The 24 Hour Rule

Claude breaks down Nick Saban’s famous 24-hour rule — the idea that players and coaches get one day to celebrate a win or learn from a loss before shifting focus to what’s next. He explores how adopting that same mindset can benefit every golfer, from weekend players to competitors: taking time to recognize what you did well, being honest about what needs work, and then letting go so you can move forward with confidence.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's these out of a Butcher podcast. I am your host,
Claude Harmon. So one of the things that I'm always
trying to do is look at I'm obsessed with coaches, right,
most of the sports that I watch, when I watch
NFL football or college football, I don't really care about
the sport. The teams that I follow tend to be
teams who'se coaches that I really like and admire. So

(00:24):
when I watch NFL games or college football games or
things like that, I'm looking at it from a coaching standpoint,
and I've talked about them a million times on the podcast.
But Nick Saban, the college football coach, you know, one
of the greatest of all time, and I always trying
to look at what coaches core principles are. And one
of Nick Saban's core coaching philosophies and principles is the

(00:44):
twenty four hour rule, meaning win or lose, you get
twenty four hours to process it and then you have
to move on. Right, So you get that twenty four
hour time frame after a game, the process what happened,
and then you know, in college, in the NFL, in
team sports, you don't really have a lot of time

(01:05):
to evaluate. You don't have months to evaluate games because
the games are coming all the time, right, So that
twenty four hour rule, I really like that, and it
was something I wanted to expand a little bit further
on in something that I think that we can all
kind of take to our own rounds of golf on
the golf course, or even our own practice sessions as well.

(01:28):
So I think one of the big problems with golfers
is the emotional side of golf. Due to the extended
time gap other sports, you don't have time to think, right,
the game is coming fairly fairly fast. One of the
things they always try and talk about, and you hear
them talk about for quarterbacks both at the college level

(01:49):
but definitely at the NFL level, is the great ones.
They always say the game is slowing down for them. Right. Well,
in golf, you've got eighteen holes. You're probably going to
be out on the golf course for you know, four
to five hours, but a lot of that time and
the majority of that time you're not really doing anything. Right.
Let's say give your so forty five seconds to hit
a shot, right, So if you have if the goal

(02:12):
was par and you had seventy two shots, and let's
say you gave yourself forty five seconds for each of them,
you don't really need to concentrate for that long. So
I think emotion becomes a big, big part in golf.
And you have a bad round, and most golfer spiral,

(02:35):
lose confidence, and the next time they go play, they'll
throw everything out and try something completely different. The opposite
of that is a good round. You think that it's
going to happen all the time. You get over confident,
you think I've got this figured out. And you know,
Nick Saban always called that the rat poison right. Too

(02:56):
much praise is a bad thing and being too negative
is a good thing. I saw a quote that Nick
Saban was talking about a football team recently that lost
a big game, and he said, you know, I always
used to tell our team when we lost games, we
were ready to lose one. And I was like, that's
a really interesting phrase, meaning, yeah, we weren't doing the

(03:17):
things that we needed to do to compete at a
high level to win consistently, and as a result of that,
we lost, and we were ready to lose because losing
and failing will help us learn something. So I think
most golfers every time they played poorly, they hit bad shots,
they have bad practice session. It's just an open invitation

(03:41):
to lose confidence, spiral and to constantly make changes, to
constantly change everything. So this idea of a twenty four
hour rule for your bad rounds, for your bad practice
sessions yourself, you know, twenty four hours to be frustrated,

(04:03):
to be disappointed or whatever. But then try and figure
out what you can learn from that. Right? Was it
was it my technique? Do I need to go to
the range and spend more time in the technique phase?
Or was it execution and performance? Do I need to

(04:25):
have a better strategy. Do I need to work on
my mental state on the golf course? Was it course management?
But pick one thing from Let's say we're going to
do it from a bad round. Right, you've gone out,
You've played poorly. You know, nothing really went well. But

(04:47):
if you evaluate the round of golf you played and
you try and evaluate it logically, try and pick it
apart and imagine that there's a panel looking at the
round of golf you just played. You had a back nine,
you had a front nine, you had seventy two holes,
and you're going to have, you know, like a Golf
Channel panel of people that are going to try and

(05:08):
analyze your round the way they do from live from
you know, when you know Brandle and Paul McGinley are
at the majors and they evaluate the leaders, they evaluate
their rounds. If somebody was leading and they played poorly,
they evaluate the round, but evaluate it and see if
you could pinpoint what the problem was, so that when

(05:29):
you go into your next practice session, which is going
to be technique phase, you can figure out what you
need to practice. And I think that's the issue. Right
when you don't play well, it's easy to spiral because
you can look at your round of golf and you'd

(05:52):
always find a lot of different things that you feel
like were the calls. But a lot of those things
will be the result of some other things, so they
won't necessarily be the cause. So look at the bad
round of golf that you played and say, okay, let
me think about this logically. First of all, let me
analyze were there any things I did well today? Okay,

(06:13):
let's say I'm trying to break ninety for the first
time and I still didn't do it. You know, I
shot ninety seven and my goal is to shoot ninety,
and that's kind of holy grail for me in my
golf development is to break ninety for the first time.
Because I can't break eighty for the first time, I
don't break ninety for the first time. I can't break

(06:34):
par for the first time. If I can't break ninety,
I can't break ninety for the first time, if I
don't break a one hundred. So when you're looking at
that bad round, try and see what you can pull
out of it, and say, Okay, if I go to
the range tomorrow and I really really focus on trying

(06:57):
to fix these things and commit to it, can commit
to that technique phase we've talked about and then work
the technique side of it and then say, okay, let
me get into kind of that transfer phase. But try
and find one thing that you can pull out of
your round of golf that you did well, But then

(07:19):
what was the main thing you did poorly? And then
if you play well and you have a really good round,
give yourself twenty four hours, celebrate, right, and then get
your ass back to work. That's one of the things
that I always say to the competitive players that I
play with. If they win a tournament. I always say
the same thing. Celebrate the win, take a day off

(07:43):
and celebrate, and then get your ass back to work.
Get back to work because doesn't matter. Right, doesn't matter
if you just want a golf tournament. The only thing
that matters is the next golf tournament you're going to play.
When you play really well, don't into that trap of thinking, Okay,
I've got it now right, I'm going to I'm going

(08:06):
to continue to play well and again, process over outcome.
What was the process that led you to the outcome
you wanted? And just like when you play poorly, taking
a deep dive into what you feel like was the
main reason why you played poorly. When you have a
good round of golf, do the opposite. Most golfers can

(08:29):
tell me everything they're doing wrong on every bad swing, right,
they tell me a laundry list of things that they're
doing wrong when they hit the golf ball well. But
if they're hitting the golf ball really, really solid, if
they have really good rounds of golf, what are you
doing well? Can you identify the things that you do

(08:51):
on the golf course when you're playing the game that
helps you play well? Right, So it's just as important,
and when you play poorly, to figure out what you
feel like was the main cause of why you played
poorly and what is the main thing that you can
try and change. I think you've got to do the

(09:12):
opposite of that. When you play well, if you have
a really good round of golf, write down, Okay, today
I did these things really really well, right today. I
drove the ball well today, I putted really really well. Today.
I had a really good round of golf. And you
know what, I really didn't hit it that good. But
my decision making process on the golf course was really
really solid. My course management was really really solid, my

(09:35):
course strategy was really really solid. I had a really
really good game plan. So you want to try and
extract the things of the bad rounds that you did
poorly and try and take those into your practice. But
when you play well, say okay, yeah, this is what
I did really really well today, and let me focus

(09:56):
on that. You know, if you think about the idea
of the process, sticking with the process, the Nick Saban
core process over outcome right, the process can protect you. Right.
If you're focused on the process, then each individual round
matters less, right, because it's a long season. You know,

(10:18):
they're going through that right now in American college football,
you know, because the way they've changed the playoff system
and all those things used to be you were trying
to stay undefeated. Now it's going to be very, very
hard for the best teams in college football to remain
undefeated because of the schedule, because of all the things
nil and stuff like that. So you're probably going to

(10:41):
have some losses. Whereas before the goal was to go undefeated. Yeah,
that's probably still going to be the goal, but that's
not going to be somewhat realistic. So in team sports,
the process is, hey, listen, you know, it's a long season.
We have more games. It's just not we had a loss. Okay,

(11:03):
let me try and learn from that. Let us as
a team try and learn from it, and then you know,
we've still got a long season and we're going to
try and have more wins than losses and learn from
this mistake. So I think that's important. If you have
a good round, ask yourself, listen, was it really a

(11:23):
good round or did I just have a lot of
things go well for me today? Did I get breaks
that I haven't been getting? I think that's really really important.
But again, a good round of golf identify what is
the reason. And I just think that so many golfers

(11:43):
just don't do that right. They're so focused on the outcome,
and they're so focused on the negative outcome. So I'm
always doing that when I'm giving golf lessons. Right when
I'm giving a student a golf lesson, It's easy for
me in lesson to look at a player and look
at all of the things that they're doing poorly. What

(12:05):
I always try and do is say, Okay, in my head,
i'm looking at a golfer, I'm watching them warm up,
I'm kind of going through my analysis of what I
think would help them play better and hit shots better
and things like that. So there's probably going to be,
you know, for a regular normal golfer, a handicap golfer,
there's always going to be a number of things that

(12:25):
I could say to them, Hey, yeah, I mean, your
grip's bad. Backswing's terrible. Don't like the top of the
back swing position that much downswing, Not a huge fan
of the downswing. Impact needs to get better post impact.
I always try and say to myself, okay before I
say anything constructive, and I guess before I tell them

(12:48):
the negative, I always try and say, listen, I really
like these parts of your golf swing. I really like
what you do with your grip. I really like the
way you set up to the golf. There's always going
to be something that is good that you can focus
on and say, listen, you do this really really well,
or you do these things really really well. And what

(13:08):
we can do is focus on these as really good
parts to your movement pattern and really good parts to
your golf swing, and see if we can take some
of the things that you really do well and then
say listen, and then the places where we can make
gains and the places where we can improve are these one,

(13:29):
two and three things. And that's only going to help
accentuate and help the good things that you do well
really affect your score. So I really do like that
twenty four hour. You could do that from a practice
standpoint as well. Get done with your practice session. We
talked about this, you know, the three phases that you're

(13:50):
going to be in in your practice session. You're going
to be in a technical phase where you're working on
swing mechanics, positions, all of the technical elements of your
golf swing. It's not the playing of the game, it's
the practice part of it. And then that's one bucket.
So that's the technical stage. The middle phase of that
is the transfer phase to where Okay, now I'm trying

(14:12):
to take some of the things that I'm doing in
my technique, some of the fields, some of the drills
and stuff, and in a practice environment, pick out some targets,
put some alignment sticks down, and try and now get
into hitting some shots that have some result outcome based

(14:32):
to them. But I'm still in the technical phase as well.
I'm trying to transfer what I'm doing from the technique
phase into the performance side of thing, right, And so
it's this transfer phase that I think is just a
phase that a lot of players never really think about,
they never really get into. They just want to make
that jump from trying to get kidting golf holes and

(14:58):
practicing golf and playing golf and scoring and performing on
the golf course. So let's say you're going to try
and learn French for the first time. The first thing
that you're going to try and do when you learn
language is you've got to learn the vocabulary. You've got
to learn the grammar, you've got to learn the pronunciation.

(15:19):
So that's a new language, and you've got to try
and learn what the words are in French, right, what
the word for cat, dog, plane, food, whatever, what that
word is, the grammar, the pronunciation, and stuff like that,
and that's kind of the foundation of how you then
start to then the transfer phase of that would be. Okay,

(15:43):
I feel like I've got a pretty good gauge and
a pretty good understanding of kind of the grammar of French,
grammar of German, Italian, whatever the language is. Okay, I
understand I'm probably still going to make some mistakes when
I start to try and make some phrases now and
put some sentences together. And if I was talking to

(16:07):
a French speaker and I was saying, hey, listen, I'm
trying to learn French, and you know, I've been practicing
the grammar and the pronunciation and all of that, and
you know, could we kind of try and have some
basic conversations in French. A French speaker is going to,
you know, regardless of what you say, if you say
it incorrectly, if you don't say it the right way,

(16:28):
if the pronunciation is off it it's the wrong word.
If it's just if it's not grammatically correct. A native
speaker would say to you, no, no, no, no, you say
the word this way, it's pronounced this way, or you're
adding a verb, you're adding an out, whatever the rules
of that language are. That is kind of the transfer phase.

(16:49):
And then the performance side of things would be to
stand up and give a two hour presentation all in French? Right?
Can you do that after one day of trying to
learn the words and the grammar and the pronunciation, right,
It just it's not realistic. So they always say one

(17:12):
of the ways to really learn a language is to
go live in that culture. So one of the easiest
ways to learn French is go live in France, right,
because you're going to be immersed in it every single
day and it's going to help that transfer phase become better. Right, So,

(17:35):
evaluating your good rounds, evaluating your bad rounds, but maybe
evaluate them in a different way and think about it, Okay,
what can I take from my round of golf today
and what did I see on the golf course that
was the issue in the performance side of things, right,

(17:56):
and whatever that is, then say okay, what can I
then go work on from that? Evaluation back into the
range environment, the controlled range environment, back into that kind
of no fear save space for practice, and what can
I work on technically that is going to help me

(18:19):
transfer what I'm working on technically and get into that
transfer phase so that I can get out of that
transfer phase and get into that performance phase, because that's
what we're always trying to do. Right Whereas I think
most golfers that are listening right now there they stay

(18:41):
in technique mode. They stay in the technical mode. They're very,
very comfortable on the range. You know, I hear this
all the time. I hit it good on the range,
I really really struggle when I go to the golf course.
And so I'd never heard the term transfer before. And

(19:02):
so I was working with a junior golfer. She had
aspirations to play Division one college golf. She went on
to play college golf, not at the Division one level,
but I remember she was playing in a big tournament
down in Miami and she went down and played a
practice round at Durel. I think it was the Red
course at Durel. And in the Red course at Durel,

(19:26):
she played pretty good. You know, I think shut seventy
four in the practice round, and she was using arcos
at the time, so we were able to kind of
look at how many fairaways she hit, how many greens
she hit. We were able to kind of look at the
round that she played and stuff like that. And then
she I'm pretty sure I've told the story before on
the pod, but I think it's a powerful one. And

(19:46):
then in the tournament, I think shut eighty six or
eighty seven, and parents freaked out. She freaked out. I mean,
she just I mean they were freaking out. And the
parents immediately called me and said, she needs more practice,
she needs more practice, she needs more practice, she needs
more technique, more technique, more technique. And I was talking
about this concept with Greg Rose from the titleist Performances

(20:08):
to doctor Greg Rose, who I've had on the pod before.
You haven't listen to that one, that's a really good one,
and I was talking about this. I was like, you know,
when you see this, what do you see? And he said, well,
that's transfer problem. I said, what, I've never heard that phrase.
What does that mean? He is, well, she's struggling to
transfer what she's doing in practice and in practice rounds

(20:30):
into competition, so it's a transfer problem, because if it
was a technique problem, if it was solely a technical problem,
she would shoot in the high eighties in the tournament
because she lacked skill. But you can see that the

(20:52):
technique and the technical side of things that she's working
on is working because we have data points to back
that up. Right, we have a school or to where
I think of seventy two is par. I think she's
shut two over. We have data that we know how
many fairways she hit, we know how many greens she hit,
we know how many putts she had. We were able
to kind of go through and look at the clubs

(21:13):
that she was hitting and where she was hitting it,
and to be over ten shots higher in the tournament.
I mean, I do that in the limited golf that
I play, right, my golf, when I play golf and
compete at golf, It's not a transfer problem, right, because

(21:34):
I don't hit it good in practice. Right, I'm struggling
in the practice phase of things. I'm struggling with the
things I'm trying to work on in my golf swing.
So I haven't you done enough work on the changes
that I'm making Because I don't really practice a lot.
I don't really play a lot, so I'm not surprised

(21:55):
when I go out and play in competition or score.
I'm not surprised that I play poorly because I'm struggling
in that practice side of things. But I hear a
lot of players say to me, listen, I hit it
good in practice. I feel like I'm making the changes
that you know you want me to make. I'm just

(22:16):
really struggling in the tournament. You know. I'm going through
this right now with Noah Kent, who I've had on
the podcast before. Finalists twenty twenty four USAM which got
him into the Masters in the US Open this year,
and he also got invites into the Byron Nelson and

(22:37):
the Houston Open on the PGA Tour. So he played
four professional golf tournaments this year, including two majors and
two regular tour events, and he is a junior at
the University of Florida. He played a tournament a couple
of weeks ago and finished fifteenth with a ten and

(22:59):
two doubles. And the good is good, the good is
as good as anybody's. And we're trying to clean up
the bad, right, trying to make the bad better. And
then a couple of weeks ago, trying to qualify for
the next tournament at the University of Florida. Three round
qualifier sixty eight sixty nine, so five under through two rounds.

(23:23):
The leader is ten under. They're going to take the
top five scores and sixty nine to sixty eight. Three
bogies through two rounds, right, cruising, no doubles, some birdies
and one by one bogue in the first round, two
bogeys in the second round. Right, So playing well, right, legit,

(23:46):
chance to qualify right where he wants to be. Third
round eighty another ten and two more doubles. Now some
of that technical sure. Talking to his coaches J. C. Deacon,
who I've had on the pod before and Dudley Hart,
who played the PGA Tour. I'm going to get on

(24:07):
the pod soon. I sent him a message that night,
technique or execution. They both came back with one bad,
getting some bad breaks on the golf course, but couldn't
really make worse decisions and compounding problems. So I'm talking
on the phone to Noah and I'm like, dude, you

(24:27):
think it's all one hundred percent technique. It's not. If
the technique was bad, you'd shoot eighty in the eighties
for the practice rounds. It's transferring what you're working on,
the mindset you have for the two rounds where you're
cruising sixty eight sixty nine, and then transfer to you
can take that to your own golf game and say, Okay,

(24:50):
when I'm on the golf course and I have good
rounds and I have good days, what is it that
I'm doing and is it one hundred percent that I
hit the golf ball better. So obviously the barriers, the
score barriers that we're all trying to break one hundred,
ninety eighty and par right, if you're trying to break

(25:11):
a hundred for the first time, Absolutely some of that
and a large majority of that is going to be technique, right,
getting the golf ball in the air all the time,
taking divots with irons, getting the golf ball in play
off the tee, getting the golf ball anywhere on the green,
stuff like that. Yeah, that's always going to be somewhat technical.

(25:32):
But if you feel like you're in that bucket of Okay,
I'm working on some things in my golf swing, I
see them working on the driving range, I feel more
comfortable with it. I've got data points through video, through
launch monitors, through or whatever technology that you're using to
try and quantify if the changes that you're making are working.

(25:57):
So I've got the good data points to where yeah swings.
You know, I've been trying to shorten my backswing looks
much shorter on the driving range. A video myself on
the golf course looks you know, right, but still not
performing the way I want to. So having that understanding
of to the three phases that you're in technique transfer execution, right,

(26:21):
technique is swing mechanics, swing changes, swing thoughts, feels, transfer
is Okay, Now I'm going to practice my technique under
game for slight conditions with targets consequences, building kind of

(26:45):
nine holes on the driving range, right, you could build
nine holes on the driving range, pick out flags on
the golf course or on the driving range and say, okay,
I'm gonna get myself a fairway there, right, and I've
got to get the golf ball in that fair wa.
You make that fair as big or as small as
you want. I'm going to pick out a green or
a target flag, and I'm going to rather than do

(27:08):
what I do in tech. So the difference between technique
and technical phase and transfer is technique. You're genuinely working
with one specific golf club, from one specific lie that
tends to be flat on the driving range, from a

(27:29):
good lie, and you are making your technical changes in
a controlled, good environment. Right, if it's super super windy
and you're gonna work on your technique and you're just
gonna be working on swing mechanics and swing changes and
it's blowing fifty, you're probably not going to go out

(27:50):
there because you're probably gonna not get a lot out
of it because golf ball is going to be flying
all over the place. Well, if you're working on technique,
that probably shouldn't matter. So the technical phase is okay.
Now I am working on all of my swing thoughts
and my swing mechanics and all of my feels. But
now I'm choosing different targets. I'm choosing different lies, I'm

(28:10):
choosing different alignments, So you know, I'm choosing different clubs,
I'm choosing different fairways, I'm choosing different greens, I'm choosing
different targets while I'm still working on my fields, working
on my swing thoughts whatever they are. And then the
performance side of things, the execution thought side of things
is going out and doing none of that and just

(28:33):
going out and scoring. But I do think building in
that twenty four hour rule for yourself for good rounds
and good practice sessions and for ad rounds and ad
practice sessions is very similar to again building that no
blame practice environment. Did a pot on it recently, and

(28:57):
I do think that's important. Don't get two to down
on yourself for twenty four hours after a bad round
or a bad practice session, figure out some of the
things that you can do to kind of affect change
and change things on the golf course, and then not
getting too high and feeling like you've got it when
you play well, and then saying, okay, what are the

(29:19):
things that helped me play well today and the reasons
why I played well, and then what are the things
that I can still improve on. So that building that
twenty four hour rule for yourself, to Nick Saban concept,
one that I really really like and one that I
think can help you get into that no blame environment
where you're not beating yourself up constantly. So give that

(29:42):
a try see if that works, and I definitely think
it will be able to help you. You can rate
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