know, he's eighty one in August. He grew up in an era to where he didn't have any of that, so he had to figure it out another way. He always says that if you're just relying on technology to give golf lessons, you're probably going to miss something. If you're only using your eyes and you're not looking at technology for specific things,
you could miss something as well. For the player, what technology do you think? Give me a couple of pieces of technology you think could help every goal for if they could use it on a regular basis.
Carry distances, knowing your carries is probably the biggest one for me. Right, Having a launch monitor that you can use on a driving range and understand what your carries
and your totals are boom like, that's that's huge. If you knew your path in your face, the club path and the face angle, I mean, you can pretty much infer that when you see the ball, when you see the ball travel, you can kind of okay, I cut across it with an open face, that's your slice, or I kind of got stuck inside and I flipped my hands and I'm smother hooking it. I mean, if you understand some basic things, and I don't think I mean, just back to your father for a second. I don't
think your father has ever refuted technology. It's just you know, he wasn't picking up a track man and deciding to use it himself, right, But it's hit that information. He definitely took on tons of information as tech was growing, wouldn't you say?
Yeah? I mean I think he looks at all the information and I don't mean this when I say this, I don't mean this in an arrogant way. I've talked to Greg Rose and Dave Phillips about this. They're like, your dad, every time a player comes in, your dad is telling them the right thing to work on. And he said, if they can't do it and we physically screen them, it'll show up. The reason why they can't do what he's trying to get them to do in the golf swing will be whatever they aren't able to
do physically. So I think he's probably seen that's been validation for him in that he's like, yeah, okay, well that I've been out to the TPI with players with my dad before, and Gregan and David like, listen, you're trying to get this. You're what you're trying to get
this player to do is exactly what he needs. The reason he can't do that is because he can't internally rotate onto whatever it is and then in a in a in a millisecond, he'll go, oh, yeah, that makes total sense in his brain the way it figures out. We know that.
But Jarmon, though has is is but Jarman for all the for all the other up and coming instructors or instructors that are looking to, you know, to build their craft. I think it's helpful to have some evidence on kinematic sequencing and pressure and all that stuff.
You mentioned. Jim McClain, I mean, he's one of the icons in golf instruction, you know. I think that Jimmy doesn't get enough credit for all the things that he bought and tried to figure out. I think, you know, Jim's legacy is people like yourself. There's so many people whose lives he's touched. What are some of the things that you learned in your time with Jim that has really stuck with you over the course of your teaching career.
Where do we start?
You're quite I mean, Claude, your questions are like anthem questions. You can spend the whole hour on that. One of the first things Jim said that I'll never ever forget so was when I was probably a month into working with Jim and his golf schools have a pretty specific system. You've got to start as an assistant, and that's a hard job to get. I know, there's a lot of people that would want that. So it's it's a year,
two years, and then you're watching instructors. There's there's maybe ten to twelve instructors, and you're watching instructors, you're setting up the golf school, you're doing all kinds of these very tight, tight, tight knit group. There's about thirty and you're there quite a bit. So my interest was so much into the golf swing because that's why we were there, right, that was why we're there studying the golf swing, understanding the golf swing. Jim had just come out with that
that four part series of Ben Hogan. He'd broken down like every two seconds of the guy's golf swing went into like ten minutes on each one. So Jim was walking down the path and I was walking with him, and a player had just it was a put with a pretty unusual golf swing, and I said, how about that win and how about that swing? And Jim looked at me and said, well, the golf swing's overrated. I love that, and it stopped me in my tracks. And
it took me a while to think about it. And I thought about it, and it really made a ton of sense that it's not about what it looks like. It's not about making certain things happen because you think they should. It's about what the swing can.
Do, and is it repeatable, And it's.
Repeatable and it's repeatable under pressure, right.
My uncle Billy, My uncle Billy said that we were in I think I've said this before on the podcast, but we were in Vegas where my dad was working with Tiger and Adam Scott and Scotty and Tiger are there and they're hitting balls. It's like two thousand and one, and my uncle Billy was there and he said, you know what I find fascinating is every instructor in the world, and every golfer in the world wants to be talked to swing like Tiger Woods at Adam Scott, and everybody
wants to swing like Adam Scott and Tiger Woods. And he said, but two of the greatest ball strikers I've ever seen, hail Irwin and Lee Trevino. Hailerwin was closed, took it inside, came over it and hit fades. Trevino hit draws was open, took it outside, dropped it under, and he said, nobody tries to teach anyone to putt like that. You know, I've talked to Phil Kenyan about this before. You know, Phil's kind of the putting guru. I've had him on the party, works with Scottie Scheffler
and everybody. But I've heard living down here in Jupiter that one of the things that has always kind of pissed off Jack Nicholas is no one ever comes and asks him about putting. They ask him about how did he do it, and handling pressure and winning and all this stuff. And I heard someone say once that Jack was like, you know, it's amazing to me that I pretty much, I mean, Jack made everybody had to make. Was probably other than Tiger, the greatest pure performance putter
of all time. And he said, nobody ever asked me. But the method that Jack used with the elbow and the kind of squatted over it doesn't look like anything you would want to teach, but it was one hundred percent functional. Truly have that balance that everybody has. I think most golfers, very few golfers like their golfings, even on the professional level. I worked with Trevor Immlman. For a long time, trev hated his golf swinging at a time when Adam Scott and Tiger Woods used to tell me,
Trev's golf swing looks amazing. The balance between what you want your golf the function versus the style, I think so many golfers get wrapped up into the style of what they want their golf swing to look like as opposed to the function of what their golf swing does and what their body can do. How can you help players balance that out?
Yeah, for sure, I'm online all function and I think this is another way tech has helped because it's beyond just video. You know you can you can it's a I like the skill thinking about skill rather than the you know, the way somebody looks doing it. And that's really because our human body is are so complicated and they're just really a bunch of chemicals in our brains. You've got a thought, You're trying to make that thought output through your central nervous system into your motor neurons.
There's a lot that goes from here into the output before before you see the result of that. There's a lot of influence and to create something the same way every time, especially if it's if it's not comfortable or something comfortable to be familiar to you, it can take a tremendous amount out of you. So I think people look at it the wrong way when they're thinking I want it to be a pretty swing or I want it to look like that. I like function because function
also you don't have to think as much. You know, right, why are we worrying about what the way it looks? I mean, there are certainly players, Like I have a guy that doesn't always believe what I'm saying, so I show him a video or write and that helps him. But like I don't even say things anymore.
And just show it to him.
And there are people that don't need to know a single thing about what their swing looks like. Okay, I have a guy if I just if I set the launch monitor, he just he's like, Okay, I get it. I want that number positive, a low positive number, and I'm going to be okay, right, And that's good. I like that because he can then kind of work with the feel and then work with trying to make that motion happen.
Yeah. I was working earlier today with Marina Alex who I've had on the podcast for Marina plays on the LPGA. We were working on swing catalyst and we were looking at where her weight is distributed between at impact. One of Marina's issues is she kind of, like a lot of golfers, in an effort to get power. She's not the tallest, you know, she's five to three. She's had some back issues. She carries the golf ball with her
driver about two thirty to two forty. But last year on the LPGA tour, she had more fairways than she hit greens. Figure that one out. So she drives the golf ball on a string. But one of the problem that she has, like a lot of players, is in an effort to try and get power, she makes this massive move off the golf ball, especially with her drivers, where she gets almost ninety percent of her weight at the top of her backswing on her right leg, her trail leg, and then it makes it very difficult for
her not to stay back there. So this morning we were hitting golf balls, Like you said, we were using technology, and I was like, listen, we know that when you play poorly, you kind of get into that situation to where at impact you can kind of sometimes get fifty to fifty with your weight at impact, maybe sometimes sixty
forty on the right as opposed to the left. So we were looking at the numbers, and I was just giving her a bunch of drills and a bunch of things to say, listen, okay, we just need to try and keep increasing how much weight you have on your
front foot at impact. So I said, if we can just get it to fifty to fifty, and then if we can just keep moving it to where you say, all right, and then we would hit some shots, do some drills, and Thatt' say okay, now feel like you've got sixty percent of your weight on your front footed impact. Now get it to seventy. In some drills this morning we got it to where it was like eighty. But we've probably in the last three four months we've probably changed.
He's probably gone from kind of more weight on her right leged impact with her irons to now we're starting to get into that sixty seventy percent on her lead foot at impact. So that's something where I think showing person up player just basic just numbers. Hey, listen, we just need more weight on your front foot. This piece of technology shows us that on the bad one you've got more weight on your right footed impact than you
do on your front foot. And then I think it's easy for players when they are looking at stuff like that, to make changes quite easily. You talked about launch monitors. One of the reasons why I'm a huge fan of rapsodo listen to the pod on a regular basis. They know that. You know I'm a huge fan. I know you are as well. But launch monitors are coming down
in price. They're they're making it much more affordable for the average golfer to where it's not the price of you know, a four door k a mid sized car. Right for players that are going to work on a launder. Give me three metrics on a launch monitor that you would like a player to look at that you think could be beneficial.
Okay, wedges trajectory, so I like thirty degrees and under.
For your distance wedges, But Jark, you're going to need some higher higher trajectories.
If you're that's and that's launch angle.
That's launch angle, Yep, you'll be You'll be looking at a soft little shot, okay, but you're not going to swing very fast. You're going to need to control your landing angle by the by the launch angle. In other words, you're going to get it to stop based on the launch angle going up. But there are some longer shots you're going to hit where you're going to you're going
to do it with spin. So let's look at either your spin or you can look at your You can see how the ball reacts on the green, but that launch angle can really help keep the launch a little lower than you might think. How about your launch angle with the driver massive massive, So I like people to take a look at that, because what.
Are we looking for.
We're looking for a higher launch, not super high, but you want enough launch and you want the spin to be down so you can carry it optimally.
Yeah, and high launch low spin is kind of the holy grail of driver fitting. And I think a lot of that is speed dependent and player dependent. I mean, god, Dustin Johnson, he plays his best when he's right around like eighteen hundred in spin to kind of twenty one hundred. If you have no speed, that's death. You can't you
can't get away with that. And if you look at a guy like Rory McElroy with his driver, Rory is hitting up massively on his driver, and I think most of the average golfers listening if they were to get on a launch monitor, there are times when they hit a bad drive to where they'd actually be hitting down on it. So I agree with you that launch and spin with driver technology and iron technology, I think it can kind of paint a really really good picture distance
control with wedges. How important and what role do you feel like having a launch monitor can play in the development. Do you feel like it can speed that up if the player knows how far their swing needs to go back and through to hit it fifty seventy five, those scoring clubs, those scoring numbers.
I think this may be and this is just my opinion. I'd love to know what you think. I think the distance control with your short game could be where rap Sodo really shines the brightest. For me, You pull out a full club and you get a sense of how far it goes. Okay, But guess what, not all shots are going to be full swing, because you're going to get close to that green at some point and you're going to have to come up with a slower swing, a smaller swing. You're gonna have to come up with
something out of the blue. And figure out where you're going to land it, how are you going to do that, how are you going to practice that right? So that's another thing. People people head out to the golf course and they think they were doing so great in the range, and my question is, well, were you doing great on the range? Like was that range game really as good as you think it was? And it didn't take take
it take it out to the course. I mean, how many times did you did you did it take you to hit the shot you wanted to hit right, because you don't have more than one chance on the golf course, but you do in the driving range. The second thing on the driving range you can do or with the rough sodos you can actually measure.
You can measure right off the bat.
So if every shot really counts and you were trying to hit a thirty, a forty, a fifty yard carry shot, well you can see that. You get that feedback, and that's that is invaluable.
Yeah, I think people always ask when Dustin Johnson kind of changed his wedge game and became one of the best wedge players in the world, he got a launch monitor and basically he looks at two numbers, carry and spin and we were just at a We're just at a tournament and he was hitting his fifty two and he was like, something's off. That's going too far. He said to his brother A J. Go to the truck
check it. And he's like, either the lie or the loft is off, because that swing should produce this number. I've hit enough of these, honestly. We took it to the it was one degree flat and the loft was off by two degrees. I took it back to him and he was like, you know, I could feel that based off of the work that he'd put in. I think for the average goal for if they could just get an idea of just some baseline numbers of how far do you hit it when you what's your swing
look like when it's going back fifty yards? Video it, what's it look like when it's going back seventy five yards? Video that, and then see what the visual of it is looking like relative to what the numbers are saying.
That's that's exactly what I do. I say, go out exactly, go out find one. Just start with one swing and figure out you can easily measure, say hi like waist high. If you're going to go waist hide to waist, hie. Just make a bunch of swings, then find out how far that went. Then you have a baseline swing. So
let's say it's forty yards. Great, now you know forty, but you also know fifty, and you also know thirty because you can go a little bit bigger, faster, or smaller and slower from that baseline forty yard shot.
Really, really, I think it's great, great stuff. Lastly, Trill, you're on the Golf died just top hundred lists. You're on the Golf or of the top fifty list Golf Magazine's Top hundred instructor. We're starting to see more females in a predominantly male dominated industry. Are you starting to see more females want to not just play golf, but actually saying, listen, I'd love to get into golf instruction.
I teach a girl from Canada. She tried to play, tried to play college, she tried to play some professional At about two three months ago, she said, listen, I really want to get into golf instruction. Obviously, as one of the female instructors that are kind of doing the same things that the best male instructors in the country are doing. Do you feel we're seeing a shift to that that are there are more women and girls saying listen, I want to try and get into golf instruction.
I certainly see it. I certainly see it. I see a lot more women that are also playing with other women and making a whole thing around just having their moments on the golf course. Time you see you see someone that looks like you doing something, you know, you think, hey, I could do that too, And so there we just we're seeing a lot more imagery of women in places
that are that are pretty visible. So yeah, I think there's grounds Well, this is probably the first time that we wouldn't have had the same number of girls as boys in our program, and that's that's pretty big, you know. The last you know, the last ten years, I think golf courses have had a big uptick in in in programs that are that are you know, girlfriendly, you know us kids golf has just as many clubs for for girls. You might they might paint them pink, but they're they're
attractive to a little girl. There's nothing different in the club from a little boy except they're pink. So trying to encourage girls to come out and play. I mean, I think that's great. So yeah, I think there's a lot more. There's a lot more out there. That's that's that's for for women.
What do what do I mean by that?
I mean clothes, a lot more golf clothes. You know, you go on Instagram and you're going to see you know, you can find women, you know, certainly the original the original women that are in bathing suits. And I think that's that's that's starting to become. I don't know, is it more or less. I don't pay as much attention to that, but I think the series women playing golf and teaching golf, but I'd definitely see more of that.
Well, long may it continue. Take care of the foot, and hopefully are you going to the TPI conference in Orlando.
Yes, I'll be speaking about coaching as a team the female athlete.
There we go. Well, I didn't even know that. I'm teeing all up. I'm teeing all the good questions up to you. I will be there as well. Look forward to seeing you and take care of the take care of the foot. We need you.
Thanks Claud, great talking to you. Take care.
So cool. Chat with Trulliam Rose, and like I said, she might not be a household name, but there are there so many golf instructors out there that are just giving good quality golf lessons. And one of the cool things about having your own podcast is you can have people on that you want to pick and that you want to choose, and it's easy to go to all the superstars and golf instructions, people like my dad who's
been on. People are Mark Blackburn who's been on, people like Sean Foley who have been on, Chris Como, all of the superstars of golf instruction. But Trillium is just one of those people out there giving good quality golf lessons. I'm a fan and I really like her approach and hopefully everybody learns some stuff that they can use to shoot lower scores and enjoy their golf more. Son of It, which comes to you almost every Wednesday. We will see you next week.