August 6, 2025 • 28 mins
In this episode, Claude shares a powerful lesson from his time at The Open Championship with Dustin Johnson, and why it changed the way he thinks about practice. While many golfers rely on block practice to sharpen their technique, Claude explains how random practice — and giving yourself real problems to solve — leads to skill acquisition and more consistent execution on the course.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's the Son of a Butch podcast. I'm your host,
Claude Harmon solo episode of the pod. But before we
get to it, this episode is being brought to you
by Platform Golf, the world class solution bringing uneven lies
to off course golf. Whether you're hitting indoors or on
a simulator, or training from an into out bay, Platform
Golf lets you practice like you're on the course with sidehill,
(00:22):
uphill and downhill lies adjusting right beneath your feet. It's
the first of its kind solution giving players and coaches
the ability to replicate real world conditions in and out
of the studio. You don't need to be on the
tenth fairway to learn how to handle an awkward stance
or a sloping green. Now you can train for it
inside the studio. Trusted by me and top PGA teaching professionals,
(00:42):
Platform Golf is changing how golf is practiced. To learn more,
visit platform goolf dot com. That's platform goolf dot com.
So I wanted to talk this week a little bit
about skill acquisition and kind of an experience I had
over at the Open Championship with Dustin Johnson. So I
was thinking about skill acquisition?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
What is that? So?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I went online found a definition skill acxiition motor learning,
the interdisciplinary science of intention, perception, action, and calibration of
the performer's environment relationship.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Simplified terms, skill acquisition refers to the voluntary control over
movements and joints and body segments in effort to solve
a motor skill problem or achieve a goal. So when
we talk about skill acquisition, I think a lot of
players think of practice as just that they're just going
to practice one specific thing.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
They're going to practice it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
A lot of times we divide practice, you know, for
our golfers, for our athletes, into block practice and random practice.
And I've spoken about this on the pod before. I
think a lot of players spend a lot of time
in block practice, Right they get their seven iron, they
pick out a target, and they're working on a move
and they just do that over and over and over
and over again. And I think a lot of players
(01:58):
that I talk to think they're going to get to
that next level. They think they're going to lower their
scores by just practicing their golf swing enough, making that
golf swing better. And yeah, I mean, obviously that's going
to help, But there's so much more to practicing golf
and how you practice golf. I've talked before the difference
between random and block practice. Block practices where you're just
doing the same thing over and over again. Randomized practice
(02:21):
is kind of saying, Okay, I've worked on my golf swing,
I've worked to my technique. The random part of it is,
now I'm going to kind of take different targets, different lies.
Something that Platform Golf is trying to do is trying
to simulate in practice what you're going to see on
the golf course. So the randomized practice is changing the lie,
changing the target, changing the condition. Block practice is just
(02:43):
kind of doing the same task over and over and
over again. So specifically with the short game, I think
a lot of times players are really just using one club.
They're going to their loob wedge, They're going to the
club that's got the most loft in their bag, and
they're trying to hit all of the shots with that.
So from a skill acquisition standpoint, are you trying to
(03:06):
learn one specific shot with your lob wedge or you know,
if you're thinking about chipping around the green. Right, So
if you go throw some balls all around whatever short
game green you've got, around your home course, whatever bunker,
you have your own course, right chipping, and then that's
what's going to be happening where we're close to the green,
and then as we get further away, that's pitching, but
(03:26):
specifically in terms of pitching. So we were at the
Open Championship at Port Rush. I was working with Dustin
Johnson DJ. Good week for DJ twenty third, only one
bogie on the on the weekend, so yeah, definitely moving
in the right direction. But we were in the short
game area and he was looking at I mean, the
ground is very very hard. The ground is very very
(03:47):
firm at the Open Championship. So we were trying to
figure out what kind of bounces we were going to use,
what kind of losts we were going to use. So
he was having some wedges made up and one of
the manufacturers came over and said, hey, listen, we're gonna
make you up some wedges. Can we take the two
wedges You've got the fifty eight and the fifty DJ's
got a fifty eight that sometimes is at fifty eight,
(04:10):
sometimes it's spent to sixty and then he's got a
fifty four.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
That he bends.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
But basically he's got two wedges in his bag, and
then he's got his pitching wedge. And so they took
his wedges away from him because they wanted to weigh
them and measure them and make sure the lies and everything.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
They were building up some new ones.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
So he just had his pitching wedge and DJ started
just kind of chipping with his pitching wedge, and it
was unbelievable the difference and the change and how much
utter the shots that he was hitting with a pitching wedge.
He'd been hitting a shot to a pin that was
kind of just on the front edge of the short
game area. He's trying to hit, you know, a lob wedge,
(04:48):
trying to hit you know, something high in there and
one bounce, spin it and stuff.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Having some success, hitting some bad ones.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
But because he didn't have his lob wedge or a
sand wedge, he pulled out his pitching wedge. I mean,
it was unbelievable how much better his technique got, how
much better the shots were, how much better the quality
of the strike was.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Why right, why.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Was it better with a pitching wedge to a short
sighted flag that he was trying to hit a lob
wedge too. Why was the shot better? Well, A lot
of I think what happens with players is dependent on
kind of their grip, their setups, and in DJ's case,
at times his short game can get a little bit
off because of the grip that he has, of the
(05:32):
forward press that he has, he tends to take the
golf club back. You know, he's got that kind of
a little bit of a move to where he's get
a little bit of a forward press, the golf club
goes back a little bit on the shut or the
closed side gets up to the top and that really
really closed side, that really flat left wrist.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Coming down, he can bote down.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
That's all great for hitting iron shots, for hitting really
good solid iron shots, but at times, because of his
grip and because of what he does with the forward press,
it affects his short game. So in videoing it and
looking at it, because he had a pitching wedge in
his hand, there wasn't nearly as much forward press at address.
(06:14):
He was opening the face of the pitching wedge a
little bit, which meant as the club was going back
on the backswing, the golf club wasn't going back as
closed as it does in his full swing, but as
closed as it does sometimes in his short game stuff.
And it was just amazing how much better his technique got,
(06:39):
the way the club was interacting with the turf, the
quality of the strike, his ability to kind of I mean,
we had a pitching wedge and I said, okay, we've
got a backflag in here. I said, hit me one
that goes in there a little bit higher and kind
of one bounces and stops it. So with a pitching
wedge in his hand, that's easy to do with a
lob wedge, right, That's easy to do with a sand wedge.
(06:59):
But with the wedge, he has to do something different. Right,
there's a problem that he has to solve, and it's
a loft problem.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
We were asking him to hit a high, one bounce
spin shot with a pitching wedge. Like I said, it's
easy to do that with a lob wedge because the
loft helps you.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Easy to do that with a sand wedge.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Because fifty four, fifty five, fifty six degrees a loft.
Your lob wedge anywhere between fifty eight to sixty. Some
guys even have sixty four's in their back. Some guys
have sixty twos in their back. But when you have
a golf club that you know doesn't have enough loft
on it to hit it high, you have to then
(07:42):
do something different. And that's where it's a skill that
you're trying to manufacture. So that's the skill acquisition part
of it. Because your pitching wedge inherently wants to go
low right, It doesn't want to go high, especially if
you're hitting it around the grip. So what do you
have to do as a player. And I think sometimes
(08:03):
as well, because DJ has a very very strong, you know,
strong grip, lot of forward press. The back swing can
go back, it can go back a little bit on
the outside like his full swing. The club can get
a little bit shut on going back. Then he's trying
to get the golf ball to go a little bit higher.
And a lot of times DJ to do that, can
kind of drive a little bit with his knees, back
(08:25):
up a little bit with his chest and maybe hit
a little bit behind it, catch it a little bit
high on the face. The quality of the strike is great,
and that's something that I see a lot of regular,
you know, just normal golfers trying to non competitive tour players,
non competitive college amateurs, just they're trying to get the
golf ball in the air. They've taken the golf club
that's got the most loft. They've opened the face, but
(08:47):
now they're going to try and feel like they have
to get underneath it. So they drive a lot with
their knees. Their upper body goes back, the head goes back,
the handle gets way way forward, and at times DJ
can can fight that same thing. So with this pitching wedge,
all of a sudden and videoing it, his knees weren't
moving around as much. Right, He wasn't trying to get
(09:08):
underneath it as much. What he was doing was he
had a problem that he was trying to solve. Right,
it was a loft problem. We were telling him to
hit some high soft landing chip shots with a pitching wedge.
So he opened the face, the golf club went it
was a little bit more rounded, so it was going
back a little bit more for him on the inside,
(09:30):
which was getting the face in a little bit more
open position. But I just think it was getting him
to start to think about what he had to do
to get this golf club to perform in a way
that it's not designed to be performed. We actually went
over to the bunker and got him in the bunker
(09:51):
with a pitching wedge and had him hitting, trying to
hit and to a short sighted flag. Again, that's a
problem he's got to solve, right, because he's got too
much golf club. He's got a pitching wedge which is
longer than his sand wedg, which is longer than his
lob wedge. He's got less loft than his sand wedge.
He's got way less lost when his lob wedge. So
(10:12):
he had to try and figure it out. And the
cool thing is, I wasn't saying anything right, It wasn't
me trying to.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Teach him how to hit it higher.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
I was just telling him, listen, this is a shot
I want you to hit, and you've got a pitching
wedge in your hand, so you, as the player, have
to solve that problem. And we got him in the
bunker and all of a sudden, he was hitting high, soft,
little bunker shots because he was solving the loft problem.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
He was saying.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
You could see his brain kind of working out what
he was trying to do. And I think This is
a fantastic way.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
For you to look.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
There's a big difference between practicing a chip shot right
and then learning how to chip. So if you give
someone a golf club like a pitching wedge around the
green and say, okay, you've got to hit a variety
of different shots here. Yeah, you can hit some where
you put it back in your stance and hit a
little bit of bump and run. But we're going to
(11:13):
ask you to hit some high shots with a pitching ledge.
So what are you is the player going to do
to try and solve that problem? And so what I
try and do in teaching and in coaching is to
try and first and foremost see if the player can
solve that problem themselves. And that's another thing that I
(11:33):
think is really important. If you want to try and
improve your short game, give yourself problems to solve, give
yourself shots that you have to try and figure out
how to make the golf ball perform. So we started
just hitting some real I mean, DJ just started hitting
(11:54):
some beautiful, little controlled spin shots, and all of the sudden,
because he has a golf club in his in his
in his hands, that wasn't necessarily the right club for
that shot, right, it wasn't the right choice. His brain
had to work, Okay, what do I need to do
to hit some higher? So we were we short sighted
(12:15):
ourselves a couple of times. We got down in a
little bit of a kind of a swale. There was
a swale to kind of the right side of the
chipping green at Port Rush, which is basically at a
lot of the Open Championships, specifically the ones that have
more than just one nine or an extra nine or
an extra eighteen or kind of a practice course, right,
some of the Open Championships have a nine whole course.
(12:37):
But the short game green for the Open Championship was
one of the greens on one of the other golf courses,
and so it was actually a real green, a couple
of bunkers, and it had all of the runoff areas
and stuff very similar to what we were going to
see on the golf course. So we kind of threw
some balls down into kind of a low area simulating
that he short sighted himself and now he's got to
(12:57):
really get the golf ball up. Could stop, but he's
got a pitching wedge. Now. Obviously he hit some to
where he kind of bounced it into the slope and
tried to control it that way. But once he started
hitting it to where I said, okay, hit me some
a little bit higher with the pitching wedge, he hit
better shots than trying to hit a bump and run
(13:18):
with a pitching wedge, which you would think that would
be the right shot.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And so it was this situation.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
It was a problem that he had to solve, right,
And I think, as a player, don't be afraid in
your practice sessions to say, okay, whatever you could do
it in full swings, Okay, the yardage is I do
this a lot when we're working on people's own players
wedge games, right, we give them Yardages'll say, okay, we've
got eighty five yards to a flag, and then we've
(13:46):
got one oh five to a flag, and then we've
got kind of one ten, one fifteen to a flag.
And so the first thing that everybody wants to do
is they want to take their lob wedge or their
sandw edge to all that. And so what I try
and do is say, okay, take one more club, So
eighty five yards, what's that going to be most people
from eighty five yards, you know, competitive players are probably
(14:09):
going to choose a lob wedge. And then if you've
got a lob wedge in your hand and you're just
a regular, average handicap recreational golfer, you're probably going to
be hitting lob wedge from distances where the golf ball
you're gonna have to make a massive swing, it's going
to balloon on you and it's not going to go
into the air. So one of the skill acquisition things
that I like to do is especially for competitive players
(14:32):
who come in and say, listen, I'm really I feel
like my wedge games, you know, one of the things
that's holding me back, one of the things that I
struggle with. And I'll have them go, Okay, give me
some baseline yardages that you struggle with, and whatever those
baseline yardages that you struggle with will have them hit. Okay,
what club would you hit for this yard? So let's
say we're doing you know, baselines. I kind of think
baselines from a short game, you know, pitching standpoint kind
(14:55):
of fifty seventy five, one hundred, one hundred and fifteen
one hundred twenty five. You can randomize the numbers any
way you want, but you know, just make it easy
go fifty seventy five, one hundred, one hundred and ten,
one hundred and twenty five. Okay, pick those out as
your wedge. Just then ask yourself what clubs that you
(15:15):
would hit to those, and hit some to them and
say okay, now, whatever club I was used, And if
you're using your lob wedge, I'd go pitching wedge, If
you were using your sand wedge, I'd go nine iron,
I'd go one or two clubs down in loft. Right,
so we're getting you away from a loft that you're
(15:36):
comfortable with. We're getting you away from a loft that
you're used to using, so that you have to solve
the problem.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Right, what do you have to do? Do you have to.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Change the ball position? Do you have to change how
much you're leaning the shaft forward at address, how much
you're leaning the shaft back at address? You're going to
have to adjust your golf swing because if it's eighty
five yards and we give you a nine iron and
we ask you to hit a green from eighty five
yards with a nine iron, you're going to have to
do You're going to have to do something number one
to take the distance off the ball, and number two,
(16:05):
you're going to have to do something to solve the
loft problem because you've got too much loft. And so
do you move the golf ball more forward in your stance,
do you open the face? Do you change your alignment
and stuff? And so I think it's a very good
way to learn how to hit a shot. But specifically
what we were asking DJ to do was I think
(16:25):
it was a very interesting time for him to kind
of learn how to chip, not learn a chip with
one club, learn how to chip. There's a big difference
between just doing the same thing over and over and
over again. You know, if you think about the putting green, everybody,
(16:46):
if they have let's say you have thirty six pots, right.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
You have a bad bunch of putting, bad putting.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Most people are going to say, listen at thirty six
putts today, had a bunch of three pots, missed a
bunch of short putts and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
So what am I going? What am I going to do?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
First thing they're going to do going to go straight
to In my opinion and in my experience, most people
have a bad putting day. The first thing they do
they go to the putting green and they practice putts
inside of three to five feet, that's it. They think
that's going to help them put better because they've missed
some short puts for par. But maybe you missed the
(17:19):
short putt because your lag putting is bad. So again,
as opposed to just going and saying, listen, I'm just
going to practice three footers and that's going to help
me putt better. That is one specific task from one
specific distance, as opposed to saying, okay, a great drill
that I saw Cam come up with, who works with
(17:40):
Jordan Speed. Six pots, randomize them from three to kind
of six feet, six pots randomize them from kind of
ten to twenty feet, and then six putts, randomize them
from twenty.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
To forty feet.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Right, most people, if you give them six puts between
three to six feet three to five feet, they're going
to expect to make all of those. And if you're
a really good golfer, if you're trying to play competitive,
you're probably going to make pretty much all of those.
So think about that, six puts from three to five feet,
three to six feet, then six putts from ten to
twenty feet. Most of the times, that's where I see
(18:15):
players not really make a lot of putts right. If
they're a competitive golfer and they're struggling with their putting,
they're probably going to two put a lot from that range,
but they're not going to make a lot of ten
to twenty footers. I remember asking Phil Mickelson about putting
once and he said, the weeks that I have won historically,
I make a lot of putts from fifteen to thirty feet.
(18:36):
That's not always for birdie, but that can also be
for hard to save from making a bogie. That can
also be a twenty foot bogie putt, so you don't
make double right, and then randomize twenty six puts from
twenty to forty feet and then figure out most people
are probably going to be fairly good at the putts
(18:59):
from three three to five feet. Most golfers are going
to probably two pott from ten to twenty feet, maybe
not make any, but they're probably going to three putt
a bit from twenty to forty feet because they never
practice it. So if you do that drill all the time,
what are you learning how to do? You're learning how
to putt, You're not learning one specific task. I watch
(19:21):
Brad faxon once do a drill. He calls the imagination playground.
He has he puts five you know, five foot potts,
So take balls, do a circle, go one to go
two steps away from the hole. And then what he
makes you do is he makes you make potts. But
you have to use every club in your bag except
(19:44):
your putter. So you'd start with your driver. So you've
got to make a putt from three to five feet
with your driver, with your three wood, with your hybrid,
with your four iron, your five iron, your six iron,
your seven iron, your eight iron, your nine iron. You're
pitching wedge, your sand wedge, your lob wedge. You've got
to learn how to putt with a tool that is
(20:06):
not designed for you to put with. But you have
to use your imagination. And there's no right answer.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You can use different grips, you can hold the clubs
in a different way, but again, you're learning a task,
you're learning how to solve a problem. So I just
thought it was really fascinating that DJs And then throughout
the week DJ's short game got better. Right, The quality
of the shots, the quality of the strike on the
(20:33):
golf course during the tournament got better, so much so
that every single day we were starting kind of at
the short game area, which which is rare for DJDJ
likes the putt first, so in the practice rounds we
were going over and starting at the short game area,
and once he got his new wedges, we were taking
over his pitching wedge, his sand wedge, and his lob wedge,
(20:55):
and he was spending a lot of time practicing with
the pitching wedge from all different lines. So there was
there was a pin so we were kind of standing.
There was a bunker to the left. See if I
can kind of describe this or so there's a bunker.
We're probably about you know, fifteen maybe twenty paces, and
we were kind of over by a bunker, and then
(21:17):
there was a pin cut just over this bunker, about
kind of three to five paces just over the bunker.
So he was taking the pitching wedge and hitting some high,
little soft ones with the pitching wedge, trying to hit
that one bounce, one and stop, and he was.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Doing a really really good job.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
And then just on his own, the bunker had a
really big kind of lip on it that kind of
had some slope to it, and then all of a
sudden he put it back in his stance with the
pitching wedge and kind of hit a little low runner
and it kind of hit the right corner of this
slope and kind of went up and then over this hill.
(21:54):
So he was trying to hit kind of a little
hook low draw into kind of a bump and run
area to where he could kind of sling shot this
ball off of this hill and get it to kind
of go up and over. In the first one he
lipped out, he kind of looked at me and goes, man,
that was cool shot. And then he just started choosing
(22:15):
shots like that where he was using the slopes and
trying to roll balls off of slopes and trying to
use the curvature again again, learning how to chip, getting
him out of so much of his technique. But the
funny thing was you could see that he wasn't necessarily
thinking about his technique. He was thinking about how to
(22:37):
solve the problem of having a golf club that's got
way too much loft. It's a little long, and it's
just different than the one that he would normally use,
So he wasn't necessarily thinking about his technique. But as
a result, his technique got better. I mean, I went
back that night and put some side beside videos of
him hitting the exact same shot with a lobwedge in
(22:58):
his hand, and the exact same shot the pitching wedge
in his hand. He wasn't losing as much height, he
wasn't backing up as much, the quality of the strike
was better.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Everything.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
He kept saying, Man, all of these are right out
of the center of the face. They're not off the toe,
they're not off the heel, they're not high on the face.
So even when he was trying to hit it higher
with the pitching wedge, all the shots were good. So again,
he's learning how to solve a problem. He's learning how
to chip. That's what skill acquisition is. And I think
(23:27):
so many players through all aspects of their game, but
specifically with the short game. You put some balls in
rough and you don't have a lob wedge, and she
short sized yourself. So what are you going to do
if you've got a pitching edge in your hand. You're
going to have to figure it out. You're going to
have to maybe open the face. You're going to have
to maybe put the golf ball a little bit more
(23:48):
forward in your stands, let the club go a little
bit more inside. So that the face opens, and in
DJ's case, the knee drive that he had in an
effort to try and get underneath a lot of his
shots to where he can catch it high on the face,
the quality of the strike can get a little bit off,
he can hit it a little bit short of the
distance that he wanted to.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
All that went away.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
He I mean, the amount of good shots versus bad
shots really exponentially got better in practice, right, using a tool,
using a club that is the wrong club for it.
But he's learning how to chip. So when you're looking
at a skill, whether it's your putting, whether it's your
(24:32):
short game, whether it's your iron game, whether it's your driver,
whether you're trying to learn how to flight the golf
ball down, whether you're trying to learn how to hit
the golf ball higher, whatever you're trying to do, think
of it in terms of a skill acquisition sense. Okay,
give yourself a problem that you've got to solve. Okay,
(24:52):
give yourself too much loft, give yourself too much club,
give yourself not enough club. Learn how Okay, let's say
you're working on your iron game, and you've got your
your seven iron, you kind of consistently hit your seven
iron right around that one hundred and fifty mark. You
consistently kind of hit your eight iron around that one
(25:13):
hundred and thirty five yard mark. So shoot one point
fifty and instead of using an eight iron or seven iron,
which you want to, take one club down and say, Okay,
how do I teach myself how to hit the golf
ball further? Okay, put it back in my stance, maybe
close the face, maybe get a little bit more shut
with my setup.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I'm going to hit a little bit more of a draw.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
See if I can get this eight iron to go
the distance that my seven iron goes.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Right, So then you're learning a skill.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
You're not just practicing the same thing over and over again.
And I think skill acquisition is a vital part to
improve and doesn't matter what your handicap level is, right,
doesn't matter if you're trying to break one hundred for
the first time, ninety for the first time, eighty or
break par for the first time, what skills you have,
(26:04):
and the amount of skills and the amount of tools
you can put in your toolbox, right, the amount of
shots you can have in your arsenal is only going
to help you become a better player. Is only going
to help you learn how to hit different shots. But
I just thought it was really, really fascinating, and I
think I learned a lot at the Open Championship by
(26:27):
watching DJ do that, and I think it's something that
I'm going to really use moving forward with players that
are trying to learn how to improve their short games,
trying to learn how to bring the flight down. Give
them a tool, give them a golf club that isn't
normal for them, that is the wrong club for that
(26:47):
shot in their eyes, and say, okay, and without any
coaching for me, solve this problem. Think about it logically,
you've got too much club, you've got too much law,
you don't have enough law. What are you going to
do as the player to try and solve the problem.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
So that kind of.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Falls into the randomizing your practice, the skill acquisition part
of your practice. And then there's the block part of
your practice, to where you're doing the same task over
and over and over again. But just remember when you're
in block practice, you're not really learning a lot. You're
just learning how to do one specific thing. You want
(27:26):
to learn how to chip, you want to learn how
to putt, you want to learn how to become a
better chipper, a better pitcher, a better short game player.
You want to learn how to become a better putter.
Learning how to become a better putter is not standing
and just doing three footers, five footers, fifty in a row. Yeah,
you're going to get great at doing one specific task,
(27:48):
but always remember that the game, for the majority of
people that are practicing golf is practiced in a very
very block practice repetition, over and over and over and
over again. Yes, that's great for technique, but as I've
talked about on the pod loads of times, there's technique
and there's execution. And what DJ was learning how to
(28:10):
do at the Open Championship with a pitching wedge because
he didn't have a sandwich and he didn't have a
lob wedge. He was learning how to learn a new skill,
but he was learning how to execute. He was learning
how to execute and solve a problem. So in your
practice sessions, give yourself problems to solve as much as
you're just giving yourself repetitive over and overshots from the
(28:31):
exact same position, because that is one of the reasons
why I think players struggle when they get out on
the golf course. So really cool story and I learned
a lot from that story. The son of a bunch
of podcasts comes to you most weeks. We will definitely
see you next week.
It's the Son of a Butch podcast. I'm your host,
Claude Harmon solo episode of the pod. But before we
get to it, this episode is being brought to you
by Platform Golf, the world class solution bringing uneven lies
to off course golf. Whether you're hitting indoors or on
a simulator, or training from an into out bay, Platform
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Platform Golf is changing how golf is practiced. To learn more,
visit platform goolf dot com. That's platform goolf dot com.
So I wanted to talk this week a little bit
about skill acquisition and kind of an experience I had
over at the Open Championship with Dustin Johnson. So I
was thinking about skill acquisition?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
What is that? So?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I went online found a definition skill acxiition motor learning,
the interdisciplinary science of intention, perception, action, and calibration of
the performer's environment relationship.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Simplified terms, skill acquisition refers to the voluntary control over
movements and joints and body segments in effort to solve
a motor skill problem or achieve a goal. So when
we talk about skill acquisition, I think a lot of
players think of practice as just that they're just going
to practice one specific thing.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
They're going to practice it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
A lot of times we divide practice, you know, for
our golfers, for our athletes, into block practice and random practice.
And I've spoken about this on the pod before. I
think a lot of players spend a lot of time
in block practice, Right they get their seven iron, they
pick out a target, and they're working on a move
and they just do that over and over and over
and over again. And I think a lot of players
(01:58):
that I talk to think they're going to get to
that next level. They think they're going to lower their
scores by just practicing their golf swing enough, making that
golf swing better. And yeah, I mean, obviously that's going
to help, But there's so much more to practicing golf
and how you practice golf. I've talked before the difference
between random and block practice. Block practices where you're just
doing the same thing over and over again. Randomized practice
(02:21):
is kind of saying, Okay, I've worked on my golf swing,
I've worked to my technique. The random part of it is,
now I'm going to kind of take different targets, different lies.
Something that Platform Golf is trying to do is trying
to simulate in practice what you're going to see on
the golf course. So the randomized practice is changing the lie,
changing the target, changing the condition. Block practice is just
(02:43):
kind of doing the same task over and over and
over again. So specifically with the short game, I think
a lot of times players are really just using one club.
They're going to their loob wedge, They're going to the
club that's got the most loft in their bag, and
they're trying to hit all of the shots with that.
So from a skill acquisition standpoint, are you trying to
(03:06):
learn one specific shot with your lob wedge or you know,
if you're thinking about chipping around the green. Right, So
if you go throw some balls all around whatever short
game green you've got, around your home course, whatever bunker,
you have your own course, right chipping, and then that's
what's going to be happening where we're close to the green,
and then as we get further away, that's pitching, but
(03:26):
specifically in terms of pitching. So we were at the
Open Championship at Port Rush. I was working with Dustin
Johnson DJ. Good week for DJ twenty third, only one
bogie on the on the weekend, so yeah, definitely moving
in the right direction. But we were in the short
game area and he was looking at I mean, the
ground is very very hard. The ground is very very
(03:47):
firm at the Open Championship. So we were trying to
figure out what kind of bounces we were going to use,
what kind of losts we were going to use. So
he was having some wedges made up and one of
the manufacturers came over and said, hey, listen, we're gonna
make you up some wedges. Can we take the two
wedges You've got the fifty eight and the fifty DJ's
got a fifty eight that sometimes is at fifty eight,
(04:10):
sometimes it's spent to sixty and then he's got a
fifty four.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
That he bends.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
But basically he's got two wedges in his bag, and
then he's got his pitching wedge. And so they took
his wedges away from him because they wanted to weigh
them and measure them and make sure the lies and everything.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
They were building up some new ones.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
So he just had his pitching wedge and DJ started
just kind of chipping with his pitching wedge, and it
was unbelievable the difference and the change and how much
utter the shots that he was hitting with a pitching wedge.
He'd been hitting a shot to a pin that was
kind of just on the front edge of the short
game area. He's trying to hit, you know, a lob wedge,
(04:48):
trying to hit you know, something high in there and
one bounce, spin it and stuff.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Having some success, hitting some bad ones.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
But because he didn't have his lob wedge or a
sand wedge, he pulled out his pitching wedge. I mean,
it was unbelievable how much better his technique got, how
much better the shots were, how much better the quality
of the strike was.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Why right, why.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Was it better with a pitching wedge to a short
sighted flag that he was trying to hit a lob
wedge too. Why was the shot better? Well, A lot
of I think what happens with players is dependent on
kind of their grip, their setups, and in DJ's case,
at times his short game can get a little bit
off because of the grip that he has, of the
(05:32):
forward press that he has, he tends to take the
golf club back. You know, he's got that kind of
a little bit of a move to where he's get
a little bit of a forward press, the golf club
goes back a little bit on the shut or the
closed side gets up to the top and that really
really closed side, that really flat left wrist.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Coming down, he can bote down.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
That's all great for hitting iron shots, for hitting really
good solid iron shots, but at times, because of his
grip and because of what he does with the forward press,
it affects his short game. So in videoing it and
looking at it, because he had a pitching wedge in
his hand, there wasn't nearly as much forward press at address.
(06:14):
He was opening the face of the pitching wedge a
little bit, which meant as the club was going back
on the backswing, the golf club wasn't going back as
closed as it does in his full swing, but as
closed as it does sometimes in his short game stuff.
And it was just amazing how much better his technique got,
(06:39):
the way the club was interacting with the turf, the
quality of the strike, his ability to kind of I mean,
we had a pitching wedge and I said, okay, we've
got a backflag in here. I said, hit me one
that goes in there a little bit higher and kind
of one bounces and stops it. So with a pitching
wedge in his hand, that's easy to do with a
lob wedge, right, That's easy to do with a sand wedge.
(06:59):
But with the wedge, he has to do something different. Right,
there's a problem that he has to solve, and it's
a loft problem.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
We were asking him to hit a high, one bounce
spin shot with a pitching wedge. Like I said, it's
easy to do that with a lob wedge because the
loft helps you.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Easy to do that with a sand wedge.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Because fifty four, fifty five, fifty six degrees a loft.
Your lob wedge anywhere between fifty eight to sixty. Some
guys even have sixty four's in their back. Some guys
have sixty twos in their back. But when you have
a golf club that you know doesn't have enough loft
on it to hit it high, you have to then
(07:42):
do something different. And that's where it's a skill that
you're trying to manufacture. So that's the skill acquisition part
of it. Because your pitching wedge inherently wants to go
low right, It doesn't want to go high, especially if
you're hitting it around the grip. So what do you
have to do as a player. And I think sometimes
(08:03):
as well, because DJ has a very very strong, you know,
strong grip, lot of forward press. The back swing can
go back, it can go back a little bit on
the outside like his full swing. The club can get
a little bit shut on going back. Then he's trying
to get the golf ball to go a little bit higher.
And a lot of times DJ to do that, can
kind of drive a little bit with his knees, back
(08:25):
up a little bit with his chest and maybe hit
a little bit behind it, catch it a little bit
high on the face. The quality of the strike is great,
and that's something that I see a lot of regular,
you know, just normal golfers trying to non competitive tour players,
non competitive college amateurs, just they're trying to get the
golf ball in the air. They've taken the golf club
that's got the most loft. They've opened the face, but
(08:47):
now they're going to try and feel like they have
to get underneath it. So they drive a lot with
their knees. Their upper body goes back, the head goes back,
the handle gets way way forward, and at times DJ
can can fight that same thing. So with this pitching wedge,
all of a sudden and videoing it, his knees weren't
moving around as much. Right, He wasn't trying to get
(09:08):
underneath it as much. What he was doing was he
had a problem that he was trying to solve. Right,
it was a loft problem. We were telling him to
hit some high soft landing chip shots with a pitching wedge.
So he opened the face, the golf club went it
was a little bit more rounded, so it was going
back a little bit more for him on the inside,
(09:30):
which was getting the face in a little bit more
open position. But I just think it was getting him
to start to think about what he had to do
to get this golf club to perform in a way
that it's not designed to be performed. We actually went
over to the bunker and got him in the bunker
(09:51):
with a pitching wedge and had him hitting, trying to
hit and to a short sighted flag. Again, that's a
problem he's got to solve, right, because he's got too
much golf club. He's got a pitching wedge which is
longer than his sand wedg, which is longer than his
lob wedge. He's got less loft than his sand wedge.
He's got way less lost when his lob wedge. So
(10:12):
he had to try and figure it out. And the
cool thing is, I wasn't saying anything right, It wasn't
me trying to.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Teach him how to hit it higher.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
I was just telling him, listen, this is a shot
I want you to hit, and you've got a pitching
wedge in your hand, so you, as the player, have
to solve that problem. And we got him in the
bunker and all of a sudden, he was hitting high, soft,
little bunker shots because he was solving the loft problem.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
He was saying.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
You could see his brain kind of working out what
he was trying to do. And I think This is
a fantastic way.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
For you to look.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
There's a big difference between practicing a chip shot right
and then learning how to chip. So if you give
someone a golf club like a pitching wedge around the
green and say, okay, you've got to hit a variety
of different shots here. Yeah, you can hit some where
you put it back in your stance and hit a
little bit of bump and run. But we're going to
(11:13):
ask you to hit some high shots with a pitching ledge.
So what are you is the player going to do
to try and solve that problem? And so what I
try and do in teaching and in coaching is to
try and first and foremost see if the player can
solve that problem themselves. And that's another thing that I
(11:33):
think is really important. If you want to try and
improve your short game, give yourself problems to solve, give
yourself shots that you have to try and figure out
how to make the golf ball perform. So we started
just hitting some real I mean, DJ just started hitting
(11:54):
some beautiful, little controlled spin shots, and all of the sudden,
because he has a golf club in his in his
in his hands, that wasn't necessarily the right club for
that shot, right, it wasn't the right choice. His brain
had to work, Okay, what do I need to do
to hit some higher? So we were we short sighted
(12:15):
ourselves a couple of times. We got down in a
little bit of a kind of a swale. There was
a swale to kind of the right side of the
chipping green at Port Rush, which is basically at a
lot of the Open Championships, specifically the ones that have
more than just one nine or an extra nine or
an extra eighteen or kind of a practice course, right,
some of the Open Championships have a nine whole course.
(12:37):
But the short game green for the Open Championship was
one of the greens on one of the other golf courses,
and so it was actually a real green, a couple
of bunkers, and it had all of the runoff areas
and stuff very similar to what we were going to
see on the golf course. So we kind of threw
some balls down into kind of a low area simulating
that he short sighted himself and now he's got to
(12:57):
really get the golf ball up. Could stop, but he's
got a pitching wedge. Now. Obviously he hit some to
where he kind of bounced it into the slope and
tried to control it that way. But once he started
hitting it to where I said, okay, hit me some
a little bit higher with the pitching wedge, he hit
better shots than trying to hit a bump and run
(13:18):
with a pitching wedge, which you would think that would
be the right shot.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And so it was this situation.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
It was a problem that he had to solve, right,
And I think, as a player, don't be afraid in
your practice sessions to say, okay, whatever you could do
it in full swings, Okay, the yardage is I do
this a lot when we're working on people's own players
wedge games, right, we give them Yardages'll say, okay, we've
got eighty five yards to a flag, and then we've
(13:46):
got one oh five to a flag, and then we've
got kind of one ten, one fifteen to a flag.
And so the first thing that everybody wants to do
is they want to take their lob wedge or their
sandw edge to all that. And so what I try
and do is say, okay, take one more club, So
eighty five yards, what's that going to be most people
from eighty five yards, you know, competitive players are probably
(14:09):
going to choose a lob wedge. And then if you've
got a lob wedge in your hand and you're just
a regular, average handicap recreational golfer, you're probably going to
be hitting lob wedge from distances where the golf ball
you're gonna have to make a massive swing, it's going
to balloon on you and it's not going to go
into the air. So one of the skill acquisition things
that I like to do is especially for competitive players
(14:32):
who come in and say, listen, I'm really I feel
like my wedge games, you know, one of the things
that's holding me back, one of the things that I
struggle with. And I'll have them go, Okay, give me
some baseline yardages that you struggle with, and whatever those
baseline yardages that you struggle with will have them hit. Okay,
what club would you hit for this yard? So let's
say we're doing you know, baselines. I kind of think
baselines from a short game, you know, pitching standpoint kind
(14:55):
of fifty seventy five, one hundred, one hundred and fifteen
one hundred twenty five. You can randomize the numbers any
way you want, but you know, just make it easy
go fifty seventy five, one hundred, one hundred and ten,
one hundred and twenty five. Okay, pick those out as
your wedge. Just then ask yourself what clubs that you
(15:15):
would hit to those, and hit some to them and
say okay, now, whatever club I was used, And if
you're using your lob wedge, I'd go pitching wedge, If
you were using your sand wedge, I'd go nine iron,
I'd go one or two clubs down in loft. Right,
so we're getting you away from a loft that you're
(15:36):
comfortable with. We're getting you away from a loft that
you're used to using, so that you have to solve
the problem.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Right, what do you have to do? Do you have to.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Change the ball position? Do you have to change how
much you're leaning the shaft forward at address, how much
you're leaning the shaft back at address? You're going to
have to adjust your golf swing because if it's eighty
five yards and we give you a nine iron and
we ask you to hit a green from eighty five
yards with a nine iron, you're going to have to
do You're going to have to do something number one
to take the distance off the ball, and number two,
(16:05):
you're going to have to do something to solve the
loft problem because you've got too much loft. And so
do you move the golf ball more forward in your stance,
do you open the face? Do you change your alignment
and stuff? And so I think it's a very good
way to learn how to hit a shot. But specifically
what we were asking DJ to do was I think
(16:25):
it was a very interesting time for him to kind
of learn how to chip, not learn a chip with
one club, learn how to chip. There's a big difference
between just doing the same thing over and over and
over again. You know, if you think about the putting green, everybody,
(16:46):
if they have let's say you have thirty six pots, right.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
You have a bad bunch of putting, bad putting.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Most people are going to say, listen at thirty six
putts today, had a bunch of three pots, missed a
bunch of short putts and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
So what am I going? What am I going to do?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
First thing they're going to do going to go straight
to In my opinion and in my experience, most people
have a bad putting day. The first thing they do
they go to the putting green and they practice putts
inside of three to five feet, that's it. They think
that's going to help them put better because they've missed
some short puts for par. But maybe you missed the
(17:19):
short putt because your lag putting is bad. So again,
as opposed to just going and saying, listen, I'm just
going to practice three footers and that's going to help
me putt better. That is one specific task from one
specific distance, as opposed to saying, okay, a great drill
that I saw Cam come up with, who works with
(17:40):
Jordan Speed. Six pots, randomize them from three to kind
of six feet, six pots randomize them from kind of
ten to twenty feet, and then six putts, randomize them
from twenty.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
To forty feet.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Right, most people, if you give them six puts between
three to six feet three to five feet, they're going
to expect to make all of those. And if you're
a really good golfer, if you're trying to play competitive,
you're probably going to make pretty much all of those.
So think about that, six puts from three to five feet,
three to six feet, then six putts from ten to
twenty feet. Most of the times, that's where I see
(18:15):
players not really make a lot of putts right. If
they're a competitive golfer and they're struggling with their putting,
they're probably going to two put a lot from that range,
but they're not going to make a lot of ten
to twenty footers. I remember asking Phil Mickelson about putting
once and he said, the weeks that I have won historically,
I make a lot of putts from fifteen to thirty feet.
(18:36):
That's not always for birdie, but that can also be
for hard to save from making a bogie. That can
also be a twenty foot bogie putt, so you don't
make double right, and then randomize twenty six puts from
twenty to forty feet and then figure out most people
are probably going to be fairly good at the putts
(18:59):
from three three to five feet. Most golfers are going
to probably two pott from ten to twenty feet, maybe
not make any, but they're probably going to three putt
a bit from twenty to forty feet because they never
practice it. So if you do that drill all the time,
what are you learning how to do? You're learning how
to putt, You're not learning one specific task. I watch
(19:21):
Brad faxon once do a drill. He calls the imagination playground.
He has he puts five you know, five foot potts,
So take balls, do a circle, go one to go
two steps away from the hole. And then what he
makes you do is he makes you make potts. But
you have to use every club in your bag except
(19:44):
your putter. So you'd start with your driver. So you've
got to make a putt from three to five feet
with your driver, with your three wood, with your hybrid,
with your four iron, your five iron, your six iron,
your seven iron, your eight iron, your nine iron. You're
pitching wedge, your sand wedge, your lob wedge. You've got
to learn how to putt with a tool that is
(20:06):
not designed for you to put with. But you have
to use your imagination. And there's no right answer.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You can use different grips, you can hold the clubs
in a different way, but again, you're learning a task,
you're learning how to solve a problem. So I just
thought it was really fascinating that DJs And then throughout
the week DJ's short game got better. Right, The quality
of the shots, the quality of the strike on the
(20:33):
golf course during the tournament got better, so much so
that every single day we were starting kind of at
the short game area, which which is rare for DJDJ
likes the putt first, so in the practice rounds we
were going over and starting at the short game area,
and once he got his new wedges, we were taking
over his pitching wedge, his sand wedge, and his lob wedge,
(20:55):
and he was spending a lot of time practicing with
the pitching wedge from all different lines. So there was
there was a pin so we were kind of standing.
There was a bunker to the left. See if I
can kind of describe this or so there's a bunker.
We're probably about you know, fifteen maybe twenty paces, and
we were kind of over by a bunker, and then
(21:17):
there was a pin cut just over this bunker, about
kind of three to five paces just over the bunker.
So he was taking the pitching wedge and hitting some high,
little soft ones with the pitching wedge, trying to hit
that one bounce, one and stop, and he was.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Doing a really really good job.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
And then just on his own, the bunker had a
really big kind of lip on it that kind of
had some slope to it, and then all of a
sudden he put it back in his stance with the
pitching wedge and kind of hit a little low runner
and it kind of hit the right corner of this
slope and kind of went up and then over this hill.
(21:54):
So he was trying to hit kind of a little
hook low draw into kind of a bump and run
area to where he could kind of sling shot this
ball off of this hill and get it to kind
of go up and over. In the first one he
lipped out, he kind of looked at me and goes, man,
that was cool shot. And then he just started choosing
(22:15):
shots like that where he was using the slopes and
trying to roll balls off of slopes and trying to
use the curvature again again, learning how to chip, getting
him out of so much of his technique. But the
funny thing was you could see that he wasn't necessarily
thinking about his technique. He was thinking about how to
(22:37):
solve the problem of having a golf club that's got
way too much loft. It's a little long, and it's
just different than the one that he would normally use,
So he wasn't necessarily thinking about his technique. But as
a result, his technique got better. I mean, I went
back that night and put some side beside videos of
him hitting the exact same shot with a lobwedge in
(22:58):
his hand, and the exact same shot the pitching wedge
in his hand. He wasn't losing as much height, he
wasn't backing up as much, the quality of the strike
was better.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Everything.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
He kept saying, Man, all of these are right out
of the center of the face. They're not off the toe,
they're not off the heel, they're not high on the face.
So even when he was trying to hit it higher
with the pitching wedge, all the shots were good. So again,
he's learning how to solve a problem. He's learning how
to chip. That's what skill acquisition is. And I think
(23:27):
so many players through all aspects of their game, but
specifically with the short game. You put some balls in
rough and you don't have a lob wedge, and she
short sized yourself. So what are you going to do
if you've got a pitching edge in your hand. You're
going to have to figure it out. You're going to
have to maybe open the face. You're going to have
to maybe put the golf ball a little bit more
(23:48):
forward in your stands, let the club go a little
bit more inside. So that the face opens, and in
DJ's case, the knee drive that he had in an
effort to try and get underneath a lot of his
shots to where he can catch it high on the face,
the quality of the strike can get a little bit off,
he can hit it a little bit short of the
distance that he wanted to.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
All that went away.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
He I mean, the amount of good shots versus bad
shots really exponentially got better in practice, right, using a tool,
using a club that is the wrong club for it.
But he's learning how to chip. So when you're looking
at a skill, whether it's your putting, whether it's your
(24:32):
short game, whether it's your iron game, whether it's your driver,
whether you're trying to learn how to flight the golf
ball down, whether you're trying to learn how to hit
the golf ball higher, whatever you're trying to do, think
of it in terms of a skill acquisition sense. Okay,
give yourself a problem that you've got to solve. Okay,
(24:52):
give yourself too much loft, give yourself too much club,
give yourself not enough club. Learn how Okay, let's say
you're working on your iron game, and you've got your
your seven iron, you kind of consistently hit your seven
iron right around that one hundred and fifty mark. You
consistently kind of hit your eight iron around that one
(25:13):
hundred and thirty five yard mark. So shoot one point
fifty and instead of using an eight iron or seven iron,
which you want to, take one club down and say, Okay,
how do I teach myself how to hit the golf
ball further? Okay, put it back in my stance, maybe
close the face, maybe get a little bit more shut
with my setup.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I'm going to hit a little bit more of a draw.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
See if I can get this eight iron to go
the distance that my seven iron goes.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Right, So then you're learning a skill.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
You're not just practicing the same thing over and over again.
And I think skill acquisition is a vital part to
improve and doesn't matter what your handicap level is, right,
doesn't matter if you're trying to break one hundred for
the first time, ninety for the first time, eighty or
break par for the first time, what skills you have,
(26:04):
and the amount of skills and the amount of tools
you can put in your toolbox, right, the amount of
shots you can have in your arsenal is only going
to help you become a better player. Is only going
to help you learn how to hit different shots. But
I just thought it was really, really fascinating, and I
think I learned a lot at the Open Championship by
(26:27):
watching DJ do that, and I think it's something that
I'm going to really use moving forward with players that
are trying to learn how to improve their short games,
trying to learn how to bring the flight down. Give
them a tool, give them a golf club that isn't
normal for them, that is the wrong club for that
(26:47):
shot in their eyes, and say, okay, and without any
coaching for me, solve this problem. Think about it logically,
you've got too much club, you've got too much law,
you don't have enough law. What are you going to
do as the player to try and solve the problem.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
So that kind of.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Falls into the randomizing your practice, the skill acquisition part
of your practice. And then there's the block part of
your practice, to where you're doing the same task over
and over and over again. But just remember when you're
in block practice, you're not really learning a lot. You're
just learning how to do one specific thing. You want
(27:26):
to learn how to chip, you want to learn how
to putt, you want to learn how to become a
better chipper, a better pitcher, a better short game player.
You want to learn how to become a better putter.
Learning how to become a better putter is not standing
and just doing three footers, five footers, fifty in a row. Yeah,
you're going to get great at doing one specific task,
(27:48):
but always remember that the game, for the majority of
people that are practicing golf is practiced in a very
very block practice repetition, over and over and over and
over again. Yes, that's great for technique, but as I've
talked about on the pod loads of times, there's technique
and there's execution. And what DJ was learning how to
(28:10):
do at the Open Championship with a pitching wedge because
he didn't have a sandwich and he didn't have a
lob wedge. He was learning how to learn a new skill,
but he was learning how to execute. He was learning
how to execute and solve a problem. So in your
practice sessions, give yourself problems to solve as much as
you're just giving yourself repetitive over and overshots from the
(28:31):
exact same position, because that is one of the reasons
why I think players struggle when they get out on
the golf course. So really cool story and I learned
a lot from that story. The son of a bunch
of podcasts comes to you most weeks. We will definitely
see you next week.
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