August 15, 2024 • 70 mins
Unlocking Your Best Golf: Mastering the Mental Game with Phil Shomo
In this episode of the Accelerate Golf Podcast, I'm joined by Phil Shomo, a seasoned golf mental skills coach with 35 years of experience. This conversation builds on the insights shared by Jake Peacock, a top collegiate golfer from the University of South Florida, who credits Phil as a key figure in his journey to success. Together, these episodes emphasize the critical role that mental training plays in achieving excellence in competitive golf.
Phil, based in Hilton Head, South Carolina, has a rich background in both coaching and character development. In our discussion, he shares powerful stories, including his work with Jake, illustrating how mastering the mental game can unlock a golfer’s full potential. Phil explores essential topics such as the art of acceptance, balancing conscious decisions with instinctive reactions, and the most effective practice strategies.
Whether you’re a competitive golfer aiming to elevate your game or a supportive parent looking to guide a young player, this episode is packed with actionable advice. Learn how to train more effectively, perform under pressure, and transform golf into a lifelong journey of improvement and enjoyment. Don’t miss Phil’s expert tips on making the most of every round, and how mental fortitude can be the key to unlocking your best performance on the course.
Get in touch with Phil Shomo: https://philshomocoaching.com/
Presented by: QSchool Sports https://qschoolsports.com
Music: Intro and outro by Infraction Music – “Silent Night.”
Previous Episodes: https://accelerategolf.com/podcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-accelerate-golf-podcast/id1723899077
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2lF07BOS0y7fIxoxoSxEAk
University of South Florida: https://www.usf.edu/
USF Men’s Golf: https://gousfbulls.com/sports/mens-golf
Hashtags: #pgatour #pgaprofessional #usf #golf #ncaa #junior #college #sponsorship #liv #professionalgolf
Tags: @Straight Shot to College Golf, @College Golf Alumni, @College Bound Golf, @CollegeReviews
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Yeah, reactive instinctive state is only designed to unlock whatever trained
skill you have at the level you have it.
So it's not you all of a sudden become Tiger Woods over the ball because you're
being reactive instinctive. You don't have a skill.
Well, I'm not trying to get you to be Tiger Woods. I'm trying to get you to be the best you.
(00:22):
So whatever you have trained, when you go out to play, you're actually out there
playing to your ability. In audio.
Music.
(00:47):
Welcome to the Accelerate Golf Podcast, where we explore player improvement
and the business of golf through conversations.
I'm your host, Bikram Kapoor, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with
Phil Shomo, a golf mental skills coach based out of Hilton Head, South Carolina.
(01:07):
He has 35 years of experience coaching young people in a variety of life arenas,
a master's degree in transformation with a specialization on personal character development,
and is a low single-digit handicap golfer himself.
Welcome, Phil. Thank you. Thank you, Bikram. It's really an honor to be here and chat with you.
(01:28):
Thanks for the opportunity and thank you for making the time phil so i first
heard of you from jake peacock a previous guest on this show who is now a top
collegiate golfer he said you transformed him from a struggling junior golfer
into what he is today an elite,
player with the pro tours in his sights do you remember how you met him for the first time.
(01:52):
Oh, yeah. I remember it very, very well. I was working with a junior golfer in the state of Georgia.
He was playing in the Georgia Junior Amateur, which is a pretty big event in the state.
That year was over here in Savannah, which is only about 45 minutes from Hilton Head.
So I went over. I try when I can to go and actually watch the players I work with in person.
(02:16):
So I I was there watching him that day, and he was paired with Jake.
I didn't know who Jake was, but Jake was, as Jake explained in his podcast,
Jake was dealing with some problems that were very, very evident that day. Slow play.
Officials were all over their group by the second or third hole.
(02:37):
I mean, literally, officials' carts were setting up beside every green.
It was like a thing. and it was very evident in watching that Jake was really
struggling with some stuff,
but it wasn't, that wasn't even the main thing that I, I mean,
it was, but it was, there was a lot more that I picked up on that day and watching
(03:01):
him than just the struggles he was having. He was an incredibly skilled golfer.
Like when he would finally pull the trigger and hit the ball, it was like, wow.
Okay. Like it was, you know, he's having a hard time getting to the point of
pulling the trigger away from the ball. But once he does, pretty amazing.
And yeah, through a connection that day, the father of the kid I was watching.
(03:24):
The father went and introduced himself to Jake's parents during the round,
came back to me and said, hey, obviously he's got some challenges.
You interested in getting involved in this at all?
And I said, I would love to try to help him because some of the things just
watching him, his body language and so on stuff.
His deal was just so obvious to me, some things that I thought were happening.
(03:49):
So I met the parents during the round.
We talked, I talked to both of them separately.
We chatted a lot about Jake and his background. By the time the round was over,
then after the round, I met Jake. They hired me immediately.
Jake and I started working together instantly right after that.
I'll never forget that day. Yeah, it was amazing. Amazing.
(04:11):
And you seem to have had a magic effect on Jake and his, you know,
his ability to break through to the next level, as he said in his own words.
What did you do? What did you start off with when you started working with Jake?
Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know if the word magic really applies, but thank you.
(04:34):
Anyway, so what I saw the day I was there, what seemed to make sense to me was
that Jake, everybody seemed to look at Jake as having a big problem.
He was stuck in his pre-shot routine.
He explained that very well in his interview with you.
But what I saw was he was searching
for a type of certainty or
(04:58):
a type of comfort and he
had sort of trained himself to not
hold the trigger on the shot until he
achieved this sort of sense of comfort and certainty and so where we what i
saw was an amazing ability to focus he was so focused but it was on the things
(05:23):
that were holding him back like Like he was so focused,
he couldn't get out of it.
And I just saw an opportunity to, if I could redirect him, take that amazing ability he has to focus.
And we get that going in a straightforward direction with a pre-shot routine
that is very moving towards the execution of the shot.
(05:48):
He was just going sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways the whole
time. And it was taking him way too long to get to the action point.
So what I helped him, I remember our very first conversation,
we talked about him searching for comfort and certainty. And it made sense to him immediately.
(06:08):
He immediately said to me, which I learned over the years has become, it's the way Jake is.
And it's partly how I've learned to help him. When stuff clicks with him,
oh, that's why I'm doing that. that the why behind what everybody was trying
to get him to stop doing is.
Is what made sense to him. And then he was open to fully buying the idea that
(06:34):
there is no such thing as certainty or perfection.
And comfort is just some mystical thing floating around if you treat it that way.
So how about we build something that you find comfort in because it's repeatable?
We called it the flow, the rhythm.
(06:55):
What if we built this so that you did it so consistently that it almost feels
familiar to you each time you start to do it and the comfort you're looking
for is what actually comes as part of doing that.
So instead of just trying to make yourself be comfortable, what if we start
making comfort a natural part of your pre-shot routine?
(07:19):
And that's what we from day one
that's what we started doing and he he
was amazing in what
I always people ask me from time to time what's Jake's
greatest strengths and when we get past
like the putting and like some of the golf stuff right
it's always his ability to focus is everything I thought it was when I first
(07:44):
saw him and more and then secondly his ability to take concepts that click in
his mind and turn that into executable performance under pressure.
Unbelievable. Like that is a rare thing that somebody is that quick at translating it like that.
(08:06):
And Jake was, Jake made changes really, really fast.
And then when we, a few weeks later, And he talked about that first Georgia
AM he played in at Atlanta Athletic Club.
And I was there for the first two days.
And what I watched him do in day one was very good compared to what he was doing before.
(08:29):
It wasn't everything we wanted, but it was big steps in the right direction.
And then I did something after that. I'll never forget this because this is
very unusual that I do this.
After round one I almost never
in the middle of a tournament between day one
and day two or day three I almost never try to do like coaching stuff with a
(08:49):
player right in between rounds like you don't want to like put stuff in their
head between rounds like I'm always just encouraging them reminding them of
things like it's always like this that kind of stuff but with Jake.
I just had this deep sense while watching him, like there is one thing I think
if I talked to him about afterwards and I knew it was a little risky,
(09:13):
I had, I literally asked for permission from his parents and he and I,
as soon as he finished his round, we went over and we found this seat under
this area at Atlanta athletic club.
And I talked to him about it and I, and I walked out the next morning and watched
his first tee shot and he did exactly what we talked about.
I mean, exactly. Exactly. It had to do with his body language and his sort of exuding confidence.
(09:38):
And he just did it instantly. And I was like, wow, that was super risky for me to do that.
But it also then showed me I really have something pretty rare here and what
this guy is able to do from hearing stuff, it making sense to him and then him
just doing it and in pressure. sure.
(09:58):
Yeah. I mean, from my conversation with Jake, it was very clear to me that Jake
is a very cerebral golfer, a very, very smart, intelligent young man.
And sometimes, you know, there's a little catalyst which is required to just
change, transform, take him to the next level, which clearly you provided.
(10:20):
But I'm just curious, how about your other clients?
Are they always as high level intellect as Jake, or do you struggle to get the
point across with other clients?
Yeah, everybody's very uniquely individual. And part of what I'm always trying
to do is not, I'm not trying to squeeze them into sort of Jake Peacock's path.
(10:47):
There are certain concepts, There are certain principles, foundational elements
that I think are critical for everybody.
So I'm working within frameworks and concepts that I believe in,
but how to communicate that, how quickly I grasp that,
(11:09):
how the vast majority of my clients are between the ages of 15 and 22. to.
And so you're dealing with a lot of developmental differences in that age range,
physically, emotionally, even how their brains are developing,
especially their frontal lobe, whether or not they really are working in a,
(11:32):
you know, process information and problem solving and seeing options and all of that kind of stuff.
Or are they more still like a younger child, which everything is just very black and white?
Like, you know, well, it just wasn't my day to day. So that's why I played poorly.
Well, that's a very like little kids tend to think like that.
(11:55):
You know, as you get older and more mature, you start thinking,
yeah, it wasn't my day to day, but what could I have done differently?
How could I have changed something? thing. You become more open to options because
just the developmental stage starts changing and personality is part of that
as well. So everybody's different.
I'm always trying to figure out as quick as I can.
(12:18):
I'm trying to figure out what are their strengths and weaknesses.
And a lot of times, and this is sort of a belief and philosophy I function with,
what seems to be their greatest weaknesses is actually the opposite side of
the coin of their strengths.
It seems like everybody gets fixated on, well, they struggle to do this.
(12:43):
He doesn't do this. He doesn't do this. He doesn't do this.
But the reason behind that is because they actually are really good at something very close to that.
They're just misdirecting it and it's getting in their way.
And Jake's a great example of that, but almost everybody I work with has some elements of that.
So I'm trying to figure out what are the things that, especially in the game
(13:07):
of golf, what are the things that they,
that would free them up the most that would get us out of overthinking that
would get us out of the sort of the fear-based anxiety side that would get us more into the trust of.
Freedom, let their skills happen rather than trying to consciously force their skills to happen.
(13:33):
So I'm always kind of navigating that conscious subconscious space where we
overthink the conscious side because we think at the wrong, the wrong things
at the wrong times. Right.
And we don't actually unlock that sort of subconscious side very much,
which a trained performer is actually prepared to do.
(13:57):
They have trained the skill to do it.
They just limit the skill by overthinking it or trying to consciously force it.
And that's really the, I'm sort of balancing that space all the time.
So that's actually quite an interesting space.
And before we delve deeper into that, Phil, so you said you work with clients
(14:20):
who are typically between 15 and 22 years of age.
I presume male and female and competitive golfers.
Is this your target clientele?
Yeah, it's really my only client. I don't really work with recreational golfers.
I do have a couple who are, there's unique reasons why I work with them.
(14:43):
But generally Generally, when people reach out to me and they're not in the
competitive space, meaning they're.
You know, you might be 15, but you're the game of golf for you is already a,
both passion and career. Like they're working.
You rarely find elite junior golfers who have another job during the summer
(15:08):
when they're out of school.
Like it is, they are traveling, playing tournaments all the time.
They are 40 to 80 hours a week. They're into golf.
That's my client base. My my client base is junior golfers who are on a college
golf pathway and that's their goal or college golfers who are on a professional
(15:29):
golf pathway and that's their goal.
And then I have a, just a small handful of professional golfers I work with,
but that's mostly because I worked with them in college and they are now playing professionally.
I don't typically try to pursue professional golfers and their specific reasons for that.
(15:49):
It's, it's more what, what I value, what I'm motivated by.
So I like the developmental space of 15 to 22.
I like the opportunity to shape and mold mindsets and perspectives and ways
of thinking while building specific skills mentally and emotionally.
(16:10):
I, and I just love the, I love the sort of tendencies that come in that space.
Everybody I work with would tend to lean on the more perfectionistic side than
the average population out there.
They couldn't get to the level they're at without having a lot of that.
(16:30):
Like they wouldn't be motivated enough, but there's also a real shadow side
to being perfectionistic.
So that's where they run into in the 15 to 22 space a lot.
So those tendencies, elite performers, I'm very comfortable in the world of very gifted.
(16:52):
People and I have a background in other arenas doing that. And that has translated well into golf.
So that's really, that's really my space. The stuff I do can apply to recreational golfers.
It's just, it's just trickier when you're only playing golf a few hours a week
and you're not developing the mental skills that I work on in the same kind of way.
(17:16):
So, so how do people actually get in touch with you?
Do you have a website? people can get onto and actually set up an appointment with you?
Or is it more word of mouth and phone calls and stuff like that?
Yeah, it's both really. I do have a website, philshomocoaching.com.
There is a contact form on there. That is a real thing. You really do get a reply.
(17:39):
My oldest son works for me and he handles those initial contacts.
That allows you then to set up a typically 20 to 30 minute, no obligation,
what I call a meet and greet.
Let's just chat. I'll explain what I do. You can tell me what you're interested
in, why you reached out to me.
(18:00):
If it makes sense to you, I tell you how to get involved in the early stages,
depending on whether I've got room or not on my roster.
So website, I do have an Instagram presence that I work hard at and that sometimes
people reach out to me through that avenue.
The main way people reach out to me is through word of mouth or through parents
(18:24):
I've worked with or coaches or swing instructors who got to know me and know
what I do and believe in what I do.
I've just been blessed. I'm really in year six of doing this, kind of five years ago.
Fifth year, fourth to fifth year being golf specific. So I only work with golfers
(18:47):
for the last four or five years.
And I don't, I've never spent a dollar on marketing or advertising.
It's just been organic, which is the way I like it. It's my style.
So that's great. So naturally that leads to, you know, the question of,
could you just tell us how you got here to this point?
(19:09):
Not golf. I grew up a sports fanatic. I mean, at the truest definition of fanatic,
all sports, any arena, loved it, loved it, loved it.
I played everything I could possibly play, both organized and then more on an unorganized level.
Went to college, got a bachelor's degree.
(19:30):
Eventually, a number of years later, got a master's degree, which you had mentioned.
And I sort of cut my teeth in the nonprofit world of working with high school
kids when I was first out of college.
And it was all really based around personalized mentoring and coaching.
(19:50):
I mean, I was also taught to run programs, you know, after school stuff and different things.
But I was sort of big brother to a lot of high school kids. And then from there,
everything I progressed through, continuing through a lot of nonprofit work and.
Being involved in business careers, but on the side, continuing to do a lot
(20:12):
of volunteer work, eventually starting my own nonprofit stuff for young people,
specifically in the music career.
But the thread that runs through all of what I've done in every different arena
is I started coaching and mentoring high school kids when I was 20 years old.
(20:33):
And I'm now 61, and that has never stopped. I've done that nonstop the age of 20 till today.
And when I say mentoring and coaching, I'm talking probably minimum 10 to 15
hours a week setting one-on-one or in small groups.
We've estimated it somewhere 25 or 30,000 hours I've set face-to-face with young people.
(21:00):
And that's just my passion. And I fell in love from a very young age with the
idea of investing your best into the lives of people that are coming behind you.
And I call it an investment. It
is placing the best of what you have into their minds and hearts and lives in
(21:26):
a way that can hopefully influence the path that they're on for what they're
trying to do with their lives.
And that idea has never left me and getting involved in the golf and mental
coaching space. So during that space, I got to know some athletic coaches in
(21:48):
the college athletic world.
And I was literally, there were three different coaches that I was meeting with
kind of doing some life mentoring.
They were young, had young families, just had a lot of challenges in their life.
And we were just, I was just trying to support them and use my experiences and help them.
This would have been about 2018, 2019. 19, I had one of these guys was a baseball
(22:12):
coach, one of these guys with tennis coach, and one of these guys was a golf
coach and they were all college coaches.
And in just a short period of time, over a few months, they all sort of asked
me to get involved with people on their team because of some specific reasons.
Like I remember one of them had a player on his team, whose brother had committed
(22:35):
suicide and he was very struggling in his sport and his life was just kind of in turmoil.
Another player who had achieved a high level, but then got to sort of a national
championship level and really just sort of experienced performance anxiety for
the first time and really struggled.
(22:57):
So these coaching friends, they basically just asked me like,
Like, would you be willing to sit down and talk to this kid? Like...
And of course, I love that idea. I was very comfortable in the anxiety worlds,
the mental health worlds, even the addiction worlds, like deep habits.
(23:18):
I loved that space. So I started meeting with players on their teams,
and that just started kind of evolving to me doing some workshops for their
teams on performance anxiety or self-control or emotional control stuff.
And it just started evolving.
So for a while, I was just doing it as kind of a fun thing on the side.
(23:39):
And then it started growing.
And kind of right before COVID hit, I started a business.
And then COVID hit. And that kind of was a weird season.
But golf during COVID actually took off.
Right and because golf was
(24:00):
the space i wanted to be in the most i was working
with some baseball players and some tennis players and people
in different arenas even some actors in hollywood that
i'd had connections with like a lot of different people but golf was the main
thing i really wanted to do and that's where things really started to emerge
and it wasn't long after that before i met jake and a lot of different people
(24:23):
so that's really kind of how i got here it's,
I've always been mentoring and coaching young people.
I've been a sports fanatic my whole life.
I obsessively research stuff when it becomes interesting to me.
Some of that I did formally in an education way,
but probably 90% of it I've just done because I get obsessed with stuff and
(24:48):
can't stop myself and trying to read everything that's out there and listen to experts and all that.
So I just kind of blended all that and the challenges that young golfers face
in the competitive world made a lot of sense to me from the standpoint that they're human beings,
just like all the other people I've coached in other arenas and industries.
(25:13):
They're just trying to apply their challenges as a human being to the demands
of this specific sort of niche world. And I had done that same kind of thing
in the music world for a while.
It just made sense to me. And I knew golf by that time pretty deeply from a,
just from a research standpoint and people I was involved with in the game and
(25:38):
it just all started blending.
So I feel like everything I've done in my life has prepared me to be able to
just enjoy the game and working with young people.
So that's, that's quite a journey. I mean, 41 years of coaching and mentoring.
So you bring a lot of experience to the table.
And, you know, in just thinking about of golf.
(26:01):
The ball is stationary. You have plenty of time to kind of, you know,
set up to it and then think through what you need to do.
But that is a double edged sword, right? Like I think you had alluded to initially.
Is that why golf is a is a little more difficult?
Because in many other sports, you just don't have time to, you know, to think you just react.
(26:24):
Whereas golf you have four
hours you know of a typical round maybe a little bit more and
then maybe you know five minutes of actually swinging the
club in those four hours so you have plenty of time to think what is your take
on that yeah that is for sure a big part of what makes it i think the greatest
game and also maybe the most challenging i did see like i had some experience
(26:48):
and other stuff that made sense to me.
And even like in the music world I was involved in, I was very close in mentoring
a lot of musicians who were, I mean, playing big concerts in front of thousands
and thousands of people.
And they also initiate the action.
It's just on a stage, but they're the ones that do it.
(27:12):
I used to do some basketball coaching and I was even a shooting instructor for
a while. And one of my specialties was teaching free throw shooting.
Well, free throw shooting in basketball, you initiate the action, basically.
Right. In baseball, pitchers initiate the action.
That's interesting. Hitters are responding to the ball, but pitchers hold the start point.
(27:37):
And so it was, it was very,
I was very comfortable in overlapping where sports are reactive and instinctive
because things are moving and you're adjusting to the ball or to defenders or to,
you know, things that are action oriented versus people who are initiating action
(27:58):
and And my philosophy has always been,
and I think this is backed up by all the research I've done in the neuroscience
world and in movement patterns and in trained, how we actually utilize trained skills.
I think there's a good way to say this Bikram would be there's information that
(28:20):
we have to think through and make decisions on in the game of golf.
Okay. And making conscious decisions with that information, what's the yardage,
what's the wind doing, what's the elevation, what's the lie,
what's the stance, where's the trouble on this shot?
Inputting information is where we make good decisions.
(28:43):
So there's a conscious decision part of the game.
And that conscious decision part is very important, or you end up just making
a bunch of mistakes recklessly because you're missing stuff,
not paying attention to stuff like, you know, oh, wow, I didn't realize the
wind was blowing that hard into my face.
So the ball went in the water because I didn't think of the wind.
(29:05):
Like, obviously, we got to think the conscious information.
But if you think about it, conscious information at some point when it comes
to performance and people with skilled performance type skills,
movement patterns and all that stuff, So conscious information actually gets in the way eventually.
(29:26):
We call that overthinking or being in my head or making last second changes.
We have to go from conscious information to shifting into more what I call instinctive
reactive, which we often talk about as athletic. Right.
(29:48):
Trust yourself. That's a subconscious. Let your skills happen. That's subconscious.
And there's certain triggers that help you do that.
So any sport or action where people are starting the action,
needing their trained skills to be at their maximum level,
(30:09):
they can either try to do that with the conscious information side,
consciously control the movement of your body.
Well, that's really not very helpful when your brain consciously can't go that
fast. Like you just can't work that quickly on the mental conscious level.
(30:32):
So moving more into the reactive instinctive side for me means you've got to
get more into the sensory part of your brain than the conscious thinking part of your brain.
So visuals are senses, creating pictures of what you want to happen,
(30:53):
locking in on a target, which is what a pitcher does when he's throwing a pitch
to a glove, what a basketball shooter's doing when they're locked in the rim,
and then not interfering with that visual by the conscious thinking.
So it's, can I lock in on the visual? Can I stay in the sort of visual feeling side of golf?
(31:16):
We'll just apply it to golf and then let it go in a very sort of empty mind.
Jake was talking about this on your podcast. When he walks into the ball,
he wants his mind to be very empty.
And he talked about how he putts so general. He kept using the word general.
I'm a general putter. I'm a general putter. But what he actually means by that
(31:38):
is Jake putts by pictures.
So when he's standing over the ball, when he's looking, everything is making
sense in his mind from a sort of picture or imagination standpoint.
And his feels work exactly with that.
So he doesn't think about it that way, but that's actually what he's doing.
(32:02):
And so he keeps a very like general picture and then he's gotten good at just
rolling the putt as a reaction to that picture.
And the, what we do in the pre-shot routine stuff and how it's all laid out
is to be very decision oriented away from the ball.
(32:23):
Okay. And then be very sensory based at the ball. Yeah.
When we mix that up, when we get the conscious information decision thinking
part of our brain at the ball,
then our brain starts going into overload with usually with don't go left, don't go right.
(32:47):
Make sure you don't get the club face this way or that way. Make sure you do this.
Make sure you do that. You see golfers at tournaments all the time.
They stare at the ball six, seven, 10 seconds before they pull the trigger.
The only thing going on when they're staring at the ball is a checklist of things.
They got to make sure they do them.
(33:07):
I'm guilty of that.
Me too. Me too. So, but you, there is no sensory based stuff going on when you're staring at the ball.
You're interfering with your picture
or your feels with information
that you're now trying to consciously make sure
(33:29):
I do this this this and this now why
is that so crazy in golf well think about
it you're trained if you're a competitive golfer
you get swing lessons and I have swing instructors are very good friends of
mine I literally value that side so much But we've overloaded golfers with information
(33:51):
on positions and swing angles and spin rates and launch angles.
And if you don't know how to take that information,
train your skill with it, and then shut that off at the right time,
you will just get trapped in standing over the ball trying to do what your instructor
(34:13):
told you to do when you had your last lesson.
And that's a conscious version of your swing, which interestingly enough,
works when you're in front of your instructor.
And I think there's two big reasons why it works.
He's the one clarifying every thought in your mind for you.
(34:33):
You're just simple on what he's directing you to think. That's one.
But two, you're hitting balls close enough together that you can figure it out.
So you mix those two things together and a good instructor is going to get you hitting it good.
So, so if I work backwards, Phil, if, if the goal is to be in this reactive instinctive state.
(34:59):
Isn't it that the prerequisite is that you should have trained your skill,
you know, in your own time, in your practice time, to be capable of that performance
you're trying to achieve in that reactive instinctive state, right?
Because I feel a lot of people know that they haven't put in the time or they
don't have that skill, but in trying to, for example, hit a ball 230 yards over
(35:22):
water, you know, second shot onto a par five, I know I can't do it.
So no matter what I do, I will not be able to achieve that reactive instinctive
state. Am I right in that?
Yeah, reactive instinctive state is only designed to unlock whatever trained
skill you have at the level you have it.
(35:44):
So it's not you all of a sudden become Tiger Woods over the ball because you're
being reactive instinctive. You don't have a skill.
Well, I'm not trying to get you to be Tiger Woods. I'm trying to get you to be the best you.
So whatever you have trained, when you go out to play, you're actually out there
(36:05):
playing to your ability.
Or you're playing way below your ability.
And if you want to play way below your ability, I can guarantee you how I can help you do that.
So maybe, maybe finally, you know, that question, which everybody says,
oh, I was hitting it so nicely on the range before the round started. Yes.
(36:29):
I think we might've answered that question today. A hundred percent,
because all we got to do is take consequences away and we give you enough balls quick enough.
That don't mean anything. And whatever it is you're thinking,
if I give you 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and you have any skill,
it should start clicking in sooner or later.
(36:51):
Right. And then you go out on the course, you get one ball with high consequences.
There's actual trouble out there that is threatening to you.
And you get to hit one ball and
then you got to walk to find it before you get to hit
again and depending on how good you are you
might hit the second ball within 60 seconds because you just walked 20 yards
(37:15):
after you topped it but if you actually know how to hit the ball you might be
three to five minutes before you ever hit another one so you're going to get
two shots in five minutes when on the driving range if you're like most people,
you were raking them and whacking them, you probably got 20 to 25 to 30 in five minutes.
(37:35):
So think about how hard that is to translate from this environment to an environment
that is almost nothing like the environment you were using on the driving range.
And now folks, I wanted to mention that this show is brought to you by QSchool Sports,
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(37:58):
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Wow, that's a kind of a profound concept that you've just introduced.
And some of that is actually detrimental in the sense that if you hit a bad
(38:18):
one on the range, you probably are a little frustrated.
But you basically train yourself to fix your frustration with a better shot
within the next 10 to 15 seconds.
So the way you're actually conditioning yourself is be frustrated after a miss
and then fix it with another one really fast.
(38:41):
But what if you got to walk three minutes or four minutes on the golf course
after a bad one, and you've trained yourself to figure it out emotionally or
mentally, your self-control is tied to how fast you're hitting the next ball.
Right. Well, again, these are all things that I literally work with golfers
on how to practice on driving ranges or how to even warm up before or a round
(39:04):
much more effectively for the demands you will face on the golf course.
And golf is one of the only sports that's really bad at that.
Like we, we separate the practice into an environment that's so different,
perfect lie and everything is always flat.
And if you're at a nice club, it's like you get, you know, all kinds of everything
(39:28):
catered to you on a practice facility.
So i just think there's yeah there's
just a lot of room that we can grow in that and
just to make i'll make this one concept
make sense to you since you like the driving range golf course
thing if a driving range so what i teach the golfers i work with to do is to
separate out two sides of your practice purpose okay there is a training your
(39:56):
skill purpose i call that the laboratory operatory work where we're dissecting
the nitty gritty of the swing positions,
body parts, how you're moving, what the club face is doing.
And let's make that the training side of your practice. In the laboratory,
there's good and bad ways you can do that work.
(40:16):
And I've studied a lot of that as far as how movement patterns are developed
and how we learn and grow and all that kind of stuff.
So I try to help golfers be really good in that space.
And that's usually what swing instructors are very good at.
They're very good at giving their player stuff to go work on after a lesson
and drills or or devices to use, or stations to set up, or whatever.
(40:42):
That's all laboratory training work.
That's sort of the equivalent to, I'm an F1 fan for racing. That's the equivalent
of an F1 car being in a garage.
They're putting in the oil, they're tweaking the engine, they're airing the
tires, they're calibrating everything just right. Right.
But then practice should also include things that are much more simulated for
(41:10):
what you'll face on the golf course.
So I have golfers divide their practice into laboratory work on purpose,
and that's separate work from what I call performance work.
And performance work is where you're doing everything you can to treat the driving
range like a golf course.
(41:31):
Okay. So in your mind, you're creating fairways, water hazards, whatever.
You're one ball at a time. This is where we put away the alignment sticks and
we put up all the devices and we take the headphones out of our ears because
we can't do that on the golf course.
And if it's not true on the golf course, we don't do it in this part of our practice.
(41:53):
And now we're working on creating one shot at a time where we're moving from
decision point to activating our sensory side.
And we're learning to visualize shots better.
We're learning to feel the swing that's actually connected to the shot we want to hit.
(42:15):
We're learning to then walk into the ball and quiet our mind and execute that
shot. then we're learning to react to that shot.
After it's gone in a way that helps us on the golf course.
So if it's a bad one, how do I want to react on the golf course?
And I always say, you've got to walk away.
Usually put your club back in the bag.
(42:37):
You got to do that on the golf course. Yeah. Gather yourself, calm yourself down.
Think through what you were doing.
Approach the next shot as a separate shot.
Separating shots is a actual literal skill on the golf course in your mind.
Separating shots own unique shot so we're doing that on the driving range we're
(43:00):
just working on that and in warm-ups before my golfers go play we do a series
of getting your body loose getting your mind warmed up with targets and then
ending your session with some full pre-shot routine.
Visualization of your first tee shot or even
your first two or three full swings on the golf course
(43:22):
because you know what you you know what's
gonna it's gonna be driver and if i hit it well it's gonna be eight iron
you've played a practice round you know what's coming
so they're actually working through those shots
on the driving range and then when they go out
on the golf course their last prep work was
both physical and mental and they're
(43:42):
hopefully warmed up and ready to go instead of
waiting for four holes to get into the round and
finally find your groove and all that that kind of stuff
so i'm going to apply these concepts to
myself do it man the next
time i go out and play so and you know in my conversation with jake he had mentioned
(44:05):
how you helped him avoid you know the meltdown after a bad shot to not go and
hit another bad shot and have let's say,
make a bogey, then make a double, then another bogey.
So just talk us through.
How to hit that reset button. I think you had touched upon that just previously,
(44:25):
but could you just go into a little more detail?
Sure. There's sort of multiple components at work there.
I know Jake mentioned one of them that's very important, and that's the concept of acceptance.
So we work on actually accepting the realities of golf before you ever go play.
(44:47):
So just one of the main realities
is you know jake is
so good and that he can get really hot
and have around like he's had 61s and
62s before like he can have a day where it's almost like every shot is perfect
like but that that happens so rarely that's really not realistic golf that's
(45:13):
sort of that outlier fire in the zone wild day.
And he's very good at trusting himself and doing that and not interfering with that side.
A lot of people can start that kind of day and then they interfere with it,
but Jake's good at just trusting it.
But most of the time golf reality is you're going to hit some good shots.
(45:35):
You're going to hit some bad shots. You're going to have good holes.
You're going to have bad holes.
Like think of every round of golf you've ever played.
It's not like a a straight line where everything just works smoothly and you
go from first tee shot to 18th green and everything was clicking and everything
went where you planned on and there was no adversity and you never got a bad
break and you never had a bad swing.
(45:58):
Like nobody plays golf like that. Right. Sort of how we mentally prepare for it.
Like we hope it's going to be that way. And then as soon as it's not,
we then shift into fix that quickly.
So bad shot, I got to hit an extra good one on the next shot to fix that.
(46:20):
Or bad hole, I got to birdie the next one. In golf, we call that getting it
back. I got to get it back.
Right. I teach my players that there is no such thing. You don't get shots back.
There's no getting anything back.
If you bogey a hole and you birdie the next hole, you didn't get it back because
it was still a plus one on that hole.
(46:41):
Right no matter how you look at it so that
we we do away with get it back we what i teach
is get it steady so after a bad shot can we accept that this is one of those
that we knew was going to happen today and then once we accept that this was
one of those can we separate the next shot into its own shot.
(47:05):
It's not a makeup or how we got here. It's a, the ball's here.
What can we do with this shot to move this ball in a smart way,
in a committed way to a better place that we would like it to be.
And that shouldn't change whether I hit the ball in the trees or whether your
(47:28):
college coach was playing a little competitive game where he took the whole
team into the trees and dropped the ball and said, all right,
we're going to see who can hit the best shots from here.
And when college T I've had college coaches who do that.
College players love that game. Oh, I'm, I'm better from trouble than you guys are.
Watch this. And they get all into it and they're all excited.
(47:49):
And then the coach will say at the end, why'd you guys love this so much?
Oh, well, cause it was the challenge, man.
It was so, and I like beating my teammates and, and the coach will go the next time you hit one here.
Why are you treating it like it's something you hate?
Like this is part of the game. So that's the stuff we work on accepting beforehand that this is reality.
(48:12):
When you hit the shot, you're going to be frustrated at first,
but the key is how quickly can you switch to acceptance that this is one of those.
And now I've got, until I get to the ball, My job is to let go of that one,
separate it out, and treat this one as a new separate shot that has nothing
(48:37):
to do with how the ball got here.
It's just an opportunity for me from here to make my situation better than what it is.
You know, that actually brought up a part in my mind, you know,
is it acceptance relative to your capability?
Totally. Because, you know, it's, you know, Tiger Woods might be accepting,
(48:59):
you know, very, very few shots compared to what I am forced to accept as a seven
handicap or five handicap or whatever.
So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's acceptance based on two things,
really, or really three. acceptance of what your skill is.
So in other words, for you to play golf all the time and treat it like every
(49:24):
single round and every single shot is like your best 5%, you're going to make yourself crazy, man.
Like the other 95% of your reality is going to overwhelm you.
So just because you every once in
a while hit a shot a certain way cannot become
the expectation or standard for every shot
(49:46):
so it is what is your actual
level and stats can be
helpful for this how many fairways do you really hit
how many greens do you really hit how many
bogeys do you really average how many double bogeys
how many penalty balls like if you start getting a handle on what your reality
(50:07):
is then you can work with it to move it forward okay but if you only think of
your reality as that very top A plus level shot,
you're not actually working with the reality of golf.
You're working with a fantasy of golf that 5% is what translates to everything you do.
(50:30):
So your reality is going to be affected by your skills.
Your reality is also going to be affected by how hard is this golf course?
Because golf courses vary wildly in difficulty, right?
So if you're only thinking of the way you played at this municipal course over
(50:52):
here where there was very little trouble and you were hitting it great,
and you think that when you get on a golf course where it's narrow,
tree-lined, hallways, water, bunkers, everything feels difficult.
Right. And you only think, but I hit it so good that day. If I hit it that same
way over here, I'd be playing great.
(51:15):
Except the environment and the demands of the golf course are presenting you
something that is totally different than over here.
So again, this is the fallacy. We think, well, I'm the one that hit the good shots over here.
I just got to do the same thing over here. yes except
the demands of what you're working with
are different than that golf course and you've got to learn how to accept your
(51:40):
skill as it translates to different holes i mean if you if you've got a 230
carry over water and you hit that thing in the water seven out of ten times.
Why are you trying to hit it over the water hit
it over there and then hit it on the green from
(52:00):
over there and you actually are going
to score better i know
show it's a part three i'm supposed
to hit the green yeah but if
the game is you score better so you
got to decide what your game is so it's the demands of
the golf course and then i'll introduce a third one and this is really tricky sometimes
(52:23):
conditions weather wind rain
cold conditions change the
way your game is executed so like somebody like jake and i'll just use him keep
using him as an example because he's the one you met me through you know jake
(52:45):
averages four plus birdies per round on average.
Okay which is elite at division one college golf like that's elite at the lead
on the pga tour too actually but so that's fine and jake but if jake's on the
golf course thinking to himself how many birdies do i have today as a definition
(53:07):
for whether he's playing good or not,
then on a day when the wind's 30 and the golf course is hard the game isn't four birdies today okay.
Yeah, it might be just having one bogey on the card and getting out of there.
And if you can't flex your acceptance based on the difficulty of the course,
(53:29):
and these guys play courses that are set up so hard, tucked pins,
lots of trouble, and that's a translation
from junior golf to college golf that's hard for a lot of people.
But you got to play the course, and you got to play the conditions.
And when the conditions get really bad
the game is more who handles this
(53:50):
better than who plays as close
to their normal round of golf so again
if you're just sort of stuck in this well here's how i play when i'm playing
good and i'm not doing that today you'll actually start trying things forcing
things getting greedy and trying to pull off shots that are ridiculous for you to try,
(54:14):
even though you're probably capable of doing it.
And that's another thing I work with good players on all the time.
They're capable of shots, but they can't do them enough to make it a smart decision.
And that's really tricky. It's almost easier when you're not capable of doing
(54:35):
stuff than it's obvious what you need to do.
But when you got people like Like Jake and a lot of others, they're capable
of stuff, but they might only pull it off two out or three out of 10 times.
But if they just think, I got this, I got this shot, I can do this. I know I got this.
And this is the way Jake played a lot his first couple of years in college.
(54:57):
He played like that a lot.
And he doesn't really play like that anymore. Almost never. Every once in a
while, he makes that mistake, but not often.
Wow. That's an elite golfer problem right there.
So I wanted to touch upon a couple of other things one of them being putting
you know all that we talked about,
(55:19):
eventually the guy is going to get on the green. And it seems like on the PGA
Tour, that's where a lot of money is made or lost.
Like the good putter, even if he's having a bad ball striking day,
typically ends up with a decent score.
Whereas a great ball striker having an average day or maybe a less than average
(55:41):
day on the green suddenly is missing the cut.
But so is there something about getting on the green and putting which you really have to focus on?
Or is it just part of the same system you're teaching your your students?
Yeah, it's it's a little bit of both. It's part of the same system,
but it has its own unique challenges within that system.
(56:04):
So putting is where the score is final on the whole.
Every putt presents a
much stronger distraction for outcome
for what the
outcome means if i miss this putt it's another bogey if i make this putt it's
(56:27):
a finally i get a birdie if i make this one after i made that last one i'll
get momentum going so it's putting starts
pressurizing the meaning of the putt a lot.
And that tends to create, for most golfers, that tends to create a sort of natural
(56:52):
reflex to control it more consciously.
Okay. And force the
ball into the hole is one of the ways
that we say that in golf or try
to make sure your putting stroke is
exactly perfect and it's such
(57:12):
a small movement that the idea of
consciously doing it seems super logical
like yeah it's just this far and this far surely you can just make that happen
but nobody who's great at putting putts in a conscious way I shouldn't say nobody,
(57:34):
maybe Bryson DeChambeau.
He's kind of in his own world for how he works.
That's true. But as a general rule, putting, and a lot of this has been studied
now with our new technologies and stuff.
When our minds are more quiet, more...
Instinctive reactive I would say more feeler
(57:57):
sensory based picturing the putt seeing
the ball go in the hole and when we look back
down at the ball we stay very sensory based then our putting strokes are actually
smoother we make center contact more consistently the roll off the face is actually
more consistent you hit your start line more consistently if your mind when
(58:22):
you look down at the ball,
goes to putter stroke.
Perfect start line, you actually introduce a lot of tension into your arms and hands,
which actually brings the putting stroke much more jagged and often much shorter
and quicker or bigger and decelerate because you're actually trying to consciously
(58:44):
make it happen while you're doing it.
So you sort of, you see a lot of golfers who
that and they'll actually tell me they're doing this
if i ask them like if you're watching your putter go
back and you are judging it in the
middle of the backstroke oh that's inside oh that's too
far you're you'll try to correct it right like that but your corrections are
(59:09):
rarely good because even as slow as a putting stroke is it's still too fast
for you to get good at correcting it.
And you'll make yourself crazy on sort of a fear-based tension.
Ultimately the yips side of how you're making muscle movement happen.
(59:34):
Okay. Because you're losing that sort of instinctive, natural usage of your train skill.
And that makes a lot of sense, Phil. And in fact, I'm extrapolating that to like a chip
or a pitch, you know, over a bunker or over water to a tight pin where you really
(59:55):
want to control the ball.
And typically, you know, the average player is just going to make it nine times
out of 10, you know, he'll put the ball in the water or in the bunker.
So, so I guess this concept also translates to the short game and,
and, and areas where you can sense that this is really going to to be impactful
(01:00:18):
on the score and you try to control the outcome it really is the human and this
is all human stuff right if something is threatening to us we will react to the threat.
And we'll react to the threat usually in fight or flight kind of ways,
which is always, if you think about what fight or flight means,
(01:00:41):
fight means tensing and I'm going to attack it with aggression, right?
Flight means I'm defensive and I'm trying to get away from it.
And neither one of those kind of reactions help you perform a golf skill at all.
Neither one. aggression almost never helps you unless you're in a long drive
(01:01:05):
contest or something and then that defensive posture is where we're actually
trying to make a golf movement.
While we're almost like flinching before whatever happens like don't do it don't
do it don't do it i gotta do it and you're in big trouble so even little micro
versions of that which is what better or golfers deal with is still locking
(01:01:29):
up whatever skill they trained.
So if they've got great short game, but we put them in a threat situation and
they're reacting to the threat,
that skill is going to, your body just does not move the same way under that kind of fight or flight.
Part of your brain just doesn't, I don't care how many hours you spent training your movement.
(01:01:52):
You will lock your movement up with that kind of stress.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, that also brings me to kind of
the last topic I wanted to touch upon was as a parent of a junior golfer,
you typically follow them around and then on the greens, you know,
if they miss a putt or if they screw up a chip, observing that I get consumed
(01:02:18):
by anger. Don't you know how to do that better?
Like, what's the psychology behind that?
Wow. That's a deep question. So I was a junior golf parent.
In all honesty, I was not a good junior golf parent. I was pretty bad.
And I would say part of what motivates me to love what I do now,
(01:02:40):
it may be because maybe it's because I'm trying to make up for those years.
Maybe it's because I just feel like I learned a lot, which I wish I had another shot at.
I am a grandfather now, so maybe I'll get another shot at it as a grandfather. father. We'll see.
But yeah, for, I'll just tell you for me when I was going through it,
(01:03:01):
like I didn't realize this at the time, but a lot of personal work I did had
helped me to gain some sense of this.
My own emotional stability was very tied to what my son was doing on the golf course.
And some of that was sort of complex in the sense that if he was frustrated
(01:03:22):
and angry, I just didn't, I didn't want him to feel like that.
So I was trying, you know, I was very tense just in the hopes that,
oh, please go in the hole because he's going to be so upset if it doesn't.
And I didn't want him to be upset.
So part of it was that part of it was also just the, in all honesty,
(01:03:44):
I, I felt like his performance reflected on me as his parent.
So the way other parents or the way other people or the way his,
what his scores being posted would mean or what, you know, the coach would think,
or like, am I an exceptional parent?
Well, if I am, I'm,
(01:04:05):
He should be able to do what he knows how to do when he needs to do it.
And some of that his missing was, yeah, I just can't figure out how to get him
to do what he knows how to do as often as he needs to do it.
Come on. You know how to do that.
You do it all the time, man. Why did you do it that way? That was so stupid.
Like, you know better than that. that and then we start just mixing a bunch
(01:04:29):
of the emotional sort of you know self-esteem and identity and like it just
gets all mixed up and i get as a parent i get very reactive.
Visibly even at the golf course you know i'm standing over on the side and i'm reacting acting.
And all that does for him is just make every shot he hits.
(01:04:55):
My dad's emotional state is tied to this golf shot or to this round of golf.
You know how crazy it is for a teenager to feel like they hold the emotional joy or disappointment,
the fun or the sadness of their parents in their golf clubs,
(01:05:15):
you talk about pressure.
I don't think any teenager in the world's wired for standing up to that,
not at that stage of development of our lives.
But in all honesty, when they know not only that I have a bad day,
but I ruined your day on the ride home. Right.
(01:05:36):
They're building a sort of fear-based version of golf that is really nuts.
Man it is crazy for them so yeah yeah it's tough I didn't do it very well but
I do have I have some parents who are doing it very well and it's really impressive
to me and for competitive golfers.
(01:06:01):
You know, if, if they're having a bad day, do you think that it's a good idea
for them to kind of release that anger a little bit, you know,
maybe throw a club or say something bad?
I mean, is that, is that safety valve a good concept or what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah. I, I teach, I try to teach my golfers to allow themselves to have frustration,
(01:06:26):
initial reactions, but we try to create initial reactions which are consistent with the mistake.
When I excessively react, I actually do some stuff in my brain that makes it
very unlikely that I will be able to perform effectively anytime in the next 20 or 30 minutes.
(01:06:53):
And that's just the way our brain works with sort of the emotional center and
the anger and all that kind of stuff.
So this idea that I can slam clubs in the ground and then when it's time to
hit the next shot, I'm going to be calm, cool and collected and locked in and
focused on what I'm doing.
That doesn't jive with the way our brains work.
(01:07:16):
So excessive reactions, I think, are very unhelpful.
Appropriate reactions are human. So, Phil, it was really nice speaking with you.
I personally learned a lot, and I hope our listeners pick up a few of the concepts
you've expressed today and get a better understanding of capability versus acceptance,
(01:07:41):
how to train better, how to prepare for a round better, and for the competitive
golfers out there, where how to perform better would be some of the things I
would take away from this episode.
As we leave, Phil, is there anything else you would like to add to our listeners out there?
No, not really. I think I would just say if you're going to play golf, it is a very hard game,
(01:08:07):
and you've got to get your mind into working with the reality of your skill,
still a not in a negative way but
in a improvement way here's where I
am what would a next step of
improvement look like and what can I
do on the golf course today to learn improve and grow and I think the game can
(01:08:31):
be a beautiful journey and experience and the challenges never end I mean it
can be a lot of fun if we don't learn to treat it that way golf becomes an exercise
of craziness and misery.
And if it's not our own misery, we're making everybody else miserable when we're out there.
So I don't think this beautiful game benefits from being an exercise in misery.
(01:09:01):
That's so true. Thank you so much, Phil, for taking the time to speak with us.
Thank you, Bikram. Appreciate it.
And for our listeners out there, I'll have links to Phil's website so you can
get in touch with him if you're interested, in the description.
And that, folks, is a wrap for today. Thank you for listening.
Music.
Yeah, reactive instinctive state is only designed to unlock whatever trained
skill you have at the level you have it.
So it's not you all of a sudden become Tiger Woods over the ball because you're
being reactive instinctive. You don't have a skill.
Well, I'm not trying to get you to be Tiger Woods. I'm trying to get you to be the best you.
(00:22):
So whatever you have trained, when you go out to play, you're actually out there
playing to your ability. In audio.
Music.
(00:47):
Welcome to the Accelerate Golf Podcast, where we explore player improvement
and the business of golf through conversations.
I'm your host, Bikram Kapoor, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with
Phil Shomo, a golf mental skills coach based out of Hilton Head, South Carolina.
(01:07):
He has 35 years of experience coaching young people in a variety of life arenas,
a master's degree in transformation with a specialization on personal character development,
and is a low single-digit handicap golfer himself.
Welcome, Phil. Thank you. Thank you, Bikram. It's really an honor to be here and chat with you.
(01:28):
Thanks for the opportunity and thank you for making the time phil so i first
heard of you from jake peacock a previous guest on this show who is now a top
collegiate golfer he said you transformed him from a struggling junior golfer
into what he is today an elite,
player with the pro tours in his sights do you remember how you met him for the first time.
(01:52):
Oh, yeah. I remember it very, very well. I was working with a junior golfer in the state of Georgia.
He was playing in the Georgia Junior Amateur, which is a pretty big event in the state.
That year was over here in Savannah, which is only about 45 minutes from Hilton Head.
So I went over. I try when I can to go and actually watch the players I work with in person.
(02:16):
So I I was there watching him that day, and he was paired with Jake.
I didn't know who Jake was, but Jake was, as Jake explained in his podcast,
Jake was dealing with some problems that were very, very evident that day. Slow play.
Officials were all over their group by the second or third hole.
(02:37):
I mean, literally, officials' carts were setting up beside every green.
It was like a thing. and it was very evident in watching that Jake was really
struggling with some stuff,
but it wasn't, that wasn't even the main thing that I, I mean,
it was, but it was, there was a lot more that I picked up on that day and watching
(03:01):
him than just the struggles he was having. He was an incredibly skilled golfer.
Like when he would finally pull the trigger and hit the ball, it was like, wow.
Okay. Like it was, you know, he's having a hard time getting to the point of
pulling the trigger away from the ball. But once he does, pretty amazing.
And yeah, through a connection that day, the father of the kid I was watching.
(03:24):
The father went and introduced himself to Jake's parents during the round,
came back to me and said, hey, obviously he's got some challenges.
You interested in getting involved in this at all?
And I said, I would love to try to help him because some of the things just
watching him, his body language and so on stuff.
His deal was just so obvious to me, some things that I thought were happening.
(03:49):
So I met the parents during the round.
We talked, I talked to both of them separately.
We chatted a lot about Jake and his background. By the time the round was over,
then after the round, I met Jake. They hired me immediately.
Jake and I started working together instantly right after that.
I'll never forget that day. Yeah, it was amazing. Amazing.
(04:11):
And you seem to have had a magic effect on Jake and his, you know,
his ability to break through to the next level, as he said in his own words.
What did you do? What did you start off with when you started working with Jake?
Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know if the word magic really applies, but thank you.
(04:34):
Anyway, so what I saw the day I was there, what seemed to make sense to me was
that Jake, everybody seemed to look at Jake as having a big problem.
He was stuck in his pre-shot routine.
He explained that very well in his interview with you.
But what I saw was he was searching
for a type of certainty or
(04:58):
a type of comfort and he
had sort of trained himself to not
hold the trigger on the shot until he
achieved this sort of sense of comfort and certainty and so where we what i
saw was an amazing ability to focus he was so focused but it was on the things
(05:23):
that were holding him back like Like he was so focused,
he couldn't get out of it.
And I just saw an opportunity to, if I could redirect him, take that amazing ability he has to focus.
And we get that going in a straightforward direction with a pre-shot routine
that is very moving towards the execution of the shot.
(05:48):
He was just going sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways the whole
time. And it was taking him way too long to get to the action point.
So what I helped him, I remember our very first conversation,
we talked about him searching for comfort and certainty. And it made sense to him immediately.
(06:08):
He immediately said to me, which I learned over the years has become, it's the way Jake is.
And it's partly how I've learned to help him. When stuff clicks with him,
oh, that's why I'm doing that. that the why behind what everybody was trying
to get him to stop doing is.
Is what made sense to him. And then he was open to fully buying the idea that
(06:34):
there is no such thing as certainty or perfection.
And comfort is just some mystical thing floating around if you treat it that way.
So how about we build something that you find comfort in because it's repeatable?
We called it the flow, the rhythm.
(06:55):
What if we built this so that you did it so consistently that it almost feels
familiar to you each time you start to do it and the comfort you're looking
for is what actually comes as part of doing that.
So instead of just trying to make yourself be comfortable, what if we start
making comfort a natural part of your pre-shot routine?
(07:19):
And that's what we from day one
that's what we started doing and he he
was amazing in what
I always people ask me from time to time what's Jake's
greatest strengths and when we get past
like the putting and like some of the golf stuff right
it's always his ability to focus is everything I thought it was when I first
(07:44):
saw him and more and then secondly his ability to take concepts that click in
his mind and turn that into executable performance under pressure.
Unbelievable. Like that is a rare thing that somebody is that quick at translating it like that.
(08:06):
And Jake was, Jake made changes really, really fast.
And then when we, a few weeks later, And he talked about that first Georgia
AM he played in at Atlanta Athletic Club.
And I was there for the first two days.
And what I watched him do in day one was very good compared to what he was doing before.
(08:29):
It wasn't everything we wanted, but it was big steps in the right direction.
And then I did something after that. I'll never forget this because this is
very unusual that I do this.
After round one I almost never
in the middle of a tournament between day one
and day two or day three I almost never try to do like coaching stuff with a
(08:49):
player right in between rounds like you don't want to like put stuff in their
head between rounds like I'm always just encouraging them reminding them of
things like it's always like this that kind of stuff but with Jake.
I just had this deep sense while watching him, like there is one thing I think
if I talked to him about afterwards and I knew it was a little risky,
(09:13):
I had, I literally asked for permission from his parents and he and I,
as soon as he finished his round, we went over and we found this seat under
this area at Atlanta athletic club.
And I talked to him about it and I, and I walked out the next morning and watched
his first tee shot and he did exactly what we talked about.
I mean, exactly. Exactly. It had to do with his body language and his sort of exuding confidence.
(09:38):
And he just did it instantly. And I was like, wow, that was super risky for me to do that.
But it also then showed me I really have something pretty rare here and what
this guy is able to do from hearing stuff, it making sense to him and then him
just doing it and in pressure. sure.
(09:58):
Yeah. I mean, from my conversation with Jake, it was very clear to me that Jake
is a very cerebral golfer, a very, very smart, intelligent young man.
And sometimes, you know, there's a little catalyst which is required to just
change, transform, take him to the next level, which clearly you provided.
(10:20):
But I'm just curious, how about your other clients?
Are they always as high level intellect as Jake, or do you struggle to get the
point across with other clients?
Yeah, everybody's very uniquely individual. And part of what I'm always trying
to do is not, I'm not trying to squeeze them into sort of Jake Peacock's path.
(10:47):
There are certain concepts, There are certain principles, foundational elements
that I think are critical for everybody.
So I'm working within frameworks and concepts that I believe in,
but how to communicate that, how quickly I grasp that,
(11:09):
how the vast majority of my clients are between the ages of 15 and 22. to.
And so you're dealing with a lot of developmental differences in that age range,
physically, emotionally, even how their brains are developing,
especially their frontal lobe, whether or not they really are working in a,
(11:32):
you know, process information and problem solving and seeing options and all of that kind of stuff.
Or are they more still like a younger child, which everything is just very black and white?
Like, you know, well, it just wasn't my day to day. So that's why I played poorly.
Well, that's a very like little kids tend to think like that.
(11:55):
You know, as you get older and more mature, you start thinking,
yeah, it wasn't my day to day, but what could I have done differently?
How could I have changed something? thing. You become more open to options because
just the developmental stage starts changing and personality is part of that
as well. So everybody's different.
I'm always trying to figure out as quick as I can.
(12:18):
I'm trying to figure out what are their strengths and weaknesses.
And a lot of times, and this is sort of a belief and philosophy I function with,
what seems to be their greatest weaknesses is actually the opposite side of
the coin of their strengths.
It seems like everybody gets fixated on, well, they struggle to do this.
(12:43):
He doesn't do this. He doesn't do this. He doesn't do this.
But the reason behind that is because they actually are really good at something very close to that.
They're just misdirecting it and it's getting in their way.
And Jake's a great example of that, but almost everybody I work with has some elements of that.
So I'm trying to figure out what are the things that, especially in the game
(13:07):
of golf, what are the things that they,
that would free them up the most that would get us out of overthinking that
would get us out of the sort of the fear-based anxiety side that would get us more into the trust of.
Freedom, let their skills happen rather than trying to consciously force their skills to happen.
(13:33):
So I'm always kind of navigating that conscious subconscious space where we
overthink the conscious side because we think at the wrong, the wrong things
at the wrong times. Right.
And we don't actually unlock that sort of subconscious side very much,
which a trained performer is actually prepared to do.
(13:57):
They have trained the skill to do it.
They just limit the skill by overthinking it or trying to consciously force it.
And that's really the, I'm sort of balancing that space all the time.
So that's actually quite an interesting space.
And before we delve deeper into that, Phil, so you said you work with clients
(14:20):
who are typically between 15 and 22 years of age.
I presume male and female and competitive golfers.
Is this your target clientele?
Yeah, it's really my only client. I don't really work with recreational golfers.
I do have a couple who are, there's unique reasons why I work with them.
(14:43):
But generally Generally, when people reach out to me and they're not in the
competitive space, meaning they're.
You know, you might be 15, but you're the game of golf for you is already a,
both passion and career. Like they're working.
You rarely find elite junior golfers who have another job during the summer
(15:08):
when they're out of school.
Like it is, they are traveling, playing tournaments all the time.
They are 40 to 80 hours a week. They're into golf.
That's my client base. My my client base is junior golfers who are on a college
golf pathway and that's their goal or college golfers who are on a professional
(15:29):
golf pathway and that's their goal.
And then I have a, just a small handful of professional golfers I work with,
but that's mostly because I worked with them in college and they are now playing professionally.
I don't typically try to pursue professional golfers and their specific reasons for that.
(15:49):
It's, it's more what, what I value, what I'm motivated by.
So I like the developmental space of 15 to 22.
I like the opportunity to shape and mold mindsets and perspectives and ways
of thinking while building specific skills mentally and emotionally.
(16:10):
I, and I just love the, I love the sort of tendencies that come in that space.
Everybody I work with would tend to lean on the more perfectionistic side than
the average population out there.
They couldn't get to the level they're at without having a lot of that.
(16:30):
Like they wouldn't be motivated enough, but there's also a real shadow side
to being perfectionistic.
So that's where they run into in the 15 to 22 space a lot.
So those tendencies, elite performers, I'm very comfortable in the world of very gifted.
(16:52):
People and I have a background in other arenas doing that. And that has translated well into golf.
So that's really, that's really my space. The stuff I do can apply to recreational golfers.
It's just, it's just trickier when you're only playing golf a few hours a week
and you're not developing the mental skills that I work on in the same kind of way.
(17:16):
So, so how do people actually get in touch with you?
Do you have a website? people can get onto and actually set up an appointment with you?
Or is it more word of mouth and phone calls and stuff like that?
Yeah, it's both really. I do have a website, philshomocoaching.com.
There is a contact form on there. That is a real thing. You really do get a reply.
(17:39):
My oldest son works for me and he handles those initial contacts.
That allows you then to set up a typically 20 to 30 minute, no obligation,
what I call a meet and greet.
Let's just chat. I'll explain what I do. You can tell me what you're interested
in, why you reached out to me.
(18:00):
If it makes sense to you, I tell you how to get involved in the early stages,
depending on whether I've got room or not on my roster.
So website, I do have an Instagram presence that I work hard at and that sometimes
people reach out to me through that avenue.
The main way people reach out to me is through word of mouth or through parents
(18:24):
I've worked with or coaches or swing instructors who got to know me and know
what I do and believe in what I do.
I've just been blessed. I'm really in year six of doing this, kind of five years ago.
Fifth year, fourth to fifth year being golf specific. So I only work with golfers
(18:47):
for the last four or five years.
And I don't, I've never spent a dollar on marketing or advertising.
It's just been organic, which is the way I like it. It's my style.
So that's great. So naturally that leads to, you know, the question of,
could you just tell us how you got here to this point?
(19:09):
Not golf. I grew up a sports fanatic. I mean, at the truest definition of fanatic,
all sports, any arena, loved it, loved it, loved it.
I played everything I could possibly play, both organized and then more on an unorganized level.
Went to college, got a bachelor's degree.
(19:30):
Eventually, a number of years later, got a master's degree, which you had mentioned.
And I sort of cut my teeth in the nonprofit world of working with high school
kids when I was first out of college.
And it was all really based around personalized mentoring and coaching.
(19:50):
I mean, I was also taught to run programs, you know, after school stuff and different things.
But I was sort of big brother to a lot of high school kids. And then from there,
everything I progressed through, continuing through a lot of nonprofit work and.
Being involved in business careers, but on the side, continuing to do a lot
(20:12):
of volunteer work, eventually starting my own nonprofit stuff for young people,
specifically in the music career.
But the thread that runs through all of what I've done in every different arena
is I started coaching and mentoring high school kids when I was 20 years old.
(20:33):
And I'm now 61, and that has never stopped. I've done that nonstop the age of 20 till today.
And when I say mentoring and coaching, I'm talking probably minimum 10 to 15
hours a week setting one-on-one or in small groups.
We've estimated it somewhere 25 or 30,000 hours I've set face-to-face with young people.
(21:00):
And that's just my passion. And I fell in love from a very young age with the
idea of investing your best into the lives of people that are coming behind you.
And I call it an investment. It
is placing the best of what you have into their minds and hearts and lives in
(21:26):
a way that can hopefully influence the path that they're on for what they're
trying to do with their lives.
And that idea has never left me and getting involved in the golf and mental
coaching space. So during that space, I got to know some athletic coaches in
(21:48):
the college athletic world.
And I was literally, there were three different coaches that I was meeting with
kind of doing some life mentoring.
They were young, had young families, just had a lot of challenges in their life.
And we were just, I was just trying to support them and use my experiences and help them.
This would have been about 2018, 2019. 19, I had one of these guys was a baseball
(22:12):
coach, one of these guys with tennis coach, and one of these guys was a golf
coach and they were all college coaches.
And in just a short period of time, over a few months, they all sort of asked
me to get involved with people on their team because of some specific reasons.
Like I remember one of them had a player on his team, whose brother had committed
(22:35):
suicide and he was very struggling in his sport and his life was just kind of in turmoil.
Another player who had achieved a high level, but then got to sort of a national
championship level and really just sort of experienced performance anxiety for
the first time and really struggled.
(22:57):
So these coaching friends, they basically just asked me like,
Like, would you be willing to sit down and talk to this kid? Like...
And of course, I love that idea. I was very comfortable in the anxiety worlds,
the mental health worlds, even the addiction worlds, like deep habits.
(23:18):
I loved that space. So I started meeting with players on their teams,
and that just started kind of evolving to me doing some workshops for their
teams on performance anxiety or self-control or emotional control stuff.
And it just started evolving.
So for a while, I was just doing it as kind of a fun thing on the side.
(23:39):
And then it started growing.
And kind of right before COVID hit, I started a business.
And then COVID hit. And that kind of was a weird season.
But golf during COVID actually took off.
Right and because golf was
(24:00):
the space i wanted to be in the most i was working
with some baseball players and some tennis players and people
in different arenas even some actors in hollywood that
i'd had connections with like a lot of different people but golf was the main
thing i really wanted to do and that's where things really started to emerge
and it wasn't long after that before i met jake and a lot of different people
(24:23):
so that's really kind of how i got here it's,
I've always been mentoring and coaching young people.
I've been a sports fanatic my whole life.
I obsessively research stuff when it becomes interesting to me.
Some of that I did formally in an education way,
but probably 90% of it I've just done because I get obsessed with stuff and
(24:48):
can't stop myself and trying to read everything that's out there and listen to experts and all that.
So I just kind of blended all that and the challenges that young golfers face
in the competitive world made a lot of sense to me from the standpoint that they're human beings,
just like all the other people I've coached in other arenas and industries.
(25:13):
They're just trying to apply their challenges as a human being to the demands
of this specific sort of niche world. And I had done that same kind of thing
in the music world for a while.
It just made sense to me. And I knew golf by that time pretty deeply from a,
just from a research standpoint and people I was involved with in the game and
(25:38):
it just all started blending.
So I feel like everything I've done in my life has prepared me to be able to
just enjoy the game and working with young people.
So that's, that's quite a journey. I mean, 41 years of coaching and mentoring.
So you bring a lot of experience to the table.
And, you know, in just thinking about of golf.
(26:01):
The ball is stationary. You have plenty of time to kind of, you know,
set up to it and then think through what you need to do.
But that is a double edged sword, right? Like I think you had alluded to initially.
Is that why golf is a is a little more difficult?
Because in many other sports, you just don't have time to, you know, to think you just react.
(26:24):
Whereas golf you have four
hours you know of a typical round maybe a little bit more and
then maybe you know five minutes of actually swinging the
club in those four hours so you have plenty of time to think what is your take
on that yeah that is for sure a big part of what makes it i think the greatest
game and also maybe the most challenging i did see like i had some experience
(26:48):
and other stuff that made sense to me.
And even like in the music world I was involved in, I was very close in mentoring
a lot of musicians who were, I mean, playing big concerts in front of thousands
and thousands of people.
And they also initiate the action.
It's just on a stage, but they're the ones that do it.
(27:12):
I used to do some basketball coaching and I was even a shooting instructor for
a while. And one of my specialties was teaching free throw shooting.
Well, free throw shooting in basketball, you initiate the action, basically.
Right. In baseball, pitchers initiate the action.
That's interesting. Hitters are responding to the ball, but pitchers hold the start point.
(27:37):
And so it was, it was very,
I was very comfortable in overlapping where sports are reactive and instinctive
because things are moving and you're adjusting to the ball or to defenders or to,
you know, things that are action oriented versus people who are initiating action
(27:58):
and And my philosophy has always been,
and I think this is backed up by all the research I've done in the neuroscience
world and in movement patterns and in trained, how we actually utilize trained skills.
I think there's a good way to say this Bikram would be there's information that
(28:20):
we have to think through and make decisions on in the game of golf.
Okay. And making conscious decisions with that information, what's the yardage,
what's the wind doing, what's the elevation, what's the lie,
what's the stance, where's the trouble on this shot?
Inputting information is where we make good decisions.
(28:43):
So there's a conscious decision part of the game.
And that conscious decision part is very important, or you end up just making
a bunch of mistakes recklessly because you're missing stuff,
not paying attention to stuff like, you know, oh, wow, I didn't realize the
wind was blowing that hard into my face.
So the ball went in the water because I didn't think of the wind.
(29:05):
Like, obviously, we got to think the conscious information.
But if you think about it, conscious information at some point when it comes
to performance and people with skilled performance type skills,
movement patterns and all that stuff, So conscious information actually gets in the way eventually.
(29:26):
We call that overthinking or being in my head or making last second changes.
We have to go from conscious information to shifting into more what I call instinctive
reactive, which we often talk about as athletic. Right.
(29:48):
Trust yourself. That's a subconscious. Let your skills happen. That's subconscious.
And there's certain triggers that help you do that.
So any sport or action where people are starting the action,
needing their trained skills to be at their maximum level,
(30:09):
they can either try to do that with the conscious information side,
consciously control the movement of your body.
Well, that's really not very helpful when your brain consciously can't go that
fast. Like you just can't work that quickly on the mental conscious level.
(30:32):
So moving more into the reactive instinctive side for me means you've got to
get more into the sensory part of your brain than the conscious thinking part of your brain.
So visuals are senses, creating pictures of what you want to happen,
(30:53):
locking in on a target, which is what a pitcher does when he's throwing a pitch
to a glove, what a basketball shooter's doing when they're locked in the rim,
and then not interfering with that visual by the conscious thinking.
So it's, can I lock in on the visual? Can I stay in the sort of visual feeling side of golf?
(31:16):
We'll just apply it to golf and then let it go in a very sort of empty mind.
Jake was talking about this on your podcast. When he walks into the ball,
he wants his mind to be very empty.
And he talked about how he putts so general. He kept using the word general.
I'm a general putter. I'm a general putter. But what he actually means by that
(31:38):
is Jake putts by pictures.
So when he's standing over the ball, when he's looking, everything is making
sense in his mind from a sort of picture or imagination standpoint.
And his feels work exactly with that.
So he doesn't think about it that way, but that's actually what he's doing.
(32:02):
And so he keeps a very like general picture and then he's gotten good at just
rolling the putt as a reaction to that picture.
And the, what we do in the pre-shot routine stuff and how it's all laid out
is to be very decision oriented away from the ball.
(32:23):
Okay. And then be very sensory based at the ball. Yeah.
When we mix that up, when we get the conscious information decision thinking
part of our brain at the ball,
then our brain starts going into overload with usually with don't go left, don't go right.
(32:47):
Make sure you don't get the club face this way or that way. Make sure you do this.
Make sure you do that. You see golfers at tournaments all the time.
They stare at the ball six, seven, 10 seconds before they pull the trigger.
The only thing going on when they're staring at the ball is a checklist of things.
They got to make sure they do them.
(33:07):
I'm guilty of that.
Me too. Me too. So, but you, there is no sensory based stuff going on when you're staring at the ball.
You're interfering with your picture
or your feels with information
that you're now trying to consciously make sure
(33:29):
I do this this this and this now why
is that so crazy in golf well think about
it you're trained if you're a competitive golfer
you get swing lessons and I have swing instructors are very good friends of
mine I literally value that side so much But we've overloaded golfers with information
(33:51):
on positions and swing angles and spin rates and launch angles.
And if you don't know how to take that information,
train your skill with it, and then shut that off at the right time,
you will just get trapped in standing over the ball trying to do what your instructor
(34:13):
told you to do when you had your last lesson.
And that's a conscious version of your swing, which interestingly enough,
works when you're in front of your instructor.
And I think there's two big reasons why it works.
He's the one clarifying every thought in your mind for you.
(34:33):
You're just simple on what he's directing you to think. That's one.
But two, you're hitting balls close enough together that you can figure it out.
So you mix those two things together and a good instructor is going to get you hitting it good.
So, so if I work backwards, Phil, if, if the goal is to be in this reactive instinctive state.
(34:59):
Isn't it that the prerequisite is that you should have trained your skill,
you know, in your own time, in your practice time, to be capable of that performance
you're trying to achieve in that reactive instinctive state, right?
Because I feel a lot of people know that they haven't put in the time or they
don't have that skill, but in trying to, for example, hit a ball 230 yards over
(35:22):
water, you know, second shot onto a par five, I know I can't do it.
So no matter what I do, I will not be able to achieve that reactive instinctive
state. Am I right in that?
Yeah, reactive instinctive state is only designed to unlock whatever trained
skill you have at the level you have it.
(35:44):
So it's not you all of a sudden become Tiger Woods over the ball because you're
being reactive instinctive. You don't have a skill.
Well, I'm not trying to get you to be Tiger Woods. I'm trying to get you to be the best you.
So whatever you have trained, when you go out to play, you're actually out there
(36:05):
playing to your ability.
Or you're playing way below your ability.
And if you want to play way below your ability, I can guarantee you how I can help you do that.
So maybe, maybe finally, you know, that question, which everybody says,
oh, I was hitting it so nicely on the range before the round started. Yes.
(36:29):
I think we might've answered that question today. A hundred percent,
because all we got to do is take consequences away and we give you enough balls quick enough.
That don't mean anything. And whatever it is you're thinking,
if I give you 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and you have any skill,
it should start clicking in sooner or later.
(36:51):
Right. And then you go out on the course, you get one ball with high consequences.
There's actual trouble out there that is threatening to you.
And you get to hit one ball and
then you got to walk to find it before you get to hit
again and depending on how good you are you
might hit the second ball within 60 seconds because you just walked 20 yards
(37:15):
after you topped it but if you actually know how to hit the ball you might be
three to five minutes before you ever hit another one so you're going to get
two shots in five minutes when on the driving range if you're like most people,
you were raking them and whacking them, you probably got 20 to 25 to 30 in five minutes.
(37:35):
So think about how hard that is to translate from this environment to an environment
that is almost nothing like the environment you were using on the driving range.
And now folks, I wanted to mention that this show is brought to you by QSchool Sports,
a technology company that offers thoughtfully designed point-of-sale,
(37:58):
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Wow, that's a kind of a profound concept that you've just introduced.
And some of that is actually detrimental in the sense that if you hit a bad
(38:18):
one on the range, you probably are a little frustrated.
But you basically train yourself to fix your frustration with a better shot
within the next 10 to 15 seconds.
So the way you're actually conditioning yourself is be frustrated after a miss
and then fix it with another one really fast.
(38:41):
But what if you got to walk three minutes or four minutes on the golf course
after a bad one, and you've trained yourself to figure it out emotionally or
mentally, your self-control is tied to how fast you're hitting the next ball.
Right. Well, again, these are all things that I literally work with golfers
on how to practice on driving ranges or how to even warm up before or a round
(39:04):
much more effectively for the demands you will face on the golf course.
And golf is one of the only sports that's really bad at that.
Like we, we separate the practice into an environment that's so different,
perfect lie and everything is always flat.
And if you're at a nice club, it's like you get, you know, all kinds of everything
(39:28):
catered to you on a practice facility.
So i just think there's yeah there's
just a lot of room that we can grow in that and
just to make i'll make this one concept
make sense to you since you like the driving range golf course
thing if a driving range so what i teach the golfers i work with to do is to
separate out two sides of your practice purpose okay there is a training your
(39:56):
skill purpose i call that the laboratory operatory work where we're dissecting
the nitty gritty of the swing positions,
body parts, how you're moving, what the club face is doing.
And let's make that the training side of your practice. In the laboratory,
there's good and bad ways you can do that work.
(40:16):
And I've studied a lot of that as far as how movement patterns are developed
and how we learn and grow and all that kind of stuff.
So I try to help golfers be really good in that space.
And that's usually what swing instructors are very good at.
They're very good at giving their player stuff to go work on after a lesson
and drills or or devices to use, or stations to set up, or whatever.
(40:42):
That's all laboratory training work.
That's sort of the equivalent to, I'm an F1 fan for racing. That's the equivalent
of an F1 car being in a garage.
They're putting in the oil, they're tweaking the engine, they're airing the
tires, they're calibrating everything just right. Right.
But then practice should also include things that are much more simulated for
(41:10):
what you'll face on the golf course.
So I have golfers divide their practice into laboratory work on purpose,
and that's separate work from what I call performance work.
And performance work is where you're doing everything you can to treat the driving
range like a golf course.
(41:31):
Okay. So in your mind, you're creating fairways, water hazards, whatever.
You're one ball at a time. This is where we put away the alignment sticks and
we put up all the devices and we take the headphones out of our ears because
we can't do that on the golf course.
And if it's not true on the golf course, we don't do it in this part of our practice.
(41:53):
And now we're working on creating one shot at a time where we're moving from
decision point to activating our sensory side.
And we're learning to visualize shots better.
We're learning to feel the swing that's actually connected to the shot we want to hit.
(42:15):
We're learning to then walk into the ball and quiet our mind and execute that
shot. then we're learning to react to that shot.
After it's gone in a way that helps us on the golf course.
So if it's a bad one, how do I want to react on the golf course?
And I always say, you've got to walk away.
Usually put your club back in the bag.
(42:37):
You got to do that on the golf course. Yeah. Gather yourself, calm yourself down.
Think through what you were doing.
Approach the next shot as a separate shot.
Separating shots is a actual literal skill on the golf course in your mind.
Separating shots own unique shot so we're doing that on the driving range we're
(43:00):
just working on that and in warm-ups before my golfers go play we do a series
of getting your body loose getting your mind warmed up with targets and then
ending your session with some full pre-shot routine.
Visualization of your first tee shot or even
your first two or three full swings on the golf course
(43:22):
because you know what you you know what's
gonna it's gonna be driver and if i hit it well it's gonna be eight iron
you've played a practice round you know what's coming
so they're actually working through those shots
on the driving range and then when they go out
on the golf course their last prep work was
both physical and mental and they're
(43:42):
hopefully warmed up and ready to go instead of
waiting for four holes to get into the round and
finally find your groove and all that that kind of stuff
so i'm going to apply these concepts to
myself do it man the next
time i go out and play so and you know in my conversation with jake he had mentioned
(44:05):
how you helped him avoid you know the meltdown after a bad shot to not go and
hit another bad shot and have let's say,
make a bogey, then make a double, then another bogey.
So just talk us through.
How to hit that reset button. I think you had touched upon that just previously,
(44:25):
but could you just go into a little more detail?
Sure. There's sort of multiple components at work there.
I know Jake mentioned one of them that's very important, and that's the concept of acceptance.
So we work on actually accepting the realities of golf before you ever go play.
(44:47):
So just one of the main realities
is you know jake is
so good and that he can get really hot
and have around like he's had 61s and
62s before like he can have a day where it's almost like every shot is perfect
like but that that happens so rarely that's really not realistic golf that's
(45:13):
sort of that outlier fire in the zone wild day.
And he's very good at trusting himself and doing that and not interfering with that side.
A lot of people can start that kind of day and then they interfere with it,
but Jake's good at just trusting it.
But most of the time golf reality is you're going to hit some good shots.
(45:35):
You're going to hit some bad shots. You're going to have good holes.
You're going to have bad holes.
Like think of every round of golf you've ever played.
It's not like a a straight line where everything just works smoothly and you
go from first tee shot to 18th green and everything was clicking and everything
went where you planned on and there was no adversity and you never got a bad
break and you never had a bad swing.
(45:58):
Like nobody plays golf like that. Right. Sort of how we mentally prepare for it.
Like we hope it's going to be that way. And then as soon as it's not,
we then shift into fix that quickly.
So bad shot, I got to hit an extra good one on the next shot to fix that.
(46:20):
Or bad hole, I got to birdie the next one. In golf, we call that getting it
back. I got to get it back.
Right. I teach my players that there is no such thing. You don't get shots back.
There's no getting anything back.
If you bogey a hole and you birdie the next hole, you didn't get it back because
it was still a plus one on that hole.
(46:41):
Right no matter how you look at it so that
we we do away with get it back we what i teach
is get it steady so after a bad shot can we accept that this is one of those
that we knew was going to happen today and then once we accept that this was
one of those can we separate the next shot into its own shot.
(47:05):
It's not a makeup or how we got here. It's a, the ball's here.
What can we do with this shot to move this ball in a smart way,
in a committed way to a better place that we would like it to be.
And that shouldn't change whether I hit the ball in the trees or whether your
(47:28):
college coach was playing a little competitive game where he took the whole
team into the trees and dropped the ball and said, all right,
we're going to see who can hit the best shots from here.
And when college T I've had college coaches who do that.
College players love that game. Oh, I'm, I'm better from trouble than you guys are.
Watch this. And they get all into it and they're all excited.
(47:49):
And then the coach will say at the end, why'd you guys love this so much?
Oh, well, cause it was the challenge, man.
It was so, and I like beating my teammates and, and the coach will go the next time you hit one here.
Why are you treating it like it's something you hate?
Like this is part of the game. So that's the stuff we work on accepting beforehand that this is reality.
(48:12):
When you hit the shot, you're going to be frustrated at first,
but the key is how quickly can you switch to acceptance that this is one of those.
And now I've got, until I get to the ball, My job is to let go of that one,
separate it out, and treat this one as a new separate shot that has nothing
(48:37):
to do with how the ball got here.
It's just an opportunity for me from here to make my situation better than what it is.
You know, that actually brought up a part in my mind, you know,
is it acceptance relative to your capability?
Totally. Because, you know, it's, you know, Tiger Woods might be accepting,
(48:59):
you know, very, very few shots compared to what I am forced to accept as a seven
handicap or five handicap or whatever.
So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's acceptance based on two things,
really, or really three. acceptance of what your skill is.
So in other words, for you to play golf all the time and treat it like every
(49:24):
single round and every single shot is like your best 5%, you're going to make yourself crazy, man.
Like the other 95% of your reality is going to overwhelm you.
So just because you every once in
a while hit a shot a certain way cannot become
the expectation or standard for every shot
(49:46):
so it is what is your actual
level and stats can be
helpful for this how many fairways do you really hit
how many greens do you really hit how many
bogeys do you really average how many double bogeys
how many penalty balls like if you start getting a handle on what your reality
(50:07):
is then you can work with it to move it forward okay but if you only think of
your reality as that very top A plus level shot,
you're not actually working with the reality of golf.
You're working with a fantasy of golf that 5% is what translates to everything you do.
(50:30):
So your reality is going to be affected by your skills.
Your reality is also going to be affected by how hard is this golf course?
Because golf courses vary wildly in difficulty, right?
So if you're only thinking of the way you played at this municipal course over
(50:52):
here where there was very little trouble and you were hitting it great,
and you think that when you get on a golf course where it's narrow,
tree-lined, hallways, water, bunkers, everything feels difficult.
Right. And you only think, but I hit it so good that day. If I hit it that same
way over here, I'd be playing great.
(51:15):
Except the environment and the demands of the golf course are presenting you
something that is totally different than over here.
So again, this is the fallacy. We think, well, I'm the one that hit the good shots over here.
I just got to do the same thing over here. yes except
the demands of what you're working with
are different than that golf course and you've got to learn how to accept your
(51:40):
skill as it translates to different holes i mean if you if you've got a 230
carry over water and you hit that thing in the water seven out of ten times.
Why are you trying to hit it over the water hit
it over there and then hit it on the green from
(52:00):
over there and you actually are going
to score better i know
show it's a part three i'm supposed
to hit the green yeah but if
the game is you score better so you
got to decide what your game is so it's the demands of
the golf course and then i'll introduce a third one and this is really tricky sometimes
(52:23):
conditions weather wind rain
cold conditions change the
way your game is executed so like somebody like jake and i'll just use him keep
using him as an example because he's the one you met me through you know jake
(52:45):
averages four plus birdies per round on average.
Okay which is elite at division one college golf like that's elite at the lead
on the pga tour too actually but so that's fine and jake but if jake's on the
golf course thinking to himself how many birdies do i have today as a definition
(53:07):
for whether he's playing good or not,
then on a day when the wind's 30 and the golf course is hard the game isn't four birdies today okay.
Yeah, it might be just having one bogey on the card and getting out of there.
And if you can't flex your acceptance based on the difficulty of the course,
(53:29):
and these guys play courses that are set up so hard, tucked pins,
lots of trouble, and that's a translation
from junior golf to college golf that's hard for a lot of people.
But you got to play the course, and you got to play the conditions.
And when the conditions get really bad
the game is more who handles this
(53:50):
better than who plays as close
to their normal round of golf so again
if you're just sort of stuck in this well here's how i play when i'm playing
good and i'm not doing that today you'll actually start trying things forcing
things getting greedy and trying to pull off shots that are ridiculous for you to try,
(54:14):
even though you're probably capable of doing it.
And that's another thing I work with good players on all the time.
They're capable of shots, but they can't do them enough to make it a smart decision.
And that's really tricky. It's almost easier when you're not capable of doing
(54:35):
stuff than it's obvious what you need to do.
But when you got people like Like Jake and a lot of others, they're capable
of stuff, but they might only pull it off two out or three out of 10 times.
But if they just think, I got this, I got this shot, I can do this. I know I got this.
And this is the way Jake played a lot his first couple of years in college.
(54:57):
He played like that a lot.
And he doesn't really play like that anymore. Almost never. Every once in a
while, he makes that mistake, but not often.
Wow. That's an elite golfer problem right there.
So I wanted to touch upon a couple of other things one of them being putting
you know all that we talked about,
(55:19):
eventually the guy is going to get on the green. And it seems like on the PGA
Tour, that's where a lot of money is made or lost.
Like the good putter, even if he's having a bad ball striking day,
typically ends up with a decent score.
Whereas a great ball striker having an average day or maybe a less than average
(55:41):
day on the green suddenly is missing the cut.
But so is there something about getting on the green and putting which you really have to focus on?
Or is it just part of the same system you're teaching your your students?
Yeah, it's it's a little bit of both. It's part of the same system,
but it has its own unique challenges within that system.
(56:04):
So putting is where the score is final on the whole.
Every putt presents a
much stronger distraction for outcome
for what the
outcome means if i miss this putt it's another bogey if i make this putt it's
(56:27):
a finally i get a birdie if i make this one after i made that last one i'll
get momentum going so it's putting starts
pressurizing the meaning of the putt a lot.
And that tends to create, for most golfers, that tends to create a sort of natural
(56:52):
reflex to control it more consciously.
Okay. And force the
ball into the hole is one of the ways
that we say that in golf or try
to make sure your putting stroke is
exactly perfect and it's such
(57:12):
a small movement that the idea of
consciously doing it seems super logical
like yeah it's just this far and this far surely you can just make that happen
but nobody who's great at putting putts in a conscious way I shouldn't say nobody,
(57:34):
maybe Bryson DeChambeau.
He's kind of in his own world for how he works.
That's true. But as a general rule, putting, and a lot of this has been studied
now with our new technologies and stuff.
When our minds are more quiet, more...
Instinctive reactive I would say more feeler
(57:57):
sensory based picturing the putt seeing
the ball go in the hole and when we look back
down at the ball we stay very sensory based then our putting strokes are actually
smoother we make center contact more consistently the roll off the face is actually
more consistent you hit your start line more consistently if your mind when
(58:22):
you look down at the ball,
goes to putter stroke.
Perfect start line, you actually introduce a lot of tension into your arms and hands,
which actually brings the putting stroke much more jagged and often much shorter
and quicker or bigger and decelerate because you're actually trying to consciously
(58:44):
make it happen while you're doing it.
So you sort of, you see a lot of golfers who
that and they'll actually tell me they're doing this
if i ask them like if you're watching your putter go
back and you are judging it in the
middle of the backstroke oh that's inside oh that's too
far you're you'll try to correct it right like that but your corrections are
(59:09):
rarely good because even as slow as a putting stroke is it's still too fast
for you to get good at correcting it.
And you'll make yourself crazy on sort of a fear-based tension.
Ultimately the yips side of how you're making muscle movement happen.
(59:34):
Okay. Because you're losing that sort of instinctive, natural usage of your train skill.
And that makes a lot of sense, Phil. And in fact, I'm extrapolating that to like a chip
or a pitch, you know, over a bunker or over water to a tight pin where you really
(59:55):
want to control the ball.
And typically, you know, the average player is just going to make it nine times
out of 10, you know, he'll put the ball in the water or in the bunker.
So, so I guess this concept also translates to the short game and,
and, and areas where you can sense that this is really going to to be impactful
(01:00:18):
on the score and you try to control the outcome it really is the human and this
is all human stuff right if something is threatening to us we will react to the threat.
And we'll react to the threat usually in fight or flight kind of ways,
which is always, if you think about what fight or flight means,
(01:00:41):
fight means tensing and I'm going to attack it with aggression, right?
Flight means I'm defensive and I'm trying to get away from it.
And neither one of those kind of reactions help you perform a golf skill at all.
Neither one. aggression almost never helps you unless you're in a long drive
(01:01:05):
contest or something and then that defensive posture is where we're actually
trying to make a golf movement.
While we're almost like flinching before whatever happens like don't do it don't
do it don't do it i gotta do it and you're in big trouble so even little micro
versions of that which is what better or golfers deal with is still locking
(01:01:29):
up whatever skill they trained.
So if they've got great short game, but we put them in a threat situation and
they're reacting to the threat,
that skill is going to, your body just does not move the same way under that kind of fight or flight.
Part of your brain just doesn't, I don't care how many hours you spent training your movement.
(01:01:52):
You will lock your movement up with that kind of stress.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, that also brings me to kind of
the last topic I wanted to touch upon was as a parent of a junior golfer,
you typically follow them around and then on the greens, you know,
if they miss a putt or if they screw up a chip, observing that I get consumed
(01:02:18):
by anger. Don't you know how to do that better?
Like, what's the psychology behind that?
Wow. That's a deep question. So I was a junior golf parent.
In all honesty, I was not a good junior golf parent. I was pretty bad.
And I would say part of what motivates me to love what I do now,
(01:02:40):
it may be because maybe it's because I'm trying to make up for those years.
Maybe it's because I just feel like I learned a lot, which I wish I had another shot at.
I am a grandfather now, so maybe I'll get another shot at it as a grandfather. father. We'll see.
But yeah, for, I'll just tell you for me when I was going through it,
(01:03:01):
like I didn't realize this at the time, but a lot of personal work I did had
helped me to gain some sense of this.
My own emotional stability was very tied to what my son was doing on the golf course.
And some of that was sort of complex in the sense that if he was frustrated
(01:03:22):
and angry, I just didn't, I didn't want him to feel like that.
So I was trying, you know, I was very tense just in the hopes that,
oh, please go in the hole because he's going to be so upset if it doesn't.
And I didn't want him to be upset.
So part of it was that part of it was also just the, in all honesty,
(01:03:44):
I, I felt like his performance reflected on me as his parent.
So the way other parents or the way other people or the way his,
what his scores being posted would mean or what, you know, the coach would think,
or like, am I an exceptional parent?
Well, if I am, I'm,
(01:04:05):
He should be able to do what he knows how to do when he needs to do it.
And some of that his missing was, yeah, I just can't figure out how to get him
to do what he knows how to do as often as he needs to do it.
Come on. You know how to do that.
You do it all the time, man. Why did you do it that way? That was so stupid.
Like, you know better than that. that and then we start just mixing a bunch
(01:04:29):
of the emotional sort of you know self-esteem and identity and like it just
gets all mixed up and i get as a parent i get very reactive.
Visibly even at the golf course you know i'm standing over on the side and i'm reacting acting.
And all that does for him is just make every shot he hits.
(01:04:55):
My dad's emotional state is tied to this golf shot or to this round of golf.
You know how crazy it is for a teenager to feel like they hold the emotional joy or disappointment,
the fun or the sadness of their parents in their golf clubs,
(01:05:15):
you talk about pressure.
I don't think any teenager in the world's wired for standing up to that,
not at that stage of development of our lives.
But in all honesty, when they know not only that I have a bad day,
but I ruined your day on the ride home. Right.
(01:05:36):
They're building a sort of fear-based version of golf that is really nuts.
Man it is crazy for them so yeah yeah it's tough I didn't do it very well but
I do have I have some parents who are doing it very well and it's really impressive
to me and for competitive golfers.
(01:06:01):
You know, if, if they're having a bad day, do you think that it's a good idea
for them to kind of release that anger a little bit, you know,
maybe throw a club or say something bad?
I mean, is that, is that safety valve a good concept or what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah. I, I teach, I try to teach my golfers to allow themselves to have frustration,
(01:06:26):
initial reactions, but we try to create initial reactions which are consistent with the mistake.
When I excessively react, I actually do some stuff in my brain that makes it
very unlikely that I will be able to perform effectively anytime in the next 20 or 30 minutes.
(01:06:53):
And that's just the way our brain works with sort of the emotional center and
the anger and all that kind of stuff.
So this idea that I can slam clubs in the ground and then when it's time to
hit the next shot, I'm going to be calm, cool and collected and locked in and
focused on what I'm doing.
That doesn't jive with the way our brains work.
(01:07:16):
So excessive reactions, I think, are very unhelpful.
Appropriate reactions are human. So, Phil, it was really nice speaking with you.
I personally learned a lot, and I hope our listeners pick up a few of the concepts
you've expressed today and get a better understanding of capability versus acceptance,
(01:07:41):
how to train better, how to prepare for a round better, and for the competitive
golfers out there, where how to perform better would be some of the things I
would take away from this episode.
As we leave, Phil, is there anything else you would like to add to our listeners out there?
No, not really. I think I would just say if you're going to play golf, it is a very hard game,
(01:08:07):
and you've got to get your mind into working with the reality of your skill,
still a not in a negative way but
in a improvement way here's where I
am what would a next step of
improvement look like and what can I
do on the golf course today to learn improve and grow and I think the game can
(01:08:31):
be a beautiful journey and experience and the challenges never end I mean it
can be a lot of fun if we don't learn to treat it that way golf becomes an exercise
of craziness and misery.
And if it's not our own misery, we're making everybody else miserable when we're out there.
So I don't think this beautiful game benefits from being an exercise in misery.
(01:09:01):
That's so true. Thank you so much, Phil, for taking the time to speak with us.
Thank you, Bikram. Appreciate it.
And for our listeners out there, I'll have links to Phil's website so you can
get in touch with him if you're interested, in the description.
And that, folks, is a wrap for today. Thank you for listening.
Music.
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