Dr. Nico Darras

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
It's the Son of a Butch podcast. We come to
you every Wednesday. My guest today Nico Daris Blueprint golf
blueprint dot Com. Talk to me about what that is.
We'll get into your background, because I think the background
you've got coming into golf as a sport is very different.
But golf blueprint dot Com, what is it and why

(00:27):
is it?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
So? Great question? First of all, thanks for having me on.
Appreciate you, longtime listener, first time, first time being here.
And as I was driving up here, I was thinking
about what is golf Blueprint? So Golf Blueprint is really
the ethos of my golf journey, of the relentless pursuit
of better and me needing to get better in a
short amount of time. Like you said, I didn't come

(00:49):
to golf in a traditional way, and Golf Blueprint was
the journey of how I went from having never played
golf at twenty three to now at thirty working in
golf and journey along the way of my education and
my background and creating dialed in practice plans because some
days I only had thirty minutes, some days I had

(01:09):
thirty five minutes, some days I had forty minutes and
I needed to get better to close the gap on
the people that I was playing against in a really
short amount of time. And I couldn't do that traditionally
through lessons. I didn't you know, I didn't have the time,
I didn't have the resources to do that at that time.
So I needed to find an academic way that I
could marry what I was doing in school with what

(01:30):
I was doing on the golf course.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Your background, like you said, you're not a golfer. Talk
to me about your background. You were a baseball player,
wanted to be a professional baseball player, got to which
level of professional baseball?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
So growing up as a kid, when I was I
was in preschool and my mom told me this story
the other day that every picture of me as a
child was in a baseball uniform. And one of the
not so nice moms came up to my mom and said,
why do you insist on dressing your son in a
baseball uniform every single day for school? And to her,
you know, horrified self, she goes, do you think I

(02:04):
want my preschooler to wear nothing but a baseball uniform?
So when I was a kid, it was all I
wanted to do. To quote card Ale Jones of Ohio
State football. You know, we didn't come here to play school.
That was very much my mentality as a kid. I
just wanted to play baseball every day, all day. That's
all I wanted to do from the time I was
two years old, and ultimately it was a pretty good

(02:26):
player in high school, got recruited all over, got my
pick of the school. I was very fortunate and ended
up going to University Connecticut my last three years. Got
hurt right before the Big League Draft. Blew out my
rotator cuff, my laborum, and my lat and that ended it.
And so one day, you know, at twenty two, everything
I had worked for for the first twenty two years,
my life was gone, taken away and I needed to

(02:47):
start over.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
That's I mean, I think so many people have. I mean,
when you look at athletes in general, and you look
at the people that make it and that are on TV,
that doing all these great things that are everybody's heroes,
I mean, there are just so many people that have
tried to have a career in professional sports at any level,

(03:12):
and there are so many people that injury causes so
many careers to just get derailed. Yeah, and I don't
think that people realize, you know, not only in golf,
but in every sport. To be great, to have a
very long career, there is an element of just dumb
luck that you just don't get hurt. Sure you just

(03:33):
weren't you know. Tom Brady's a great example. Tom Brady
never really had any major issue injuries. Roger Federer never
really had any major major injury issues. You know, Tiger
Woods really throughout the majority of the early part of
his career, the Big Tiger Roun my Dad era, the

(03:54):
Hank Haney era, there were never any injuries. He just
basically was able to just play injury free. Why golf
and why did you pick up golf Because a lot
of ex athletes are just obsessed with golf. I've had
them on the pod before. They you know, they're they're junkies. Yeah,
why do you think that is?

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, my golf story is very unique, and I'll give
you a funny story to start. So, my family had
just moved to Hawaii. I was twenty two, depressed, heartbroken,
you know, my life is over. And we move in
and our golf course had a community. Now my sister
had played college golf, so my sister was fifteen. She

(04:36):
had never played college, she had never played golf before,
and she went one day to the driving range met
a coach and this coach said to my dad, hey,
this girl's pretty good, and my dad was like, okay,
you know how good is good. Well, they end up
pulling her out of high school and she had a
college scholarship two years later. So at that time, I
had I'd been to the golf course. I've watched her
play golf. I wasn't playing golf. Baseball players at that time.

(04:59):
You know, it'll mes of your swing, that kind of deal.
So I had probably played at that to that point,
maybe nine holes in my life. So we're in Hawaii.
I sign up for this nine hole scramble and I
get paired with i'd Loane, denounced later the biggest jerk
in the club because no one else wanted to play
with him. They stuck me with him because you know,
here's this new guy who doesn't know any better. So

(05:19):
we played nine holes. This guy's smoking cigarettes in my face,
just ripping me. You know, I hit balls out of bounds,
I topped him. I did this, and the whole time
he's telling me about this. You know club championship that
he's going to play in and he's the member guest champion.
So I call my best friend at the time, who
played college golf, and I said, hey, there's three months
until this guy's important member guest. You're gonna teach me

(05:40):
how to play golf and we're gonna win. And he
for seas ago. Okay, buddy. So I'm working valet at
the time, and if I wasn't valeting, I was hitting balls.
I probably hit you know, five hundred ball, who knows
how many balls a day. And three months later I
shot seventy nine in that member guest and we ended
up beating the guy and it just got hooked and
that pro laughed. He goes, maybe I should pair him

(06:02):
with every new golfer, you know, maybe that's what fifth
people need to do to get motivated to learn. But
I just I fell in love with the process of
getting better and it gave me an opportunity to improve
at something every day. That was my favorite part about baseball,
and I have that in golf now.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
You also, your background from an education background is to
me a big part of what golf blueprint became.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Totally totally so as I said. As a kid, something
a lot of people don't know about me. I had
pretty severe learning disabilities in school, so I skipped the
third grade. I went from the second grade to the
fourth grade. At the time, there was an edd which
is what my doctorate is now in education. Funny how
life comes full circle. I was pretty advanced and they
said you should skip him ahead. Well, what we now know,

(06:48):
you know twenty years later, is that third grade is
where you learn sentence structure and mathematics, and the basic
building blocks of school is third grade. So today I
struggle with math. I struggle with sentence structure, basic things
like that that created a lifetime of difficulty in school.
High school was so hard for me because I could

(07:09):
get the math answer, I didn't know how to prove
the answer. I didn't know how to get to there.
I could write beautiful sentences, but I didn't know what
an adverb was because I never learned it. I had
to learn multiplication and division in a weekend when I
went from second to fourth grade, and it really created
a challenging high school and undergrad experience for me, where

(07:29):
I just really had a tough time getting through the
basic classes and I wasn't that interesting, souse. I just
want to play baseball. But luckily for me, I have
wonderful parents. My mom told me she goes go to class,
you have to go to class. So for any student
athletes that are listening out there, dude, I showed up
to the eight am geography class when no one was there.

(07:49):
Did I learn anything? No, But you know what I learned.
I learned how to show up. I learned how to grind.
I learned how to do something that you don't want
to do every single day. And then after baseball ended,
I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do.
My father's a lawyer. I thought maybe I'll go to
law school. You know, he's a successful lawyer. And as
I was looking around for classes, I found a program

(08:09):
called Social Innovation from the University of San Diego. And
for those of you who don't know what it is
at home, it's essentially creative problem solving. Think Google Think.
A lot of people from our program went to the
three letter government agencies, CIA, FBI, things like that. I
went down that road for a little while, got recruited,
and ultimately it wasn't for me.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Ryan Chrysler, who was on the pod last week. Who
works for me? He he did the he was trying
to be an FBI agent.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah, yeah, So I'm sure we got to talk. I'm
sure you know, off camera about it. And it was fun.
I enjoyed the process. But that's what a lot of
the people in that program went to. Creative problem solving.
And while that time I was I was so right
around the same time about my master's, I learned golf.
So I was living in San Diego. Shout out to
the San Diego Country Club boys. I'm sure they're listening.
There was a group of high school kids there at

(08:56):
the time that were some of the best juniors in
the country, and I ended up becoming a pseudo mentor
to them, and in exchange, they essentially taught me golf.
And so every single day we would play golf after
they get out of school and I'd be done with
my classes. And it was amazing getting to watch them
play because they didn't have the fear of the adults.

(09:16):
They played creatively, they played, they tried shots, they hit shots.
I tried to swing as hard as I could for
like two years. No one laughed at me because when
you were with children and children don't have that same
level of you know world lea, I guess anxiety and
now they're all playing Division one and they're all, you know, studs.
But right around that same time started playing golf and

(09:37):
then to get into my doctorate. My doctorate is an education.
I studied specifically learning theory and how people can optimize
what they're doing through their learning.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
And that's where I think so many people. I mean,
it's something I talk about on the podcast all the time.
I think everybody believes that the way they're going to
get better at playing golf is just to hit more
golf balls, to go to the driving range, to put
the time in to work on your technique. And it's
something that I talk about and I think it's one

(10:08):
of the reasons why you and I connected. I mean,
Dave Phillips was like, You've got to meet Nico because
you guys talk about the same stuff, this balance between
technique versus execution. And I say this all the time
every competitive golfer. And we'll get to the work that
you do with John Rahm. John Ram's trying to make

(10:28):
his golf swing better. Rory McElroy is trying to make
his golf swing. Everybody that plays competitive golf is trying
to improve their technique, but there is so much more
to getting better than just standing on a driving range
and hitting golf balls. Because I think there's also a

(10:48):
rate in my opinion, of diminishing return in that too.
You will get to it. I think you can overpractice totally.
I think a lot of junior golfers that I see
who's parents come, they're overpracticed. Yeah, all they do is practice,
They don't fundamentally play the game. And did you notice

(11:11):
that coming? I think also you coming from a baseball
background and getting into golf and watching how competitive baseball
is practiced versus how competitive golf is practiced. I've heard
you say this before. There's no other competitive sport in
the world that has the approach that golf has.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Absolutely, and you said a lot of important things there,
specifically about overpracticing. So many people are overpracticing, spending eight
hours a day. You know, we always laugh, you and
I laugh, and we'll see the posts online about our
guys schedules where they wake up at five point thirty
and they're running, you know, six miles and they put
for three hours.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
It's not Real's you that's all. That is all Instagram bullshit, right,
That is a get ready with Me video of a
day in the life. And all the golf influencers out
there are really good at portraying this life that Okay,
they wake up, they go to the gym, they do
all this stuff. But you talk to real competitive golfers,

(12:13):
they don't do any of that.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Sure, their dads, their their husbands, their fathers, their friends,
they have lives. They do things right.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
But also they compartmentalize their practice. I mean, I was
around Tiger for the glory days of the Tiger and Butchierra, right,
he didn't hit golf balls for eight hours a day. Really,
we weren't at the golf course till dark. There were
days where we would hit balls and stuff. But Tiger

(12:42):
had a much more balanced life. Did he practice a lot, yes,
did he work hard? Obviously he worked hard, But he
didn't stand and hit golf balls for eight hours a day.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
He just didn't do that makes sense. Working hard is
a really interesting word because because what is hard work
is hard work standing there in the heat hitting balls
for eight hours a day. Is it putting for three
hours a day? I don't think it is I'm trying
to get our guys to work smarter the same as
your guys are where they're taking. The nice thing is, now,
with statistics and data, we can look at what you're

(13:15):
good at, what you struggle at, what you need work in,
and we can emphasize the areas that you're great at
to make you better at what you're already great at.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Because most golfers tend to practice what they're good at. Sure,
that's all they work off. Sure, So if you're a
great driver of the golf ball, if you're a junior
golfer and you're a good driver of the golf ball,
you're a stand on the driving range and hit tons
of drive, watch me, because it gives you a tremendous
amount of validation. You feel good about the skill that
you've got. You're able to peacock and show off. People

(13:45):
watch you, and you get external validation for being a
great driver of the golf ball. If someone's got a
great short game, if someone's a great potter, whatever that
skill is, most people just overpractice the skill that they've
got totally.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
And that's okay, and some people, some people should do
that in the beginning, especially as a beginner. If I
was going to if I was going to say, someone
who's a beginner golfer, or.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
You're trying to break a hundred for the first time.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Perfect example, if you're trying to break one hundred for
the first time. I had this conversation last night with
another young pro and I said, there's no player in
the country who's a good driver of the ball that's
an eighteen handicap. Can't happen. Can't happen. A good driver
of the ball will hit the ball in play, they
will consistently score. And so, like you said, if you're
trying to bring.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
You good driver of the golf ball, you're an eighteen handicap,
you don't ever need to hit a driver in practice.
You need to find a potty green. You need to
find a short game.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Area, something something good, lord, something else to where to
where you can raise your game. But at the highest levels,
the thing that I think that people need to understand
is you and I work at the highest levels of
professional golf. They're shaving margins, right, We're looking for a
quarter of a shot here. We're looking to take sand
game from fifty seven percent to sixty three percent, or

(15:00):
you know, gir to seventy two percent. The amateur player
is playing such a different game that they can make
such great leaps by practicing smarter.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
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(15:33):
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(15:54):
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(16:16):
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forget about their award winning combines. You're on John Ram's team.

(16:40):
How did that come about? And what is it that
you do in the scope of being part of John
Ram's kind of inner circle and team.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Sure? So, first of all, shout out to Dave Right.
You and I both love.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Dave ay Phillips, who who's a friend of the Pod.
We've had them on many times.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Dave Phillips is the greatest and I owe so much
of my golf journey to Dave. Dave called me up
out of the blue one day. We met through a
mutual friend and he said, Hey, I'd love you to
come work with some of my guys. Dave has an
incredible team of not only John Rahm, but David Pooge
on Live, Cameron Trengali on Live, Alejandro del Rey on
dep World, and Max Rotliffe as well, and it's just

(17:17):
such a pleasure to work with Dave, and you know,
we met through Dave and I think the thing that
I appreciate the most about you and Dave with my
work and it ties in is you're both creatives who
are willing to look at things from a different perspective.
Because I don't come from golf, I look at it.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Which I think is a massive, massive strength because I
do think occasionally if you just are in the golf
centric world, I would say in the last you're in
meeting Greg Rose and Dave Phillips. You know I met
them in two thousand and four, but I'd really say, Nico,

(17:54):
in the last ten years, people ask me all the time, Hey,
what books are you're reading, what podcast you're reading? What
you know? Talk to you a lot. The majority of it,
I would say now is non golf related. It's coming
from outside of the golf world. Do I spend time
talking to golf instructor, sure, I mean we have a
lot of time on tour where I'm lucky when I

(18:16):
was on the PGA tour and now my guys they
have gone to live, but we have a lot of
time and downtime to where we're waiting for players. Players
are doing other things. So I'm able to sit with
Boyd Summer Hayes and talk about golf, talk about what
he's working on with his kids, what he's working on
with Tony Finow, what he's working on with Taylor Goot.

(18:37):
I'm able to stand and pick these guys' brains. Mike Walker,
who's been on the podcast, I'm able to sit and
talk to him about Hey, talk to me about the
stuff that you and fits are working on. But i
think the majority of my influences in the last decade
have been non golf related. They've been other coaches from

(18:57):
other sports. And I'm always fascinated at the approach that
the team sport concept has versus the individual concept, because
I find it really interesting as a coach that you'll
be working with a player and let's say they're a
junior golfer, and we've all most people that play golf

(19:19):
have played other some sort of team sport at some point, right,
And I'm always fascinated that you can be working with
a player, Let's say you're working on hitting a draw
and they're hitting you know, you're trying to get them
to get the path right to left. You're trying to
get the ball to start to the right and curve
to the right. And if they're struggling, I always say, listen,
do you understand the concept right? Do you understand what

(19:43):
we're trying to get you to do as a player.
So tell me what we're working on. Tell me all
of the things that we need to do to execute this.
Show me the mimic. Let's go through it in slow motion.
But you'll watch a player hit two, three, four balls
completely sideways, almost doing the exact opposite of what they

(20:06):
know they're supposed to do what they've been practicing. If
that's a team sport, the coach immediately says, can we
get someone in here. If you're a wide receiver and
you go and you ken't dropping the ball, they will
pull you out of practice in a heartbeat. And what
you don't do in team sports is you don't go
to another practice area and work on catching. You sit

(20:30):
on the bench and watch someone else and there's people
fighting to take your spot, and then eventually the coach
will come to you and say, okay, do you want
to get back in the game and do your job
the way that we have taught you to do it,
and the way that we have practiced to do it.

(20:51):
Somehow in team sports, through no external other practicing, you
figure that shit out real quick and you go execute
what you've practiced. Why do you think it's so hard
for golfers to find that execution part of it? Because

(21:12):
my theory is they just spend all their time hitting
golf balls. Yeah, they just that's it. Yeah, and the
test for them to see if anything works is going
out and playing the game. There's and we've talked about it,
there's no other sport in the world where they do that.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, basketball is a great example where if you think
about shooting free throws, shooting free throws are a huge
part of basketball, and it's a part of the game.
But if you and I went out and we were
trying to get better at the game, we wouldn't shoot
free throws and say I.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Worked on basketball eight hours.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
You would play basketball because you have to dribble, rebound, shoot,
you know, pass and one.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Point defense, do all the things that the game. And
I think so many people forget that golf is a game.
And I say this all the time on the pod.
It's a game. Because they get they First of all,
they tell you what the rules are, and then they
give you a scorecard, and they tell you what the
object of the game. Yes, right, this is not golf,

(22:11):
is not equestrian or figure skating. It's not gymnastics. And
I say this all the time. If golf was being
judged on your technique, Nellie Corda would win it a
lot of times. He's got a great looking golf perfect
Adam Scott, the classic golf swingers would win because the

(22:33):
judges would look at the aesthetics of what it looks
like and say their golf swing looks the best. But
John Rahm doesn't have a classic looking golf swing. Sure,
he doesn't have a golf swing that anyone is really
coaching or teaching. No one's saying, hey, do what John

(22:54):
Rahm does, because John Rahm is very easy. Unicornton Johnson
is a unicorn. Colin Montgomery, Freddie Couples, all of these
great unique golfers were somewhat unicorns. They had techniques that
you don't teach. Sure, And so from an execution standpoint,

(23:15):
you get a call from Dave Phillips to have an
opportunity to work with someone like John Rahm. For you,
that's got to be like, Okay, wow, this is a
unique opportunity. Absolutely, And let's be honest. It's always that
thing to where Okay, how can I help a player? Yeah,
that is already a great player.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
So good. So the thing with Johnny that we always
laugh about is his a He's unbelievable. Right, let's just
start from that. The dude does everything well. When you
look at his numbers, there's no flaws, there's no gaps,
there's no holes.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
You guys say this all the time. I don't know
guys like him, Guys like Rory McElroy. You wonder how
they don't win every single week with the toolbox sure
that they have. Sure with all of the things that
they can pull out of their toolbox, there isn't a

(24:08):
situation that John Rahm or someone like Rory McElroy is
going to get into to where they don't have an
arrow to pull out. Sure they've got that in.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
There are always the ACEP this sleeve and getting to
work with Dave and the team, Spencer Tatum who runs
THHP and his whole team has been such a joy.
And getting to learn what it's like from the best
in the world. And I think the thing that you
said circling back to where do I learn from? The
best advice I ever got was from my business partner,
doctor Kevin Moore. He's a professor of mathematics. And about

(24:40):
three years into my golf journey, I started playing mini
tours in Arizona and I was going to read golf
books and he said, Nico, stop. He said, you don't
know the rules yet, so you continue to break them.
And it was the best advice I ever got in golf,
being able to bring something to a team where I
don't know the rules of golf. I don't know how
you're supposed to practice. I don't know how you're supposed

(25:01):
to look at a driving range or a golf course
or a hole. Like you said, golf is given us
a set of rules and a scorecard. We can play
the hole however we'd like. We can hit out.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
Always says there's no place on the scorecard for anything
other than a number.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yes, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
The box is so small you can't write anything else
other than the score.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
That's it. And so being able to look at the
game creatively like an artist, although I'm an academic I
look at golf as an artist and be able to say,
you know, what is presented in front of me when
someone goes to a driving range. You know, for people
at home, look at your driving range, ask yourself the question,
what does this range give me? Do I have a
great chipping green? Do I have a putting facility that's nice?
Do I have a driving range that I can go

(25:49):
to to be created?

Speaker 1 (25:50):
I have a lot of targets on the driving totally.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Is there two trees out there that I can look
at and say, hey, that looks about forty yards wide,
That'd be a great fair way for me to hit
drivers into. And so being able to bring that non
golf team sport mentality my dissertation research, A lot of
it was written on special forces. So as a kid
I loved reading military books and still to this day.
You asked, you know you listen to other team sports

(26:15):
and coaches. I listened to military podcasts. Specifically I listened
to the Sean Ryan Show. He has a lot of
Seal Team six guys, Delta Force, really high performers. What
are they doing? What are they doing that's different than
what you and I are doing when we go to
the driving range. They don't have a day off, they
don't have the ability to have a bad day. A

(26:36):
bad day for them has real consequences. A bad day
for me, I shoot seventy seven. It's a very different mentality.
And looking at them they gave The military gave me
so much confidence in something called operant conditioning. It's essentially
where you can take someone off the street. You can
take a civilian who's seventeen or eighteen years old, put
them through buds, and in roughly two years they can

(26:59):
become a functioning Navy seal. Who's to say that in
sport we can't take someone off the street and turn
them into a world class player. The military has already
shown us it can be done through training, through.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
If they fall up exactly specific exactly thanks.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Instead, we show up to the driving range and we
have a seven iron, and we look out there and well,
I'm gonna work on my swing today. I'm gonna film
my swing. Look, I play golf seven days a week.
I want to make my swing better. But what is better?
What is better? Is it the esthetic contest? Or is
it the ability to put the ball in the hole.
You know, I have a dear old friend. We call

(27:38):
him Uncle Skip. He caddied on tour for a long
time and he always says to me, he goes, you
gotta dance with the date that you brought. Every one
of us wants a better swing.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
But I also think that people forget that unless you
are going to go in a vacuum in a laboratory
type situation and you're just going to go work on
your technique. Sure, right, if you are trying to play
golf recreationally or competitively, every time you go to the

(28:09):
golf course is an opportunity for you to play the
game better as regardless of what you're doing on the
driving range. Yes, right, because if you are going to
play golf, and I think we have generations now who
are just practicers. They don't fundamentally know how to play golf.

(28:32):
Sure and through technology, through science, through data, through all
of the things that are available on social media, all
of the things you can watch, you can work on
your technique. Ad nos, you work on techne forever you
can find anything online to work on.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Google how to fix my slice? There's ae hundred millions instantly.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
But even if you're trying to fix your slice, unless
you were just going to be a lifetime practicer or
a professional practicer. Sure you have to at some point
take the test. Yeah, the test is going out and
playing nine holes or eighteen holes with the rules of

(29:20):
the game, with the scorecard. You have to at some
point go out to the ocean. You just can't sail
in the harbor and think you're a sailor. Sure right,
you have to go out into the big blue sea
and learn how to sail.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
You said a fascinating anything about whatever level you're at,
And I think that this is for the listeners at home.
The professional game, in the amateur game is really far apart, right,
But it doesn't matter my own game. Right now, I'm
going to talk about my game. I'm probably never going
to play in the Masters, and that's okay. My Masters
might be the minor league Tour. It might be coming

(29:59):
down the stretch with a lead at sand Hill Crane
Golf Club playing against you know who knows who on
a Tuesday afternoon. My heart rate's going to be the
same as somebody is coming down with the chance to win.
One of my favorite clients, doctor Lonnie Malo has been
with us for basically since the beginning his goal when
he started with us was to break a hundred. He
had to play with his boss. He's an er doctor

(30:21):
and he had to play with his boss in I'll
never forget. It was the end of September and it
was June, and he said, I don't know how to
play golf and I'm terrified. His Masters was that round
with his boss. It didn't matter to him. He has
no aspirations of being a you know, world beater, world
number one. His Masters was that round. He ended up

(30:43):
shooting about you know, ninety eight or whatever it was.
And this year he played in his club championship. Next
year his goal is to compete in the club championship.
And I think that when you sit there and you
look at what your own goals are and being realistic
about them, it's okay. If I never play in the Masters,
career will still be a success because I'm trying to
be the best player that I can be next week,

(31:05):
next month, next year, five years from now. Who's to
say I can't.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
That's that's pretty interesting that I think most people, I
think most people in golf have massively out of kilter expectations.
Sure right, I mean, they're just their expectations of what
they're going to be able to do versus what they
can do. Circling back to John. So you get on

(31:33):
John's team, you go spend time with him. He's a
freak athlete. He's a freak golfer. He has all of
the tools, sure everyone, I mean he has all of
the tools. I mean he is a he's a joy
to watch play golf, and he plays golf in a
way that is incredibly simplistic, like he really does play

(31:58):
golf in them people is form where I think people
would think that it would be much more complex. The
way he plays.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
The beauty is the simplicity, the truest form of art
think about. I watched Hero Dreams of Sushi, the Netflix
documentary where the chef he makes sushi all day long,
and the sushi is so simple, but it's perfect. It's
so clean, the lines are elegant, the way it's done.
And with John, the way I look at it and
my time with him has been trying to make it
more fun, just trying to make practice not a job.

(32:29):
These guys do it every day all day. At the
highest levels of the game. There's stress, there's financial there's
you know, all the expectations of trying to be the
best in the world. And I try to create games
that are enjoyable, that are engaging, that are you know,
taking what they do well already and make it a
little better. And then hey, here are some areas that
we need to work on. Let's try to have a

(32:50):
little more fun doing that. And so for me, I
look at children as the greatest model of learning. How
do kids learn? They play? Kids play. When we become adults,
when we stop playing. You know, I'm a serious person.
I need to have serious you know, I'm gonna grind.
What does that even mean? Are you not gonna enjoy?

(33:10):
You're gonna stand there and hip balls till you bleed,
thanks man, Like I'll take anyone else against that guy
in the field. Right The children are out there learning.
My have a four yeal niece who I get to
watch her, how she learns, the questions that she asks. That's,
in my opinion, my role with players is taking them
back to when they were a child and how they learned,

(33:30):
how they had fun, and more importantly, judgment free. Us
as human beings are egos and are the stories that
we tell ourselves. The stress that we put ourselves under
It can become very constraining where you don't want to
take that risk. John's always willing to take the risk.
I will always say this if I ask the same
question to all of my guys, everyone you know, seeing

(33:51):
Tory Pine's the eighteenth hole, and I always give them
the number two fifty five because it's a weird tweener number,
like maybe it's a five five iron lay up, maybe
it's a you send it hit three wood. And a
good question to ask yourself is you're tied for the lead,
your opponent just hit it in the water. What do
you do? Who are you? Do?

Speaker 1 (34:12):
You go for the green from two fifty five, which
a guy like John rom can easily get any pin
on the eighteenth hole at Torrey Pines, where he won
his first major championship, the US Open. But he can
get from two fifty five, He can get any You
can get to any pin, sure, And he's got a
variety of different shots he could git to do that. Yeah,
So does he go for it or does he lay

(34:35):
up and then try and make a birdie with a wedge?

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Sure? And the questions that I ask all of my guys,
I always tell them there's no right answers. It's your
answer because at the end of the day, something that
I will never take credit for an athlete's success. You know,
we have some amazing athletes on our team. They're the
ones hitting the shot. I'm the one asking the questions
to try to give them some thought as to what
do we do in that moment. We go back to

(34:58):
the military. You know, how do you you know what
you're gonna do if you haven't trained it. We go
back to our level of training under stress, under duress.
Something we spend so much time on is our heart rate.
All of our guys we monitor their heart rates when
they're playing because we know that when your heart rate
gets up, your decision making changes, your physical body changes.
Your hands. Everyone's felt it. Your hands go a little
numb when you're putting. What is that sensation?

Speaker 1 (35:20):
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(35:43):
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(36:03):
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(36:24):
on the road. Go to drink ag one dot com
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com slash son of a Butch. Check it out. This
is something I think is really fascinating. So all of
the technology out there. You know a lot of the
guys on the PGA tour used the whoops during the pandemic.

(36:46):
They gave everybody on the PGA Tour a whoop, because
that was one of the ways that they were looking
at seeing which guys were coming down with COVID. The
Nick Wotney that that famous story Nick Wotney. He shows up,
he doesn't tell positive at Harbortown, he's not feeling good.
He sees Roy McElroy in the parking lot. Roy talks

(37:07):
to him a little bit about it. He said, look
at your whoop data. I'm not feeling good today. They
looked through that, they found out that he had contracted.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah, COVID.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
They gave everybody. So now a lot of PGA Tour
players and because of the PGA Tour, everybody mimics every
amateur that I work with. Now every Mini tour player
has got a whoop on. You're able during tournaments to
actively get live heart rate data from your players.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
So one of the coolest stories during that same era,
one of the first guys we worked with, I will
mention his name. He had a put to tie in
an event that he really needed to play well in
and he had six feet on the last hole and
his heart rate go up to one hundred and forty
six beats. And for those of you at home who
don't realize this. That's right on the cusp of where
your vision starts to change and neurological things start to happen.

(37:58):
Physical things start to happen. And I called the buddy
of mine who was a Green Beret, and I asked
him about this, and I said, hey, have you guys
researched this? And he turned me onto this amazing research
from someone within the military who monitors all the Special
Forces heart rate and he told a great story. He said,
one of the final tests they have, they give you

(38:18):
essentially a paintball gun and you know, they're like not
real bullets, and they put a hood over your head
and a scenario is presented in front of you. It
might be a woman holding a baby, it might be
you know, two pertend terrorists. And they said, the first
time everyone's heart rates through the roof, it's one sixty.
And then you know, they shoot, They shoot the paintball
gun at whatever's in front of them, and they said,
by the end they're able to calm down. Hood comes off.

(38:41):
They assess, they assess, they pull the trigger in the
right way, and it just clicked off. This idea in
my mind that what if I test everything on myself.
I am my own crash test dummy. For those of
you who follow me on Instagram, you know I'm doing
this every day all day. It's it's it's every day,
all day. And so I just monitored my own heart
rate and I put myself in and tournaments had said, well,

(39:01):
when I'm hitting balls in the driving range, I'm out
about eighty. When I play a tournament, there's no consequence.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
I just and if you hit That's the thing I
think everyone listening when you are hitting golf balls on
the range, there really is no consequence because if you
hit a bad one, you just fire one over. And
a lot of times what I'll do with players is
they get into that rut to where they start hitting
bad shot after bad shot after bad shot, and the

(39:29):
worst they hit it, the faster they're hitting the next ball.
So there's really no thought process. And I'll let players
sometimes go through that to where they'll hit three, four
or five shots, and a lot of times I'll start
filming without them realizing they don't know what I'm filming,
and I'll say, listen, watch how fast you just hit

(39:51):
the last five balls. Sure, now tell me what you
were thinking, tell me what the object of each shot was,
and you can't because you're in that drowning phase. Right.
I think golfers more than any other sport you get.
Everybody goes through this. Tour players go through this, but
the average golfer that's listening, we all go through that
phase of where you feel like I've lost it and

(40:14):
now I'm drowning. Oh yeah, And the more you feel
like you're losing it, the more you feel like you're drowning.
You're in quicksand and you're just in your arms around
that boat is sinking. So you were saying the heart rate.
Most people in the range, they hit a bad shot,
there's fifty of them in front of them, they just
grab another one.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
So the consequence of that is so different when we're
on the golf course because you don't have another ball.
It matters every ball when you're playing the game of golf,
matters when you're trying to keep score, when you're in
a competition, whether you're just out for a weekend with
your friends. The playing of the game is so different

(40:59):
than the practice sing of the game. Yes, but everybody
just spends all of their time practicing.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, it's a fascinating concept for me where I look
at it and I'm with you, I don't quite understand it.
I can't put my finger on the why. And that's okay.
I've stopped trying to ask the why, and I've started
just trying to find solutions. I've just said, you know what,
I'm willing to do burpies on the driving range and
have everyone laugh at me, because here's the thing about

(41:27):
being an overnight success. Everyone laughed at me until they didn't.
I was doing burpies on the driving range three years
ago by myself and everyone would giggle. I didn't have
any PGA tour clients. I wasn't on your podcast. I
was some four handicap in Scott's Arizona, you know, trying
to play in my club championship. I was willing to
be different because I didn't know that was wrong. I

(41:51):
didn't know the So.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
Doing burpees on the driving range is trying to get.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Your heart right up, jamming my heart right up, I
know what, try.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
And get what you're Everybody comes to people like you.
Everyone comes to people like me that is trying to
play and say, okay, how can I simulate what happens
on the golf course, on the driving rang. So in
my practice, how can I how do I get because
I'm struggling. I'm hitting it good on the range, I

(42:19):
stripe it on the range. I strike it on the range,
and then I get on the golf course and I
feel like I haven't been practicing. Things go wrong, I
think I always say, and it's something I've been saying
for a while now. From an American football standpoint, competitive
golf is the two minute.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Offense one hundred.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
It's the red zone. Yes, sometimes you're going to get
a lot of time in the red zone, but sometimes
at the end of a game, you're going to get
a team is going to get the ball back. They're
going to have forty five seconds left, they're on the
their own ten yard line. Maybe they've got a time out,
maybe they don't. And I'm always fascinating that the greater

(43:01):
the quarterback, the less the time, the more the announcers say,
that's a lot of time for Aaron Rodgers, he's got
a chance, a lot of time for Patrick Mahomes. The
greater the quarterback, the less time they have there are
people are more surprised if they don't score, then they

(43:23):
are right.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
So I'll tell you. I'll tell you a baseball story
and the same I played at cal State Fullerton my
freshman year.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
We're the number one hour house.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, we're the number one team in the country. And
our coach always said to us, if we're down one
in the ninth, we're winning the game because the other
team is going to be more. They're gonna panic. We
are not. We are going to win. And I can't
tell you how many how many leads that we flipped
going into the eighth, going into the ninth, when we
were like, yeah, of course we're gonna win. Of course

(43:53):
we're gonna win. Well, that's exactly we were more surprised
if we lost, like no, no, no, no, this is we're
gonna beat you. We are the team that's worked harder.
We've done it, We've done the reps. And if you
here's a funny story going back to what you said
about competitive team sports. I was a freshman. I was
scared to death. Our biggest rival in college baseball, think Alabama,
Auburn is Long Beach State, cal State Fullerton. I'm zero

(44:16):
for two. On Saturday, I get the start because one
of our guys got hurt, so I get the start.
My first two at bats were terrible, I mean awful.
As I'm walking up to bet, my head coach puts
his arm around me in the on deck circle and
he looks at me. And what do you think you
say to a scared freshman who is there's thousands of
people there. You say, hey, you can do it, son,

(44:36):
You know you can do this, Nico. He looked at me,
he goes, do you ever want to play here again?
And I turned and there's a video of it somewhere.
My eyes are like saucers. He goes, get a hit.
I rolled one over the five to six hole and
I got a base hit. And he comes up to
me and he goes, I told you, And you sit
there and you compare that to golf, where as you said,
you hit a bad shot, and then you go spend

(44:57):
you know, a week on the driving range working on
my te technique. Golf, the ball doesn't move, so we
have so much time to think and evaluate and ask
ourselves why did the ball go there. I'm not that
interested in the why. I'm interested in competing. I want
a dog who gets in there and competes on their
worst day. Everybody in professional golf, every Mini Tour pro

(45:20):
can shoot sixty three.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Padrick Harrington a couple weeks ago they interviewed him live
amazing at I think he was playing at the Senior
British opening. Padrick said, you know, Padrick is a multiple
major champions stuff. He is a Wryder Cup hero for Europe.
He is a Writer Cup captain. They didn't win when
he was captain, but he is a I mean, he's
he's the man.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
I love his Paddy's golf tips. By way, if you're listening,
I love your Patty's golf tips.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
It's great. And he was saying live on our Tim
Barter from Sky was interview him and he said, listen,
at this level, there are people that hit it better
than I do that aren't at this level, not even close,
but at the elite competitive level, the way that you
think on the golf course is the differentiator because everybody

(46:08):
is good. So if you're trying to break to me,
it's the barriers one hundred ninety, yes, eighty seventy. If
you're trying to break one hundred for the same for
the first time, pretty much everybody that's in your handicap
level is the same.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, they're all the same.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
You're you all have the same amount of talent. So
everybody trying to break one hundred out there for the
first time, everybody trying to break ninety, trying to break eighty. Sure,
whatever bucket of those you're in. Sure remember that everybody
that's never broken eighty before pretty much probably has the
same skill set, similar, same kind of technique. Sure, there's

(46:51):
no differentiator there right from a technique standpoint.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Probably there's some. Obviously there's outliers. There're largely golfers fit
in buckets and they're.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
So if you're trying to break eighty for the first
time or ninety for the first time, there are so
And I talked to Ryan about it last week on
the podcast. There are so many golf life hacks that
you can come up with that don't have anything to
do with the way you're swinging the golf club. Yes,
and the way that you practice can help you so

(47:24):
much when you get into these situations on the golf
course that everybody is going to get into. I think
one of the people always ask me why Brooks is
so great in the majors, and I always say the
same thing. And I say, because Brooks doesn't expect everything
to go well. He expects there to be turbulence, He

(47:44):
expects there to be he expects to make bad swings. Sure,
he expects to hit bad shots. I think so many
people go into playing golf thinking, Okay, the way I'm
going to break one hundred and ninety or eighty for
the first time is I have to do all of
these things perfect and the stars almost have to align.

(48:07):
And I think that the way that you've come up
with a way to try and gamify practice is something
that I think can help so many people. So circling
back to John, what were some of the practice games
that you came up with? When you're looking at a

(48:28):
guy like John Rum, who's good at everything, how do
you go, Okay, what can I get him to practice?
From a game standpoint? Give him games? Because I've seen
you for around all the majors. You come up with
a list of games, sure, based off of the tasks
that he's going to have to control. So at AUGUSTA,

(48:51):
you identify the shots that he's going to have to
hit the type of conditions that he's going to be playing.
Insure firm greens, not a lot of landing areas, slopey, slopey,
all of those things. So you come up with games
and you say, okay, here are the games. See if

(49:12):
you can now achieve these tasks or tests in practice.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
So my dissertation was written on a guy named doctor
Robert F. Major who created criterion reference instruction. It's exactly
what you're describing. It's little tests, it's here's the task.
It might be to hit an eight iron one hundred
and fifty yards, normal task every PGA tour pro. I
don't care how short you are. You can hit it
one hundred and fifty. Then it might be to hit

(49:40):
at one seventy that might be a stretch. So they're
little tests before the test. And John's a unique case
because he's so talented everything. But I work really closely
with Dave John's I almost throw John out because he's
such an anomaly. He's so gifted. He's so gifted. So
if we were going to speak more generally about regular

(50:01):
I guess tour pros, I would work with first a player,
sit down them, learn who they are. Who are are
you going for it on eighteen or not? At toy
it's okay if you don't, it's okay if you don't.
And then working with Dave, working with him to identify
what are they doing in their swings, because I need
to understand what is the technique that they're trying to do.
And then my job is down the line of saying,

(50:23):
all right, let's make some fun games. Augusta is a
great example. Backfoot wedge on thirteen. You might need to
hit a backfoot edge on thirteen, not something that you
can do on a flat driving range. And so for
most people you go to a flat, you know, municipal
driving range, they don't have the opportunity to hit a
backfooter off of the rough or you know, hit balls
out of the wodship exactly, hit balls out of a

(50:44):
wood chips or you know, fair way bunkers, whatever it
might be. And so if you're listening at home, your
golf course could turn into a practice facility on the
rounds that you play by yourself. One of the things
that I do for all of our guys is we
look at their golf course and say, all right, the
first hole at Floridian, let's call it, it has a

(51:04):
fairway bunker left that how far do you think that
is in.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Probably from from the back tea, it's probably two eighty
to ninety. So, you know at our club at the Floridian,
it's a it's a pretty you know, it's a good
t ball bunker's right, Yeah, bunkers left, good ball. If
you've never played there before, you're trying to the first
question anybody asks if I take a player there is okay,
can I reach the bunkers? What's it to get into

(51:28):
the bunker on the right, what's it to get into
the bunker on the left?

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Yeah, So, if you're a player at home, number one
at the Floridian might be a great driving hole. So
the days that you're going to maybe go to the
driving range or maybe play, what if we reimagined until
we get places like the Grove, Floridian, Silver Leaf that
have these unbelievable world class practice facilities. If you reimagine
your golf course into a practice facility, that first hole

(51:52):
might be your driving focus and you could work on
maybe you hit two. Obviously this is assuming that you're
in the afternoon and not holding play up. You might
hit fairway bunkers out of the one on the left.
Then you might find a green. Say the second green
has a really good slope, you might work on putting
for an extra three minutes on that putting slope, Say
the third hole you find a chip shot and you

(52:13):
hit one extra chip shot from there. So now, if
you're playing alone, or if you're playing with one friend
who's motivated that eighteen whole round, look, you can't. The
thing that I think people mistake is every round can't
be your lowest round. It's not a thing. You're not
gonna shoot your lowest score every single day. Some days
are gonna have to be days that you work. Maybe
you use a half set, maybe you don't use a driver.

(52:35):
One of the most common things I do with our
guys is I take their driver in the three it away,
I make them hit irons. Why because then they have
to hit long irons into par fours, something that is uncomfortable,
especially for the guys who are playing in the wind.
In Florida. We're lucky here where it's windy, But for
my West Coast guys, Arizona guys, I mean Pooge. He
plays at the ASU two. They don't have wind, so

(52:57):
for him, hitting a four iron into a par four
is like all right, Hey, I gotta work at this.
They're hitting driver sixty driver, you know, fifty six into everything,
And so as you're thinking about practice, take the veil
off of every round has to be my lowest score.
Some days you can just improve and it might be
working on your extra putting. On every day on every

(53:17):
green you drop an extra ball and you just work
on lige putting. That's enough.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
I think people would be surprised. I think most golfers
would would want to go out and watch players if
they could be inside the ropes. They would want to
watch them play a tournament round.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
What I think would be fascinating for the majority of
the people listening to the pod is would be to
come to a practice round. Yeah, specifically at a major chansonship, right,
and the ideal practice round if you were if you
were going to go watch and you were going to
try and learn something from a tour player, if you
could go inside the ropes and watch a player try

(53:58):
and prepare at Augusta Nash because that is such a specific
golf course for specific shots. So I think everybody you
would watch where they would go putt from, you would
watch where they would go chip from. You you would
watch what they would talk about off the tea with
their caddies saying, Okay, what are we going to hit here?

(54:22):
What is my strategy here? Right? That to me would
be a very very accelerated learning process totally for a
lot of for a lot of golfers.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
I think if people could, people would learn so much
on the questions that they're asking. What are what are
the questions this golf course is asking me? And then
how am I answering them? The player's response?

Speaker 1 (54:44):
And I said this last week in talking to Ryan,
we were talking on a similar theme. The majority of
people listening to this podcast do not play all their
golf at Oakmond. Sure, they don't play all of their
golf at these iconic, major style, tournament style golf courses.

(55:05):
They the majority of people, I think, play golf courses
that tend to be pretty flat, Yeah, a little rough
around the edges right there, fairways tend to be fairly wide. Sure,
the greens tend to be somewhat flat to maybe a
little bit slopey.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
It's not world class.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
The greens are not running at thirteen or right. So
if if you think about the golf course that you
play all the time, and you're trying to break eighty ninety,
one hundred for the first time. You can gamify your
practice based off of the golf course that you play.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
You play which is.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Not tucked pins three from the left, three from the back,
and there's a ton of slope and the fairways ten
yards wide and if you miss the fairway you're making
X like you see on.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
TV, yah ches highright, whatever.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
So you can look at your own golf course and say, Okay,
what questions does my golf course at home that I
play the majority of my golf what questions is it
asking me?

Speaker 2 (56:13):
One hundred percent? And you have a fascinating thing about
breaking the number because when people ask me that about
breaking eighty or ninety or one hundred, whatever it might be,
and I say to them, Ken McDonald and Arizona is
a municipal I bet you can break eighty there. It's
wide open, it's flat, it's easy. But the question comes

(56:33):
down to, like you said, your own golf course. I
play a course down here called Locks of Hagi Club
requires a lot of two irons for me really uncomfortable.
There's shots there that I don't have elsewhere that if
I played that club every day, I would need to
get a seven wood because there's par fives that I
need to hit it high into. But for the tournament golfer,
the thing that amazes me the most about the high

(56:54):
level player. I'm a pretty decent player myself, but I
need to have seen in a place a few times
to understand the strategy to you know, where do I
hit it? The best players in the world to show
up and shoot sixty five. It is just a different
It's a different game. And for those of you listening
at home, that's okay. If you're not that guy. You
shooting seventy five in your club championship might be your goal.

(57:17):
That might be your process goal. Your outcome goal might
be breaking eighty. You know what you should do. Go
play the easiest course you can do, shoot seventy nine
and you did it. Does that mean you broke eighty.
It's your own decision, right, That's that's that kind of interesting.
I talk a lot about with our guys, and we
can talk about it about process and outcome goals. In outcome goals,
I want to break eighty. Is that a good goal? Maybe?

(57:40):
But I want to break eighty at my home course.
Me shooting eighty at Bayhill this year when the greens
were you know, thirteen in rock Hard, that'd have been
a hell of a round. Me shooting eighty at my
home club here, Hey man, I'm not losing all the
money like I am having a tough day, right, So
that's an important thing that I think people should differentiate
as well their own games. Score is important, but you

(58:02):
want to enjoy the game and play it for a
long time.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Give me some gamified practice ideas for someone trying to
break one hundred for the first time, someone trying to
break ninety for the first time, someone trying to break
eighty for the first time. So if you're trying to
break one hundred for the first time and you love golf,
you're practicing golf, you're trying to improve. What are some

(58:30):
good practice games that you can play on the range
at your home course, regardless whether you're hitting off of
a mat, regardless of what the driving range looks like.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
Yeah, so I have a few, And this kind of
goes into our takeaway as I want people to walk
away with Number one. You have to self assess human beings.
Because of our egos, were not very good self assessors.
We protect ourselves. When I first started with doctor Kevin Moore,
we went through my numbers and I found out as
a terrible wedge player. That didn't feel good. When I
started doing wedge tests, sucked and it didn't feel good.

(59:01):
I was I'm not a bad wedge player. I make
six birdies around? Why I make six berties? I drive
four par fours? You know, like it's not this isn't
a thing, right, So Number one, you have to self
assess what are you good at? Why can't you break
a hundred? Darren may our friend down at the Grove,
amazing guy, works with Keegan the Grove guys. He has
one of the best things. How far do you hit

(59:21):
a driver? Distance right now, whether you want to deal
with it or not, is a predictor of golf success.
So that's a first question. Do I hit it far
enough to compete? And I'm not talking about three point fifty,
not that many guys hit it three fifty and even
less guys hit it three fifty in play. If I'm
an amateur golfer trying to break a hundred, can I
hit it too forty in play? Can I hit a
driver two hundred and forty yards in the air.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Which if you're trying to break one hundred for the
first time, if you could carry a driver, you are
Rory McElroy. You're elite, you are eight Do you are
from a distance? Oh my goodness, you are in hammer
it right.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
I think most golfers that are trying to break a
hundred for the first time, if they could consistently carry
the golf bowl two hundred games in the air, it
would be a game.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Change, life changer. So number one, you self assess and
if you don't, if you're not able to self assess,
ask a friend. One of the things I do with
all my tour guys I play with all of them,
I ask them about my own game. Peer review is
something I took from the Navy seal teams. They peer
review and it sucks. Tring told me, I love cameradge Golly.
One of my guys he said to me, to day

(01:00:31):
goes your three wood stinks and that I looked at
him and I went, wow, my threewood does stink. I
hit it in the water all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
So you're asking the people that you play with on
a regular basis, Hey, you and I play every Saturday together,
play together.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
What am I good at?

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
And what am I bad at?

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
Yeah? What do you see in my game?

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
You watch me play all the time. We've got a
Saturday game.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
You and I've known each other for five, six, ten years,
however long we play every Saturday at the club. Tell
me what I'm good at. They tell me what I'm bad.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
And maybe they're a bad maybe they're a bad cess
or too. So there's a million stats programs out there.
You can pick whichever one you want. You don't need
to keep stats. You can if you'd like. That's an
easy way to do it. It'll give you an objective
view of I'm an eighteen handicap. Here's my strokes gained.
You don't need to do it, you can do it. Then,
once you know what you're good at, then you have
to ask yourself how much time am I willing to

(01:01:21):
put in? Look, you're a dad, you have kids, You
have a family. If I'm a father who has two
kids and works forty hours a week and I'm trying
to be a loving husband, I'm probably not going to
be at the range six days a week, am I? Yeah?
I hope you're I hope you're not. You know what
I mean. But you can ask yourself. When I was
doing my doctorate, I had thirty minutes. Some days I

(01:01:42):
had a lunch break. I brought a putter. I put
a putting mat in my office and I would sit
there and I would roll putts for thirty minutes. That's
what I would do. So then you have to sit
there and you have to say to yourself, Okay, what
can I do with the time that I have? And
you talked about expectations, be realistic. I'm not going to
be world number one this year, probably never in my life.
That's okay. What are my real, clear process and outcome goals.

(01:02:07):
My outcome goal might be I want to qualify from
the City Amateur. Great goal, fantastic goal, you got to
shoot seventy seven, you know, whatever it is. My process
would then be, in order to qualify for the City Amateur.
And I'm a father and I got two kids, I
got to ask my wife if she'd watch the kids
for an hour once a week so I can get
to the driving range and I can get that extra

(01:02:28):
hour in, take her on a date, get you know,
bring home ice cream, do something, process and outcome. And
then finally, it's really just learning to play the game.
And I don't mean on Instagram watching golf tips. My
dad love the guy to death, great father. He's an
eighteen handicap who watches more golf tips than any human

(01:02:49):
being on the planet. Dude, the guy has more sets
of clubs. He shows up, he's gonna, you know, screw
in the light bulb and then squish the bug. And
it's like, Dad, you know why you're an eighteen handicap,
I said, because you think you carry it two forty
and he carries it two zero five. That's why. Because
he thinks he can fly the bunker on the right,
he can't. He swings hard and he quack hooks one

(01:03:10):
into the water. So it's understanding your gain and more importantly,
your goals. Your goals don't need to be being world
number one. Your goals can be being the best player
you can be, whatever that means for you, and setting
those clear process goals processes everything to me. Obviously, this

(01:03:30):
is what I do. You don't need to buy golf blueprint.
You can, if you'd like, create a plan for yourself.
Claude talked about it. Hey, here are the shots that
my golf course needs. I want to break ninety. I
know I got to hit that five wood on the
twelfth hole. That makes me uncomfortable. Spend ten minutes at
your practice session hitting that five wood. Have a plan
showing up to the range so that when you're there,

(01:03:52):
you don't have the cognitive fatigue, which is so real
in golf. If trying to plan what do I do next?
The guy next to him's hitting driver. He's hitting it
pretty far, man, I bet I could hit it farther him. Okay, fine,
But is that your everyday plan? Is my question.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
I'm fascinated every year here in the US Hard Knocks,
which is on HBO, which talks you know, it follows
a US football team and goes through their spring training
and I'm always fascinated that, you know, I was watching
it the other night, and this year it's on the
New York Jets. And they played the first game preseason, sure,

(01:04:28):
and they played terrible, and the coach, the head coach
came in and said, we didn't play our brand of football.
And then the next game they went out and won
a preseason game, and the coach came in and said,
that was who we are we played our brand of football?
I think everybody can look at their own game and say, Okay,
what do I need to do? What does my game?

(01:04:50):
What am I good at?

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
What am I not good at? Okay? And what can
I do today when I go out on the golf
course to play my brand of golf? What is called
your everybody listening will there? Everybody's game is going to
be different. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. So identifying, Okay,
what am I good at? What am I not good at?

(01:05:13):
If I am good at something, play towards those strengths.
We all look at I think Niko, we all look
at John Ram's trying to turn weaknesses into strengths. Absolutely right,
Rory McElroy. The elite players are saying, okay, where am
I deficient? Tiger was the best at that. Tiger was
when when he turned pro. I watched for ten years

(01:05:35):
at a ringsight. See, Tiger was a shit wedge player.
He was a terrible bunker player. Tiger turned all of
the weaknesses into strengths. That's really hard for a twenty
handicapper because they don't have a lot of strengths. So
find out the things that you're good at sure, Right,
we're not talking that you have to be an elite level,

(01:05:56):
but you're gonna look at your game and say, listen,
there is going to be some part of my game, yeah,
as a twenty handicapper that stands out more than the others,
whatever that strength is, and then do everything you can
do to play to that strength.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
My girlfriend as a med student in tennis pro, she's
learning to play golf. She loves hitting driver. You know
what we do at the driving range, we hit drivers.
She loves hitting driver. So we get on par four,
She's like, I can make a par She's so excited
to play part fours and par five's because she's like,
I can hit part three the worst. Right, hates part three's,
but like he is up there on a par five.

(01:06:36):
She made a birdie a couple of weeks ago and
it was the best day ever. Her making a birdie
on a par five was that it was more elation
than I feel, you know, making a hole in one.
I'm sure it's it's it's it's it's relative to your level.
And I think that people at home need to understand that.
Watching the guys play on tour on perfect manicured greens

(01:06:57):
that roll out of twelve every week with physios and teams. Look,
you and I work on the teams. We know what
these guys have behind us. Joe who works as a
computer sales you know it guy and then goes out
and plays a Saturday game, isn't getting massage and chiropractic
And you know you're not on the range behind him, Like,
hey man, you're you know, one degree inside.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
To me, the low hanging fruit for people trying to
break one hundred, ninety to eighty, Like you said, that's
such an arbitrary goal, right if you're trying to break
one hundred for the first time, if you're trying to
break ninety, try and play an entire eighteen hole round
of golf. And the goal is, I'm not going to
make a triple bogey.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
Today, perfect goal.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
I'm not going to make amazing a triple bogey.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
To love that goal.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
I'm if I make a double bogie fus, if I
make bogie Stunes. But what I'm not going to do
today is make a triple making ten. I'm not going
to make X. Yeah right, great, and just say listen,
and I say this all the time. The easiest way
for the for the majority of golfers to achieve their
score goals, breaking one hundred, breaking eight, breaking ninety eighty,

(01:08:04):
even breaking seventy, is to make more pars and bogie,
not birdies. Yes, everyone thinks the one hundred shooter thinks
I'm going to break a hundred if I make more birdiees.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
I gotta make six birdies.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
You're not going to make a lot of birdies if
you're shooting consistently in the hundreds. So maybe the goal
would be to say, hey, if I can play eighteen
holes today and I can give myself more than one
look today at making a legit.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
Birdie, Dude, if you hit three gi rs, amazing, three looks,
you might have great, great question, What is a legitimate
look at bertie at that level? If you have a
twenty foot birdie putt, you are flushing it amazing for you.
The difference that I learned and I learned competitive golf
in pro golf because I never played amateur golf, I

(01:08:55):
never played youth golf, high school, off whatever. Pros are
really good at making pars and bogie. When you think
they're going to make a double, they make a five.
When you think they're gonna make bogie. They find a
way to make the seven footer for par. It's not
making eight birdies around. Yes, when guys shoot sixty two,
when they have the heater going, they're going to make
everything insighte.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Look at the reaction next time you watch a tour event,
and look at the reaction when someone holds a ten
footer for Park versus the ten foot birdie pot Sure
the reaction is very different. You will see people make
the ten footer for Birdie and basically show no emotion.
And then you will see someone with a downhill left

(01:09:36):
to right putt for par on tour on the back
nine to keep the round going, and the body language
and the fist pump will be very different. And the
interaction between when the player goes over to the caddy,
the fist pump, the high five, the slap on the
back for the ten footer for par is very different
than the ten footer for Birdie.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
The loss of version theory, it's literally what you're just driving.
Loss of version theory. Human beings want to not lose
more than they want to win, and so making the
birdies good but not making bogies even better. Fascinating research
study out there. I'm sure someone can look it up.
But if you tell someone a six footers for par
versus six footer for birdie, the make rate is different,
same putt, same as if you tell someone a par

(01:10:20):
four is a par five. Bryson had a fascinating thing
about calling Augusta a par sixty seven, and he got
roasted for it. He got crushed for it, but it
was an interesting concept. Him saying to himself, it's a
par sixty seven.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
Changing his didn't help that he missed the cut.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
Didn't help me miss the cut, and obviously it didn't
work out, you know whatever. Bryson has some fascinating theories,
but it was it was an interesting idea by saying, look,
I'm preparing myself today. If you're playing a Monday qualifier
and you're a you know, corn fairy guy, it's a
par sixty five.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
Yeah, if you if you shoot four under your good life,
you might as if you're four under truck, if you're
if you're four understanding on the eighteenth hole, you're trying
to Monday qualifier for a PGA Tour event, hold it.
Most of the time you're either gonna hold it, or
you know that if you make par, it's over. You've
shot four under and you've got no chance.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
Yeah. That's the thing that like playing professional golf Monday qualifiers.
It's such a unique skill versus as you and I
are talking about the average golfer who's listening to this podcast.
It's ninety nine point nine percent of golfers. That's golf.
The professional golf is such a niche, little game of
margins and freak athletes with skill. The average golfer listening

(01:11:31):
at home, listen to what Claude said, Right, don't make
triple in your break one hundred. That's what it is,
my girlfriend, don't four putt? I love you, please three putt,
make the three footer for your third putt.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
If you go back and you look at your round,
you will look at something in your round and go,
man if I just don't do that, I actually didn't
really play that bad today, regardless of what your handicapped.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
Doesn't matter, right, doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
You will look at a stretch of holes where you
say to yourself, man if I just bogey all those holes, yeah,
I go saving six shots right there right there by
just making bogies, not making doubles, not making triples.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
Lastly, Nico, I mean we could talk for three hours
on this golf blueprint dot com. If people want to
get better, tell me what you've designed, what they get,
and what the object of Golf Blueprint is four players totally.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
So the number one thing I would say to everybody
is follow the Instagram. And the reason is I I
claud season every day. I post every single day what
I'm learning. So no matter what the research is, if
I have a tour pro, if I have just what
I'm learning, I give away all that information for free.
I don't charge for that. That to me is really
important that someone might not be able to afford golf

(01:12:52):
Blueprint right now. And I understand that it's expensive. I
have two plans. One of them's forty dollars a month,
the other one's one hundred. We're always working to make
it better. But if you sign up for that, if
you sign up for the one hundred dollars plan, it's
called the Players, you'll get a customized practice plan based
on our algorithm. And then the classic plan, which is
forty is our algorithm's best guess. That's the best way

(01:13:13):
to describe it. The tour business is an entirely other thing.
If you play on the PDA Tour and you work
with Claude, great, But I don't work with other players,
if that makes sense. But for the average person at home,
I would say, you don't need to buy anything today
to get better right now this afternoon, I hope you
listen to this, and I hope you took away Claude
andize takeaways on how to improve for free. Those don't

(01:13:34):
cost you any money. Going to the driving range with
a plan costs you nothing. All you need to do
is think about your golf course, think about the way
you play the game, and more importantly, how you want
to play the game. That's hugely important. If you want
to play the game like Bryson, do it. If you
want to hit irons like Tommy Fleetwood do it. If
you want to hit you know, bunker shots like Tech,

(01:13:55):
whatever it might be that's going to keep you coming
back and keep the game engaging. Golf is meant to
be fun, and I think that sometimes amateurs forget that
you might've shot seventy five one time and that's incredible.
Just because you shot eighty to day doesn't it's not
a bad round.

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Yeah, And I think that in looking at you know,
obviously you and I have talked a lot about what
golf flue print does. I think what it does is
it gives people another element of their practice to say, Okay,
I've worked on my technique today. Sure, there's only so
much in an hour from a technique standpoint that you

(01:14:34):
can make gains. Right, Absolutely, Obviously, practicing is like going
to the gym. Right, if you're trying to lose weight,
if you put the time in, got to do it,
you will. If you're trying to lose weight and you
go to the gym five days a week, you will
see improvement. Sure, right by just going by just doing
show up, show up, will you will see some games.

(01:14:55):
But I think the games that I think everyone listening
can can benefit from is saying, Okay, I've done my
technical work today. I've worked on the technique aspect of
my game. Now let me go spend some time on
playing playing golf, playing on you know, a jungle gym,

(01:15:19):
which is the driving range. Your driving range could be
the equivalent of going to a park and seeing a
jungle gym and saying, Okay, I'm going to play on
the jungle gym. Yes, but then I'm also got two
of my friends, So now we're going to see who
can climb to the top of the jungle gym the
fastest or take the most difficult route to go. You're

(01:15:39):
learning so much. One of the most fascinating things that
really changed for me learning is I was at a
TPI seminar with Greg Rose and he was talking about,
you know, failure as being a big part of the
learning process, have to fail. And he was talking and
so he said, to any he said, we see this
with kids. He said, anybody in the room have very

(01:16:02):
young kids just learning to walk, and they raise you know,
people raise their hands and he says, okay, did anybody
in the room's child go from crawling one day to
just standing up and walking and didn't fall? Sure, And
someone will invariably, very proudly raise their hand and say, yes,

(01:16:24):
my son, little Timmy just got up one day and
started walking.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:28):
I'll never forget this. You know what Greg Grove said,
Knock him down, because if he doesn't learn how to
stand up, get his balance, then fall down, then learn
how to get and figure out how to pull himself
back up. That is a massive part about learning how
to walk, and he was saying that all of the

(01:16:50):
studies they show kids that just wake up one day
and start walking tend to be in later life vastly
uncoordinated because they never learned the struggle of getting up.
So I think what you've come up with is a
way that people can say, Okay, I've figured out I'm

(01:17:10):
working on these singles going to work. We're always going
to be working on parts of your technique. You can
always drive it better, Yes, you can always groove your
path more into out than out to in. But then
you have to spend some time saying, Okay, I'm a
hundred handicapper, I'm trying to break a hundred. I'm trying

(01:17:31):
to break ninety. Let me put myself in game situations
that are going to help me do that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
And more importantly, be willing to fail. Yeah, Claude, I
fail every single day. I fail every single day at
the driving range because if I wasn't, i'd be the
number one player in the world, and the number one
player in the world. You and I both work with
these guys. They're failing everything, fail all the time. I
am willing to fail because I'm willing to learn, And
as you said about the child, that kid is learning

(01:17:58):
how to learn, and they're learning how they walk, how
they crawl, how they fall, how they get back up.
And I love the idea of the jungle gym. Look
at the way a kid looks at the jungle gym
versus how you and I do. What do we see
when we look at that? I look at a golf
driving range as the kid in the jungle gym. I
look at it with endless possibilities. It doesn't matter where
it is. I go to different driving ranges every day

(01:18:19):
on purpose to just look at them differently. As how
do I, like you said, how do I make this
more difficult? Hit Ball's out of dibots, you flush it,
hip Ball's out of divts, hip ball's off the dirt.
It's fricking hard, you know learning, it's learning, And more importantly,
I think that people need to be kinder to themselves
when you're learning a new skill. I am constantly trying

(01:18:39):
to be a beginner. I recently restarted jiu jitsu. I'm
a white belt. I am out of shape. I get
choked out constantly. I'm the big you know, doctor Nico
Darris at the golf course, you know, country club guy.
And then I go to jiu jitsu and I'm just Nico,
the white belt who doesn't know you know how to
do any moves. It's important because I'm learning how to
learn again. I'm learning how to fail and being okay

(01:19:02):
with that. The day that I stop failing is the
day that I stopped learning.

Speaker 1 (01:19:06):
He goes, like I said, we could spend the next
ten hours doing this podcast and talking about it. We'll
get you back on again. Thanks golfflueprint dot com. Check
it out. Son of a Butch comes to you every Wednesday.
We will see you all next week.

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