Scott Fawcett

then focusing on it. You know, I never really played any aggs or anything through high school, just because I was kind of a late starter. So I went to a smaller school first in Texas, won my freshman year, and then transferred to Texas A and M and I wound up winning a tournament there and graduated, turn professional and kind of played everywhere but the one tour you want to play on over the next six years, and probably won ten or so different mini tour events on

the Hooters Tour and other places. And you know, luckily for me, I actually was kind of heart again in two thousand and two and started an electricity company when Texas te regularly electricity market and kind of ran that, you know, doing one hundred plus hour weeks for about four or five years, and then I actually wanted up becoming good friends with Chris Como, playing you know, just

friendly poker games around town and whatnot. And once I actually realized that he was a golf instructor, decided to go out and get a lesson from it. And it was the first time that I had ever heard modern ball flight logs and just everything and completely changed the

way that I view the game. And so in two thousand and eight, I decided that I was going to kind of play full time amateur golf, and you know, in hopes of winning to the US Midam and actually on getting to where I was playing well enough that I decided to enter Q school is a thirty five year old amateur and got through all four stages, went out and kind of floundered around a little bit on

the webbut CONIR nationwide tour. At the time, the game plan was originally for my wife and I had to go out and travel, and I was sitting in Phoenix for a Monday qualifier. About two months later, my wife had gotten pregnant in the interim, so I kept her at home and just something going, what am I doing here? So I just kind of screwed around for a couple of years, and then in twenty thirteen I got my

amateur statisfac again for the second time. And that was right when Mark Brody's book Every Shot Counts was coming out with all the new strokes skin statistics and whatnot, and I kept a very crude version of Strokes gained just on my own game, basically with me making up

the benchmarks not even realized. And that's what they were doing with the new shot Link data, and so I was kind of familiar with the idea all right, and all of a sudden realized from one of the excers where he talked about that Tiger was number one in the world because of his proximity from one hundred and seventy five yards and a number one twenty five only

hit it three feet further away. And that's that just kind of blew my mind, which I think Mark and I would definitely say at this point, that's, you know, not entirely like the way I read it originally was not entirely the meeting, but it gave me enough of an idea with my finance and economics and kind of statistics background, a little bit of poker, a little bit professional golf, that I could kind of create a giant spreadsheet where I introduced the strokes, gained statistics, and then

the shot pattern of you know, at the time, I was probably about a plus six or so handicap, and the theory solved course management. So I took about six months and did all that, and then the week before the Texas Amitur in twenty fourteen, I was going to play in it the following week and I got a quarters and shot in my right elbow, and the doctor caroalyzed my right arm actually for a few days, so I wound up. You know, there's a junior golfer at

my home course named Wills Ala Taurus. I actually wound up calling him and saying, hey, I can't play next week in the stadium. Can I caddy for you? And if you'll do everything I tell you to do, I promise you'll win. The kids. Was a phenomenal player, even though at the time and he hadn't really done a whole lot, but I've watched him play, you know, since he was nine years old, and the kid is amazing. So go out and caddy for him, and he wins

by thirty, so it's pretty cool. Definitely, as we were going along, I didn't really feel like I was doing anything. I mean, I was using the course of management that I had put together, but honestly, then the day I was like, I don't think this is that much different than what I was doing as a professional golfer. Anyways, But I was also watching our opponents and just listening to some of the stuff that they were saying, like targets,

and they were, you know, effectively pretty clueless. And then I'll also say, like even myself, I don't know that I would have been disciplined. I might have known the right place to in theory be aiming a golf shop, but I wouldn't have actually really been committed to trying to put it there. And yet Will was doing a

very good job of doing that well. A month later, the US Junior was down in Houston, so I went down and Kelly for him down there also, and he wins the US Junior And next thing, I've got a couple of college coaches saying, I don't know what the heck, you're telling him, but you know, congratulations really fun to watch, and it really dawned on me at that point that I kind of created, you know, Matt based system that

actually was going to be pretty easy to teach. Of course, you know, basically the course management of a guy like Tiger would take that brain and put it into a sixteen year old kid. And honestly, just watching the result over the last few years as people really put the process into play and commit to it, you seeing some

you know, some pretty cool stuff come about. So you know, next thing, you know, because SMUs here in Dallas, I'm friends with Chase Mender of the SMU coach, and I wound up giving am are there in February twenty fifteen. Bryson goes on to win the NCAA's and the US Ameters. And obviously I don't really pay attention to where a

bunch of golfers come from, buttons, I'm from Dallas. I'm certainly keenly aware that quite a few great players have been coming out of Dallas, amateurs and juniors and whatnot over the last few years. And I don't think that's a coincidence.

Could you give us like a little bit of a you know, overview of you know, kind of what what your decade system preach it?

in a much better position to score quite often. And then honestly, from the approach shots in, it's more about understanding, like we talked about all the time, the shotgun plottern you don't really have a specific idea where the ball's going. And man, just the difference in having a you know, a twenty foot birding cut from the fat side of the pen versus an up and down from the short side of the pin and the rough or a bunker.

It's just a it's a huge gain. So you're really adding up all these little fractions of shots over the course of eighteen holes. I mean again, this was designed for elite tournament golfer. We've obviously made it quite generic for any golfer to see some benefits and really realizing that it's not about just taking a nine iron and hitting it to a foot and gaining a full shot. It's about taking a nine iron and hitting it to twenty five feet and gaining a tenth of a shot,

and doing that over and over and over again. The next thing you know, you've gained you know, a full stroke with your irons versus where you normally are. It's just up to your putter, you know, which may or may not be hot on a given a week. It's funny, I've got a tour player who's putting the stats were terrible last week. Just going to text, like, hey, if you want to roll any cuts or talk about anything,

let me know. And this was a great answer because he was just like, Oh, dude, don't worry, I'm rolling it fine. You know, it's just nothing fell this week. And that's usually true. I mean, the difference in losing three strokes with your putter and gaining two, I mean obviously making five more putts, but that's just the way

the game works. I mean, it's not like if you're sitting on a petting green with the one hundred straight fifteen footers, you know you would just make one miss to make one miss too, you know, you kind of make two, three, four in a row, and then you missed maybe five sixty seven in a row, and they come in these little stretches, and so much of what I teach, even though it is, you know, like a mass based strategy system, it really winds up helping psychologically

as much as anything. Because you're like, I mean, it didn't look that was fine. I didn't do anything wrong. Now my stats look terrible, but I know I was better than that. Or sometimes your stats can kind of look really good and you also be like, oh, it wasn't that good that I got extraordinarily lucky on here, here and here, and you know, I think my job is to really help educate a player how to get to the bottom line of what was or was good.

he was the best shipper. Quote unquote schipper on tour. Well, he also was dead last in greens and regulation. So if you actually broke it out by strokes game per attempt, he's positive, he's fifty ath place on time or something like,

he's got a nice short game. But when it's a cumulus statistic, so much of it can get buried in that, like, yeah, you chip it decent, but you only hit forty seven percent of your greens, you're going to have the higher strokes gained chipping than Jason Day or somebody else who's only getting you know, three four or five attempts around. They would have to chip in once around in order to mount the cumulus amount that Brendan Todd is simply because I just pulled it up on the computer right now.

This year he is, he's losing two shots around in his strokes gained approach and he's gaining point three four six with his short game. I mean, he was okay, So here's fifth last year in total strokes gained shipping with gaining point four strokes, he was one hundred and eighty fourth and strokes gained approach the greens. So yeah, he chips at decent, but he also had more tempts than anyone else on tour every single day, so it's

not exactly fair. Kind of like Jason Day with what he did with his putter, well, I mean he gained you know, four tenth almost half a stroke more than second place in stroke skin putting. Well, he also is probably one of the more conservative players on tour, So the easiest way to make a bunch of thirty footers is to have a bunch of thirty footers, which is exactly what he did, and as a result, when he has a hot year, it looks like he's the greatest

putter on earth. If he had just hit some shot a little closer, his strokes, skin number putting would have actually gone down. These categories sometimes steal from each other. So if you're Dustin Johnson and I vombit off the t three forty and in the fair way, and that removes value, that removes exceptation from my remaining shot. It's very hard to be really high in stroke, skin driving and really high in strokes game to approach as a result, because they kind of take from each.

being in the trees an extra time or two around, and then, like I say, if you just play a solid shot from there, like the trees are about the only place in golf you can go out and intentionally gain roughly a third of a stroke every single time you do it. I mean, there's just no other shot that's easy. It's just they're giving strokes away. And that's mainly because the tour players are so bad at it, which obviously has a trickle down back to your listeners

of ander golfers, they're most likely just as bad. It's the easiest place on earth to pick a value against against your.

So it's but a guy like Jason Day who's playing a little bit more conservatively, who winds up with a few extra thirty footers around well, and he's also having a season where he's making quite a few of them, Well that's going to wind up mounting to a huge number. But yeah, I mean there is a certain biason there certainly that can either help or hurt you. It's not quite as bad as the other ones though.

the same kind of quality of shots. So in theory it wouldn't do that, but it simply does just because again, the better you drive at the lower your remaining expectation, you still have to hit a very quality shot now to get it inside of it, and almost of any bad shot you get really penalized.

how do I change something? But beyond that, a guy like Mark Brody what he created a strokes game like, I mean, that's just genius, like for me to say here's what I would like to see. I mean, honestly, I've been so busy that stuff. I haven't even thought about what I would like to see. I just take what hopefully a smart guy like Mark Creed and be like, okay,

now what can I do for that? But you know, the one thing that I would say that should happen is the strokes gained around the green should definitely be boiled into per attempt. You could do strokes gained putting rather than how they give you know, your may crate your averages on you know, every every foot from inside ten feet. I mean again that that may creates nice, but a strokes gain per attempt for each distance bucket and putting would be nice. Same thing strokes gain per

attempt at various areas in the fairway. But I honestly don't even know if the math of that would be allowed because the way they actually recomputed on each hole on each course to get a different benchmarking baseline. Which that's the reason I was asking the question what do you mean a second ago, because so there's a couple other stats programs out there aside from our decade app that offers stroke skain driving, which is it's completely bocused.

You cannot use a benchmark in order to create stroke skain driving, like can you use it in putting? I mean, it's flawed, but it's about right, and you're probably going to get a nice trend where you can see if you're doing better or worse. It's flawed a little bit,

but it's at least acceptable. But with driving, if you and I are both entering our stats into just a random staff portal, and your home course is Harbortown and my home course is Augusta, and we're using a benchmark, so a three hundred yard drive in the fairway gains a quarter of a stroke in theory, Well, if I'm playing Augusta, I'm going to get to hit a whole bunch of three hundred yard drives and never put him

in the trees. You playing Harbor Town are going to get to hit a whole bunch of two hundred and twenty yard two irons that are in the trees all day long. There's no chance your stroke skin driving is not going to look horrific, and you might be a

much better driver the golf ball than me. And I mean, so that's you know, We've got a deal right now where the entire PAC twelve is going to come in and use our portal next year, and so we'll actually be able to create a stroke skiing statistic that is correct within a tournament because I'll have you know, six teams entering their data, so that is that is possible on the same course. We're all on the same day. So if you hit a three hundred I've hit at

two to eighty, you're in the fairway. I'm in the fairway. Your drive is better than my period, and we can kind of actually ferret out some sort of useful information from that. But to just take someone's home course and compared to the benchmark is extraordinarily flawed.

would have. So, you know, if you were going to hit into a fairway bunker at one hundred and forty yards, that fairway bunker at won forty expectation on tours three point two to two, And I said, okay, we'll hit it in that bunker twenty percent of the time and the fairway x percent. And like I just did some basic expectation map to choose what club to hit off the tee, and from that I came up with you know,

what I considered originally like these rules of bombs. So it was that there are sixty five yards between penalties show hazards. You know, you can hit driver fairly, doesn't pens it less than forty yards you can hit driver, and just a few rules of thumb like that. And only after in twenty fifteen looking at every you know, I had a couple of tour clients then when I first got started, and I looked at every single course

on tour. And I hate saying, this is a guy who's played professional golf for you know, almost twenty years. It's kind of a lay person with regards to architecture. But I never really realized how formulaic golf courses are designed. I don't know if that's something they teach you in golf architects school, like, hey, you don't want to have two legs that are only fifty five yards apart on a four hundred and eighty yard goal. You just don't

see that combination. And so from there, instead of having the rules that I'm just being written like, I could actually create like a slow chart, a decision tree, if you will, where you're are there sixty five yards between penalty hazards, yes, and cool drivers still in play? Is this and then you can work yourself through. And that was based on a combination of shot patterns, a combination of expectation, masks. But then more than anything, just how

they're designed. You just don't see, you know, a fairway bunker, pinch it into fifteen yards very often without giving you the option of either carrying it or leaving short of it. And there's just so many things like that that I never, I certainly never just noticed until doing it, you know, like I said, looking at every single course over the course of a couple of.

nine doesn't give you quite enough room. Number eighteen there's a lake on the left that is only thirty yards away from the mestiite trees on the right. Well, what happened there was there used to be a giant tree that they lost in a storm, and so when they lost that tree on the left, that's when they decided to dig into bunkers afterwards. And my understanding is that DA was that the architect was telling the people like, hey, you're sticking this this lake in way too close. It's

going to be stupid. And they said, well, the sponsors want and you can see it better on TV. It's beautiful. And he's like, that's fine. Can make the whole bag. Yeah, spin thing with like number eleven, this driveable par four where there's just one silly little bunker. I get the bunker in the middle of the fairway thing, but there's no there's no option around most of them, and that's

the same way I'm fifteen the par five. They're like, if you want to give them a spot of the side of the fair where I can choose to go this way. Well, now I can avoid that bunker with skill, But that's when it's just a normal thirty five yard white fair with the bunker sitting right in the middle of it. There is nothing with skill that you can do to avoid it. It's basically luck. You know. That's

that's kind of silly in my opinion. And again it's one of those things with people, I guarantee, with not even the tour players being able to put their finger on it once you sit down explain to them, well, this whole stupid, Like, oh my god, it is stupid. I never really thought of why. But you just don't see that set up very often, if ever. And you know that course, it's my home course, I shouldn't rag it, or not my home course, my home city course. I

shouldn't rag on it too hard. But that course has three or four things that you just literally never see anywhere else.

Google Images. It's all over Sirtsalla air fights. You can't really see anything, but one green is about nine yards wide. The whole four thirty seven you kind of need to hit. It looks like a three wood off the tee, so you're gonna be left with one fifty or sixty. And the green between a lake and a bunker is ninety yards wide. And that's the width of the back part of tennant Riviera, a.

is where it gets really interesting sometimes. Is so the way decade works is I give you, I give you a yard, is that you need to be aiming it for starters what we call the baseline from any edge of the green, and from there, during your practice rounds, I teach you how to rate all of the surrounding hazards with what we call our modifiers. And then the sum of those two numbers is how far you aim at from the edge of the green. So this one

they need to be aiming. Let's say you have two hundred yards left, they got to be aiming about thirteen is yards from any edge. Well, that basically had them covering it into almost the backfringe. And this is again where sometimes it's Man, it's really hard to appreciate this. But even in that scenario, in theory the way I've talked about aim, that has been a Facebook debate going on here. I consider aim just the center of your shot pattern, because you might be a wide up in fader,

I might be a closed hooker. I might be a closed fader and you know, some guy at a pole cut. In this situation, you have to know where the center of your shot pattern is, and then you have to trust that if you've done your work, about half the time you're still going to land it on the green just fine, and about half the time you're going to hit it long and probably in a pretty screwy spot.

And even in that scenario, if you have to go with your chip shot, because the chip shot is going to for sure land on the green and go across in the water, well then you simply have to play it more lateral and either towards the front left or the front right, depending on where the pin is, but get as much green to work with just to get

it on the green. I do refuse to believe that typically just getting it on or around the fringe somewhere I'm saying, not even close to the hole is that hard and them you're just trying to two put it for boge. But like you said, the averagecorn that hole is like four point seven. Not the end of the world to make a bogey, but making doubles and triples, I mean it comes closer to the end of the world.

the left side of the distribution. And as he was getting her, it's like, I don't think he has any chance of keeping this on the green and not going in the water because of the way that this pill was. Sure enough, you hit a decent shot, landed on the down flowe world across it into the water, and I was like, I mean that was basically to me the only thing that was going to happen there. And you know, so the thought is like, your only option is just

played out forward to the front of the green. You have a lot more green to work with that way, it's flatter, and then two cutters from thirty feet you're just giving up and taking bogie. But if you know the shot you're about to try is most likely in pop, well, then that's the whole reason that the second d of decade is disciplined. You have to be disciplined enough to be aware of man, I am in a bad spot

here and adjust accordingly. And that's you know, back whenever I say, like with cattying at Will, if the US Junior where I would have butchered decade, if it weren't for caddying, I would, I mean, I would have. I would have completely butchered because if been so many times, I would have said I can do better than that, you know, get a little bit more addresses. But watching Will just pick apart these golf courses and he's a

great ball striker. Watching him just pick apart these courses and then just winning by three like that was so simple and all it was was, I mean, him just being patient and discipline. And that was mainly because he was doing a great job of listening to me, just playing like a video game.

some guy. Recently. The ask Maverick one day, you know, what did Tiger tell you about how he played golf? And you know, Mavericks said, a lot of it makes more sense now because Tiger, you know, when he asks him, why are you the best player ever? Tiger's response was because as the best lag putter ever, which isn't accurate, well it's not his accuaty is a great lag putter,

it's not accurate. It's the reason why. But Tiger's reasoning was really amazing me because he said, I could just kind of hit a twenty or thirty feet out towards the fat side of the pen and have a bunch of looks, not make stupid bogies, kill the par fives, make a pet every now and again, and shoot a couple under every day. And if I had to just write an elevator a paragraph of proper strategy, that's it. Now.

The only problem with an amateur hearing that advice and trying to apply it as a phistical part required, but it's not about for an ameter. This is why in our staff portal we finished are tracking what I call a decade ratio, which is how often your ball finishes on the that side of the whole the long side of the whole location. And the status doesn't work as often for amateur golf simply because the pins are easier. And that's also then the problem that these collegiates have

when they get out on tours. They're so used to just firing at pins, and you know, there's not a whole lot of ramification for it, and the difference in two or three yards. Not only on your proximity makes a difference, but then your resultant chip shot if and when you do miss the grain, it's so much easier to get yourself in a really screwy spot with a pretty good shot. I picked up Bohstler as a player

at the Colonial this year. I went over there and walked a little bit with a practice round, and so he kind of tried to implement some ideas that first week at Colonial, but so much of it was he realized when we talked later on after that week, He's like, man, I just realized now how many spots I was getting myself into that just an extra couple two or three

yards on a chip shot. So if you're six yards off the green and the pen is only three or four yards on the green, I mean, that's effectively a flop shot that you're going to need to hit to get it close, as opposed to if you had a slightly better target and now you would only be two or three yards off the green to append it's three or four yards on. It's just a chip shot. That's

that's basically, you know, no big deal. So not only you know that the combination of hitting more greens in regulation, but it's also having much better looks on your chip shots. And that's what was cool we were talking about before we came on, was you know, so Bo's first week where he was going to go use decade was in Wichital. Last week on the web dot com, he had the Monday qualify, in which he did He asked me, should I play more aggressive in Munday qualifiers? Nope, just go

play patient golf. And if it's your day, it's your day. So in Monday's then and then he finishes second to Aaron Wise, whose last year's mc WA champion, who is a decade or which. It was just pretty cool watching these two guys because most people think that, you know, patient conservative ish golf, hate using we're conservative because it's such a turnoff. But here's patient conservative golf last week in Witchital where scores are super low and my players

finished first, second, and fourth. Yeah, it's pretty comical, is it.

we can clean up. Because again I've got enough experience with this now I know for a fact you just won't. You know, you won't go from making four or five birdies around to zero. That's not gonna happen. But I can almost overnight get your stupid bogie level to go down very quickly, and for sure doubles and beyond like those should just disappear almost immediately once you understand the proper way of going about it.

still really good friends. I went up there to the US Open a darn Hills and walked around Key and love Mark and a bunch of other players, and it's it's just interesting how hard it is to convey to people sometimes that just avoiding bogies is a very positive thing, and you just have to trust birdies will happen almost accidentally. I mean, you will birdy one and a half par fives on average. You'll make a twenty foot or longer put Every other days there's two birdies. You'll have some

legs and nine rands. We're proper strategy is to almost be aiming it at the flag, so you'll get some looks and you'll have a seven iron that you might be aiming at the dead center of the green that you just happen to miss on the whole side of your distribution pattern. Again, if you view your shot pattern and the shotgun, you will have it spread all over the place and sometimes you'll accidentally stup it. And that's

basically the way you win golf tournaments. I mean, when Rory won the twenty fourteen PGA, he almost topped a three wood on ten to seven feet, makes it for eagle and wins one, wins by one. So there's a lot of pretty fad. I didn't see yesterday's tournament. I read about it a little bit, and I guess people said that he hit a tree or something in the playoff and kicked out in the fairway and then put it in the front bunker and then obviously holes yep,

a bunker shot. Like sorry, but that's all pretty convenient for winning a golf tournament.

is walking at it. An impact and it goes in. And then on fourteen he hits it right and hammers it like low cutting four and that's they're going to be running up to the green. He's yelling, go and it hits the pin dead square. Was going over the green, which I've never seen anyone wrong. On fourteen he was going long on that hole and hits the pin dead square and it hit the boot. I mean, I don't even want to look at the other fifty four holes because that's I mean, there's four shots and he won

by four. I mean again, was he the best player yet? He absolutely is the best player at that time. But even still, you've got to get a lot of stuff going your way. Just I mean, I made a video just this last week on Brooks kept at the US Open on seven to par five. You know, he hammered that cut all the way around that golf course on purpose for seventy two straight holes, and he double crossed a few of them, and one of them was on seven to par five in the final round. I mean,

a huge double cross. He hits it so far he's left of the festcu, you know, wedges it down back into play, knocks down, makes par, moves on. That's a huge momentum savior compared to what it could have been if it's just right in the middle of the of the festcu. He could have made god knows what.

win rate guy. I mean, this will be what's interesting to say with see with Jordan as we go through his career. I do think the guy's running pretty hot out of the blocks here. I don't think he's going to be a guy that winds up with fifty plus wins. He might, I mean, he's really good golf. I've watched that kid play golf since his golf course was closed for renovations. He used to come out the ventry where Xalators and I play. He used to come out there

all the time. I've watched that dude play golf since he was fourteen years old, and he can play. But the win rate that he's on right now is just mind boggling in my opinion, And I'll be interested to see if that's the kind of thing that is sustainable over fifteen or more years, because it's just really hard to do.

yards off the tee. There was sixty two sixty five or so yards between the festuar perfectly fine, and I mean, fire driver, these guys should keep it between that all the time. And this is what was funny is actually the Monday practice rounds. Three of my amateurs that I work with were all playing together, which was really nice to kill three birds of one stone. But then their fourth was Rory, and I personally had never heard anyone

else refer to how wide the corridors are. I heard Shambly talking about it a little bit finally, because that's one thing that I feel like I am bringing to light is if we do all this track man stuff, we can also just look how wider shot pattern. I feel like that's becoming a part of the way things look at well. For the nine holes that I walked with those guys, I mean, Rory's standing right there while I'm so there's my players saying, hey, this one's kind

of there. It's fifty two or three yards. You can hit driver though, because the fescu was not a one shirt penalty. It was bad, but you could get it out of it and you know, advanced towards the hole. So and sometimes like left on five, the one of the ones they are left on four, one of the ones they cut backfession was fine and you could put it on the green from the left fest you, I mean, could you get a really bad break in game? I mean you could, but for the most part, I didn't

have a full with whatsoever. And like I say, if I was kind of cool that here's Rory kind of easy dropping in on us, and then the next day that was effectively his exact quote was, I mean, we've got fifty or sixty yards out there. Yeah, you're right. I thought them cutting it back was unfortunate. It was unnecessary, you know, and you get guys like Kevin Nah complaining about it, like, dude, the fairways were sixty yards wide.

They were fifty yards wide, and then you'd have you know where he's like, yoh, we've only got five yards of rough and then fest and you're like, well, we've only got five yards are rough. Number two is seventy two yards across. Yeah, Ken was seventy five yards across. I've never seen fairwies that big in my entire life, let alone in the US Open. And it wasn't playing that fast. So I thought the course was great. I

didn't think they should cut the fescu back. The scores obviously showed they should not have cut the fescu back.

you end up you know, your club gets turned down, you end up long left, and you know, all of a sudden you make a six.

three and hit it close. And the shot link image is all support that completely, unless if there's a lake on the front, like number nine at Colonial, there's a lake on the front, well, they all they're forced to not say, okay, I'm trying to land at three yards on they all try to land at four or five yards past depend As a result, they actually played the front hold location there with a lower scoring average than

some of the other whole locations. And it's, you know, in theory, the hardest, the hardest location on the whole. That's what I would agree with what he's saying there is you just knew you couldn't do anything when the FESSU, so you weren't an idiot as opposed to you know,

you're just kind of handcuffed. This is all I can do, as opposed to maybe from the rough you might think you can do a little bit more than you do, And it doesn't take much to get that hozzle and shoot it so far offline and now you're going further into the junk. Yeah, I mean, I think that's actually an interesting point that I hadn't heard or even thought about. But they, you know, effectively were forced to play more intelligently from it. And yeah, I think again you're making bogey.

I mean, it's like the trees that we were talking about earlier, Like on the PGA tour, they're making bogie eighty or ninety percent of the time from the trees. From one hundred differents in the trees, the average making bogie eighty percent of the time from two twenty in the trees, the average making bogie, you know, ninety twoish percent of the time. I mean, you're making bogie. Just

don't make a double. And that was the exact advice, Like Camperon Champ who you know, I worked with A and M. Cameron Champ is we're walking around with LORI. That's like, I want you to hit driver everywhere. You can't put this asset down. But when you get it in the fescue, just don't do something stupid. Get it out the fairies again. This is the other thing, like where you you know, you think of normal us opens

with twenty two yard white farries that are firm. You can very easily just trying to pitch it out, start pitching it back and forth. I mean this thing, these ferries are so big and so soft. You couldn't not get it out if you wanted to back in to the fairway. I mean it would be almost impossible in this fairway with with a pitch out.

But it's you know, it really is avoiding big numbers and and keeping yourself in the in the game, especially at the higher level championships, in avoiding the stop.

And so he set us up in Sebastian I met at Whole Foods here in Dallas last weekend and went through all this stuff for about two hours, and we started off. I was like, let's just go through, you know, through this through this round at at st at FedEx, and I don't want you to tell me what you did or what you thought. I'm going to tell you how this played out. And he's like okay, and so I just basically rattled right through every single shot where

he was probably trying to hit it. How he started freaking out how this air compounded this air and this one. He's just looking at me like, holy shit, dude, can you read my mind? Or that's really strange. I'm like, dude, again, I'm just telling you that because I'm forty three and I've done that seventy five thousand times. I know exactly

what you did. But having the ability to kind of call someone out on that and then explain to him here's how we could go about it better than next time you're in that position, I mean, just gives it so much more validity of Yeah, this dude knows what

I'm talking about. I mean, I had made a couple bogies and now I had a fifteen or sixteen footer for par that I jammed five and a half feet by because I was trying to make it because anyone, like another one missed it coming back, and now I have made a double and then the whole wheels you're just chasing your tail all for the duration of the round. I mean again, we just we've all done it enough times.

of the green. Had twenty feet for Bertie. I mean, he would be lucky to get the shot up and down one in ten that he had, and he holds it. Not only is he not even supposed to get it up and down. I'm supposed to be too putting for the wind. He holes that I'm in second hole. I've

got a very good line in the rough. Penns cut just over a bunker to the right on the right side, and I've got like one oh five and he's already put it into the green about twenty feet and I took what I knew was about a three yard two aggressive line, but I was letting the prior holes annoyings like I was trying to get that back quickly, and I came up a foot short in the front bunker and make boguing As I was walking off, I'm laughing

in my wife, like what's the funny. I'm like, I'm the dude that teaches this, Like I am, in theory, the best in the world at teaching this. I knew that was wrong, and yet I still didn't have the discipline and patience to not do it. And it's just kind of comical because again I get so many parents calling me, like my son still to have done this that dumbness. Well he's going to That's that's the way

it works. Unfortunately, it's a hard game to you know, quote unquote perfect, but man if and can you if you do? It's just it's just so simple.

I hope it's him. I hope you don't. But so on twelve he hits it long left and again is seriously, he would ever get this ball up and down pitches it in. And then on fourteen I hit it on the green from two sixty to two. So I've got about twenty five thirty feet per eagle. He's out there forty yards in the fairway into and I'm like, just don't get it up and down. You know, I'm probably two ish down, maybe three downs, and he just chunks it.

He moves it five feet. I mean, he could not have laid the sod over it any harder holds the next one from thirty five yards, like only shit, this is actually happening. It was so rudal because you know, I'm like you, I'm sure I don't get to play that many golf tournaments. That is certainly the only one I care about all year. This guy chipped in on me four times and made a bomb.

that he needed. He's just playing golf. Obviously, got a bad break of planning on downslow. But just very rarely do you have perfect information of what your opponents made, what the scores are, and you can make an actual calculated decision. So I don't think so, in my opinion, you just keep plugging along. And you know, I would say in match play when I'm catting for Will, we've got a really good record. Obviously, he won the US Junior He made it to the round of sixteen that year.

He won two matches. The following year he lost to Donkey. He was last year, you know, in the in the first round. So I mean, I know, I don't think so again, that's there. There are some games theory implications you could theory try, but I just don't believe it's worth it. I just, you know, like a perfect information.

That is, if we'red of playing the final table the World Series of Poker and one guy has two million ships, one guy has a million chips, and I have one ship left, and those two push all in right out of the blox, and I look down and I've got Poppa dass. I should sold that hand because the odds are the one of those two guys, you know, the one guy potentially got to get knocked out. So my one ship is now worth one million ships. Technically in

that scenario, that's perfect information. You just don't ever get that for the most part in golf. And again the more importantly is so let's say we're out there in the seventy second hole and I know I need Bertie, so I'm going to get more aggressive. Well, you're actually going to wind up. So instead of with a five yards off the left, let's say your proper target should maybe be four or five yards towards the middle degree. Yes, you might have a few more kickings by firing it

directly at it. I'm not going to dispute that, like one or two, maybe three percent more out of you know, a million iterations of the shot, but you're also going to miss the green and regulation twenty percent more time. So the game that you make and value by aiming right at it, you lose by having fewer attempts. So, yes, and my birdie putt is slightly longer on average, but I have more of them. You wind up making the

same amount of birdies with proper strategy. And that's the kind of thing that you've really got to sit down to a few of the visuals like that. I've gotten the decade apt to kind of illustrate that idea. But I don't think so. I mean, I shouldn't say. I don't think so. I know you shouldn't, but it's kind

of hard to convince you. I mean, again, that's what a guy like film meslist and just can't get through his head from a gambling standpoint, like he just wants to go at it, and and mathematically it's just not correct.

three holes. Would he occasionally do something pretty stupid? I mean sure, but I think that last nine holes he would always just switch into this other gear of trying to floorce things. And that's just the you know again, you take a proper strategy and you just go with it. And if it's my week, it's my week. That's Jordan Speed. This year, however, many shots he was back through fifty four holes at the Masters. He goes into his you know, his press conference, and he's saying, you know, I'm a

guy like me. It doesn't matter if I finished fit their tenth. Like you're already being defensive. He already knew what he was about to say was wrong. He's like, so, I'm gonna go out tomorrow and I'm just going to fire at pins and I'm just gonna make it happen out of texted people. Right then, I'm like, he's shooting seventy five tomorrow guaranteed. Now, I didn't think he'd have to burny three of the last four to shoot seventy five. There's just I mean, sure, it's conceivable it could work out,

just like it's more conceivable just playing correct. We'll have a chance. At the end of the day. He needed to shoot sixty seven, well, that was round of the day. There was about a three to five percent chance he might do that. He had about three to five percent equity in that golf turn with eighteen holes to go. Period. There's nothing you can do to intentionally raise your equity.

All you can do is to hope other people like how Jack and Tiger say, we're just kind of hanging around the lead and see if people will die force on Sunday you're there then giving you their equity. But he went out and tried to force his equity from what three or five percent to six that's it's just not going to work. And again he'll you know, he'll learn that. And you know, you can see his thought processes.

He actually gives good interviews. You can see and hear his thought processes and a lot of times figure out how he's gonna do. I mean, if you go back to the twenty sixteen Masters the Tuesday before, I've got a video up on YouTube just in my free channel where it's just called Jordan Speed and Expectations where he's talking about all the right things. You know, I know this golf course, I know not to get short setup and nowhere to leave it. I know not to force birdies.

I know not to do all these things. And I told my wife at then, I'm like, that's perfect. This guy's he's gonna be in the hunt. He's thinking very clear right there, and it was just so amazing to watch what he did on twelve with I don't know what happened. I just got over the ball and tried to aim it four or five yards further right than

I should have. And I mean, it's just so bizarre to have a guy who was saying that just shows you how hard it is guy saying all the right things on Tuesday and then you put him, you know, with a four shot lead and seven holes ago and just could not have made a sillier, worse mental mistake than he did.

work with us. See, he's going to work with Tom House also, and we'll just start talking about you know, psychology and golf and pitching and you know, all this Stuffcause I'm like, hey, I've never pitched, and he's like, I've never played golf. Perfect, but the thoughts were just identical.

It's one of those things where I've always thought that, man, if you've never played golf at the highest level, it's gonna be really hard for you to understand some of the thoughts, just like I would say, me working with a pitcher. I don't know what you're thinking out there, dude, I don't know the first thing about it, but just hearing how common the thoughts were. And he told me this book The Mental Agency is pitching, but if you were just to rewrite it with the golf club, it's

the exact same book. I mean, it's no difference. And here's the guy who at the time had suffered quite a few injuries, and you know, it was definitely struggling. And yeah, it's just crazy to listen to a young guy who's making twelve million dollars a year basically sound pretty beat down, Like, you know, I will not to be down because he's super positive. Guys should say that, but just man, I'm really out here working hard, trying

to get better. I'm my own dying going to see this guy and it was was pretty cool.

put on the PGA Tour is fifty to fifty. That means if I had, you know, the hole is four and a quarter inches wide, it seems hard to make that putt. But if all of a sudden you just put a te two inches on either side of the hole and you tell someone just roll it between those two teams, well, I'm going to do that every single time. Like that's very, very very simple to do. Well. If you can do that, the hole is going to get

in the way of about half of them. You put good feed on it, you're going to keep the whole the appropriate size. In my opinion, seed is the only thing that matters in putting. Now, again, you do have to be able to start it on some semblenth of the line, but it is a lot low threshold than what you think. I mean, I think that's why game point is so good. I mean, is it dead on correct? I mean no, it's pretty good. It's in the right vicinity. It's within an inch or two on a six to

ten foot putt. And if I only need to be able to roll it through an eight and a half or nine inch wide gate, I don't have to put a perfect read on it, and so much of it is just you know, taking a kid like Bryson Dave Chambeau, who is obviously a little Kaipei perfectionist, and when you tell him you can be perfect and he thinks he can, when he's gonna run with it, I tell him, dude, you're not even close to being perfect, and in fact,

you kind of stuck compared to other professional athletes. If John McEnroe, you know, does a serve and he's going to argue with a person who's got a laser and tell them, no, that was in and he's always right. It's a totally different game than golf, Like just the shot patterns are so huge, there's so many bounds of so many bumps, win grained. I mean, trying to be perfect in this game is It's not fun, and it is the exact opposite way that you should think about it. In my opinion.

that twice? Is that really a good goal? Is that going to set you up for a positive mindset? The only one that I've even heard anecdotally Fanily, I was just trying to shoot a couple under, which would always keep me in the hunt. If I happen to shoot seven one week one day, I'm winning, and if someone else just wants to give it to me, I'm winning. That's exactly correct. And you know, my home course here in Dallas is a seventy five point five rating on

a par seventy one. And since I've basically stopped playing golf in the last few years, I just got to try to shoot the round car maybe one or two under, and I always do. It's just not that hard to go out and try to shoot a little bit below your actual average as opposed that most people are trying to you know, you know, their goal is two standard deviations below their average, and that's just silly.

amazing place. So I would say underrated, even if that's possible.

else in life. But the easiest clean ups would be breaking the chipping into per attempt, breaking the putting into buy buckets, stroke skin off the tee, and approach like those should just be They shouldn't be summed into one category, but it just needs to be more widely understood. Like what I do is saying, you know that you can't

be the top in both. So I do a program that I put together each week where I sum those two categories, and it's like mathematically flawed to some two categories like stroke scare total driving is you know they sum your distance rank, push your accuracy rate. Well, those two things are you know, they're not mutually exclusively, they're not dependent on each other, so you can you can be number one in both of them. In theory, in strokes gained approach and strokes gain off the tee, you

really can't be number one in both. So I sum those two categories each week, and the average winner on the PGA Tour this year, the average is a sum of thirty, so it's safe way. Brendan Steel's right off the tee was twentieth, his rank and approach was eight, so he was twenty eight total. You just don't get very often that sum under ten, and those are the weak should look at. Like Justin Thomas and at Sony he was first in driving and fourth and approach. That's ridiculous.

John Brahm smaller fields at WGC, but he was first in driving, fourth and approach. Decky in Phoenix ninth and driving first in approach, like those things. It's the normal winner is like Dustin Johnson was first in driving Riviera and twentieth in approach. That's where you know, Branda Schamblie is like, oh, his driving carried in this week and he didn't hit his irons that well. No, he hit his irons pretty good. He just had such smaller expectation

from there. He just couldn't mount a big number. And that sounds so that's usually what you find.

But again this is where it gets really complicated because John Graham kind of lit me up for saying a few things about driving recently, like shipping really matters, like saying you're an average chipper on tours, like saying you're one of the best chippers in the world.

They finished first, second, and fourth. It's hard for me to claim that stuff, but you kind of have to. But a lot of that is just about teaching people how to use that bass sriking. So where I was in that is I assume you can hit it. If you can't hit it well, I can make you shoot lower. But if making you shoot seventy two instead of seventy fours, not gon do a whole lot for you on this tour you need. I am just assuming you're really good.

And that's where guys like Tomo and Mark Blackburn and you know, Scott Hamilton, these instructors with a big stables send me their players because they're like, man, my job is to get these guys striking it. Your job is to tell them how to get it in the hole perfect. That is a marriage made in heaven because I'm really good at doing that, and y'all are really good at doing good at what you're doing. Your guy could win without me, for sure. I'm just going to help them

win more consistently. And that's really what it's all about.

that green in three years now. And again, granted I don't play that much anymore, but it's I've got thirty or so attempts, and you know, an average scorn of PGA two or Part three that length is three and a quarter is three to two, and I can just kind of take a three ron and just flared under the green. That's how Brooks hit that shot on seventeen

in the final round. Was just such a wipey flay three wood or a chuby driver because he knows exactly what side of the path face is on and you can just i mean, keep it out there and that's

you know. I was fortunate enough that one of my duke players played a practice around the Brooks last Monday, and so I walked three or four holes with Brooks and Claude and my and claud came over to me and Claude Harmon and was asking me some questions because I think he saw my little decade logo and the pamphlet that I had, and he and are speaking at James Rigard Steal together during the Verse open, and I'm

more than telling him what I do. I just wanted to ask him because I've always respected what Butch Harmon does as a teacher, Like the guy teaches people how to play the game so well, in my opinion, and so I just kind of wanted to hear how they view these things. And it was just everything that he was saying. And this is Monday before. That guy that

we're watching is about the one that Turman. He's like, can just watch this Guy's huge, he's strong, he's lined up down the left here, he's just gonna hammer it. Cut it feels weird. He holds onto it a little bit, flares it out there, and that's kind of what he did all day in the final round and it's just so beautiful anytime eighteen, anytime, the hole didn't make sense for that shot. It wasn't take my driver and turn it. It was go to my three wood and try to

hit it straight. Like that's exactly correct. That takes patients, So that takes so much discipline. On number one, the wind was twenty miles an hour off the right, he hammered a cut. On number four, it plays diagonal in the other directions, so slightly northwest, the wind is coming in and off the left, he hammered a cut. Like that's correct golf, assuming you can do it.

on the green from one ninety. That may as well be the driver into the fescue. You're laying him both up. And it was so much wider where the driver was. He actually was going to hit the two iron into the rough as often as he was going to hit the driver into the fescue, And in my opinion, they were the exact same results. Some sort of a way up and it is. I mean, he hit a few drivers, but he also hit a few irons that I don't

think he should have. And like I say, this is more just to let any kids or parents that are listening, here's a guy that's one of the best players in the world and still can't get comfortable. Again, I'm not telling him what he did was wrong, but I'm telling him, dude, we need to at least take a few minutes and see if you can get comfortable the driver, because it is a better play, as Brooks evidence. I mean, is

there a chance it would have worked out? I mean absolutely, But again, if you just never play correctly, the odds are less than if you Hey, if I play correctly every time, it might work out once or twice a year.

full decade. Again, I say this a lot, but people really do really well very quickly sometimes and then maybe falter back. He got a little bit lucky that the very first week that he's out there just trying to do this, he also played good. I mean I could if he played poorly. I mean I had two guys that's to cut. Yeah, I can't help bad golf. But if you play good, this is how you do it, and you have to do it every single week, just in case you play good.

his app. His websites playing lesson dot com and his app is the Decade App. And Scott look forward to meeting you in the near future. And uh, have a great rest of your week.