L.A.B. Golf - Part 6: “The Navy Seal” - The Fire Pit w/ Matt Ginella

In Part 6 of the Fire Pit Podcast series on L.A.B. Golf, we’re getting to Lucas Glover, the highs and lows of professional golf, why friends and good management matters, and we talk to a Navy Seal about overcoming the yips. Thanks for following along. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I graduated Seal Training or Hell Week with twenty guys
out of one hundred and thirty five that started our
buds class.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
So we started one.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hundred and thirty five, we got the Hell Week of
forty three. We came out of Hell Week with twenty.
That requires an extreme amount of mental toughness. So if
I proved that I was extremely mentally tough and at
the same exact point in life could not throw a
baseball due to the yips, then the yips cannot be
due to a lack of mental toughness.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Put another log on the fire nobody he is get
the time.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Welcome to the fire pit with Matt Chanella as.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
Will Zalaturus used a lab to finish second at Riviera
and Phil Nicholson used one at Live Goolf's Jetta event
to finish T six.

Speaker 5 (00:56):
We're rolling right.

Speaker 4 (00:57):
Into part six of this series on the rise in
relevancy of lab golf. If you've been following along, you
know by now this is not just a story and
a series about putters and putting strokes. It's also a
story about ingenuity overcoming adversity, some risks which resulted in
rewards throw in the cultivation of relationships, serendipity, mental toughness,

(01:23):
timing technology, some sweat marketing with a sprinkle of stubbornness,
and you have the American Dream, several of them.

Speaker 5 (01:32):
Actually, how many more episodes in this series?

Speaker 2 (01:35):
You ask?

Speaker 4 (01:36):
I'm not really sure yet, as many as it takes
to tell this story because for me, knowing where it
ends and the people who have offered their time, insights
and perspectives, it's all worth it.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
I hope you feel the same.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
In Part five we met Brett Rumford, the Australian short
game guru who pushed back on the original directed force
technology and after a few passionate exchange with Sam Hahn
and lab leadership, Rummy is now all in on the
product process and the results.

Speaker 6 (02:09):
When you get to that first green, it's just all
about locking into holding a part and just the more
things that you can eliminate in the thought process with
putting them, the better, you know, simplify it to just
hitting that the best put you can. And a classic
example was the story I told at the Cottaslow Open
where I've got a thirty footer. There's lots of stuff

(02:29):
that can happen in between the impact of that golfer
going in the hole. But at the end of the day,
you go, you just got to give up on that
and just put the best stroke you can on it,
and that was That's what was really evident. It was
just an amazing moment for me which I went, Okay,
I get it. I understand what Sam's on about, and
Bill and the technology what it's all about. So it

(02:53):
was just purely just emptied.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
It was amazing.

Speaker 6 (02:55):
It was quite don't want to use the word it
was very spiritual.

Speaker 4 (02:59):
And before how are we go any further? I just
want to say thank you to Dormy Workshop for their
sponsorship of this podcast. The Bishop Brothers are based in Halifax,
Nova Scotia. They're coming up on ten years of making
handmade leather goods such as custom headcovers and accessories. For
their complete collection of originals headcovers and classics, go to

(03:19):
Dormy Workshop dot com and use promo code fire Pit
fifteen for fifteen percent off your next purchase. So, as
I explained in Part one, the reason I started reporting
this story and series was a byproduct of Lucas Glover
going from having a severe case of the yips to
winning back to back PGA Tour events in August of

(03:41):
twenty twenty three. He had gone from the outhouse to
the penthouse of putting, and the transformation was seemingly overnight.
After a few phone calls, I confirmed that a lab
putter definitely had something to do with it, and after
initial interviews with Sam Han and Bill Pressey, I quickly
realized that lab golf was indeed a story I wanted

(04:03):
to tell, But I also found out there was more
to Glover's success than just the putter. Where we go
in the next few episodes is a better understanding of
Lucas Glover, his life and his career, a better understanding
of the yips, and we talked to Jason Kuhn, the
former Navy seal who helped Glover overcome every golfer's worst nightmare,

(04:24):
and we find out how and why Glover decided to
try a lab putter. We start with Sam Han, CEO
of lab Golf since twenty eighteen, and his thoughts on
Glover's back to back wins.

Speaker 5 (04:37):
And again.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
This interview with Han is in August of twenty twenty three,
only days after Glover's second win.

Speaker 7 (04:45):
Crazy isn't it? Absolutely nuts? I mean there's nothing to say.
I mean, it's just there's nothing to say that hasn't
been said in the tens of thousands of words that
have been written about him in the last couple of weeks,
and he deserves every one of them. I've I've seen
some remarkable turnarounds. I've never seen anything like that. I've

(05:08):
never seen anything like it, and it's so fucking validating.
And you know that all of this is kind of
happening when it is, you know, Adam's stat's going through
the roof this last you know, a couple of years
since he's been using it, and we've got a handful
of other guys out there that are doing really well.
We've had some wins. We had two wins on the
Live tour. We had a web Dot or a Cornberry

(05:30):
win this year as well from a guy from Grayson
Murray who's you know, same same kind of thing. I mean,
really really struggled on the greens. And then now Lucas,
and Lucas is uh. He's one of the few guys that,
you know, one of the few pros that I've I've
had very little interaction with this that that was born
entirely through Liam so Lucas ran into Liam at one

(05:51):
of the tour stops and you know, as the story
goes that he's talked about it was just like, just
give me Adams putter and don't tell me a thing.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
After playing professional baseball for seven years, Liam Bedford of Melbourne,
Australia got a college golf scholarship at what is now
Bushnell University in Eugene, Oregon. Their home course is Emerald Valley,
which is where the offices of Lab Golf are located.
His wife, who was getting her PhD at the University
of Oregon, is what inspired the full time move from

(06:23):
Australia to the United States. Like Sam Hahn, Bedford found
LAB putters by way of Bob Duncan, who taught out
of Emerald Valley.

Speaker 8 (06:33):
About a month before. A month before I graduated, Me
and Sam would run into each other all the time
because he's a member out of Emerald, and about a
month before I graduated, he offered me a job to
work at LAB in customer service. At the time, we
were only I think I was like the eighth or
ninth employee at the time, and yeah, we only had
the directed force at that time. But my first introduction

(06:55):
was like, yeah, twenty twenty nineteen. I think it was
twenty nineteen with Bob Duncan on the putting Green in
Evermonald Valley.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
Bedford worked his way up to run the tour department
and player development for lab Golf. As he's going from
PGA Tour putting Green to putting Green, I asked if
he would share an example of his sales pitch.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
So I don't really have a pitch.

Speaker 8 (07:16):
I mean, I'm pretty organic as far as like it's got,
I'll bring it up in a conversation or like I
want it. I don't want it to ever feel like
I'm making guys or doing something that they don't want
to do. But the thing that's pretty hard to go
past is the face stay square by itself. If you
keep the shaft on playing, the face will return square.
And if you can return the face square, the ball
the starting line is going to start where you're aiming it,

(07:38):
and it gives you the best chance to make the
parts and start the ball in your starting line. There's
a lot that goes into putting as far as green, reading, speed,
and line, and you've got to match all those three.
But if you can start the ball in your line
at a higher percentage of the time, you have to
have a better chance of making more parts. The biggest
thing I emphasize is the face is staying square and

(07:59):
also because because of where it's balanced and where it's shafted,
we're shafting essentially very close to the center of mass.
So with that force, with the force coming through the
ball pretty much across the face, smash factor is the same.
So the sweet spot on that face, because of how
we balance it and how we shaft it, the sweet

(08:20):
spot is huge. Like I typically get guys to hit
three different putts. I hit a normal putt and then
get to hit one really heavy toe and really heavy
heel and watch the balls roll and all three are
almost identical. And that's when everybody's like, oh shit.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
Given the looks of lab the sale of the product
has never been easy. But like Pressy Home and Hahn
before him, Liam Bedford leans into the unique look and
uses it to his advantage.

Speaker 8 (08:54):
That's a part of the stick too, right, Like it's
got to be that ugly for a reason, Like we're
not just going to make a part of it looks
like a spaceship just to make something and look like
a spaceship, like it's got this function. There's function in there,
and so like it's pretty easy to explain. And then
especially most of the time, it's just like other reps
who are friends that are poking fun and give me

(09:15):
shit or players that have given me shit, and like
it's water off a ducts back. It's all part of it.
It's all fun. Like when when guys actually get to
roll it, like they'll make fun of the directed force
specifically and just like, oh man, that thing's huge and
that thing looks like a bottle opener, it's a branding iron.
But then then they actually hit puts with it and
they're like, oh shit, like this thing, this thing rolls
the hell out of it, and it's it's I typically

(09:37):
always try and take a directed force with me in
for most places I go because I want people to
do that. I want people to be like, why the
hell would you make that? And then then it's a
good opportunity to be like, well, let me show you
why is this fun? It's amazing, it's amazing, how cool
is this? Like we're a small company that three years ago.
Three years ago I felt guilty buying a stapler on

(09:59):
company money now. It's it's not that we're that we
that we can we've got all these sexcess cash now,
but like it's to see to see the things the
growth of the company. We're in a new building now,
we're on Like our building that we're at now is
at Emerald Valley's golf Course, which is a gorgeous championship
eighteen whole golf course where the Ducks play out of

(10:20):
our facilities there. We've got a bunch of guys that
that love golf, that are around golf. The atmospheres, the
culture and the company is great. It's just really cool.
We're just we're moving in the right direction. And not
only we're moving in the right direction of growth, the
culture is staying the same as well. And we've got
a really bunch of a really good bunch of guys.

(10:41):
And even though that's weird to say it's sixty people,
it still feels like a small little family.

Speaker 4 (10:45):
Bedford doesn't know Bill Pressey very well, but he certainly
knows who he is. And here he reflects on Pressey's
ingenuity and impact.

Speaker 8 (10:53):
What else can you say, but the the resilience is
a great is a great word. He had an idea
and had a like brought it to life. It wasn't
just that he had an idea and like and talked
about it and did something. He he figured it out
like he went He went forward and tried and tested
and tried and tried and tried until it worked, until

(11:15):
he found and found out a way that he could
manufacture it so and then he could not just make one,
he could make multiple. And the concept is brilliant, Like
the whole concept is absolutely brilliant. Making something that's lying
or balanced that the puttest is going to try and
stay square. It's incredible, Like that says such a great
idea and such a great thing that we joke all

(11:35):
the time at work, like how does how does no?
How did nobody think of this?

Speaker 5 (11:39):
Beforehand? From pressy, I had Bedford summarize sam Han's rule
and impact on the company.

Speaker 8 (11:44):
Sam has got a brilliant brain. He just knows how
things are gonna work. I feel like he just he
knows something that we all done. Like we we all
there'll be things that happen and we're just like what
the hell? Sam, Like he's just putting us in a
huge pickle. And then it turns out that it was
the best decision that we've made. He is brilli He
he cared. But the best part, the best part about

(12:04):
Sam is Sam is he is the most caring, loving
boss that you could ask for. Like he genuinely cares
about every single person that is in that building and
wants everybody to live a happy and fulfilling life. And
that's probably part of the reason why we have been
successful over the last couple of years, because he cares

(12:25):
about people more than he cares about the business. But
because he cares about people, people care about the business.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
What are some stories that you have, some personal stories
of like watching somebody have that aha moment and being like, Wow,
that's cool.

Speaker 8 (12:40):
I mean, you can't go past Lucas right, Like Lucas
is unbelievable since he's put the putter in play. I
think he's had one week in negative shirts and putting
where that was the normal. His first six events for
that he's worst finished with a T six like it was.
It's insane like that, how one piece of equipment change

(13:03):
can just straight up change a guy's mentality and his
whole energy that his confidence level is truly it was remarkable.
I speak with his agent Mac quite a little bit.

Speaker 6 (13:16):
And.

Speaker 8 (13:19):
Just from his team side of things, like the amount
of confidence that they have in themselves now that they
can actually go win. I truly don't know if in
six months ago that like Lucas will finish well, but
he has to hit it five shots better than anybody
else to have a chance. But now like he's putter
is putter was what won in the back Nan at

(13:41):
the FedEx.

Speaker 4 (13:42):
Meet Mac Barnhart of Rock Sports. I got to know
him in the nineteen nineties working at Sports Illustrated, whin
Mac was managing, among others, Davis Love. Many would say
it was Barnhardt who helped cultivate the Sea Island Mafia
of tour pros. Barnhart still lives in the Sea Island
area and runs Rock Sports, which is essentially a team
of people who manage the lives of professional golfers all

(14:05):
over the world.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah. I came up under Benny Giles. Vinnie was probably
one of the best amateurs ever. And I don't know
if I'd got into this job. If you'd told me
my job was to go sell advertising on players, it
would have no meaning to me. But Minnie was a
you know, he was a player's manager, and that's how
he brought me into business. So I don't know if
you just said, hey, I'm going to get into this

(14:28):
and you've got to go sell hat deals, it would
have never occurred to me to do that. But to
have purpose in kind of their lives being part of
the WII and them is it's pretty exciting. It's as
good as it gets.

Speaker 5 (14:43):
How many players would you say you've you know, you've
worked with so to speak, you know, over the thirty
one years, would you have any estimate?

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Gosh, I don't know, probably forty, Probably yeah, forty or so.

Speaker 5 (14:57):
And when did Lucas Glover come into your life?

Speaker 3 (15:01):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (15:02):
After he graduated Clemson in two thousand and one, played
and played in the Walker Cup and he signed with
us after that he turned pro.

Speaker 5 (15:14):
And how what's your first recollection of Lucas Glover? Like,
what would you have summarized at that beginning?

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Like had dinner with him in Greenville, South Carolina, and
the restaurant's still there. I can't remember the restaurant. I mean,
you know, you watch him play, you meet the parents,
you're around the coaches, you run his teammates, but just
he and I sitting in a restaurant, dinner's over, and
just I knew then, I'm like, you know this, this

(15:43):
guy's different. We you know, we became very close friends
real quick. He had the kind of same southern upbringing
I had. His dad played pro baseball or you know,
and my dad played pro baseball, and we just had
It wasn't like a lot of the other golfers that
I dealt with. He had a little different mode.

Speaker 9 (16:05):
And meaning it was it was there was something that,
you know, a different meaning that there was a little
more grint, a little more grind or a little more Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Absolutely, Now he reminded me more of a baseball player mentality.
There wasn't much of fodder in his speaking of GoF
it was seatball, hit ball. He was not one of these.
He wasn't caught up in how good he looked on
the course. He wasn't caught up in how anything other
than playing golf. I mean, he was just that guy,

(16:36):
and you know, and very honest, and you know, shared
his thoughts really well, which is, you know, at twenty
one years old, not many people are developing that yet.
But he seemed to have his thoughts that way, right.

Speaker 5 (16:50):
You're life coaching these guys from the beginning, like an understanding,
like just because you have a win doesn't mean you've
got ten wins coming. You've got to like you've got
to bang can understand. It's it's a commitment to this
bigger thing. It's that's my that's my that's my sense.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
I mean, I think over time it's changed a little bit,
but you know, this is a this is a really
crazy sport and that you you have coaches at high school,
you have coaches in college, and you get out and
you're the prior. You know, you're the sole propriority of
this business. And it's not like you have peers that
you know, it's not like you have teammates as a
baseball team does to come in and shake you loose

(17:28):
every once in a while. And if you come out
and your playing and you're a big enough deal, you've
got a lot of people telling you what you want
to hear at all times. And the guys get used
to that. They don't even understand someone going against you know,
you know about if you have a different idea. You
see these guys struggle, who do they turn to? You know,

(17:48):
who's who's organizing? Who you turn to I used to
use this Alex rod Reeves. You know, I don't know
how much money he made for the Yankees, but he
round the second. He didn't question, he slid, stood or
went home. And I think there's comfort in that. So
I think having a team around these players, that's not
just a team saying, hey, how much money can we make?

Speaker 10 (18:08):
Ye?

Speaker 2 (18:10):
I mean really, you know, if you play well, you'll
make money. If you don't play well, you won't make money.
It's kind of easy, whether off the course or on
the course. So if in the sense of how these
how you approach these players. Now, I've been doing it
for so long. I've seen careers starting, careers end, so
you kind of have a blueprint of what's going to happen.

(18:31):
They're going to come out and you've heard me say it.
We use this talent minus distractions equals performance. These kids
have no distractions coming out of college. They're just bass
to the wall. And then you know, things happen, and
distractions don't mean negative. They need great things. You win,
that's a distraction, get married, have kids. You know every
player is going to go through this. You're going to

(18:53):
go through ups and downs and when it's up, you've
got everybody in the world, and when you're down, it
seemed I look around and you're seeing to be nobody.
There's nobody guiding the path back, I guess, And so
I don't know if it's like coaching. Sometimes it is
like coaching. Sometimes it's trying to help them because they
do have a life and its pretty much most of
these guys have done nothing but play golf their whole life.

(19:14):
That's it. And you know it's sad to me, but
so they don't have a lot of you know, their
life is made, I mean making it in the golf
is started at such a young age. Now, they didn't
play other sports, they didn't do anything right. So I
guess like coaching comes in. But you know it's it's
managing whatever's thrown at you because you know it. We

(19:37):
know with Lucas, you know it can be as bad
as it can get, and it can be as good
as it can get. It doesn't take long. It changes
in a hurry, and you've got to shift gears.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
Prior to August of twenty twenty three, Lucas Glover had
four PGA Tour wins, which included the two thousand and
nine US Open at beth Page Black. He has played
in two President's Cups, one Walker Cup, and two Palmer Cups.
Three of his wins and all of his team events
happened in the first ten years of his twenty year career.

Speaker 5 (20:06):
What was Lucas's biggest highs that you've seen? What are
what are some of the most amazing moments in Lucas's career.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
I mean when he went Disney, his first win was
a big one. Uh. Obviously, when the US opened beth
Page it was monsters. I mean they all weren't just wins.
They were I mean, there were signs things happening that
you could start to see with Lucas. But you know,
I don't he was never in all these ups and downs.
He's never really been down. He's been frustrated, but he

(20:38):
was never I mean, there was never like, well can
I do this type attitude. It was just like, you
know what we're going to do next kind of thing
to get it back. But I mean he's not a
high high guy. I mean the US opened, I mean
it was fun, but you know he was back in
you know, travelers playing the next week, playing golf. That's

(21:00):
I mean, he likes to beat people, but having the
trophies and stuff, I mean, he doesn't linger on that
too much.

Speaker 5 (21:07):
At Bethpage in two thousand and nine, as Mac alluded to,
it was a major for the meteorologists. Round one was
washed out, so was most a round two. It was
so bad. It ended on a Monday. And in spite
of it all, Glover shot rounds of sixty nine, sixty four, seventy,
and seventy three to finish four under and beat Ricky Barnes,

(21:30):
David Duval, and Phil Mickelson, who all tied for second
at two hunder. Beth Page. That golf course alone on
a perfect day is going to is a grind, right
like that, that's beth Page Black. Then you throw in
all you know. Then you throw in a US Open
US Open rough, you throw in the gallery New York

(21:51):
City oysterous, you throw in this massive weather shit show,
tea times, just logistics, everything, probably not entirely surprising that
given all those circumstances, Lucas comes out on top.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
That helped made it as tough as you could. He
didn't get to play on Thursday double this first hole,
so you just, I mean, that's just perfect Loo because
put him again, put his back against the wall and
see what happens. Right, Yeah, I mean, but he loves
New York. I mean he's a big Yankees fan. I mean,
so it's almost that was all perfect for him. He
loved it. That's where he wanted to be. You know,

(22:30):
Lucas up until recently, super low scoring events were not
his forte. He you know, he just didn't shoot low enough.
But you put him on a golf course where par
was really good, he'll whoop you. I mean, that's his stuff.
And he's tough, you know, the tougher it is. It
seems like he can get a little tougher, but it, yeah,

(22:51):
it was. That was a god send, you know, because
he had played in that US Open before and when
he qualified the next time, he even mentioned to him
he goes. I like that place. I remember pretty distinctly.
I liked that place because it was tough. I mean,
and that's what I think he comes out the best.
Is the tougher you make it the better. He is.

Speaker 5 (23:12):
The low's mac when you I mean, I know you
say he doesn't he doesn't get in there, or he
doesn't even come. But I mean, you know we've there
have been moments in his life that he's probably leaned
on you more, or leaned on other people more. Are
there moments you know where you've you felt like, you know,

(23:33):
over these last you know, twenty two twenty three years,
you've had to like be a little more hands on
with his, with his with his you know, being a
friend more than anything.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Ye Hey, life happens. We've all been through it, right, Yeah,
I mean those are I mean, it's nothing better than
to have someone lean on you. I mean that makes
you feel purposeful, right And Lucas, you know, Lucas's guy
some really good friends. You know, it's not just me.
I always tell people the only eye in this thing

(24:05):
is Lucas, And there's a lot of wheeze. There's a
lot of people that you know that Lucas has got
really strong relationships with people and the friends around him,
the people what they'll do for him. You know, there's
Michael Simms and there's a kid named David Griffiths. Nobody
remembers that from England and the messages that continually go

(24:27):
around between us, all of us. So Lucas has had
that strong friendship based because of who he is, right
and so Yeah, there's been incredible downtimes, but like I say,
it never felt I mean it was sometimes you were
frustrating that he was down, but it never felt never
felt hopeless. There was never anything like that. So but

(24:49):
you kind of dig it when you know you I
know he's going to come back, you know, I know
he's going to be okay. But just to have you
know you're going to that is what the life is.
Love these guys when they go through these times, if
they don't have anybody to reach out to, and they
not really they don't really have a stable footing of
knowing who their base is. And Lucas has got a

(25:11):
lot of bass. He's got a lot of guys that
are in his corner and that no matter what, regardless,
and I think that helps in these times.

Speaker 4 (25:20):
Mac mentioned Michael Simms, one of the more thoughtful, kind
and spiritual people I've met in my travels playing and
reporting on golf. Like our mutual friend John Ashworth, Simsy
is famous for his sloth like tempo, not only in
his golf swing but his life cadence. The pace of
his soul moves slowly, and that's seemingly because it's so

(25:44):
big a regular at goat Hill Park. Simms prefers to
play per Simmons, but back in two thousand and one
he was not only the winner of the North South
at Pinehurst, in which he beat Bryce Moulder in a
thirty eight hole final, he was the quarter finalist at
the US Amateur at east Lake, which was won by
Bubba Dickerson Worth noting his buddy Lucas Glover played that

(26:07):
year in the US Amateur and he was knocked out
in the first round of match play. Simms is now
a forty five year old Bermuda native who worked with
Bob Tosky and although he's no longer chasing it, he
has played in all five Butterfield Bermuda Championships. Sims is
currently working with Barnhardt at Rock Sports and in a pinch,

(26:28):
has caddied for Glover over the years.

Speaker 5 (26:30):
How would you summarize your relationship with Lucas Glover.

Speaker 11 (26:34):
He's one of my best best buds. We've known each
other for a long time. We've supported each other through
a lot of good times, hard times and everything in between.

Speaker 5 (26:45):
Give us your perspective on kind of his career. His
secret sauce to being able to sort of have the
career that he's had.

Speaker 11 (26:56):
I mean, it's grit, there's a lot of hard in it,
and he just never gives up. I mean, you've seen
what it's looked like in the last prior to these
last four months. I mean, you tell me that would
drive to anybody crazy. But he never stopped working at

(27:19):
it or trying to figure it out. You know, he
just never he never gives up.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
That's him.

Speaker 11 (27:24):
I mean, he's he's a gentleman at the same time,
you know, he's a fierce competitor, and it's it's his
heart that gets him through all this stuff. It's that
inner belief of I know I can do this. Yeah,
I mean, and then his career. I mean, what's happening
right now is is very special and it's unlocked a

(27:47):
lot of doors for him.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
We're getting to what was special, but first It's January
twenty twenty three. Liam Bedford, whose Labs Tour rep is
out working to practice putting greens on the PGA Tour.
Mac Barnhardt and Michael Simms are riding sidecard to Lucas
Glover's twentieth year on the PGA Tour and where we're
at with his career is that he has become infamous

(28:12):
for his putting. He's not only on a long stretch
of poor putting stats in which he's back of the
pack in every category, it's also that he's looking bad
doing it. Whatever the phrase must see TV is any
and all clips of Glover with a putter was the
complete opposite of that. There wasn't a golfer on planet

(28:34):
Earth who didn't cringe at the sight of Lucas Glover
on a putting green. And yet he kept going. He
continued to compete, to cope and in some cases make
a cut and cash a check. It was nothing short
of remarkable. Here's Mac Barnhardt summarizing Glover's first few months

(28:54):
of twenty twenty three, but also the last few years
in general.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
I think he's one of the top up ten ball
strikers that's been measured since they came up with shotlingks.
So you can imagine to be able to do that
much of the game and then a two foot pot
drive you and you know go into a hysteria. Yeah,
I mean, look, I mean I've probably have lost more
players through the yips than I have through injury. They'll

(29:22):
never admit it. Because you just don't say it. You
just don't say yips, you know, crazy, because they would
rather say, you know, it's a wrist injury or a
back injury, but it's the yips and it just happens.
And that's one of the big things in this I
hope that maybe we can get back by the fact
that if you have the yips, it's not a mental weakness.
It's not a mental you know, it's not like you

(29:43):
just can't pull it off, can't handle the pressure, because
that's not what it is. But yeah, it's it's frustrating
to watch a guy that can do the tough elements
so well and the things you would think were easy.
But the thing about Lucas was it he never was
like he didn't quit working and he didn't make an

(30:04):
excuse about it. He would tell me, you know, my
hands are numb, I can't fill my hands. He goes,
that's you know, that's not you know, that's not being nervous.
Nervous is not that right. You don't win the US
open being nervous. So it's just been you know, to
watch him go through what I mean, we did anything,

(30:26):
we try anything, We putty with our eyes closed. We've
done he put it with his eyes closed. He's practiced,
We've we've searched out every possible help with this that
we could, and we've kind of found it. It looks
like but there's no way to describe the people to

(30:48):
understand that you can do something and then your body
not allow you to do it. And that's that's hard
to watch. I mean, I mean that's hard to watch.

Speaker 4 (30:59):
This is the all by Lanny Watkins and wit Watson.
When Glover missed a short one trying to break sixty.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
This party goes way back and he completely decent. It's
like he he almost missed that. Wow, is that I've
never seen anything like that?

Speaker 4 (31:19):
Wit Watson said what most people were thinking when Glover
flashed an example of the yips. I have never seen
anything like that. Going back to mac Barnhart and the
idea that Glover was trying anything and that they searched
out all they could find, and that he seemed to
think they've found the solution.

Speaker 5 (31:41):
What'd you find?

Speaker 2 (31:43):
I found a guy that a former Navy seal sniper.
I found heard about him a couple of years ago
when the Braves won the UH. When the Braves won
the World Series. There's a guy named Tyler Mattson that pitched,
and I'll follow the Braves and this guy I was
out of baseball from with the throwing yips, and here
he is striking out people and you know, the highest

(32:05):
pressure situations you could ever do. And I'm like, this
isn't possible. What's this guy taken? And knowing some of
the Braves people, and I finally figured out there's this
former Navy seal that used to play baseball. So I
found him and called him and said, hey man, you know,
he goes, I don't know golf, and I was like, well,
I've got a kid with the yips, and he goes,

(32:26):
it's okay. He just was a matter of fact. He
said to me, that's okay. So I talked to him
for a long long time, and I went to Lucas
and said, hey, I got somebody, and he goes, no,
I'm good, I'm good. I got I've got it. So
it took a year and a half, I think after
I started talking to the seal to convince Lucas to
talk to him. I think he started talking to him
in May of this year. But I got such a
comfort it's like my heart stopped almost when the way Jason,

(32:49):
Jason Kuhne said to me, he goes, No, it's okay,
it's not a big deal because man, you go to
any other person and say the yips, They're like, whoa,
I don't think it's soppable. I don't you know Ian Baker,
Finn and people have been run out of the game
with it. But yeah, that's what we've That was the
start of it. It wasn't just that, but that was
the start of it.

Speaker 5 (33:08):
More in Jason, Hey, good morning, how are you. I'm
doing great, how are you good?

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Good?

Speaker 12 (33:13):
Give me one second here, can you kind of just
essentially introduce yourself, you know, I'm Jason Kuhn, you know,
and then just give me like a line or two
or a bio of just a short bio in terms
of who you are and how you kind of fit
into this narrative on Lucas and you know where he

(33:34):
is now and kind of his life and mind.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah. Absolutely so. I'm Jason Kuhn. I'm a performance coach.
I've been working in human performance and team building for
almost a decade. In August will be ten years since
I started Stonewall Solutions which is the leadership development, performance training,
and team building company that I run. As I was
doing that, I was working with a lot of sports
teams corporate groups. And as I would work with sports teams,

(34:00):
I would meet players tell them my story. I had
the yips, very a really intense case of it in
two thousand and one two thousand and two in college.
It ended my career at through six wild pitches in
an inning. So as I travel around tell my story
work with players, people would come up to me afterwards

(34:20):
sometimes and tell me, Hey, I'm struggling with the same thing,
mostly in baseball, and I started working with players just
kind of on a pro bono friendly manner, offering advice
as some things that I had done to help defeat
it myself. I never played again competitively, but I taught
myself over time how to throw again. So eventually I

(34:41):
met Tyler Matzik. He was out of baseball for five years.
He was a former first rounder out of Mission Viejo,
and we worked together. I developed a system called ironing
it Out. Our theories and thoughts on the yips were
very much in alignment, and we developed a lot of
it together. As we worked together. Working through this we
also worked on the traditional mindset stuff that I teach.

(35:03):
He got back to the big leagues, won the World Series.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
With the Braves in twenty twenty one.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
So it led it to golf. Was Mac Barnhardt with
Rock Sports Group introduced me a couple of players playing
on the corn Ferry Tour and I worked with them
through the yips. It was successful, and then from there
that led to Lucas Glover and him and I worked
together starting in last April, and then the results that
you know he's had have been in the media things

(35:31):
like that. So some of that has been credited to
the training of you know, him and I. He did
it all, not me. I can't do what he does,
but I helped him, you know, I worked as an
asset to help him solve that specific problem. So prior
to all of that, I was a college baseball player
and a Navy seal and that's where I learned. I
put all of this together through experienced base lessons, and

(35:53):
I wanted to help provide something for athletes, competitive athletes,
primarily pro athletes, that was practical and effective. I think
that what sports psychology offers them often and the mental
skills coaches hired by the team are well intended people
who provide value, but I don't think it's on a
level that matches everything else that is offered to them

(36:14):
in terms of strength and conditioning coaches, pitching coaches, wing coaches, whatever,
And a lot of it is somewhat ineffective, you know,
it's just not practically useful.

Speaker 5 (36:28):
Do you remember did Mac reach out to you? Was
it an email? Was it a phone call? How did
you guys actually get connected?

Speaker 1 (36:35):
I believe Mac reached out to me through a DM
of some sort, whether it was an email or perhaps
on Twitter or Instagram. I want to say it was Twitter,
but I can't remember quite for sure. But yes, he
had been researching solutions to the YIPS, and you know,
the traditional methods are all out there. If you google yips,
they'll be all sorts of things that pop up, and
they'll promise you the world, charge you a ton of money,

(36:57):
and they have no real credible results or maybe breakthrough
case out of tons of people that they've worked through.
So the percentage of success is very, very low. So
he started looking up some other ways I believe, I
don't want to put words in his mouth, and he
came across me and asked me if I thought it
would translate into golf, And I believe one hundred percent

(37:17):
that it would because it's the same problem, just in
a different action.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
I mean, there's a lot of people involved this, so
it's not just me, but you know, it's Michael Simms
and you know Kobe tu As trainer, and Jason Bell,
you know, is instructor. There's a lot of people talking
behind the scenes like what can we do? You know
what this is happening? And it was a ball change
and then it was you know, Tommy Lamb, who's his caddie,

(37:42):
who hung with him, like nobody's business. But there was
a lot of people working behind the scenes to get
kind of figure this thing out. But I knew the
minute I taught the Jason that I had, I was like, Wow,
this might work because this guy didn't even flinch. He'd
said he had to throw in yips. He's like, he's

(38:02):
I got it, don't worry about it. And he goes
and he tells I'll never forget him, saying, hey, listen,
this is not an ongoing thing. You go through my
You'll go through my program and you either get rid
of them or not, and I got so much confidence
in that and knowing Lucas and and knowing after I
think three sessions with this guy, the confidence change I
saw Lucas, I just saw it was like a different

(38:26):
sounding person, and it kind of I mean it was
that was when I say I found I mean, it's whatever,
but it's yeah, it's uh, it's been a search for
a long long time.

Speaker 5 (38:38):
You know in golf. That's that the YIPS is such
like it's like Voldemort and you know, Harry Potter, it's
it's just the name you don't speak of, but that
you were like yips. I got Mac, I got this.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah, absolutely well. I've worked with several amateur baseball players
at that point, probably thirty or forty, and had been
successful with all of them, and so I felt very
confident in my ability to solve it. I understand what
the YIPS is, I know how to define it. I
understand the solutions to defeat it, and every time I
work with a player, it gets better and better as
we refine that process. And I think it's funny that

(39:16):
you referred to Valdemore in Harry Potter, because I actually
use that reference in one of the podcasts I was
on before too, and so has Matsik in some of
the media interviews that he's been in when he speaks
about the YIPS. But one of the things that we
have to do is break down the barriers of the
stigma that is associated with the YIPS, because that's part
of what's causing the problem. People aren't allowed to talk

(39:36):
about it, and then it starts to manifest and it
gets worse and worse, and then they're in such a hole,
and the deeper it's set in, the harder it is
to defeat.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
And I think that people don't.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Want to talk about the YIPS because they don't understand it,
and naturally, as human beings, we're afraid of things that
we don't understand. But when you watch a guy who's
getting paid millions of dollars to throw a ball or
strike it with a club, and they've been doing it
their whole entire life, but then they go out and
they go out and all of a sudden throw it
into their toes or fifteen feet over their throwing partner's
head when they're normally just nails. You know that's not

(40:07):
because they don't understand how to throw the ball. Or
understand where a release points should be, or completely forgot
how to mechanically deliver or strike a ball right, something
else is going on.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
And one of the.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Things that I did was when I got out of
the Seal teams. You know, when I met with a psychologist,
I felt like he was telling me what was wrong
with me and then getting frustrated when the methods he
would give me would not be effective, rather than listening
to me describe what I was experiencing and helped me
develop a solution. So when I got out of the
Seal teams, you know, I had some confidence and maturity

(40:42):
and a lot of experiences. And there's a very similar
thing that happens when we shoot a gun. And I
finally started asking myself the right question. I just tracked
my arm until I'm going to track my arm until
it feels something feels different. And I stopped right about here,
and I was like, Okay, something's happening right here. What
has happened happening? Why is it happening, What's causing it?

(41:03):
How do I override it? How do I stop that
from happening? How do I get the dexterity and fluidity back?
And I just started reverse engineering and peeling back the
layers and developing this solution. But the number one thing
is they're defining it wrong, so they're treating the symptom
not the cause. I'm generalizing sports psychology. And then for
those that do define it well, the methods that come
into place are revisiting trauma, you know, visualization and you know,

(41:28):
some breath work and stuff like that, and those can
be a part of the solution. Perhaps they don't even
have to be. But to consider those to be a
comprehensive solution that's going to help the player be able
to overcome the problem and play competitively with cameras on
and tons of people watching and things like that is
ridiculous in my opinion.

Speaker 5 (41:48):
What's a session entail is that a phone call.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Is that it's a zoom call. It's a zoom call
like this. I don't think Jason. I just met Jason
the other day for the first time, and manyum two years,
I've talked to him a bunch, and it's a zoom
call like this. I don't think Lucas has made him
in person. Out of you don't need to, but you
made him in person. It's even better. You get an
understanding of things that just has not been looked at

(42:14):
as far as how to approach this YEP.

Speaker 5 (42:16):
Thing mental, physical, combination, spiritual, soulful. How would you summarize it?

Speaker 2 (42:24):
You know, I haven't been through the program. God knows
I need to, but I haven't been through it. I
don't know. I mean, he's explained to me stuff, but
I've tried. I don't want to try to get him
on here. He'll tell you. But I think it's I mean,
I think he had the yips. He's throwing yips, and
so it cost him his baseball career. So he was

(42:47):
I mean, he's very I mean, he's committed to this.
I mean because actually he says to me, after he
became a seal sniper, he still had to throwing yips
and he goes, so I knew it wasn't mental weakness.
And I was like, you know, everybody thinks it. It's embarrassing.
It's embarrassing to you, you know, And and that's one
of the problems, right That's where it starts, is the embarrassment.

(43:08):
And he convinced me that the anxiety, anxiety was not
causing the yips. Anxiety was coming because you had the yeps,
and that made a whole lot of sense because most
of the people want to cure the anxiety. How do
you do that? Breed deep, relax, you know, go into
you know, meditation, whatever. And I don't think that's how
Jason does it. I think it may be the opposite.

(43:29):
I think you attack and it must, like I say,
I know things with him that you know with Lucas
says that you could just I didn't see it physically
with Lucas. I saw it mentally, the way he walked,
the way he was talking to me. He just had
this different, like I got it attitude so much so
that when you first started watching it, when somebody told

(43:51):
you they got it, and then they get it and
you start watching, you know that you're on to something.
And I mean it was pretty people we knew. I mean,
we can the tour don't let us gamble, but the
tour let us gamble. We could have heard them.

Speaker 5 (44:09):
Is it ultimately the essence of this mind over matter
sort of.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
So one of the biggest problems. And so what they
told me is, hey, you've got performance anxiety. And I
never liked that term because I didn't feel anxious when
I went out to pitch, all right, I went out
in an inner squad as a senior pitcher on a
Division One team who the year before was ranked in
the top twenty five. I had pitched in the playoffs
as a closing pitcher with bases loaded and in high

(44:34):
leverage situations. So now I'm in an inner squad pitching
against my own teammates with nothing really at stake. I
can completely blow it and I'm still probably going to
be our closing pitcher that year because of what I've
done in the past. Right, I've already proven myself. So
the environment was not escalated in pressure, it was de escalated,
and I walked four straight batters and did not throw

(44:54):
a single strike. Now I wasn't missing the catcher completely,
but I was missing the strike zone. And then I
went out to warm up a day or two later, thought, oh,
I don't know what was what happened that day, but
I knew that day something was different, something was off,
but I didn't know how to identify what it was.
So just tried to put that behind me. Move on,
and I'm playing catch with my throwing partner. Everything's fine,
everything's normal, hanging out, joking with the dudes throwing, you know,

(45:17):
focusing on my mechanics, and then all of a sudden,
I say, I want about fifteen feet over his head.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
He's like, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (45:24):
I was like, I have no idea. Then I threw
one way, you know, I thought, well, I got to
extend out, you know, just get extension follow through, and
it looked way, oh, we're almost hit a guy, you know,
And the guys thought I was joking around, like, dude,
what's going on with you? I was like, man, I
don't know. So to answer your question, is it mind
over matter sort of. So the reason why I don't
like performance anxiety is because every player I have worked
with has said the first time they experienced the yips,

(45:46):
they did not feel an elevated level of anxiety or
fear that was a byproduct of the tension occurring in
their wrists and hands as they try to deliver or
strike the ball and not knowing why it happened, if
it's going to happen again, or having a solution for
it it does, which makes you incredibly nervous. And that's
where you get the tingling sensation and a similar, you know,
a similar sensation as an adrenaline hit, and what that's

(46:08):
doing is it's extrapolating the blood from your extremities into
your vital organs to keep you alive. And you lose
feeling in your hands and feet.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
But that is on top of.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
The tension that's taking place in the muscle groups in
your hands. So the yips is a mechanic. Anytime we
strike the ball inaccurately, it's due to a mechanical interruption
or a misjudgment and angle or distance right. And so
when it's a mechanical interruption, it's normally due to a
lack of awareness or ignorance. So with me having not
played much golf, if you watched me putt, you would

(46:42):
probably be like, hey, you need to change your grip
like this and put your feet closer or wider or whatever.
And now that I have that knowledge, I would simply
consciously choose to apply it. Or perhaps something's oft in
my swing that day, because it's a very fast, dynamic,
you know, somewhat violent motion, especially when we're hitting it
with the driver and something's a little bit out of timing,
so you can see that on video screen. Coach identifies it. Whatever,

(47:05):
you fix it, and you just weren't aware that it.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Was off that day.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
But with the yips, it's of subconscious initiation of tension.
It's the predatory survival instincts kicking in due to past
experiences and certain levels of awareness and intelligence. So I
think it's for the most part, pretty intelligent, self aware
guys who get this, who care for all of the
right reasons. And so if you think of the brain
is split into conscious and subconscious, or intentional and automated,

(47:30):
the automated part of our brain is perceiving a threat,
and when it perceives a threat, the body's natural instinct
is to create muscle tension and tightness to protect the
vital organs. Just like if you're about to get in
a car accident right and you're like this, i'll lose,
Or if I threw a punch at your chest unexpectedly
but you saw it coming, You're going to make your

(47:50):
pectoralized muscles tight to absorb that blow, to protect the
vital organs and your rib cage. You're not going to
consciously say to do that, or think to do it,
or engage that. You're going to have a body movement.
Your body is going to move and respond involuntarily without
you telling it to right, So the same thing is
happening with the yips. It has So is it mind

(48:11):
over matter, Yes, but it's coming through the subconscious mind,
which makes it more difficult because it's automated, it's involuntary,
it's unintentional, right, And it has nothing to do with
mental toughness. Players that show up every day battling the
yips and playing competitively knowing that they're struggling with this problem.
It's like going out and playing through an injury with
a broken wrist.

Speaker 5 (48:31):
You just can't see it.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
And they're coming out every day and battling through it
knowing that people don't understand it, knowing that people are
labeling them with being mentally weak and can't handle it
or whatever else. Yet they're showing up every day, and
that is mental toughness on display. It's admirable in my
book for as far as I'm concerned. And I'll finish
with this. I know I got long with that answer,
but I graduated Seal Training or Hell Week with twenty

(48:54):
guys out of one hundred and thirty five that started
our Buds class. So we started one hundred and thirty five.
We got the forty three.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
We came out of hell week with twenty.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
That requires an extreme amount of mental toughness. So if
I proved that I was extremely mentally tough and at
the same exact point in life could not throw a
baseball due to the yips, then the yips cannot be
due to a lack of mental toughness.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
This has been going on for ten years. We tried,
you know, we're trying. We're throwing a lot of ideas
out there. You know, We're at Congarea a couple of
years ago, and I know he was puttying with my
I'm left hand, he was putting with my putter, and
I'm like, man, people switch hitting baseball use this thing.
But he's making everything left it, you know. So yeah,

(49:37):
I mean I think that's you don't want a guy
that will just try anything just because you say it.
But you've got to say it. You've got to go
and give your advice or whatever. But no, it did
take a long time for it sink in. You know,
We've had, you know, we had some things working up
until then. There's a kid named Wore Jarvis who has
done amazing things in this hip category, and he helped

(49:58):
Lucas a lot, and Lucas won on Deer and but
it you know, like I said, we've we've been throwing
ideas out for so long, but you just he's it's
got to be his decision because he's the one that's
got to commit to anything that happens. You know, everybody thinks,
you know, changing teachers or changing clubs. You know, I don't.

(50:18):
We don't do anything that's that's his decision, right, We
will offer anything up. But yeah, Lucas, I think why
he's still here at forty three, why he's still you know, competitive,
is the fact that he's not flippant about how he
changes stuff. I mean, changing golf balls is not an
easy process to Lucas. He really dials in and wants

(50:38):
to figure out, why is this ball working better? Why
is this ball right for me? Right? Why is this
Everything he does is like that. So I think that helps.
I think a lot of guys, you know, you see them,
they get the yips. Well they don't want to make
they got the yips, so they start firing teachers and
hiring teachers, and they start changing putters, and they're not
really focusing on the real truth, right, you know, and

(51:00):
in this business you see a lot. You know, they're
the last people they blamed. I think Lucas took responsibility
for it being all on him, He really did, but
he took it, but it didn't mean that he wouldn't
search on corners to find help. But he's going to
make the decision. It's never going to be out.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
With golf, we're having much faster results, and I think
part of that is because there's a tool in your
hand and you you can look at the ball instead
of looking at the target, and there's several benefits in
that as it relates to the yips that you know.
We when I played trained with players, it's hours and
hours and hours of training. So I can't get into
the to the real depth of that without taking up,
you know, too much of your time. But I think

(51:37):
those are two things are of the reasons why we're
getting faster results. And I think that the switch of
the putter is a good idea because it changes the
mechanical action. Does it necessarily mean it's going to work
for every single person and yip's relief, No, because there's
more to it than that.

Speaker 5 (51:52):
Lucas Glover specifically, you know, by the way like Mack
was saying, and this we start. I started reporting this
in the September last year, but at that time Mac
was saying that you guys had had three Zoom sessions
and that maybe there was a chance that you know,
you didn't even actually have to meet in order to do.
Have you ever actually met Lucas Bubery yet, I believe it.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Or not, we have ever met in person, but I'm
really looking forward to it.

Speaker 10 (52:17):
I love the guy.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
I've developed a you know, we have a professional working relationship,
but I would say a friendship as well. I think
he's a fantastic person and well deserving of his success,
and I just couldn't be happier for him, and I
really look forward to meeting him in person.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
One day, you know, I was talking to Jason about
how it was going, and he goes and he was
pretty much, yeah, we got it. So I'm hearing the
guy talking, I'm here in Navy seal, tell me like, yeah,
we got it, and I'm here, Lucas goes, yeah, I
got it. Like it was just just like whoa. And
then you hear from Jason Baal, and you hear from
Brad Paxson, you hear from covid u E. Everybody I

(52:53):
talked to is like, yeah, we're on the something. Wait
a minute. I just got chills thinking I can remember
everybody nobody went wait, wait a minute. No, everybody went no, No,
He's it's just it, you know. And Simsy, Michael Sims,
he talks, you know, it's probably his best friend, talks
to him all the time. Michael is a great player,
you know, played door and it was everybody knew it.

(53:14):
It was just it was everybody at one time was saying, yeah,
we were on to something.

Speaker 5 (53:21):
Back to Michael Simms.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
I knew he could do it.

Speaker 11 (53:24):
And it was frustrating for for the both of us,
you know what I mean, for everyone, you know. But again,
he just he just never he never ever gave up.
It's been it's just been a neat process to watch
him work through all this stuff, you know. I mean
he he worked with a mental guy, uh woord jartists

(53:45):
for quite a while and it definitely, you know, it's
it's still lived there, but it was it was definitely
a little bit better and and but it never ever
went away. And I think I think that's that was
the hard part is his life, just waiting for it
to happen. That was that was the hard part, waiting

(54:06):
waiting for it to happen, you know, And you could
almost you could almost feel it as he was walking
up to a up to a green, and we had
a lot of conversations about that, about the weight.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
About the weight of it.

Speaker 11 (54:22):
Yeah, I mean, it's when you don't know why or
what or it doesn't it's so frushing because you don't
know how to I don't want to say diagnose it,
because you know what's happening, but you don't know what
to do with it. And that's like, you know where
Mac comes in and you know Max sitting there, he
is following so many things, and he came across this guy,

(54:47):
Jason Kuhne. You know, we're always taught it's a mental thing, right.
I mean, I don't know about you, but my whole life,
if you got the yips, it's it's got to be
a mental thing. It's got to be a mental thing.
So it was really really refreshing to hear somebody come
out and be like, it's not a mental thing. I
just did all these I just did all of this,

(55:09):
and I know I'm mentally strong enough to handle what
I have in front of me. Something else is glitching
the system, and it's neat that he's able to put
it into a formula not and you know what I mean.
And it's different for kind of everyone, but with the
base always being the same. So he just used his

(55:30):
experience to to understand and figure figure a few things out.

Speaker 5 (55:35):
And that's the Navy Seal.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
That's the Navy Seal. Jason Kune.

Speaker 11 (55:38):
Yeah, like I said, I mean, I can't wait to
give the guy a hug if if he accepts hugs.
But a lot of respect to that guy, man.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
I mean, yeah, with the.

Speaker 5 (55:51):
Navy Seal, you got to check to make sure they're good.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
With them shoot and kind of make sure.

Speaker 5 (56:00):
When did lab the concept of LAB and putters show
up on your radar? And then what happened?

Speaker 2 (56:07):
You know? Again again, like I say, there's a whole
team of us. There's a lot of people. Brad Faxon
is down with Jason Bell in Florida. I said that,
you know, obviously Brad's one of the best putters. And
I don't you know, I don't know if I've got
the timeline exactly right of when the phone call was
made or when, but I know Lucas wanted me to
grab a putter from Lab one of the broomsticks. And

(56:31):
I remember, you go through the whole cycle, all right,
it's what length do you need? Loft lie, you know,
you go all the stuff. You hear it all the time,
and he goes, I don't know. He called me pooh
because I don't know, poo. Just get me Adam Stott's.
I'm about the same size as him, and I'll figure
it out. And that's what we did. So I called
Liam at and I've never met Liam, and I called
him and said, hey, man, confused, ship us a putter.

(56:51):
And he did, shipped it down and next thing I know,
Lucas is in his garage putting with it. And so
I don't remember the exact timeline, but there was no
This was not I ordered a specific putter. It just
just Getscott. Just get Adam Scotts.

Speaker 5 (57:04):
Let's go more from Michael Simms.

Speaker 11 (57:07):
Matt calls me, he goes, hey, do you know the
lab guys. I was like no, but I can get
their number. And he's like, all right, we need to
get Lucas a lung putter. I'm like wait what He's like, Yeah,
he's gonna, you know, try it out in these next
couple weeks.

Speaker 5 (57:22):
I was like, perfect, and we're back to Liam Bedford.
How did Lucas get the putter?

Speaker 4 (57:28):
Like, how what actually physically happened? How were those putters
delivered to him?

Speaker 8 (57:33):
He called me, Oh, he didn't call me. Uh, his
agent called me.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Mac called me on.

Speaker 8 (57:42):
Might have been the week of the John Dia or
it might have been the week before the John Dea.
I can actually remember the day and I could look
it up. He called me on a on a Monday,
I think it was. It was Monday when I was
in the office. I wasn't traveling that week, which was lucky,
and he called me said, hey, can I get pretty much?

(58:03):
I want the same thing as what Adam's got. I
want the same same part of that Adams got, which
we did build it a little bit different. Adam plays
so with a broomstick because you want it as upright
as you can possibly get it, just to have the
most replica of a pendulum sort of motion. Typically, we
built him as upright as we can get it under
inside of the legal limit. So the legal limits eighty degrees.

(58:23):
Our standard for a broomstick is seventy nine to five.
So typically all of our broomsticks are seventy nine point
five degrees, and Adam actually plays at seventy eight. He
plays at one one and a half flatter. From that,
he just feels like he can get into a better posture,
make a better stroke, keeping on playing a little better,
a little flatter. So we still we made made lucases

(58:45):
at seventy nine to five. But then every other spec
on the potter is exactly the same. It's the same headweight,
same shaft, same components all around. And yeah, he we
built it that day for much as soon as I
go off the phone call, built it and then overnight
chipped it to the event that he was playing, and

(59:06):
I can't remember which event that was, but we over
not shipped it. And then on Tuesday morning, I made
sure I texted Lucas made sure he got it and
he said I've got it, and that was pretty much out.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
And it went down. We knew he had to go
to either go left handed or something completely different. We
needed to get something new in his hands because he
kind of had a new way to do this, a
new brain and a new attitude and having that be
fresh in his hands meant a lot. It helped a ton.
And people think it's just a putter. Well, I mean
he's hit some bad putts with that putter, so it

(59:38):
wasn't just a putter, but it was a combination the
putter and the new stuff.

Speaker 5 (59:43):
Just it seems very quick that you were able to
like reverse what seemingly was ten years of baggage.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Well he had been fighting it for a while and
had an idea of what was going on. But I
think it helped to have someone come in and just hey,
this is one, I've been there. Two, I'm not mentally weak.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
And neither of you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
And three this is what it is, this is what's
going on, and then you know, here's how we're going
to go about defeating it. But I think that for
I'd give a lot of that back to Lucas, you know,
because again you've got the maturity and the professional makeup
and mentality of a true pro, a championship pro at
the highest level you could play at your game, and

(01:00:24):
so he was able to pick it up quick, understand
it quick, and apply it quick. I didn't have to
hold him accountable to doing the drills or whatever, like
I got it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
I got it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
I got it, got it, and he'd go and then
he'd come back, and we kept progressing and getting better,
and yeah, there were some ups and downs and whatever,
and then you know, he got got to where he
did and it was it's just so fulfilling, you know.
I watching Tyler pitch in the World Series, I just
I bear hugged my wife with tears and I said,

(01:00:56):
you know, at the time, I thought going through the
yips was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Even now, I think, having lived the life that I've lived,
I think it's the best thing that ever happened to me,
because I'd rather be here watching him pitching the game
than pitching the game myself. Becoming a CEO after failing
or imploding short of my potential in baseball was redemption enough.
But to be able to do this and then help
a player get back into the game, and then he
gets back to the big leagues. But then he wins

(01:01:19):
the World Series, I mean that was enough. Then it
goes into golf and Lucas wins, wins a championship, you know,
just to get him back doing well enough again, it
would have been fine, but he wins when then he
wins another one, and it's just like you're telling me
there's not a guiding hand in this and how it
all comes together. You've lost your mind.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
I don't have enough faith to believe that that's all
just random. And by chance, I think that, you know,
God brings it all together. And I could just feel
him smiling down on me, blessing me with more than
I deserved through all of that, and it's just it's wonderful.

Speaker 11 (01:01:49):
On that note.

Speaker 5 (01:01:50):
And up next Lucas Glover.

Speaker 10 (01:01:54):
After three or four weeks, three or four sessions with him,
this snow putter idea came. You know, Mac pushed it
a little bit in facts and let's just let's just
try it. And I had two weeks off around the
PGA and mentioned it to Jason Tune and he said, hey, man,
let's let's go.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Let's try it.

Speaker 10 (01:02:12):
We got some time and and it just clicked.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
H put another log on the fire. Nobody here is

(01:02:37):
get the tie