March 19, 2025 • 21 mins
Back from three weeks in Asia, Claude takes us through one of the gamified drills he does with Dustin Johnson. He breaks down the drill so everyday golfers can determine what their tendencies are with each club to make their practice more efficient.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's the son of a which podcast. I'm your host,
Claude Harmon. Just back from three weeks in Asia. Was
out at my academy in Bangkok. Really excited about that project.
It's a really cool spot. And then Hong Kong and
Singapore with Live Dustin Johnson. Did you have a chance
to win Singapore last group on Sunday? So that was
(00:23):
really really encouraging. But what I want to talk about
is some of the stuff that we did in Singapore
with DJ that I think is applicable for your game.
I'm always trying to figure out how i can use
the information that I'm lucky enough to see and hear
about and work on tour with, because I do think
(00:44):
you can learn some things from what the best players
in the world are doing. I did a content shoot
and put out some content for Rafsoto, a launch monitor
that I think is one of the best on the market,
mainly because it's affordable. It's under one thousand dollars. It's
something that you can use. But one of the persons
in the comment said, hey, I'm not a tour pro,
(01:05):
so none of the stuff you're talking about is applicable.
And yardages and stuff like that, but I do think
that understanding how far you hit the golf ball and
understanding what you do on the golf course is massively important.
So just to give you a little insight, So obviously
on the PGA Tour, they're shot linked data, right, they
have some of the best data on the planet, and
(01:27):
as a player, as a coach, you can go in
and look at the data. You can look at what
you're doing, how you're performing, what clubs you're using, things
like that, And I think most professional golfers now at
the elite level have some sort of stats program that
they're either keeping themselves or they have companies using. We
do that as well, so we kind of get reports
every week on what the golf course strategy should be
(01:52):
based off of historical data, based off of what players
have done there before. So last week we're in Singapore
and at all the data and from a strategy standpoint,
the first thing that we noticed is due to the
length of the golf course and due to DJ's length,
he was only going to really hit five drivers or
needed to hit five drivers all week. Yes, he can
(02:14):
hit driver on a lot of holes, but the risk
versus the reward where the carries are where the troubles are,
So we pretty much identified that he was only going
to hit five drivers, going to hit drivers on the
two par fives, and then there were a couple of
other holes that he hit drivers the year before, so
we kind of knew he was going to hit five drivers.
(02:34):
So that means a lot of three woods off the tees.
He carries a nine wood and a seven wood, so
a lot of those clubs off of the tees. But really,
in looking at all of the data, the majority of
the clubs the yardage is that he was going to have,
We're going to be from one to twenty five to
two twenty five, So for DJ that's right around a
(02:57):
pitching wedge, kind of a gap wedge, and up to
a five iron. So the majority of the shots he
was going to hit, we knew the clubs that he
was going to be using pretty much the majority of
the round. So what we did was in our practice
session we kind of came up with a test. That's
(03:19):
Richard Bland, who is just playing some of the best
golf of his career in his early fifties. One two
majors on the Champs Tour last year, plays on live
but Richard's been coming over before some of the tournaments
into doing some warm weather training at my place in
Florida at the Floridian. His coach Tim Barter comes over
sometimes as well. But this year Blandy was over and
(03:41):
every week I see him on Live. I see him
with a launch monitor, and he's always got a little
book out and he's always writing things in a book
and stuff. And so he was doing that at my
place in the off season, and I went out and
I asked him what he was doing. He said, listen,
what I've come up with is a wedged test. And
what I do is I take twenty balls and I
randomize the numbers between eighty and one hundred and thirty yards. Right,
(04:05):
you can go on Google type in random number generator.
It'll come up and you can put in whatever number
you want. Right, you put in fifty to one hundred,
you could put twenty five to seventy, whatever it is.
So he puts in eighty to one thirty and then
hits a number and it spits out a random number.
And so the goal of the test, if you think
(04:27):
about it, So he's got twenty balls, he's randomizing every
single ball. So he doesn't know what the distance is
going to be. He can use any club in his bag,
and the goal is to have a total score for
the twenty balls of forty right. And the idea behind
that is two yards either short or long out. So
(04:48):
the way you take the test is you randomize the number,
and let's say the number is one forty four. You
take the club that you think you're going to hit
the golf ball one hundred and forty four yards, and
whatever the difference is, you write that number down. So,
for example, if it's one forty four and you carry
it one fifty for that you're write down five and
you go through that, and then at the end of
the test you add up all of the numbers that
(05:12):
you were short or long out, and the goal would
be forty right, So two yards out with every single ball.
And he says over the last two three years he's
been doing this religiously in every practice session he has, right,
So it's no surprise that for someone like Richard Bland,
who's in his fifties not nearly as long as some
(05:35):
of the players, he's going to play against the lowest
hanging fruit. And the way that he can really, really
score and the way that he can really separate himself
from the rest of the field used to be really
really good with eighty two, one hundred and thirty. The
scoring clubs right your wedges and stuff like that. And
he does this test on a regular basis religiously. And
(05:57):
I think we are in Adelaide and he told me, hey,
I just got twenty nine, and if you hit the number.
So let's say the number is one fifteen and you
carry the golf ball one fifteen, that's zero, right, So
twenty nine is an unbelievable score. And in Hong Kong
we did that a couple of times with DJ. DJ
got thirty eight. One of the times was doing that
(06:19):
with another of the players. I teach Noah Kent, who
we're trying. He's going to play in the Masters this year.
He'll play in the US Open by finishing second in
the Usam. So if you get to the finals of
the Usam, you get into the Masters. In the US Open,
we've been having Noah do this religiously, trying to get
that score down. So last week we basically did the
(06:40):
same thing with DJ. We did one twenty five to
two twenty five, and we just randomized the numbers and
got him to just again get out of technique right.
It wasn't him thinking about his golf swing. And I
think last week in Singapore, out of all of the
years that I've worked with DJs to working with DJ
(07:00):
in twenty twelve, I think last week was as little
technique work golf swing work that we've ever done. We
didn't really talk a lot about his golf swings. Golf
swing is in a pretty good place Hong Kong. He
finished dead last. A lot of people jumped on the
bandwagon on that doesn't care all that bullshit. That's fine,
if you want to do that, go for it. Thursday
(07:22):
night in Hong Kong, DJ kind of slept wrong and
had a rib out and his physio doctor, matt Ort,
tried to work on it. Warm up wasn't great. It
was on Friday in Hong Kong. It was fifty degrees
in raining all day, so Spotty never really loosened up.
He got better every day. Bogie the last hole on
Sunday could have shot seven under. I think he shot
(07:44):
you know, six under, so really good score. So by
the time we got to Singapore, I was like listen
and by the way for the first two days of
that tournament and for the majority of the third round
in Hong Kong. For the last ten years, DJ's stock
shot has been a fade Thursday and Friday because he
couldn't get through the golf ball. When he did try
and get through it and try and hit down on
(08:06):
it and trying to get that path left, he was
unable to do it, so he had to switch to
hitting a draw. So he hit a draw for almost
two and a half rounds, which isn't his normal shape
at all. But we got to Singapore and every single
day after the practice rounds Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we
did this test one twenty five to two twenty five
and he was choosing the club and we were looking
(08:28):
at the difference between what it was, and we were
also having him pick out specific targets, right, not just
aiming at the middle of the fairway or not just
aiming at one target, So not only randomizing the number,
but also trying to randomize his aim and having him
go through his pre shot routine on every shot, so
trying to get him in a game type situation. I've
(08:50):
talked about this on the pod before. One of the
things that we're always trying to do is instructors. As
a coach, what I'm always trying to do is how
can I simulate what is going to happen on the
golf course for a player on the driving range. So
it was something that we did for four days and
I think it really helped him. I think it really
helped him kind of get into play mode. I think
(09:10):
it really kind of got him not thinking so much
about his golf swing, so much about his technique, and
he had a chance to win shut eight under the
first day, was in the last group with wach o'neman
on Sunday. Didn't get it done, but a tremendous amount
of positive So I think a lot of people say
to me, listen, I don't have a launch monitor, so
(09:31):
I can't work on my distances. Right, I'm not a
tour player, so I can't work on my distances. So
maybe try this. Go to the driving range, and every
driving range you're going to go to, he's going to
have some flags, right, They're going to have target flags,
target greens. And if it doesn't have target flags and
(09:51):
target greens, it's going to have numbers, right, big scoreboard
type numbers, one hundred yards, one hundred and fifty yards whatever,
those yards are, right, But most are going to have
some sort of green complex and flags on the green.
And I think most golfers now have a launch monitor.
If you don't have a launch monitor, I mean have
(10:13):
a rangefinder. Launch monitors expensive, right, some of the ones
the players on the PGA Tour use thirty thousand dollars,
fifteen thousand dollars, ten thousand, whatever the numbers. I think
launch monitor technology is going down, and I think launch
monitors are getting better across the board. That's why I'm
a huge fan of rap Sodo. They've got two launch
monitors that are I think affordable. If golf is an
(10:36):
important part of your life and if you are really
really focused and trying to lower your handicap and get better.
But if you don't have a launch monitor, if you've
got a rangefinder, pick out a bunch of different targets, right,
pick out the different yardages and randomize these yardages. Right.
Pick out the fifty yard flag and get a number
(10:59):
on what that is, and then a seventy five yard
flag and one hundred yard flag, one hundred and twenty
five hundred whatever, you've got on the golf course. And
then if you don't have a launch monitor and you
can't tell exactly how far the ball is going, maybe
adjust this test and give yourself twenty balls and say, okay,
(11:19):
I'm going to try and aim at this specific target,
and I'm going to try. If I don't have a
launch monitor, I'm going to see if I'm long or
short of it and write that down, right, and you
choose the club right, So write down the club that
you're going to use, the yardage that you're trying to
hit it. So let's say you're trying to hit it
(11:40):
one hundred yards. You choose the club, write that club
that you're going to use down, and then if you're
short or long, right, short or long, do that for
twenty balls and try to your best ability to randomize
all of the numbers, or just pick out one hundred yards,
pick out you know, baseline numbers. Pick out a flag
(12:02):
that's one hundred yards, pick out a flag that's one
hundred and twenty five yards. I think good random numbers.
Fifty seventy five, one hundred, one hundred and twenty five,
one hundred and fifty right, I think those are good
numbers to start with. And again, if you don't have
a launch monitor and you can't tell exactly how far
it's going, but you have a rangefinder and you say, okay,
(12:23):
that target is seventy five yards, you could just do
twenty balls and pick out the club that you would
use for that distance and then do the test of
being either writing down if you're short or long, and
then go back in and look at what are the tendencies.
(12:45):
So if you've got your sand wedge, if you've got
your pitching wedge, if you've got your nine or whatever
the club is, figure out if the tendency is to
come up long or the tendency is to come up short, right.
And some of this you will probably if you're in
that mid handicap range, some of it will be contact issues. Right,
(13:07):
So yeah, when my contact is bad, I come up
way short of the number, right, way short of the
flag that I'm trying to hit. In an ideal world,
you would want the miss. I think it would be
better for the miss to be long then it would
be short, because if the miss is long, that's probably
(13:28):
going to show you that the contact is pretty good. Right,
If the miss is massively short, that's probably going to
show you that the contact miss is poor. Then you
kind of know what to do off of that. You
know two things. You know, if the tendency is from
whatever the distance is, if you're short or long, and
(13:48):
then you know that if you're consistently short and you're
hitting it fat or you're hitting it thin stuff, then
you know that's a contact issue. Then you can go
and say, okay, let me go work on my technique
to improve my contact, the quality of the strike. You
know where my weight is, am I taking a divots?
There's a million different drills you can do to try
(14:10):
and improve contact, But I just think that knowing with
the yardages that you've got with sand wedge, pitching wedge,
nine iron, eight iron, seven iron, I would work with
those clubs and then say, okay, am I short? Do
I tend to be short? Do I tend to be long?
And then next time you go play golf, write down
(14:32):
all the irons that you hit right on every hole.
So on the first hole, if you hit the fairway
right down the club that you're going to use right,
write it down. And then the next hole, obviously, if
you don't hit the fairway, you're chipping out right, but
then write down the yardage that the range finder tells
you it is and the club that you're using, and
then figure out if you're short or long, Because then
(14:55):
I think what you can do is similar to what
we're able to do on the tour level, is we
know the data from shot link, from launch monitors, from
the companies that we use for strategy. For data, you
can then kind of get an idea of Okay, at
my home course, I am going to have a lot
(15:16):
of these clubs that I'm going to have to hit.
I'm going to have to hit a lot of seven irons,
eight irons, six irons, five irons, hybrids, whatever the club is.
Because then I think it can really help you streamline
your practice, and your practice can actually be for something
(15:37):
specific that will help you on the golf course as
opposed to just what you're trying to do on the
range by just getting exercise. Try to then go, okay,
let me gamify the way that I practice, Let me
randomize my targets, let me randomize my numbers so that
(15:59):
I can then figure out what's happening on the golf course.
And I think you'll get a good idea of some
trends of what's happening. Most of us play our home
course on a regular basis, so you want to know
the clubs that you're going to be using the most
on your home course, right, And it's simple. Not everybody
(16:21):
has a launch monitor, right, Not everybody has access to
the data that we've got. But I think most driving
ranges can give you a lot that you can use
to help your game. Invest in a rangefinder and then
go out and say, okay, let me pick a bunch
of random targets, are random yardages and go from there.
(16:43):
And then one of the things that you can do
is gamify the driving range, right, and say, okay, I'm
going to try and pretend I'm playing on the golf course.
So pick a driver, take your driver out, use some
targets on the driving range, use kind of design a
fairway for yourself. Use poles, you can use trees, you
(17:04):
can use flags, and say, okay, I'm gonna choose a
flag or a tree or a pole on the left,
and then I'm gonna choose a flag or a pole
or a tree on the right hand side. That's my fairway.
And what I've got to do is I've got to
get the golf ball into the fairway and then randomize,
use that random number generator you can get on Google
(17:27):
and say, okay, now I've got to hit a club.
The number says one sixty five. Okay, what is my
one sixty five club? And then see if you can
find a target that is somewhere around that distance and
then hit an iron shot. You choose the club and
figure out if you're short or long, and then do
(17:49):
that a bunch of different times. Pick out a bunch
of different fairways, create your own fairways, pick out a
bunch of numbers that you know that you're gonna have
on the golf course, that you know that you need
to hit, and just see if you're able to have
good distance control. I don't think it takes a tremendous
amount of money. I don't think it takes a lot
(18:10):
of the stuff that we use on tour. Think of
the driving range as a playground, right as a massive playground,
and you're just going to try and use your driving
range your home course to try and help you on
the golf course. But I think if you can start
writing down the irons that you're using, whatever you're using,
(18:31):
maybe you're using a lot of hybrids on the golf course.
Maybe you're using a lot of long irons on the
golf course. But I think if you can start to
see the trends of the clubs that you're using, I
think it can be hugely beneficial for you to then
know what to practice as opposed to just going to
the driving range and just basically working on your golf swing.
(18:53):
Where I keep talking about this, there's two rooms that
you should be living in on the driving range. A
room that is technique and then another room that you
need to go into that is execution. And I think
last week the work that Austin Johnson, DJ's County and
I we just said, listen, we're going to try and
gamify as much of the practice as we can. For DJ.
(19:16):
We're going to try and get him not thinking about
his golf swing, not thinking about his technique, think about
what he's going to be doing on the golf course.
And he had a chance to win and finish top ten.
A lot to build on from last week for DJ.
But I do think if you could practice like this
and start to use your driving range like a big
(19:36):
giant playground, use the targets on the driving range, not
just for the shape and where it's going, think about
are you short or long of it? Are you missing
it left or right of it? And then I think
that'll help you kind of form a plan when you
go to the golf course and say, Okay, I know
(19:56):
on the golf course today, I'm going to have a
lot of distances I play my game, I'm gonna have
a lot of distances between this number and this number
for my second shots. I've been practicing these on the
golf on the driving range, and I think it will
help you lower your handicap, and I think it will
help you enjoy your golf better. And I think it's
(20:16):
something that you can use and take from the PGA Tour,
from DP World, from the Champs, from Live from the LPGA,
all the tours around the world. Right, it's very hard
for you to swing like the best players in the world,
like our heroes. We all struggle with that, right, We'd
all love to do that. We'd all love the swing
(20:37):
the golf club like Rory McElroy and Scotti Scheffler. We'd
all love to swing the golf club like Nellie Corda
or Adam Scott. All these beautiful golf swings, but that's
not the reality. But what we can do is really
have a good understanding as to how far you hit
your clubs, and really have a good understanding as to
what is your tendency. You tend to be short or
(21:01):
do you tend to be long. Is it a contact strike,
is it a directional miss, whatever that is, then you
can form a plan when you go to the driving range,
and you can really make your practice effective, and you
can make your practice help affect what's going on on
the golf course. So that's just a little insight of
(21:23):
what you know I was doing last week with DJ.
I think he can help you and give it a try,
and I definitely think it'll help. Son of a Butch
comes to you most week's rate review. Subscribe wherever you
get your podcasts. Can't thank everyone enough for listening. See
(21:44):
you next week.
It's the son of a which podcast. I'm your host,
Claude Harmon. Just back from three weeks in Asia. Was
out at my academy in Bangkok. Really excited about that project.
It's a really cool spot. And then Hong Kong and
Singapore with Live Dustin Johnson. Did you have a chance
to win Singapore last group on Sunday? So that was
(00:23):
really really encouraging. But what I want to talk about
is some of the stuff that we did in Singapore
with DJ that I think is applicable for your game.
I'm always trying to figure out how i can use
the information that I'm lucky enough to see and hear
about and work on tour with, because I do think
(00:44):
you can learn some things from what the best players
in the world are doing. I did a content shoot
and put out some content for Rafsoto, a launch monitor
that I think is one of the best on the market,
mainly because it's affordable. It's under one thousand dollars. It's
something that you can use. But one of the persons
in the comment said, hey, I'm not a tour pro,
(01:05):
so none of the stuff you're talking about is applicable.
And yardages and stuff like that, but I do think
that understanding how far you hit the golf ball and
understanding what you do on the golf course is massively important.
So just to give you a little insight, So obviously
on the PGA Tour, they're shot linked data, right, they
have some of the best data on the planet, and
(01:27):
as a player, as a coach, you can go in
and look at the data. You can look at what
you're doing, how you're performing, what clubs you're using, things
like that, And I think most professional golfers now at
the elite level have some sort of stats program that
they're either keeping themselves or they have companies using. We
do that as well, so we kind of get reports
every week on what the golf course strategy should be
(01:52):
based off of historical data, based off of what players
have done there before. So last week we're in Singapore
and at all the data and from a strategy standpoint,
the first thing that we noticed is due to the
length of the golf course and due to DJ's length,
he was only going to really hit five drivers or
needed to hit five drivers all week. Yes, he can
(02:14):
hit driver on a lot of holes, but the risk
versus the reward where the carries are where the troubles are,
So we pretty much identified that he was only going
to hit five drivers, going to hit drivers on the
two par fives, and then there were a couple of
other holes that he hit drivers the year before, so
we kind of knew he was going to hit five drivers.
(02:34):
So that means a lot of three woods off the tees.
He carries a nine wood and a seven wood, so
a lot of those clubs off of the tees. But really,
in looking at all of the data, the majority of
the clubs the yardage is that he was going to have,
We're going to be from one to twenty five to
two twenty five, So for DJ that's right around a
(02:57):
pitching wedge, kind of a gap wedge, and up to
a five iron. So the majority of the shots he
was going to hit, we knew the clubs that he
was going to be using pretty much the majority of
the round. So what we did was in our practice
session we kind of came up with a test. That's
(03:19):
Richard Bland, who is just playing some of the best
golf of his career in his early fifties. One two
majors on the Champs Tour last year, plays on live
but Richard's been coming over before some of the tournaments
into doing some warm weather training at my place in
Florida at the Floridian. His coach Tim Barter comes over
sometimes as well. But this year Blandy was over and
(03:41):
every week I see him on Live. I see him
with a launch monitor, and he's always got a little
book out and he's always writing things in a book
and stuff. And so he was doing that at my
place in the off season, and I went out and
I asked him what he was doing. He said, listen,
what I've come up with is a wedged test. And
what I do is I take twenty balls and I
randomize the numbers between eighty and one hundred and thirty yards. Right,
(04:05):
you can go on Google type in random number generator.
It'll come up and you can put in whatever number
you want. Right, you put in fifty to one hundred,
you could put twenty five to seventy, whatever it is.
So he puts in eighty to one thirty and then
hits a number and it spits out a random number.
And so the goal of the test, if you think
(04:27):
about it, So he's got twenty balls, he's randomizing every
single ball. So he doesn't know what the distance is
going to be. He can use any club in his bag,
and the goal is to have a total score for
the twenty balls of forty right. And the idea behind
that is two yards either short or long out. So
(04:48):
the way you take the test is you randomize the number,
and let's say the number is one forty four. You
take the club that you think you're going to hit
the golf ball one hundred and forty four yards, and
whatever the difference is, you write that number down. So,
for example, if it's one forty four and you carry
it one fifty for that you're write down five and
you go through that, and then at the end of
the test you add up all of the numbers that
(05:12):
you were short or long out, and the goal would
be forty right, So two yards out with every single ball.
And he says over the last two three years he's
been doing this religiously in every practice session he has, right,
So it's no surprise that for someone like Richard Bland,
who's in his fifties not nearly as long as some
(05:35):
of the players, he's going to play against the lowest
hanging fruit. And the way that he can really, really
score and the way that he can really separate himself
from the rest of the field used to be really
really good with eighty two, one hundred and thirty. The
scoring clubs right your wedges and stuff like that. And
he does this test on a regular basis religiously. And
(05:57):
I think we are in Adelaide and he told me, hey,
I just got twenty nine, and if you hit the number.
So let's say the number is one fifteen and you
carry the golf ball one fifteen, that's zero, right, So
twenty nine is an unbelievable score. And in Hong Kong
we did that a couple of times with DJ. DJ
got thirty eight. One of the times was doing that
(06:19):
with another of the players. I teach Noah Kent, who
we're trying. He's going to play in the Masters this year.
He'll play in the US Open by finishing second in
the Usam. So if you get to the finals of
the Usam, you get into the Masters. In the US Open,
we've been having Noah do this religiously, trying to get
that score down. So last week we basically did the
(06:40):
same thing with DJ. We did one twenty five to
two twenty five, and we just randomized the numbers and
got him to just again get out of technique right.
It wasn't him thinking about his golf swing. And I
think last week in Singapore, out of all of the
years that I've worked with DJs to working with DJ
(07:00):
in twenty twelve, I think last week was as little
technique work golf swing work that we've ever done. We
didn't really talk a lot about his golf swings. Golf
swing is in a pretty good place Hong Kong. He
finished dead last. A lot of people jumped on the
bandwagon on that doesn't care all that bullshit. That's fine,
if you want to do that, go for it. Thursday
(07:22):
night in Hong Kong, DJ kind of slept wrong and
had a rib out and his physio doctor, matt Ort,
tried to work on it. Warm up wasn't great. It
was on Friday in Hong Kong. It was fifty degrees
in raining all day, so Spotty never really loosened up.
He got better every day. Bogie the last hole on
Sunday could have shot seven under. I think he shot
(07:44):
you know, six under, so really good score. So by
the time we got to Singapore, I was like listen
and by the way for the first two days of
that tournament and for the majority of the third round
in Hong Kong. For the last ten years, DJ's stock
shot has been a fade Thursday and Friday because he
couldn't get through the golf ball. When he did try
and get through it and try and hit down on
(08:06):
it and trying to get that path left, he was
unable to do it, so he had to switch to
hitting a draw. So he hit a draw for almost
two and a half rounds, which isn't his normal shape
at all. But we got to Singapore and every single
day after the practice rounds Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we
did this test one twenty five to two twenty five
and he was choosing the club and we were looking
(08:28):
at the difference between what it was, and we were
also having him pick out specific targets, right, not just
aiming at the middle of the fairway or not just
aiming at one target, So not only randomizing the number,
but also trying to randomize his aim and having him
go through his pre shot routine on every shot, so
trying to get him in a game type situation. I've
(08:50):
talked about this on the pod before. One of the
things that we're always trying to do is instructors. As
a coach, what I'm always trying to do is how
can I simulate what is going to happen on the
golf course for a player on the driving range. So
it was something that we did for four days and
I think it really helped him. I think it really
helped him kind of get into play mode. I think
(09:10):
it really kind of got him not thinking so much
about his golf swing, so much about his technique, and
he had a chance to win shut eight under the
first day, was in the last group with wach o'neman
on Sunday. Didn't get it done, but a tremendous amount
of positive So I think a lot of people say
to me, listen, I don't have a launch monitor, so
(09:31):
I can't work on my distances. Right, I'm not a
tour player, so I can't work on my distances. So
maybe try this. Go to the driving range, and every
driving range you're going to go to, he's going to
have some flags, right, They're going to have target flags,
target greens. And if it doesn't have target flags and
(09:51):
target greens, it's going to have numbers, right, big scoreboard
type numbers, one hundred yards, one hundred and fifty yards whatever,
those yards are, right, But most are going to have
some sort of green complex and flags on the green.
And I think most golfers now have a launch monitor.
If you don't have a launch monitor, I mean have
(10:13):
a rangefinder. Launch monitors expensive, right, some of the ones
the players on the PGA Tour use thirty thousand dollars,
fifteen thousand dollars, ten thousand, whatever the numbers. I think
launch monitor technology is going down, and I think launch
monitors are getting better across the board. That's why I'm
a huge fan of rap Sodo. They've got two launch
monitors that are I think affordable. If golf is an
(10:36):
important part of your life and if you are really
really focused and trying to lower your handicap and get better.
But if you don't have a launch monitor, if you've
got a rangefinder, pick out a bunch of different targets, right,
pick out the different yardages and randomize these yardages. Right.
Pick out the fifty yard flag and get a number
(10:59):
on what that is, and then a seventy five yard
flag and one hundred yard flag, one hundred and twenty
five hundred whatever, you've got on the golf course. And
then if you don't have a launch monitor and you
can't tell exactly how far the ball is going, maybe
adjust this test and give yourself twenty balls and say, okay,
(11:19):
I'm going to try and aim at this specific target,
and I'm going to try. If I don't have a
launch monitor, I'm going to see if I'm long or
short of it and write that down, right, and you
choose the club right, So write down the club that
you're going to use, the yardage that you're trying to
hit it. So let's say you're trying to hit it
(11:40):
one hundred yards. You choose the club, write that club
that you're going to use down, and then if you're
short or long, right, short or long, do that for
twenty balls and try to your best ability to randomize
all of the numbers, or just pick out one hundred yards,
pick out you know, baseline numbers. Pick out a flag
(12:02):
that's one hundred yards, pick out a flag that's one
hundred and twenty five yards. I think good random numbers.
Fifty seventy five, one hundred, one hundred and twenty five,
one hundred and fifty right, I think those are good
numbers to start with. And again, if you don't have
a launch monitor and you can't tell exactly how far
it's going, but you have a rangefinder and you say, okay,
(12:23):
that target is seventy five yards, you could just do
twenty balls and pick out the club that you would
use for that distance and then do the test of
being either writing down if you're short or long, and
then go back in and look at what are the tendencies.
(12:45):
So if you've got your sand wedge, if you've got
your pitching wedge, if you've got your nine or whatever
the club is, figure out if the tendency is to
come up long or the tendency is to come up short, right.
And some of this you will probably if you're in
that mid handicap range, some of it will be contact issues. Right,
(13:07):
So yeah, when my contact is bad, I come up
way short of the number, right, way short of the
flag that I'm trying to hit. In an ideal world,
you would want the miss. I think it would be
better for the miss to be long then it would
be short, because if the miss is long, that's probably
(13:28):
going to show you that the contact is pretty good. Right,
If the miss is massively short, that's probably going to
show you that the contact miss is poor. Then you
kind of know what to do off of that. You
know two things. You know, if the tendency is from
whatever the distance is, if you're short or long, and
(13:48):
then you know that if you're consistently short and you're
hitting it fat or you're hitting it thin stuff, then
you know that's a contact issue. Then you can go
and say, okay, let me go work on my technique
to improve my contact, the quality of the strike. You
know where my weight is, am I taking a divots?
There's a million different drills you can do to try
(14:10):
and improve contact, But I just think that knowing with
the yardages that you've got with sand wedge, pitching wedge,
nine iron, eight iron, seven iron, I would work with
those clubs and then say, okay, am I short? Do
I tend to be short? Do I tend to be long?
And then next time you go play golf, write down
(14:32):
all the irons that you hit right on every hole.
So on the first hole, if you hit the fairway
right down the club that you're going to use right,
write it down. And then the next hole, obviously, if
you don't hit the fairway, you're chipping out right, but
then write down the yardage that the range finder tells
you it is and the club that you're using, and
then figure out if you're short or long, Because then
(14:55):
I think what you can do is similar to what
we're able to do on the tour level, is we
know the data from shot link, from launch monitors, from
the companies that we use for strategy. For data, you
can then kind of get an idea of Okay, at
my home course, I am going to have a lot
(15:16):
of these clubs that I'm going to have to hit.
I'm going to have to hit a lot of seven irons,
eight irons, six irons, five irons, hybrids, whatever the club is.
Because then I think it can really help you streamline
your practice, and your practice can actually be for something
(15:37):
specific that will help you on the golf course as
opposed to just what you're trying to do on the
range by just getting exercise. Try to then go, okay,
let me gamify the way that I practice, Let me
randomize my targets, let me randomize my numbers so that
(15:59):
I can then figure out what's happening on the golf course.
And I think you'll get a good idea of some
trends of what's happening. Most of us play our home
course on a regular basis, so you want to know
the clubs that you're going to be using the most
on your home course, right, And it's simple. Not everybody
(16:21):
has a launch monitor, right, Not everybody has access to
the data that we've got. But I think most driving
ranges can give you a lot that you can use
to help your game. Invest in a rangefinder and then
go out and say, okay, let me pick a bunch
of random targets, are random yardages and go from there.
(16:43):
And then one of the things that you can do
is gamify the driving range, right, and say, okay, I'm
going to try and pretend I'm playing on the golf course.
So pick a driver, take your driver out, use some
targets on the driving range, use kind of design a
fairway for yourself. Use poles, you can use trees, you
(17:04):
can use flags, and say, okay, I'm gonna choose a
flag or a tree or a pole on the left,
and then I'm gonna choose a flag or a pole
or a tree on the right hand side. That's my fairway.
And what I've got to do is I've got to
get the golf ball into the fairway and then randomize,
use that random number generator you can get on Google
(17:27):
and say, okay, now I've got to hit a club.
The number says one sixty five. Okay, what is my
one sixty five club? And then see if you can
find a target that is somewhere around that distance and
then hit an iron shot. You choose the club and
figure out if you're short or long, and then do
(17:49):
that a bunch of different times. Pick out a bunch
of different fairways, create your own fairways, pick out a
bunch of numbers that you know that you're gonna have
on the golf course, that you know that you need
to hit, and just see if you're able to have
good distance control. I don't think it takes a tremendous
amount of money. I don't think it takes a lot
(18:10):
of the stuff that we use on tour. Think of
the driving range as a playground, right as a massive playground,
and you're just going to try and use your driving
range your home course to try and help you on
the golf course. But I think if you can start
writing down the irons that you're using, whatever you're using,
(18:31):
maybe you're using a lot of hybrids on the golf course.
Maybe you're using a lot of long irons on the
golf course. But I think if you can start to
see the trends of the clubs that you're using, I
think it can be hugely beneficial for you to then
know what to practice as opposed to just going to
the driving range and just basically working on your golf swing.
(18:53):
Where I keep talking about this, there's two rooms that
you should be living in on the driving range. A
room that is technique and then another room that you
need to go into that is execution. And I think
last week the work that Austin Johnson, DJ's County and
I we just said, listen, we're going to try and
gamify as much of the practice as we can. For DJ.
(19:16):
We're going to try and get him not thinking about
his golf swing, not thinking about his technique, think about
what he's going to be doing on the golf course.
And he had a chance to win and finish top ten.
A lot to build on from last week for DJ.
But I do think if you could practice like this
and start to use your driving range like a big
(19:36):
giant playground, use the targets on the driving range, not
just for the shape and where it's going, think about
are you short or long of it? Are you missing
it left or right of it? And then I think
that'll help you kind of form a plan when you
go to the golf course and say, Okay, I know
(19:56):
on the golf course today, I'm going to have a
lot of distances I play my game, I'm gonna have
a lot of distances between this number and this number
for my second shots. I've been practicing these on the
golf on the driving range, and I think it will
help you lower your handicap, and I think it will
help you enjoy your golf better. And I think it's
(20:16):
something that you can use and take from the PGA Tour,
from DP World, from the Champs, from Live from the LPGA,
all the tours around the world. Right, it's very hard
for you to swing like the best players in the world,
like our heroes. We all struggle with that, right, We'd
all love to do that. We'd all love the swing
(20:37):
the golf club like Rory McElroy and Scotti Scheffler. We'd
all love to swing the golf club like Nellie Corda
or Adam Scott. All these beautiful golf swings, but that's
not the reality. But what we can do is really
have a good understanding as to how far you hit
your clubs, and really have a good understanding as to
what is your tendency. You tend to be short or
(21:01):
do you tend to be long. Is it a contact strike,
is it a directional miss, whatever that is, then you
can form a plan when you go to the driving range,
and you can really make your practice effective, and you
can make your practice help affect what's going on on
the golf course. So that's just a little insight of
(21:23):
what you know I was doing last week with DJ.
I think he can help you and give it a try,
and I definitely think it'll help. Son of a Butch
comes to you most week's rate review. Subscribe wherever you
get your podcasts. Can't thank everyone enough for listening. See
(21:44):
you next week.
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