November 17, 2023 • 61 mins
This week we feature an hourlong in-depth Part 2 conversation with PGA Teacher of the Year, Jim Hardy. His simple +/- checklist outlined in his new book, Solid Contact, helps all players self-diagnose and correct the swings and misses. This was originally a Members Only episode, published in April 2012. This is the first time it's been shared publicly for free. Find Jim's four books, including the one we discuss in this episode "Solid Contact" on Amazon.
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(00:00):
Welcome to golf Smarter mulligans, yoursecond chance to gain insight and advice from
the best instructors featured on the GolfSmarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction never gets
old. Our interview library features hundredsof hours of game improvement conversations like this
(00:21):
that are no longer available in anypodcast app. Golf is a ten thousand
different pieces, all some way gluedtogether. And the ball flights of mystery
and the impacts of mystery, andour swings a mystery. And we've got
timing, tempo, rhythm and balance. We've got a strong grip, a
week grip. You bendo where youstand up, you put the ball forward,
(00:42):
you put the ball back, youmake a long back swing, a
short back swing, you take itstraight back, you take it to the
inside, you cock your wrists,you're across the line, your laid off.
I could go on for hours,but that's why people look at golf.
They look at golf as though we'vegot all the colors of the rainbow
going on, plus all the almsof an orchestra going on, and it's
(01:02):
just too complicated. With another interviewfrom the archives of Golf Smarter, here's
your host Fred Green, Welcome backto Golf Smarter for members only. Jim,
Thank you, Fred, good tobe here with you again. Thank
you. We were just talking aboutyour work with Peter Jacobson, and you
kind of led me into is hethat much fun to work? Do you
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get anything done? Or is hejust you're just laughing NonStop. Peter Jacobson
is my very dear best friend,and we have been best friends now for
this our thirtieth year. And wow, I can honestly tell you that I've
been with Peter in every situation.I've been with him raising his kids and
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he's been with him raising mind.I mean, no two guys could be
closer. And I have never seenPeter have a bad occasion with another human
being. If Peter were a phony, I promise you somewhere in thirty years,
I deceived it. Peter Jacobson genuinelyloves people. Peter Jacobson is a
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genuine good guy. He's even funnierwhen you get to know him than he
is otherwise. But Peter is alsoone of the most compassionate, caring people
that has ever lived. I couldn'tsay and that's good things about Peter.
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He is a genuine deal. That'samazing, phenomenal. What a nice thing
to say about a friend. Heis wonderful. When you with all these
great players that you've worked with,with all these great players that you've helped,
What an honorable position that is.I mean, being a teacher at
any level is so honorable. Andfor you to be able to have high
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profile students and for you to wantto be kept in the background, that's
that's really. I admire you somuch for doing that. How often does
the conversation turn to ball flight withthese guys, I mean do they Is
it just the naturally is contact swingputting things like that? But when did
When does the Because to me thisseems so radical, the idea of ball
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flight. Well, I tell themevery time we talk on the telephone,
all the players, we talk aon where are you hitting it? Where
are your misses? Where is thedivot pointed? What kind of divot are
you making? Tell me about Tellme about this club, Tell me about
that club, Tell me about thatshop. Because I know what's wrong with
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her swing by them telling me there. In other words, if I'm when
I have a new student and I'llsay, okay, where are you hitting
the driver when you miss it everywhere. No, you're not missing it everywhere,
you know. If you are,you're pushing it and hooking inter pulling
it and slicing it. Which combinationare you see? You can't pull and
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you don't pull and push and reallyand you don't cook and slide you and
where's the ball? Ball's left?Well, where's the divot? But I
don't know? Will you better startlooking, you know, because that's important
stuff. And I tell him,don't ever send me a video without telling
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me where your misses with this golfclub are going. And don't send me
a video without drawing some lines onit. And they all know the lines
I want drawing on there. Becauseyou have to have a reference point,
you see, and the reference pointhas to be what kind of shots is
your swing producing? Right now?This is and you have to have a
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reference point when you're looking at agolf swing. And the most important a
French point is the flight of theball, because that's the end results of
the product. If the swing isthe product, the end result is the
fly. I mean, it's theswing is what we're looking at the product.
The end result is the flight ofthe golf ball. And that tells
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me everything I need to know aboutthe golf swing. How you read the
flight of the ball, and howyou apply the flight of the ball and
the impact to understanding your golf swingis the secret to golf. It's the
key to golf. That is.So I have noticed, and I'm just
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going to start talking about me now, coach, that I've consistently hit a
fade, okay, a little bitleft to right. I'm right handed and
wouldn't know how to hit a drawif my life, I just cannot figure
out how to do it, norif I worked on it. But you're
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saying I live with it, right, and I know that it's like,
okay, there's my target. I'mvery diligent about target golf, about saying
this is where I want to getit, this is I'm aiming. I'm
looking, I'm focused right on thatspot. So knowing that I'm just going
to look a little bit, I'mgoing to aim a little bit left on
my alignment so that the ball isgoing to end up in that spot,
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and then occasionally sometimes the ball willgo straight and it's like oops, I
missed. But the sense that Iget, as you're saying, live with
it, embrace it and work withit. Well, I'm going to name
use some golfers that you fall intotheir category, Okay, Greigntadler, Can
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I play with them? Bruce,Jack Nicholas, Lee Trevino. I feel
better about my game already right there. If if if Bruce Letsky faced a
shot that required a hook, heplayed a cut, okay, to explain
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the difference, please, he playedthe pay, he played a slice,
Okay, he did not hook it. In other words, if if these
guys are smart enough to know JackNicholas played the cut, he didn't play
hooks. If if when I said, Bruce, let's key if the shot,
if the shot to the pin requireda hook, we're going to hook
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that one in there, he didn'tdo it. He still play the slice.
He didn't. He'd either either heplayed a high risky cut when it
was going to require a hook,or he didn't go for that ten.
There are certain tins that you don'tgo for. You see, a back
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left pen was a hard shot forJack Nicholas, a front right pin was
a giveaway for Jack Nicholas, andwas almost impossible for Arnold Palmer. That
they understood that I understood. Iremember the first time I ever played with
Billy Casper. I played as goodas I could play. We were playing
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the Byron Nelson in the third round. I was prepared with him, and
I played as good as I could, hit the ball as good as I
could play, didn't put good,didn't put bad, and I shot seventy
one. Billy Castler played awful,didn't hold a whole bunch of puts,
petted about like I didn't shot sixtyeight. I'm sitting down on lunch afterwards.
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When I said, do you mindif I asked you some questions?
I said, he said sure,I said, help me. I played,
hit the ball about as good asI could hit it, came up
with seventy one. I know youweren't happy with the way you hit the
ball today, and it's not likeyou petted like a madman and you shot
sixty eight. Where am I goingwrong? And he said, you don't
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hit the He said, you don'tconcentrate on solely hitting the ball the right
distance with your ironshots. He said, you're too busy flagging the ball at
the pen every time, because youcan do that. And he said when
you mishit a little bit, hesaid and he named off of you that
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I had a thirty foot downhill puttthat was impossible to two put or buried
it underneath the lift of a bunkor twice. And he said, if
you notice, he said, afifteen foot right or left of the hole
is the same length putt as afifteen foot or short or past the hole.
You don't always have to aim atthe hole, but what you always
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have to understand is the part ofthe green or the position on the green
you're putting trying to put the ballinto how far to hit it to there?
And I went back over here.We went back over Billy's round.
And Billy never took a risk,never if he knew which pins his ball
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flight could shoot at and which pinsit couldn't. And when he had a
tin like a back left pin,a low hawk's going to get back there,
he knocked at stiff. If hehad a right front pin, he
would just put the ball about fifteenfeet left of the pin and just passed
it. And he knew it,even he knew he could play off that
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way. And all of a suddenit opened my eyes to the fact that
all Billy Casper was doing was hittinga predictable shot, even though it wasn't
a shot that would be the ultimateshot to shoot at that tin. He
knew he could put the ball outthere twelve feet left of the pin,
and he knew he had a prettygood chance of holding that twelve footer,
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and for him, for his ballflight, wasn't going to take a risk,
And that was a big That wasa big eye opener for me,
sure, and so for you.If you can play a cut every time,
first of all, you should alwaysbe playing two shots, a straight
ball and a hook, a straightball and a cut, and never let
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the straight ball hurt you. Yousee, Let's say that you know you
can cut it every time, andyou want to put it down the left
side of the fairway. That's fine, just saying a little left of the
faraway. But if all of asudden I said, there's water left the
fairway and you're playing the eighteenth dolldrill, well, don't name the ball
over the water unless you're absolutely onehundred percent sure it's going to cut,
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which Brimswitzka and Craig Saddler were.But most of the time I would say,
well, aim down the left sideof the faraway and play a cut.
You see the difference because daming downthe left side of the faraway playing
a cut. If it doesn't cut, if it's a straight ball, you're
still in play. If you cutit, you're still in play. It's
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when you go over the water honorwith a cut and you don't cut it,
you're not okay. And that's justa misplayed strategy shot. I once
was doing an interview with somebody Ihonestly don't remember what it was, but
they said that Tiger Woods has noego on the course and I'm like,
what he said? He has noego? And I'm like, what are
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you talking about? We had alreadybeen through all the Tiger's problems and it's
like, what do you mean?As he goes Tiger will never take a
shot on the course that he hasn'tpracticed a thousand times. I will say
that there's that there's some truth tothat, particularly into the Green. But
Tiger hits a lot of terrible drives, yeah, terrible drive yeah, and
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so he's trying to do something withthat driver they shouldn't be trying to do
so I would I would say thatinto the Green, I would very much
agree with that. Yeah, he'svery creative off the off a bad drive,
right, yeah, amazing. Let'sget into your book please, And
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I'm sorry I've dragged this out becauseI'm that makes so much fun. So
in solid contact you have a systemof plus and minus to help you correct
where well. You know, lifeis a balance, no matter what you're
doing, You're always trying every singleday when you wake up, you're just
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trying to find a balance. Sureyou know of this is good today,
that it was bad yesterday, thisis bad today, and who knows what's
going to be next week. You'realways trying to find just to get you
through the end of the day.And you're saying that almost that golf is
the same thing. There's things thatyou do that if you can balance it
out so that you can get toan equilibrium here, just by this is
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a plus. This is mind,not an ABC or D or a ninety
percent versus a thirty percent, justsimply plus versus minus. Right, See
everything in golf. Everything in golfis a binary code, an on or
and off, a ying or ayang, a bus or a minus,
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a black or white. Everything isand we make it too complicated by thinking
that golf is a ten thousand differentpieces, all some way glued together,
and the ball flights of mystery andthe impacts of mystery, and our swings
a mystery. We've got time intempo, rhythm and balance. We've got
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a strong grip, a weak grip. You bendo where you stand up.
You put the ball forward, youput the ball back. You make a
long back swing, a short backswing, You take it straight back,
you take it to the inside,You cock your wrists, you across the
line, your leg off. Icould go on for hours, but that's
why people look at golf. Theylook at golf as though we've got all
the colors of the rainbow going on, plus all the sounds of an orchestra
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going on, and it's just toocomplicated. Golf is either on or off.
It's a plus or minus. It'sa ying or a yang. Everything
in golf is either a plus orminus. Everything you do. There isn't
a move you can make in agolf swing, but it's not either a
plus or minus. There isn't aball flight miss, a terrible shot that
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has ever been hit that isn't theresult of a golf swing that has gotten
either overly plus or overly minus.Think of a salad dressing if you will.
We've got oil and vinegar the dress. Salad dressing is either just fine,
or it's too hourly, or it'stoo vinegary. That's all we're going
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to season our food. Either it'sjust fine or it's got too much salt
or too much pepper. And that'sreally what golf swings are. Golf swings
are just fine. I call thatneutral. I love your word equilibrium.
Buff swings are just fine when they'rehitting solid, playable shots that are predictable.
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It's when our golf swing gets outof whack. When you're not hitting
a solid you're not hitting a predictableshot, or you're not doing it repetitively.
That's when we've got a problem.And how do you know what to
do? Well? When I saideverything in a golf swing is a plus
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or a minus, what we're ultimatelytrying to do with the golf club is
get it to swing somewhat along theground, somewhat in the right direction into
the back of the ball. Now, when I use the word somewhat,
a driver is a sweeping club.It either hits level or slightly upward.
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A wedge is a very short clubor a nine iron. We're standing very
close to the ball, and it'sa club we want to hit more down
under and up on. So oneswing with our shortest clubs is more down
under and up, which is moreof a V shaped kind of motion.
And the driver, which is along club and it sits a long way
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from us, is more of asweeping club, and instead of a V
kind of bottom, it has likean upside down sea a much longer if
you will time, it's along theground swinging. So in either case,
everything about impact can be viewed likean airplane trying a land. If an
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airplane comes in on two steep ofan angle, it's coming straight down.
I promise you there's a lot ofnoise in that cockpit because there is some
kind of computer going pull up,pull up, pull up, pull up.
You're in a dive. You're blahblah blah. You knows in the
back of the plane to that's right, that's right, We've got to level
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this thing off. How many times, conversely, have you been in an
airplane when there's rough weather or somethingin and you're circle in the field,
and finally you turn around to theperson next to these, He says,
is this thing ever going to getdown? I've got another plane to catch.
In other words, that airplane hasno angle to land. The land
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the airplane at all, it doesn'tintend to. It's it's flying the level
to the ground. It doesn't havean angle. And golf in a geometry
standpoint is like that. The clubtoo often is coming in at the wrong
angle, which in turn also hasto do with its creating a wrong kind
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of bottom to land this thing.A big airplane, like a driver,
a big seven seven needs to havea really long runway and it needs to
land on a really shallow angle abouttwo degree landing path, while a airplane
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that's kind of like what we seecrop dusters, trick airplanes, they can
come in on a real steep angleand they only need a very short runway.
If you follow me, Oh no, you've got that for golf clubs.
Yeah, a driver. I'm sayingthat you've given a very good visual
on how to do this. Inthe way I'm seeing it is that with
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the plus minus system, that's yourassignment and your grade is your ballflight.
So how do we get that gradethat we want that we're searching for it,
not an ARB or a C,but we consistently. I want the
same type of ball flight correct andusing your plus minus system can bring you
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to that point. So what Iwant to know is how what are the
elements that we're looking at, whichis a plus, which is a minus?
How do we balance those out?How do we get to that grade
that we're looking Well, thanks forbringing me back, now that's okay.
I was enjoying the I was goingto ask you if you can get me
there. Certain half of all ballflight misses are caused by a golf swing
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that have too many pluses in thembecause you've got too much coming down on
too steep an angle with too shorta runway. Now, those ball flight
misses would be slices, polls,chops, chunks, steep cops, low
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traps. There's a number of thoseball flight misses that all are a result
of being two plus. The otherball flights, which would be shallow tops,
pushes, hooks, fats, fins, things like that, those are
all misses because you're too minus.You're circling the field here, you're hitting
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straight up on the golf ball.So first of all, your misses are
going to tell you which direction yourswing DNA has all of a sudden found
itself in. Is the salad dressinggot too much vinegar in it? Or
too much oil? Now, onceyou've understood that from a ball flight standpoint,
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boy, I'm pulling and slicing andchopping and junking. Okay, you
see all those, and all ofa sudden you realize my impact my golf
swing is producing a plus. There'stoo many pluses in there. I need
to neutralize this. I need tobring the salad dressing back under control.
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Well, there are a lot ofthings you can do in a golf swing
that will start to offset all thesepluses. For instance, some of the
things that will do that is themore you turn in the back swing,
the more that's letting the swing movetowards minus. The flatter you swing a
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golf club, the more that's movingthe swing towards minus. The weaker your
grip or the more open your clubface is, the more that's moving it
towards minus. The more your weighttransfers to the right leg, the more
you set up with your weight onthe right leg, the more you set
up with a handle and a neutralplace, even or slightly behind the golf
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ball. The more the club facewould set pointed to the shaft to the
left at the top would be aminus. Swinging down more inside out would
be a minus. Sliding your hipswould help be a minus. Who would
help neutralize those pluses? Retarding yourshoulder turn somewhat in the downswing, staying
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behind the ball more any of thosethings, you see, I could keep
naming them, by the way,and I do name them in the book.
Yeah, and you named a lot. But I just want to ask
you for a definition on one ofthe ones that you just said. I
was following you really well. Whenyou say a flat too flat? Well,
the flatter, See, everything isrelative. It's like adding. It's
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like adding our oiler or vinegar.The more vinegar you add. Let's say
that I've got it too oily andI've got to add vinegar. The more
you add. So, if Isaid the more you turn, if I
turn a little bit more, I'mmaking it a little bit shallower. If
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I turn a whole bunch, I'mmaking it a whole lot shallower or more
of a minus? Do you understand? Well? What I understand that I'm
getting very hungry, and then Iknow what I'm having. I know what
I'm having for lunch. But describewhat you mean by flat not not.
You know, it's like, howdo I would flatter? A golf problem
that swings verty could to the groundis very upright, Okay, A golf
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swing that swings more horizontal to theground would be flatter. Right. So,
as I'm looking at your website atthe planetruth dot com, and there's
an image that passes by, andit's two positions, two people taking swings.
One I would assume is a oneplane swing and the other one is
a two plane swing right right,So is the one plane swing? Is
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that the flatter? Yes, thatwould be swinging flatter. Imagine that's a
minor, and that's a minus.That would be a minor, so that'd
be more circling the field. Youfollow me, Okay, I'm with you
now, now, okay, thankyou, And again I'm having And then
if I swung more upright, thatwould be for somebody who's ball flag are
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very very minus. And if heswings more upright, he's starting to make
his golf swing more plus. Doyou follow me? Yeah? And I
think that I'm on the upright part. I think, and I've forced myself
to try to bring a little flatterand it's just uncomfortable, and it's it
takes too much thinking. That's notwhere I naturally go. Then then you
would then you would want to doa different one. You would want to
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say, I want to turn morein the backswing. For instance, Jack,
let's say your fade got too much. That would be showing a plus
ball flight. That's not want toJim, that's not hypothetical at all.
And let's say you say I wantI want to quit being so plus.
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Well, you'd go to the charts. This would be the opposite charts.
How do I move towards minus?How do I neutralize this? You could
take one of Jack Nicholas's keys,You could another word he said, turn
more in the backswing and turn yourhips more. Nicholas used to say all
the time, I don't know whythese people came up with not turning your
(26:10):
hips a lot in the back swing. I turned them as far as I
can. Well, if he didn'tas upright as his golf swing was,
he'd chop, he'd probably slice.So he turned his hips a huge amount
to all of a sudden get moreminus in his golf swing to get more
vinegar in this dressing. That's toooilate, you see. He would do
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that. And that's one thing youcould do if you didn't like to flatten
your swing to get rid of allthe fade, that's fine. Just turn
more in your back swing or standa little bit more upright at address.
That will let you turn more.Okay, thank you? See? Yeah,
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man, those things are fun toto feel. When I say fun
is there isn't one path you haveto go down. If someone says,
well, you need to flatten yourgolf swing and you on, I didn't
feel right to me? Right,well, good, that's not right to
you. You're what I call atwo planer. You would need to feel
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like you turn more in your hipsand your shoulders in the back swing,
maybe even stand a little bit moreupright, which will make you easier to
turn. You see. So asI become an older adult, as we
all are doing, and I havephysical imitations that don't allow me to make
(27:37):
those sort of turns, there arestill pleasans and mine is to help me
compensate absolutely. But I would giveyou one of Harvey Pannicks. He was
a teacher of mine. Wow,is for two painters who were getting older.
Harvey just said, please pick upyour left heel. Relation that lets
you turn more. Wow. Andall of a sudden everybody said, well,
(28:00):
Ben Hogan didn't pick up his leftheel, therefore it's not a fundamental
of golf. Well, it's surea fundamental golf for Tom Watson. He
still picks it up. Wow.It's like, and everybody quiet down your
lower body, don't know you needyou need the other you see. And
(28:25):
that's what I was saying, isall you would need to try out.
And that's what I say in thisbook. In other words, if your
golf swing is two plus, andyou know it is, because the ballfight's
telling you, here's twenty things youcan try, and you're going to find
(28:45):
one of them that works better foryou than the others. And that's the
one you should incorporate. You see. It's not you shouldn't incorporate the one
that somebody doesn't have. Your problemis incorporating. But there's no rule that
says you have to incorporate any anyof them. The one that you incorporate
(29:08):
is the one that feels the bestand gets the best results for you.
I think I'm getting the essence ofwhat we're talking about here, and please
correct me if I'm wrong. We'renot looking for a specific ball flight.
We're looking for a consistent ball flight. We're looking for a playable one.
(29:32):
In other words, your fade isyour natural ballflight. That's a good one,
thank you. It's not good whenall of a sudden you sky the
ball with a driver, you gettoo choppy and chunky with an iron,
or you slice. Now that allof a sudden, that fade is now
no good. Another time a fadecan be no good is if you start
(29:56):
hitting too much in the heel.You see. So it depends upon what
happens with your fade, which ballflight. When you're not hitting, your
fade is your miss, and thatwill always tell you what your impact is
plus or minus, and it willtell you how to get back to our
(30:21):
good salad dressing. In other words, I think it's faded. I think
it's Ade's a great ballflight, youknow what? I think? A draw
is a great ball flight. I'lltell you two ball flights I don't think
are good. A whooping slice anda diving hook. Those aren't good,
do you see? Not good?Not good? No So if your ballflight
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from a fade turns into a bigslice or stops being solid, you see,
that's when you would need to say, what's happened to my golf sling.
It's this simple. Your golf slinghas either gotten two plus or two
minus. So we all have anatural golf swing inside of us. We
all have this thing that we're goingto do no matter what, and it's
(31:06):
just a matter of refining that toright. Okay, that's right. Wow,
the coolest world word we could givethe some golfers called the hacker.
That's because they're chopping too much onthe ball. They need to start throwing
tons of vinegar in this thing.They need to start getting shallow things in
there, until all of a suddenthey quit doing it. It's really that
(31:27):
easy, and that's what golfers do, but learn how to play. So
do you prefer balsamic red wine ricevinegar with which that's not the question.
I do like the slight sweetness ofthe selmi. Okay, but that's not
where I was going. No,I actually are instructors today, and there
(31:53):
are a plethora of instructors out therefrom any person who ever thought that they
have a good game and they don'twant to do their day job anymore.
To a kid who just loves golfgrowing up thinking, oh, I can
be a teacher. Now, arethey collectively not individually? Are they doing
us a disservice today by trying tomold our swings into what we do not
(32:17):
do naturally, they are doing awild disservice. One of the things that
my mission is life is helping instructors. I have an instructor certification course.
They can become a Level one,which is kind of the entry level.
They can become a level two,they can become a level three, which
(32:39):
is the top instructors in the world. We have instructors that are certified in
fourteen countries all over Europe, China, Philippines, Australia, South America,
Scandinavia, UK and America. Wehave hundreds of certified instructors and instructors can
(33:02):
certainly come to our website and lookat our instructor certification seminars and come and
learn to be better. But thereal problem is is we have to open
our minds to the golfers in frontof us and quit trying to teach a
(33:23):
one half fits all. Quit trying. The best compliment I ever got was
years ago. I used to teachseveral LPGA players and one of them in
particular's name is Betty Burfight. AndBetty had won the LPGA Championship and a
lot of tournaments and was a sweetheartand wonderful player. But knew as she
(33:45):
was as phasing out out of beinga player, she wanted to teach,
and so she used to come andwatch me teach. And after about the
fifth time she watched me teach,she said, I'm not getting any better
at all understanding what you do.I said, what do you mean,
Betty, And she said, well, she said, I see these golfers
(34:05):
come take a lesson from you,and they come and they're hitting the ball
terrible, and quite frankly, theydon't have a very good swing, and
they leave and I don't see muchdifference in their golf swing, but they
hit the ball wonderful. And shesaid, oh, I know what the
heck you're doing. Yeah, thatwas all crux in the matter. And
(34:29):
here's our problem in golf. Howmany people have gone up to Jim Furich
and said, Jim, could yougive me the name and number of your
teacher because I sure like your golfswing. Huh. I know, I
think they would say, Jim,would you teach me how to do what
you do? Sure? Yeah,But here's the tragedy. Jim Furik,
(34:51):
for a ten year period of time, used to lead the all around stats
on the PGA Tour, which meantthat Jim Cirek was the best hittering golf.
Meanwhile, we're out there trying tocopy Ernie ELS's swing, who virtually
has disappeared from the top levels ofthe golf seat. Why because his swing
(35:12):
is pretty and Jim Furicks isn't.But Jim six is more consistent or well,
I mean live. I just saidhe led for ten years every year
they all around ball hitting statistics.So what's wrong with Ernie these days?
Ernie swing is no longer reliable becausehe's got too many minuses in his swing
(35:36):
by a bunch. Wow, itstill is pretty. It is still pretty.
Ernie hits a ton of fat,thin pushes and hooks. Every one
of those is a minus minus ballflight. You see how many and how
many swings did it? Crazy?Yeah, it's gorgeous and it's all and
(35:58):
you know it's because it's so smooth. It's so rhythmic, it's you know
it doesn't it looks effortless. There'sno question looks effortless. Where we all
know about Fuorick, even those whodon't follow know about Fuerick. How many
swings does it take for you tosee uh one? And you'll you know
where to go. I know wherehis missions are going to be. I
(36:20):
know what is good shots are goingto be, His good clubs are going
to be, what his bad clubsare going to be. I know the
whole thing. I know his history. I can put my arm around him
and say, you can't hit thisball and this ball with this club into
this situation, and this is whyWow, and I for years I've been
you're really gonna you're going to ruinsome of my jokes. But I mean,
(36:43):
it's like, you know, Isay to people all the time,
it's like, yeah, you hada great golf shot. You just once
the ball leaves the club face,you're totally out of your control. But
what you're saying is that's where thecontrol begins. Once that ball gets in
the air and you can see whereit's going, you can learn so much
from that. That tells me thingabout his golf swing. Wow, that
is right, that it tells tellsme what's happening in his golf swings and
(37:08):
uh if if And that's where we'reblinded in golf instruction right now. It's
almost as though we're giving lessons togolfers indoors into a net and you just
put a lot of business right becausethey're they're hitting balls into a net and
(37:30):
they're telling you all these things,and they don't talk about the people's ball
flight. But can you imagine howmany bells and whistles would go off if
we hooked up Lee Trevino or JimFury, or really Jack Nicholas or Arnold
Palmer or Boba Watson, for guy'ssakes, if we hooked them up to
(37:55):
Ernie ELS's model and we had aproduct on that was going to give all
the readings of us, well,sirens would start going off a foot into
the backswing, you see, andthey would continue to have different bells and
whistles screaming at us you're wrong,wrong, long, long, long,
(38:15):
long, long. Except if Ibuilt one that had a club face,
a swing path, an angle ofhit, and a width to the bottom
of the swing on it, andit only registered what happened at impact.
That's the machine we're trying to build, you see, We're trying to build
(38:38):
the machine that will bring the clubback to square delivered in a good direction
on a nice angle, and dothat repetitively. That's what we're trying to
build, not all this sort ofstuff. And right now, whenever you
see a golfer who is failing onthe PGA Tour, they're not sailing because
(39:01):
they're swinging. Is not pretty orwhat have you. They're swinging because the
correct bells and whistles didn't go offrelative to bringing the club back into the
back of the ball. Jim,this is awesome. This is awesome,
(39:22):
and it's almost too simple for golf. Golf needs to be complicated or it
will never succeed. I mean,it's a multi billion dollar business because it's
too complicated. Well we've made itthat hapily. Well yeah, but isn't
that why more people are leaving thegame than starting. Because it's too hard.
(39:42):
I mean, forget about that.It takes too long and it costs
too much. It's too hard,and we continue to make it harder and
and or they don't want the timeand effort investment to learn how to play.
They see that, they take aseries of five lessons, and they're
(40:04):
as bad or worse than they wereafter their five after the fifth lesson then
they were when they started. Yousee, it's and it's so complicated to
them, especially women women who arenot have haven't grown up playing but a
lot of bat and ball games,you know, and all of a sudden
(40:27):
they can't hit it, and theygo, look, this is easier,
this hit the tennis ball because we'vegot it so corruptibly complicated? Is that
because the ball's not moving and wehave to think about it just sitting there
and we're staring at it and thinkingabout it and trying to outwit it.
If I told people, I tellpeople how simple this game is. When
(40:51):
they come to me or come toany of our instructors, they are amazed.
They are amazed. Golf is acircular game played with the ball on
the ground. What do you meanby circular baseball? Any side on game
where you're standing to the side ofyour target line, you see, is
(41:15):
a circular game. Any game whereyou're standing on your target line, usually
facing your target is a straight linegame. You see, we stand and
face a dark board, shuffle board, underhand pitching, overhand pitching, playing
pool, anything where you're on yourtarget line facing your target. The motion
(41:36):
is straight back, straight through.Don't making difference whether you're down here bowling
or up overhand throwing darts. You'regoing pretty much straight back, straight through
and you're looking at your target.Not necessarily right, that's right. Now,
let's go. Now we're to theside of our target line and to
the side of the line of theobject. That's hockey, that's polo,
(41:59):
that's golf. Throwing a discus,it's baseball, it's cricket, it's soccer
style kicking, it's roundhouse punching.You see all those games. Can you
imagine throwing a discus in a straightline? Wouldn't go A javelin is thrown
(42:20):
a straight line. You see frisbeefrisbee throwing. All side on games are
side on baseball. The difference betweena forehand and a backhand shot in tennis
and baseball and golf is simply ballseither on the ground or it's waist high
or chest high. A ball thatyou would pick up in a forehand or
(42:43):
a backhand shot in tennis, Let'stake a forehand shot in tennis. If
you picked it up exactly at theground, you made a golf swing.
Right hockey? Why do you thinkso many? Almost one hundred percent of
all Canadian club PGA golf professionals areformer hockey players. This is the same
(43:07):
game. It's the same game.You skate into your lead foot, you
put the stick behind you, andyou slap it in a circular motion.
Right hockey is golf? Yeah,show me anybody who's played hockey. I'll
let them grab a golf club likea hockey stick, splin handed. For
(43:30):
their first few swings, they say, would you please hit a slap shot?
They never end up off the rightfoot with a stick stuck up in
the air or something. Four handshot in tennis, you step into your
lead foot and you hit it froma You put a tennis racket behind you
to your side and hit it.You see, I'm thinking lacrosse now,
but you can go either way withthat. I will go overhand, try
(43:53):
right. So what is what isour target and golf? The ball or
the spot out that we're to theline that you have now? Asked one
of the pretty cool questions. BenHogan showed something in his book Five Lessons,
Fundamentally, Modern Fundamentals and Golf Thatkills golfers. People talk about it
(44:15):
on television announcers. That kills golfers. We are not swinging at the target.
You are swinging in a circle aroundyou. You see, you're only
square to the target line for threeten thousands of a second. Wow.
(44:37):
In fact, the more you tryand swing down your target line, the
more you are going to fail.Because you're not in an online game.
You're in a side on game.You swing around. The golf swing best
foot is inside to inside. Now, if you can imagine a baseball swing,
it's when the bats. It's up, when the batter is waiting for
(45:01):
the pitch, but then it comesdown and around you in a circular manner.
Do you follow me? Now,just tip that plane of that circle
that down towards the ball. Ifthe pitcher were to roll the ball on
the ground and we had to hitit, they'd make a golf swing.
(45:22):
You are swinging at an object onthe ground while swinging in a circle.
That's all you're doing. You're swingingthrough that object. It's not at the
target. You're swinging around through theobject. That's exactly right. The only
thing that should be swinging at thetarget is the ball. You're swinging in
(45:45):
a circle. Now the circle eitherhits the ball too much while the circle
is swinging downward and outward to theright, or upward and leftward to the
left. Do you follow me?Yeah, that's all. That's all.
And that's just a correction, aplus or minus correction right there. But
(46:12):
if I get I teach all ofour in certify instructors how to do junior
clinics and beginning clinics for women,particularly as I just say, get them
all to stand straight up in theair, pull the golf club out chest
chest to rib cage high and swingthe club around their ribcage and around their
(46:37):
chest back and forth, around them, back in the back, swing around
in the follow through. And thenI said, it's okay. If you
even have some pipes out there witha ball on top of a pipe with
a baseball bat and they're hitting themuntil they can understand the concept of a
circular game, hit them with tennisrackets is fine. Then I have to
(47:00):
his golf clubs. Just as longas they understand the concept of a circular
game, you can have him throwfrisbees. You can have him throw a
discus, you can have them hittennis balls, and can have with a
hockey stick. Anything that will getthem to understand it's a circular game.
Then tell them it's a circular gameoff the ground. Now, there's two
(47:23):
ways to solve that while swinging ina circle. Either one, keep swinging
in a circle and just bend overa bunch until the circle is oriented towards
the ground. I call that aone fine swing. The other one is
don't bend over, just lift yourarms up and down while you're swinging in
(47:45):
a circular game. That's a twofine swing. That's are only two options,
by the way. In other words, if you had a baseball player
and he had to hit a pitchthat was rolling on the ground, he
either keeps swinging the bat around onhis ribcage and just simply bends his rib
gage over until it is facing theball. That would be Lee Trevino,
(48:07):
that's Anthony Kim, that's Roy McElroy. You see, they still swing around
them just bend over, or theywould stand straight up and instead of swinging
the baseball bat around them, they'dstart lifting the club up in the air
and down to the ground and upin the air with her arms while swinging
in a circle. Wouldn't that beTom Watson? Would a baseball pitcher be
(48:30):
better off throwing sidearm than overhand becauseof more motion than the circular motion you
do, I'm going in a differentdirection. You're sorry, shouldn't go there.
You do have both side arm andsubmarine pictures that have all been in
the major leagues. Yeah. Yeah, you see the problem with a side
(48:53):
arm pitcher or a submarine pitcher.Is there only a sect give if you
will, against the batter that's that'sstanding on the same side their side arm,
is their right arm, side armor their hell for a for a
right handed hitter, do you followthem? Yeah, of course, because
a right handed pitcher and a lefthanded hitter. The left handed hitter gets
(49:15):
to see the ball longer than theright handed Yeah, well you see that.
So so you've you've really got overhandhas a chance to throw the curves
and the sliders. You know,the side arm side arm is only going
to get out half, you knowone he's limited and they're usually more releaf
(49:37):
pitchers. Bring him in for theright handed batter or the left handed batter
in depending on what what he is, and then you have to take him
out for the next batter. Okay, yeah, sorry, sorry to go
that direction. All right, butyou've got the idea. There, you
got the idea. One is aside arm pitcher. The other one's a
straight line pick. So I tryto avoid asking two part questions, but
(50:06):
I'm going to do it this time, and it'll be obvious why I do
it. So is there a target? And what is the target? The
target of the golf swing, ifyou will, is around you, is
almost behind you at address. Youare trying to swift swing the club as
(50:32):
hard as you can. Throw theball around behind you. Now, that's
the target of the swing. Thetarget of the club while the swing is
doing that is the ball. Okay, that's the ball. In other words,
(50:52):
I can see someone swing in apractice swing. I cannot see the
effectiveness of the swing without hitting theball. So the clubhead's target is the
ball. The swing's target doesn't endat the ball. It must keep moving.
(51:13):
If you follow the difference, I'mwith yeah, yeah. And finally,
the judgment of the shot is relativeto the target or to our intended
target. Intended target most golfers don't. Most tour players do not aim at
the target. What no, no, they aren't. Even in petting.
(51:36):
There's only eight percent of all tourplayers ever tested that aimed exactly on a
twenty foot put, exactly where theywere supposed to aim. We keep going.
Now you're like, what, Oh, no, that's true. That's
that's that's statistics. Most of themaimed slightly of the roughly nine plus but
(52:00):
did not aim exactly where they weresupposed to run a twenty foot put.
More than half, about fifty fivepercent of those aim slightly left, the
other half the other less than halfaimed slightly right. And we're talking about
the cup of the cup, orof their target line, of the intended
(52:22):
line. In other words, theyhad a straight input twenty feet so I
could say the middle of the cup, okay. And they measured them with
lasers attached to their putter face.And this is intentional. They didn't know
they were doing it. Oh okay, they thought they were. They thought
(52:43):
they were all aiming exactly where theywanted to, but they were no,
and they weren't. Because they haddeveloped a repetitive putting stroke that the putter
face came into the ball to theright or slightly to the left. Now
(53:04):
if their putter face came into theball slightly to the right, those were
the golfers that learned to aim slightlyleft. Didn't know they were doing it,
did not know, didn't know whenthey ran the tests on them,
did not know that they aimed wrongbecause their repetitive motion, if you will,
(53:28):
would be a slight push fade notdidn't show up the pushpay to the
putter. But they kept missing tothe right, and pretty soon they were
aiming more left. Didn't know it. I promise you, what's the same
thing hitting the golf ball. Theonly person that should aim exactly at their
(53:49):
target is the person who can hitthe ball and it finishes up exactly at
their target. Most people don't.The ball finishes up either slightly right or
slightly left, and so what theydo. Fred Couple's aims maybe forty yards
left of his target. Lee Trevinoaimed farther left. Jack Nicholas aimed about
(54:13):
twenty five yards left of his target. Gary Player aimed slightly right of his
target. Ben Ogan name slightly rightof his target. Sam's need name way
right of his target. The easiestway to get somebody who is swinging out
to ind to start aiming at thestart swinging more into out, if you
(54:37):
will, is to wildly change hisaim, wildly change him you see.
Wow, Yeah, it was.It was a startling fact. Let me
go grab the book while we're talking. Here, two guys, Howard Twitty,
(54:59):
and they very interesting man. Anorthopedic surgeon who's a golf fanatic,
if you will, not a golffanatic, but he loves golf, wrote
an incredible, incredible book on puttingand they used so much of the statistics
(55:21):
that were gathered by Sam Hutting LabScience and Motion, which had studied the
strokes of pretty much every single greatplayer on any of the tours. I'm
sorry, I don't have the bookright now in front of me, you
said, Howard Twitt. Howard Tweet. It's a research books. It's self
(55:45):
published in a research book. Butthey went out and did this study and
all of a sudden they found outthat that such few percent of Oh here's
the book called There's More to Creditthat meets the eye and Lanny L.
Johnson m D. Was the onethat wrote it with Howard Twitty, and
(56:07):
I have the Collector's edition, andagain, what's the name of it.
There's more to putting than meets theeye, Okay, And they talked about
how few people, certainly less thanten percent, aimed exactly correct on a
twenty foot print. No, I'mlooking up the book and see if we
(56:37):
can where we can get it.I think it's I think it's self published
and you have to contact probably HowardTwitty. Well it's there is a website.
It's called Prescription golf dot com.There is more to putting that meets
the eye, and it's Howard Twitty, PGA tour player and Lanny Johnson,
(56:57):
MD, Research and Development. Andthey've got a video that just starts right
off. But there you can justbuy it from their website. Five hundred
and fifty plus pages, full color, highest quality paper. Yeah, it's
an amazing book. It has everythingyou want to know and a whole lot
of what you don't want to knowabout potting. It. When I say
(57:20):
that, I don't mean that youdon't want to know. It's it's an
exhaustive study. Yeah. And ifI'm not how I have joked that.
They said they will offer this bookat the cost of an introductory price.
Of fifty dollars. Yeah, wow, okay, okay, anyway, it's
yeah prescription golf dot com. Gocheck it out if you're if you're fascinated
(57:42):
by that. Yeah. Oh,man, Jim, you know I've I've
kept you on for quite a whileonly because I know what a momentous occasion
it is for here, for uson the Golf Smarter podcast to have someone
of your stature. And I didn'twant to let you go. I had
too many questions after reading the bookand enjoying the book greatly, and I
(58:04):
got to tell you in our hourand a half together, I've got about
seventeen epiphanies here, and I feelso much. I honestly feel so much
better about going out and just trustingwhat I have and not trying to change
everything, correct everything. And howmany times have I played with guys go
oh, I know what I didwrong in that swing. Oh, I
know what I did wrong with thatswing. But right, I mean,
(58:28):
oh I oh I did that.Oh I moved my, I lift my
I turned my you know, shutup, they don't and none of those
things are what happened right. Andnow when I go and play with people,
I'm really going to focus on whatthe ball flight is, and and
it's like, oh, okay,wait, what are you complaining about.
That's the way you hit the ballevery single time. Find and as long
(58:49):
as it's a decent shock and it'ssolid and it's repetitive, play it.
Amous play it and enjoy your golf. And if you want to lower your
scores, work on your putting.That's right in your short game, which
now the short game. The ballfled on your short game is at a
(59:10):
different beast. We're talking about fullswings. Correct, yes, okay,
but the thing, the same thingis true for the short game. You
have to land your club with equilibrium. And if you're not landing it with
equilibrium, it's either your golf swinghas gotten what I call too narrow and
(59:30):
too steep, or your golf swingis too wide and sweety and too shallow.
And all you've got it to guesswhat. You got a fifty to
fifty chance of being right. Justtake one of them, and if all
of a sudden it's a disaster,you know you picked the wrong one.
In other words, if your mistakegot worse, it is you stake somebody
(59:51):
who's chopping at the ball too muchsome would you please swing up on one?
And if they say how do Ido that? You don't want to
often say I have no idea.An athlete, of course I have an
idea, but I don't want totell them. You see, just be
an athlete. Don't chop down onthe thing so much. Imagine not chopping
(01:00:14):
down so much? Do you see? Because if I'm a class of five
year old children and I tell oneof them, would you turn more in
your backswing? I have yet tohave any of them ask me how this
turn more? You see so muchof golf, we don't have to worry
(01:00:36):
about the how, just do theopposite of what is occurring. The book
is called Solid Contact, written byJim Hardy, a legend in the game,
a legend in teaching, clearly thefather of the one plane two plane
(01:00:59):
discussion. Yes, all right,Jim, I really appreciate you spending so
much time with us here on theGolf Smarter podcast. It's been a sheer
joy and education. And boy amI hungry. Let's go Let's go out
and have a salad. All right, thanks Bred
Welcome to golf Smarter mulligans, yoursecond chance to gain insight and advice from
the best instructors featured on the GolfSmarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction never gets
old. Our interview library features hundredsof hours of game improvement conversations like this
(00:21):
that are no longer available in anypodcast app. Golf is a ten thousand
different pieces, all some way gluedtogether. And the ball flights of mystery
and the impacts of mystery, andour swings a mystery. And we've got
timing, tempo, rhythm and balance. We've got a strong grip, a
week grip. You bendo where youstand up, you put the ball forward,
(00:42):
you put the ball back, youmake a long back swing, a
short back swing, you take itstraight back, you take it to the
inside, you cock your wrists,you're across the line, your laid off.
I could go on for hours,but that's why people look at golf.
They look at golf as though we'vegot all the colors of the rainbow
going on, plus all the almsof an orchestra going on, and it's
(01:02):
just too complicated. With another interviewfrom the archives of Golf Smarter, here's
your host Fred Green, Welcome backto Golf Smarter for members only. Jim,
Thank you, Fred, good tobe here with you again. Thank
you. We were just talking aboutyour work with Peter Jacobson, and you
kind of led me into is hethat much fun to work? Do you
(01:23):
get anything done? Or is hejust you're just laughing NonStop. Peter Jacobson
is my very dear best friend,and we have been best friends now for
this our thirtieth year. And wow, I can honestly tell you that I've
been with Peter in every situation.I've been with him raising his kids and
(01:48):
he's been with him raising mind.I mean, no two guys could be
closer. And I have never seenPeter have a bad occasion with another human
being. If Peter were a phony, I promise you somewhere in thirty years,
I deceived it. Peter Jacobson genuinelyloves people. Peter Jacobson is a
(02:15):
genuine good guy. He's even funnierwhen you get to know him than he
is otherwise. But Peter is alsoone of the most compassionate, caring people
that has ever lived. I couldn'tsay and that's good things about Peter.
(02:35):
He is a genuine deal. That'samazing, phenomenal. What a nice thing
to say about a friend. Heis wonderful. When you with all these
great players that you've worked with,with all these great players that you've helped,
What an honorable position that is.I mean, being a teacher at
any level is so honorable. Andfor you to be able to have high
(02:58):
profile students and for you to wantto be kept in the background, that's
that's really. I admire you somuch for doing that. How often does
the conversation turn to ball flight withthese guys, I mean do they Is
it just the naturally is contact swingputting things like that? But when did
When does the Because to me thisseems so radical, the idea of ball
(03:21):
flight. Well, I tell themevery time we talk on the telephone,
all the players, we talk aon where are you hitting it? Where
are your misses? Where is thedivot pointed? What kind of divot are
you making? Tell me about Tellme about this club, Tell me about
that club, Tell me about thatshop. Because I know what's wrong with
(03:44):
her swing by them telling me there. In other words, if I'm when
I have a new student and I'llsay, okay, where are you hitting
the driver when you miss it everywhere. No, you're not missing it everywhere,
you know. If you are,you're pushing it and hooking inter pulling
it and slicing it. Which combinationare you see? You can't pull and
(04:05):
you don't pull and push and reallyand you don't cook and slide you and
where's the ball? Ball's left?Well, where's the divot? But I
don't know? Will you better startlooking, you know, because that's important
stuff. And I tell him,don't ever send me a video without telling
(04:28):
me where your misses with this golfclub are going. And don't send me
a video without drawing some lines onit. And they all know the lines
I want drawing on there. Becauseyou have to have a reference point,
you see, and the reference pointhas to be what kind of shots is
your swing producing? Right now?This is and you have to have a
(04:53):
reference point when you're looking at agolf swing. And the most important a
French point is the flight of theball, because that's the end results of
the product. If the swing isthe product, the end result is the
fly. I mean, it's theswing is what we're looking at the product.
The end result is the flight ofthe golf ball. And that tells
(05:17):
me everything I need to know aboutthe golf swing. How you read the
flight of the ball, and howyou apply the flight of the ball and
the impact to understanding your golf swingis the secret to golf. It's the
key to golf. That is.So I have noticed, and I'm just
(05:43):
going to start talking about me now, coach, that I've consistently hit a
fade, okay, a little bitleft to right. I'm right handed and
wouldn't know how to hit a drawif my life, I just cannot figure
out how to do it, norif I worked on it. But you're
(06:03):
saying I live with it, right, and I know that it's like,
okay, there's my target. I'mvery diligent about target golf, about saying
this is where I want to getit, this is I'm aiming. I'm
looking, I'm focused right on thatspot. So knowing that I'm just going
to look a little bit, I'mgoing to aim a little bit left on
my alignment so that the ball isgoing to end up in that spot,
(06:26):
and then occasionally sometimes the ball willgo straight and it's like oops, I
missed. But the sense that Iget, as you're saying, live with
it, embrace it and work withit. Well, I'm going to name
use some golfers that you fall intotheir category, Okay, Greigntadler, Can
(06:48):
I play with them? Bruce,Jack Nicholas, Lee Trevino. I feel
better about my game already right there. If if if Bruce Letsky faced a
shot that required a hook, heplayed a cut, okay, to explain
(07:12):
the difference, please, he playedthe pay, he played a slice,
Okay, he did not hook it. In other words, if if these
guys are smart enough to know JackNicholas played the cut, he didn't play
hooks. If if when I said, Bruce, let's key if the shot,
if the shot to the pin requireda hook, we're going to hook
(07:34):
that one in there, he didn'tdo it. He still play the slice.
He didn't. He'd either either heplayed a high risky cut when it
was going to require a hook,or he didn't go for that ten.
There are certain tins that you don'tgo for. You see, a back
(07:56):
left pen was a hard shot forJack Nicholas, a front right pin was
a giveaway for Jack Nicholas, andwas almost impossible for Arnold Palmer. That
they understood that I understood. Iremember the first time I ever played with
Billy Casper. I played as goodas I could play. We were playing
(08:16):
the Byron Nelson in the third round. I was prepared with him, and
I played as good as I could, hit the ball as good as I
could play, didn't put good,didn't put bad, and I shot seventy
one. Billy Castler played awful,didn't hold a whole bunch of puts,
petted about like I didn't shot sixtyeight. I'm sitting down on lunch afterwards.
(08:37):
When I said, do you mindif I asked you some questions?
I said, he said sure,I said, help me. I played,
hit the ball about as good asI could hit it, came up
with seventy one. I know youweren't happy with the way you hit the
ball today, and it's not likeyou petted like a madman and you shot
sixty eight. Where am I goingwrong? And he said, you don't
(09:01):
hit the He said, you don'tconcentrate on solely hitting the ball the right
distance with your ironshots. He said, you're too busy flagging the ball at
the pen every time, because youcan do that. And he said when
you mishit a little bit, hesaid and he named off of you that
(09:22):
I had a thirty foot downhill puttthat was impossible to two put or buried
it underneath the lift of a bunkor twice. And he said, if
you notice, he said, afifteen foot right or left of the hole
is the same length putt as afifteen foot or short or past the hole.
You don't always have to aim atthe hole, but what you always
(09:43):
have to understand is the part ofthe green or the position on the green
you're putting trying to put the ballinto how far to hit it to there?
And I went back over here.We went back over Billy's round.
And Billy never took a risk,never if he knew which pins his ball
(10:03):
flight could shoot at and which pinsit couldn't. And when he had a
tin like a back left pin,a low hawk's going to get back there,
he knocked at stiff. If hehad a right front pin, he
would just put the ball about fifteenfeet left of the pin and just passed
it. And he knew it,even he knew he could play off that
(10:26):
way. And all of a suddenit opened my eyes to the fact that
all Billy Casper was doing was hittinga predictable shot, even though it wasn't
a shot that would be the ultimateshot to shoot at that tin. He
knew he could put the ball outthere twelve feet left of the pin,
and he knew he had a prettygood chance of holding that twelve footer,
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and for him, for his ballflight, wasn't going to take a risk,
And that was a big That wasa big eye opener for me,
sure, and so for you.If you can play a cut every time,
first of all, you should alwaysbe playing two shots, a straight
ball and a hook, a straightball and a cut, and never let
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the straight ball hurt you. Yousee, Let's say that you know you
can cut it every time, andyou want to put it down the left
side of the fairway. That's fine, just saying a little left of the
faraway. But if all of asudden I said, there's water left the
fairway and you're playing the eighteenth dolldrill, well, don't name the ball
over the water unless you're absolutely onehundred percent sure it's going to cut,
(11:35):
which Brimswitzka and Craig Saddler were.But most of the time I would say,
well, aim down the left sideof the faraway and play a cut.
You see the difference because daming downthe left side of the faraway playing
a cut. If it doesn't cut, if it's a straight ball, you're
still in play. If you cutit, you're still in play. It's
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when you go over the water honorwith a cut and you don't cut it,
you're not okay. And that's justa misplayed strategy shot. I once
was doing an interview with somebody Ihonestly don't remember what it was, but
they said that Tiger Woods has noego on the course and I'm like,
what he said? He has noego? And I'm like, what are
(12:20):
you talking about? We had alreadybeen through all the Tiger's problems and it's
like, what do you mean?As he goes Tiger will never take a
shot on the course that he hasn'tpracticed a thousand times. I will say
that there's that there's some truth tothat, particularly into the Green. But
Tiger hits a lot of terrible drives, yeah, terrible drive yeah, and
(12:43):
so he's trying to do something withthat driver they shouldn't be trying to do
so I would I would say thatinto the Green, I would very much
agree with that. Yeah, he'svery creative off the off a bad drive,
right, yeah, amazing. Let'sget into your book please, And
(13:03):
I'm sorry I've dragged this out becauseI'm that makes so much fun. So
in solid contact you have a systemof plus and minus to help you correct
where well. You know, lifeis a balance, no matter what you're
doing, You're always trying every singleday when you wake up, you're just
(13:24):
trying to find a balance. Sureyou know of this is good today,
that it was bad yesterday, thisis bad today, and who knows what's
going to be next week. You'realways trying to find just to get you
through the end of the day.And you're saying that almost that golf is
the same thing. There's things thatyou do that if you can balance it
out so that you can get toan equilibrium here, just by this is
(13:48):
a plus. This is mind,not an ABC or D or a ninety
percent versus a thirty percent, justsimply plus versus minus. Right, See
everything in golf. Everything in golfis a binary code, an on or
and off, a ying or ayang, a bus or a minus,
(14:09):
a black or white. Everything isand we make it too complicated by thinking
that golf is a ten thousand differentpieces, all some way glued together,
and the ball flights of mystery andthe impacts of mystery, and our swings
a mystery. We've got time intempo, rhythm and balance. We've got
(14:33):
a strong grip, a weak grip. You bendo where you stand up.
You put the ball forward, youput the ball back. You make a
long back swing, a short backswing, You take it straight back,
you take it to the inside,You cock your wrists, you across the
line, your leg off. Icould go on for hours, but that's
why people look at golf. Theylook at golf as though we've got all
the colors of the rainbow going on, plus all the sounds of an orchestra
(14:56):
going on, and it's just toocomplicated. Golf is either on or off.
It's a plus or minus. It'sa ying or a yang. Everything
in golf is either a plus orminus. Everything you do. There isn't
a move you can make in agolf swing, but it's not either a
plus or minus. There isn't aball flight miss, a terrible shot that
(15:24):
has ever been hit that isn't theresult of a golf swing that has gotten
either overly plus or overly minus.Think of a salad dressing if you will.
We've got oil and vinegar the dress. Salad dressing is either just fine,
or it's too hourly, or it'stoo vinegary. That's all we're going
(15:48):
to season our food. Either it'sjust fine or it's got too much salt
or too much pepper. And that'sreally what golf swings are. Golf swings
are just fine. I call thatneutral. I love your word equilibrium.
Buff swings are just fine when they'rehitting solid, playable shots that are predictable.
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It's when our golf swing gets outof whack. When you're not hitting
a solid you're not hitting a predictableshot, or you're not doing it repetitively.
That's when we've got a problem.And how do you know what to
do? Well? When I saideverything in a golf swing is a plus
(16:37):
or a minus, what we're ultimatelytrying to do with the golf club is
get it to swing somewhat along theground, somewhat in the right direction into
the back of the ball. Now, when I use the word somewhat,
a driver is a sweeping club.It either hits level or slightly upward.
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A wedge is a very short clubor a nine iron. We're standing very
close to the ball, and it'sa club we want to hit more down
under and up on. So oneswing with our shortest clubs is more down
under and up, which is moreof a V shaped kind of motion.
And the driver, which is along club and it sits a long way
(17:25):
from us, is more of asweeping club, and instead of a V
kind of bottom, it has likean upside down sea a much longer if
you will time, it's along theground swinging. So in either case,
everything about impact can be viewed likean airplane trying a land. If an
(17:48):
airplane comes in on two steep ofan angle, it's coming straight down.
I promise you there's a lot ofnoise in that cockpit because there is some
kind of computer going pull up,pull up, pull up, pull up.
You're in a dive. You're blahblah blah. You knows in the
back of the plane to that's right, that's right, We've got to level
(18:12):
this thing off. How many times, conversely, have you been in an
airplane when there's rough weather or somethingin and you're circle in the field,
and finally you turn around to theperson next to these, He says,
is this thing ever going to getdown? I've got another plane to catch.
In other words, that airplane hasno angle to land. The land
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the airplane at all, it doesn'tintend to. It's it's flying the level
to the ground. It doesn't havean angle. And golf in a geometry
standpoint is like that. The clubtoo often is coming in at the wrong
angle, which in turn also hasto do with its creating a wrong kind
(19:00):
of bottom to land this thing.A big airplane, like a driver,
a big seven seven needs to havea really long runway and it needs to
land on a really shallow angle abouttwo degree landing path, while a airplane
(19:22):
that's kind of like what we seecrop dusters, trick airplanes, they can
come in on a real steep angleand they only need a very short runway.
If you follow me, Oh no, you've got that for golf clubs.
Yeah, a driver. I'm sayingthat you've given a very good visual
on how to do this. Inthe way I'm seeing it is that with
(19:45):
the plus minus system, that's yourassignment and your grade is your ballflight.
So how do we get that gradethat we want that we're searching for it,
not an ARB or a C,but we consistently. I want the
same type of ball flight correct andusing your plus minus system can bring you
(20:06):
to that point. So what Iwant to know is how what are the
elements that we're looking at, whichis a plus, which is a minus?
How do we balance those out?How do we get to that grade
that we're looking Well, thanks forbringing me back, now that's okay.
I was enjoying the I was goingto ask you if you can get me
there. Certain half of all ballflight misses are caused by a golf swing
(20:30):
that have too many pluses in thembecause you've got too much coming down on
too steep an angle with too shorta runway. Now, those ball flight
misses would be slices, polls,chops, chunks, steep cops, low
(20:51):
traps. There's a number of thoseball flight misses that all are a result
of being two plus. The otherball flights, which would be shallow tops,
pushes, hooks, fats, fins, things like that, those are
all misses because you're too minus.You're circling the field here, you're hitting
(21:14):
straight up on the golf ball.So first of all, your misses are
going to tell you which direction yourswing DNA has all of a sudden found
itself in. Is the salad dressinggot too much vinegar in it? Or
too much oil? Now, onceyou've understood that from a ball flight standpoint,
(21:36):
boy, I'm pulling and slicing andchopping and junking. Okay, you
see all those, and all ofa sudden you realize my impact my golf
swing is producing a plus. There'stoo many pluses in there. I need
to neutralize this. I need tobring the salad dressing back under control.
(21:59):
Well, there are a lot ofthings you can do in a golf swing
that will start to offset all thesepluses. For instance, some of the
things that will do that is themore you turn in the back swing,
the more that's letting the swing movetowards minus. The flatter you swing a
(22:22):
golf club, the more that's movingthe swing towards minus. The weaker your
grip or the more open your clubface is, the more that's moving it
towards minus. The more your weighttransfers to the right leg, the more
you set up with your weight onthe right leg, the more you set
up with a handle and a neutralplace, even or slightly behind the golf
(22:45):
ball. The more the club facewould set pointed to the shaft to the
left at the top would be aminus. Swinging down more inside out would
be a minus. Sliding your hipswould help be a minus. Who would
help neutralize those pluses? Retarding yourshoulder turn somewhat in the downswing, staying
(23:08):
behind the ball more any of thosethings, you see, I could keep
naming them, by the way,and I do name them in the book.
Yeah, and you named a lot. But I just want to ask
you for a definition on one ofthe ones that you just said. I
was following you really well. Whenyou say a flat too flat? Well,
the flatter, See, everything isrelative. It's like adding. It's
(23:30):
like adding our oiler or vinegar.The more vinegar you add. Let's say
that I've got it too oily andI've got to add vinegar. The more
you add. So, if Isaid the more you turn, if I
turn a little bit more, I'mmaking it a little bit shallower. If
(23:51):
I turn a whole bunch, I'mmaking it a whole lot shallower or more
of a minus? Do you understand? Well? What I understand that I'm
getting very hungry, and then Iknow what I'm having. I know what
I'm having for lunch. But describewhat you mean by flat not not.
You know, it's like, howdo I would flatter? A golf problem
that swings verty could to the groundis very upright, Okay, A golf
(24:15):
swing that swings more horizontal to theground would be flatter. Right. So,
as I'm looking at your website atthe planetruth dot com, and there's
an image that passes by, andit's two positions, two people taking swings.
One I would assume is a oneplane swing and the other one is
a two plane swing right right,So is the one plane swing? Is
(24:38):
that the flatter? Yes, thatwould be swinging flatter. Imagine that's a
minor, and that's a minus.That would be a minor, so that'd
be more circling the field. Youfollow me, Okay, I'm with you
now, now, okay, thankyou, And again I'm having And then
if I swung more upright, thatwould be for somebody who's ball flag are
(25:00):
very very minus. And if heswings more upright, he's starting to make
his golf swing more plus. Doyou follow me? Yeah? And I
think that I'm on the upright part. I think, and I've forced myself
to try to bring a little flatterand it's just uncomfortable, and it's it
takes too much thinking. That's notwhere I naturally go. Then then you
would then you would want to doa different one. You would want to
(25:23):
say, I want to turn morein the backswing. For instance, Jack,
let's say your fade got too much. That would be showing a plus
ball flight. That's not want toJim, that's not hypothetical at all.
And let's say you say I wantI want to quit being so plus.
(25:47):
Well, you'd go to the charts. This would be the opposite charts.
How do I move towards minus?How do I neutralize this? You could
take one of Jack Nicholas's keys,You could another word he said, turn
more in the backswing and turn yourhips more. Nicholas used to say all
the time, I don't know whythese people came up with not turning your
(26:10):
hips a lot in the back swing. I turned them as far as I
can. Well, if he didn'tas upright as his golf swing was,
he'd chop, he'd probably slice.So he turned his hips a huge amount
to all of a sudden get moreminus in his golf swing to get more
vinegar in this dressing. That's toooilate, you see. He would do
(26:33):
that. And that's one thing youcould do if you didn't like to flatten
your swing to get rid of allthe fade, that's fine. Just turn
more in your back swing or standa little bit more upright at address.
That will let you turn more.Okay, thank you? See? Yeah,
(26:55):
man, those things are fun toto feel. When I say fun
is there isn't one path you haveto go down. If someone says,
well, you need to flatten yourgolf swing and you on, I didn't
feel right to me? Right,well, good, that's not right to
you. You're what I call atwo planer. You would need to feel
(27:17):
like you turn more in your hipsand your shoulders in the back swing,
maybe even stand a little bit moreupright, which will make you easier to
turn. You see. So asI become an older adult, as we
all are doing, and I havephysical imitations that don't allow me to make
(27:37):
those sort of turns, there arestill pleasans and mine is to help me
compensate absolutely. But I would giveyou one of Harvey Pannicks. He was
a teacher of mine. Wow,is for two painters who were getting older.
Harvey just said, please pick upyour left heel. Relation that lets
you turn more. Wow. Andall of a sudden everybody said, well,
(28:00):
Ben Hogan didn't pick up his leftheel, therefore it's not a fundamental
of golf. Well, it's surea fundamental golf for Tom Watson. He
still picks it up. Wow.It's like, and everybody quiet down your
lower body, don't know you needyou need the other you see. And
(28:25):
that's what I was saying, isall you would need to try out.
And that's what I say in thisbook. In other words, if your
golf swing is two plus, andyou know it is, because the ballfight's
telling you, here's twenty things youcan try, and you're going to find
(28:45):
one of them that works better foryou than the others. And that's the
one you should incorporate. You see. It's not you shouldn't incorporate the one
that somebody doesn't have. Your problemis incorporating. But there's no rule that
says you have to incorporate any anyof them. The one that you incorporate
(29:08):
is the one that feels the bestand gets the best results for you.
I think I'm getting the essence ofwhat we're talking about here, and please
correct me if I'm wrong. We'renot looking for a specific ball flight.
We're looking for a consistent ball flight. We're looking for a playable one.
(29:32):
In other words, your fade isyour natural ballflight. That's a good one,
thank you. It's not good whenall of a sudden you sky the
ball with a driver, you gettoo choppy and chunky with an iron,
or you slice. Now that allof a sudden, that fade is now
no good. Another time a fadecan be no good is if you start
(29:56):
hitting too much in the heel.You see. So it depends upon what
happens with your fade, which ballflight. When you're not hitting, your
fade is your miss, and thatwill always tell you what your impact is
plus or minus, and it willtell you how to get back to our
(30:21):
good salad dressing. In other words, I think it's faded. I think
it's Ade's a great ballflight, youknow what? I think? A draw
is a great ball flight. I'lltell you two ball flights I don't think
are good. A whooping slice anda diving hook. Those aren't good,
do you see? Not good?Not good? No So if your ballflight
(30:44):
from a fade turns into a bigslice or stops being solid, you see,
that's when you would need to say, what's happened to my golf sling.
It's this simple. Your golf slinghas either gotten two plus or two
minus. So we all have anatural golf swing inside of us. We
all have this thing that we're goingto do no matter what, and it's
(31:06):
just a matter of refining that toright. Okay, that's right. Wow,
the coolest world word we could givethe some golfers called the hacker.
That's because they're chopping too much onthe ball. They need to start throwing
tons of vinegar in this thing.They need to start getting shallow things in
there, until all of a suddenthey quit doing it. It's really that
(31:27):
easy, and that's what golfers do, but learn how to play. So
do you prefer balsamic red wine ricevinegar with which that's not the question.
I do like the slight sweetness ofthe selmi. Okay, but that's not
where I was going. No,I actually are instructors today, and there
(31:53):
are a plethora of instructors out therefrom any person who ever thought that they
have a good game and they don'twant to do their day job anymore.
To a kid who just loves golfgrowing up thinking, oh, I can
be a teacher. Now, arethey collectively not individually? Are they doing
us a disservice today by trying tomold our swings into what we do not
(32:17):
do naturally, they are doing awild disservice. One of the things that
my mission is life is helping instructors. I have an instructor certification course.
They can become a Level one,which is kind of the entry level.
They can become a level two,they can become a level three, which
(32:39):
is the top instructors in the world. We have instructors that are certified in
fourteen countries all over Europe, China, Philippines, Australia, South America,
Scandinavia, UK and America. Wehave hundreds of certified instructors and instructors can
(33:02):
certainly come to our website and lookat our instructor certification seminars and come and
learn to be better. But thereal problem is is we have to open
our minds to the golfers in frontof us and quit trying to teach a
(33:23):
one half fits all. Quit trying. The best compliment I ever got was
years ago. I used to teachseveral LPGA players and one of them in
particular's name is Betty Burfight. AndBetty had won the LPGA Championship and a
lot of tournaments and was a sweetheartand wonderful player. But knew as she
(33:45):
was as phasing out out of beinga player, she wanted to teach,
and so she used to come andwatch me teach. And after about the
fifth time she watched me teach,she said, I'm not getting any better
at all understanding what you do.I said, what do you mean,
Betty, And she said, well, she said, I see these golfers
(34:05):
come take a lesson from you,and they come and they're hitting the ball
terrible, and quite frankly, theydon't have a very good swing, and
they leave and I don't see muchdifference in their golf swing, but they
hit the ball wonderful. And shesaid, oh, I know what the
heck you're doing. Yeah, thatwas all crux in the matter. And
(34:29):
here's our problem in golf. Howmany people have gone up to Jim Furich
and said, Jim, could yougive me the name and number of your
teacher because I sure like your golfswing. Huh. I know, I
think they would say, Jim,would you teach me how to do what
you do? Sure? Yeah,But here's the tragedy. Jim Furik,
(34:51):
for a ten year period of time, used to lead the all around stats
on the PGA Tour, which meantthat Jim Cirek was the best hittering golf.
Meanwhile, we're out there trying tocopy Ernie ELS's swing, who virtually
has disappeared from the top levels ofthe golf seat. Why because his swing
(35:12):
is pretty and Jim Furicks isn't.But Jim six is more consistent or well,
I mean live. I just saidhe led for ten years every year
they all around ball hitting statistics.So what's wrong with Ernie these days?
Ernie swing is no longer reliable becausehe's got too many minuses in his swing
(35:36):
by a bunch. Wow, itstill is pretty. It is still pretty.
Ernie hits a ton of fat,thin pushes and hooks. Every one
of those is a minus minus ballflight. You see how many and how
many swings did it? Crazy?Yeah, it's gorgeous and it's all and
(35:58):
you know it's because it's so smooth. It's so rhythmic, it's you know
it doesn't it looks effortless. There'sno question looks effortless. Where we all
know about Fuorick, even those whodon't follow know about Fuerick. How many
swings does it take for you tosee uh one? And you'll you know
where to go. I know wherehis missions are going to be. I
(36:20):
know what is good shots are goingto be, His good clubs are going
to be, what his bad clubsare going to be. I know the
whole thing. I know his history. I can put my arm around him
and say, you can't hit thisball and this ball with this club into
this situation, and this is whyWow, and I for years I've been
you're really gonna you're going to ruinsome of my jokes. But I mean,
(36:43):
it's like, you know, Isay to people all the time,
it's like, yeah, you hada great golf shot. You just once
the ball leaves the club face,you're totally out of your control. But
what you're saying is that's where thecontrol begins. Once that ball gets in
the air and you can see whereit's going, you can learn so much
from that. That tells me thingabout his golf swing. Wow, that
is right, that it tells tellsme what's happening in his golf swings and
(37:08):
uh if if And that's where we'reblinded in golf instruction right now. It's
almost as though we're giving lessons togolfers indoors into a net and you just
put a lot of business right becausethey're they're hitting balls into a net and
(37:30):
they're telling you all these things,and they don't talk about the people's ball
flight. But can you imagine howmany bells and whistles would go off if
we hooked up Lee Trevino or JimFury, or really Jack Nicholas or Arnold
Palmer or Boba Watson, for guy'ssakes, if we hooked them up to
(37:55):
Ernie ELS's model and we had aproduct on that was going to give all
the readings of us, well,sirens would start going off a foot into
the backswing, you see, andthey would continue to have different bells and
whistles screaming at us you're wrong,wrong, long, long, long,
(38:15):
long, long. Except if Ibuilt one that had a club face,
a swing path, an angle ofhit, and a width to the bottom
of the swing on it, andit only registered what happened at impact.
That's the machine we're trying to build, you see, We're trying to build
(38:38):
the machine that will bring the clubback to square delivered in a good direction
on a nice angle, and dothat repetitively. That's what we're trying to
build, not all this sort ofstuff. And right now, whenever you
see a golfer who is failing onthe PGA Tour, they're not sailing because
(39:01):
they're swinging. Is not pretty orwhat have you. They're swinging because the
correct bells and whistles didn't go offrelative to bringing the club back into the
back of the ball. Jim,this is awesome. This is awesome,
(39:22):
and it's almost too simple for golf. Golf needs to be complicated or it
will never succeed. I mean,it's a multi billion dollar business because it's
too complicated. Well we've made itthat hapily. Well yeah, but isn't
that why more people are leaving thegame than starting. Because it's too hard.
(39:42):
I mean, forget about that.It takes too long and it costs
too much. It's too hard,and we continue to make it harder and
and or they don't want the timeand effort investment to learn how to play.
They see that, they take aseries of five lessons, and they're
(40:04):
as bad or worse than they wereafter their five after the fifth lesson then
they were when they started. Yousee, it's and it's so complicated to
them, especially women women who arenot have haven't grown up playing but a
lot of bat and ball games,you know, and all of a sudden
(40:27):
they can't hit it, and theygo, look, this is easier,
this hit the tennis ball because we'vegot it so corruptibly complicated? Is that
because the ball's not moving and wehave to think about it just sitting there
and we're staring at it and thinkingabout it and trying to outwit it.
If I told people, I tellpeople how simple this game is. When
(40:51):
they come to me or come toany of our instructors, they are amazed.
They are amazed. Golf is acircular game played with the ball on
the ground. What do you meanby circular baseball? Any side on game
where you're standing to the side ofyour target line, you see, is
(41:15):
a circular game. Any game whereyou're standing on your target line, usually
facing your target is a straight linegame. You see, we stand and
face a dark board, shuffle board, underhand pitching, overhand pitching, playing
pool, anything where you're on yourtarget line facing your target. The motion
(41:36):
is straight back, straight through.Don't making difference whether you're down here bowling
or up overhand throwing darts. You'regoing pretty much straight back, straight through
and you're looking at your target.Not necessarily right, that's right. Now,
let's go. Now we're to theside of our target line and to
the side of the line of theobject. That's hockey, that's polo,
(41:59):
that's golf. Throwing a discus,it's baseball, it's cricket, it's soccer
style kicking, it's roundhouse punching.You see all those games. Can you
imagine throwing a discus in a straightline? Wouldn't go A javelin is thrown
(42:20):
a straight line. You see frisbeefrisbee throwing. All side on games are
side on baseball. The difference betweena forehand and a backhand shot in tennis
and baseball and golf is simply ballseither on the ground or it's waist high
or chest high. A ball thatyou would pick up in a forehand or
(42:43):
a backhand shot in tennis, Let'stake a forehand shot in tennis. If
you picked it up exactly at theground, you made a golf swing.
Right hockey? Why do you thinkso many? Almost one hundred percent of
all Canadian club PGA golf professionals areformer hockey players. This is the same
(43:07):
game. It's the same game.You skate into your lead foot, you
put the stick behind you, andyou slap it in a circular motion.
Right hockey is golf? Yeah,show me anybody who's played hockey. I'll
let them grab a golf club likea hockey stick, splin handed. For
(43:30):
their first few swings, they say, would you please hit a slap shot?
They never end up off the rightfoot with a stick stuck up in
the air or something. Four handshot in tennis, you step into your
lead foot and you hit it froma You put a tennis racket behind you
to your side and hit it.You see, I'm thinking lacrosse now,
but you can go either way withthat. I will go overhand, try
(43:53):
right. So what is what isour target and golf? The ball or
the spot out that we're to theline that you have now? Asked one
of the pretty cool questions. BenHogan showed something in his book Five Lessons,
Fundamentally, Modern Fundamentals and Golf Thatkills golfers. People talk about it
(44:15):
on television announcers. That kills golfers. We are not swinging at the target.
You are swinging in a circle aroundyou. You see, you're only
square to the target line for threeten thousands of a second. Wow.
(44:37):
In fact, the more you tryand swing down your target line, the
more you are going to fail.Because you're not in an online game.
You're in a side on game.You swing around. The golf swing best
foot is inside to inside. Now, if you can imagine a baseball swing,
it's when the bats. It's up, when the batter is waiting for
(45:01):
the pitch, but then it comesdown and around you in a circular manner.
Do you follow me? Now,just tip that plane of that circle
that down towards the ball. Ifthe pitcher were to roll the ball on
the ground and we had to hitit, they'd make a golf swing.
(45:22):
You are swinging at an object onthe ground while swinging in a circle.
That's all you're doing. You're swingingthrough that object. It's not at the
target. You're swinging around through theobject. That's exactly right. The only
thing that should be swinging at thetarget is the ball. You're swinging in
(45:45):
a circle. Now the circle eitherhits the ball too much while the circle
is swinging downward and outward to theright, or upward and leftward to the
left. Do you follow me?Yeah, that's all. That's all.
And that's just a correction, aplus or minus correction right there. But
(46:12):
if I get I teach all ofour in certify instructors how to do junior
clinics and beginning clinics for women,particularly as I just say, get them
all to stand straight up in theair, pull the golf club out chest
chest to rib cage high and swingthe club around their ribcage and around their
(46:37):
chest back and forth, around them, back in the back, swing around
in the follow through. And thenI said, it's okay. If you
even have some pipes out there witha ball on top of a pipe with
a baseball bat and they're hitting themuntil they can understand the concept of a
circular game, hit them with tennisrackets is fine. Then I have to
(47:00):
his golf clubs. Just as longas they understand the concept of a circular
game, you can have him throwfrisbees. You can have him throw a
discus, you can have them hittennis balls, and can have with a
hockey stick. Anything that will getthem to understand it's a circular game.
Then tell them it's a circular gameoff the ground. Now, there's two
(47:23):
ways to solve that while swinging ina circle. Either one, keep swinging
in a circle and just bend overa bunch until the circle is oriented towards
the ground. I call that aone fine swing. The other one is
don't bend over, just lift yourarms up and down while you're swinging in
(47:45):
a circular game. That's a twofine swing. That's are only two options,
by the way. In other words, if you had a baseball player
and he had to hit a pitchthat was rolling on the ground, he
either keeps swinging the bat around onhis ribcage and just simply bends his rib
gage over until it is facing theball. That would be Lee Trevino,
(48:07):
that's Anthony Kim, that's Roy McElroy. You see, they still swing around
them just bend over, or theywould stand straight up and instead of swinging
the baseball bat around them, they'dstart lifting the club up in the air
and down to the ground and upin the air with her arms while swinging
in a circle. Wouldn't that beTom Watson? Would a baseball pitcher be
(48:30):
better off throwing sidearm than overhand becauseof more motion than the circular motion you
do, I'm going in a differentdirection. You're sorry, shouldn't go there.
You do have both side arm andsubmarine pictures that have all been in
the major leagues. Yeah. Yeah, you see the problem with a side
(48:53):
arm pitcher or a submarine pitcher.Is there only a sect give if you
will, against the batter that's that'sstanding on the same side their side arm,
is their right arm, side armor their hell for a for a
right handed hitter, do you followthem? Yeah, of course, because
a right handed pitcher and a lefthanded hitter. The left handed hitter gets
(49:15):
to see the ball longer than theright handed Yeah, well you see that.
So so you've you've really got overhandhas a chance to throw the curves
and the sliders. You know,the side arm side arm is only going
to get out half, you knowone he's limited and they're usually more releaf
(49:37):
pitchers. Bring him in for theright handed batter or the left handed batter
in depending on what what he is, and then you have to take him
out for the next batter. Okay, yeah, sorry, sorry to go
that direction. All right, butyou've got the idea. There, you
got the idea. One is aside arm pitcher. The other one's a
straight line pick. So I tryto avoid asking two part questions, but
(50:06):
I'm going to do it this time, and it'll be obvious why I do
it. So is there a target? And what is the target? The
target of the golf swing, ifyou will, is around you, is
almost behind you at address. Youare trying to swift swing the club as
(50:32):
hard as you can. Throw theball around behind you. Now, that's
the target of the swing. Thetarget of the club while the swing is
doing that is the ball. Okay, that's the ball. In other words,
(50:52):
I can see someone swing in apractice swing. I cannot see the
effectiveness of the swing without hitting theball. So the clubhead's target is the
ball. The swing's target doesn't endat the ball. It must keep moving.
(51:13):
If you follow the difference, I'mwith yeah, yeah. And finally,
the judgment of the shot is relativeto the target or to our intended
target. Intended target most golfers don't. Most tour players do not aim at
the target. What no, no, they aren't. Even in petting.
(51:36):
There's only eight percent of all tourplayers ever tested that aimed exactly on a
twenty foot put, exactly where theywere supposed to aim. We keep going.
Now you're like, what, Oh, no, that's true. That's
that's that's statistics. Most of themaimed slightly of the roughly nine plus but
(52:00):
did not aim exactly where they weresupposed to run a twenty foot put.
More than half, about fifty fivepercent of those aim slightly left, the
other half the other less than halfaimed slightly right. And we're talking about
the cup of the cup, orof their target line, of the intended
(52:22):
line. In other words, theyhad a straight input twenty feet so I
could say the middle of the cup, okay. And they measured them with
lasers attached to their putter face.And this is intentional. They didn't know
they were doing it. Oh okay, they thought they were. They thought
(52:43):
they were all aiming exactly where theywanted to, but they were no,
and they weren't. Because they haddeveloped a repetitive putting stroke that the putter
face came into the ball to theright or slightly to the left. Now
(53:04):
if their putter face came into theball slightly to the right, those were
the golfers that learned to aim slightlyleft. Didn't know they were doing it,
did not know, didn't know whenthey ran the tests on them,
did not know that they aimed wrongbecause their repetitive motion, if you will,
(53:28):
would be a slight push fade notdidn't show up the pushpay to the
putter. But they kept missing tothe right, and pretty soon they were
aiming more left. Didn't know it. I promise you, what's the same
thing hitting the golf ball. Theonly person that should aim exactly at their
(53:49):
target is the person who can hitthe ball and it finishes up exactly at
their target. Most people don't.The ball finishes up either slightly right or
slightly left, and so what theydo. Fred Couple's aims maybe forty yards
left of his target. Lee Trevinoaimed farther left. Jack Nicholas aimed about
(54:13):
twenty five yards left of his target. Gary Player aimed slightly right of his
target. Ben Ogan name slightly rightof his target. Sam's need name way
right of his target. The easiestway to get somebody who is swinging out
to ind to start aiming at thestart swinging more into out, if you
(54:37):
will, is to wildly change hisaim, wildly change him you see.
Wow, Yeah, it was.It was a startling fact. Let me
go grab the book while we're talking. Here, two guys, Howard Twitty,
(54:59):
and they very interesting man. Anorthopedic surgeon who's a golf fanatic,
if you will, not a golffanatic, but he loves golf, wrote
an incredible, incredible book on puttingand they used so much of the statistics
(55:21):
that were gathered by Sam Hutting LabScience and Motion, which had studied the
strokes of pretty much every single greatplayer on any of the tours. I'm
sorry, I don't have the bookright now in front of me, you
said, Howard Twitt. Howard Tweet. It's a research books. It's self
(55:45):
published in a research book. Butthey went out and did this study and
all of a sudden they found outthat that such few percent of Oh here's
the book called There's More to Creditthat meets the eye and Lanny L.
Johnson m D. Was the onethat wrote it with Howard Twitty, and
(56:07):
I have the Collector's edition, andagain, what's the name of it.
There's more to putting than meets theeye, Okay, And they talked about
how few people, certainly less thanten percent, aimed exactly correct on a
twenty foot print. No, I'mlooking up the book and see if we
(56:37):
can where we can get it.I think it's I think it's self published
and you have to contact probably HowardTwitty. Well it's there is a website.
It's called Prescription golf dot com.There is more to putting that meets
the eye, and it's Howard Twitty, PGA tour player and Lanny Johnson,
(56:57):
MD, Research and Development. Andthey've got a video that just starts right
off. But there you can justbuy it from their website. Five hundred
and fifty plus pages, full color, highest quality paper. Yeah, it's
an amazing book. It has everythingyou want to know and a whole lot
of what you don't want to knowabout potting. It. When I say
(57:20):
that, I don't mean that youdon't want to know. It's it's an
exhaustive study. Yeah. And ifI'm not how I have joked that.
They said they will offer this bookat the cost of an introductory price.
Of fifty dollars. Yeah, wow, okay, okay, anyway, it's
yeah prescription golf dot com. Gocheck it out if you're if you're fascinated
(57:42):
by that. Yeah. Oh,man, Jim, you know I've I've
kept you on for quite a whileonly because I know what a momentous occasion
it is for here, for uson the Golf Smarter podcast to have someone
of your stature. And I didn'twant to let you go. I had
too many questions after reading the bookand enjoying the book greatly, and I
(58:04):
got to tell you in our hourand a half together, I've got about
seventeen epiphanies here, and I feelso much. I honestly feel so much
better about going out and just trustingwhat I have and not trying to change
everything, correct everything. And howmany times have I played with guys go
oh, I know what I didwrong in that swing. Oh, I
know what I did wrong with thatswing. But right, I mean,
(58:28):
oh I oh I did that.Oh I moved my, I lift my
I turned my you know, shutup, they don't and none of those
things are what happened right. Andnow when I go and play with people,
I'm really going to focus on whatthe ball flight is, and and
it's like, oh, okay,wait, what are you complaining about.
That's the way you hit the ballevery single time. Find and as long
(58:49):
as it's a decent shock and it'ssolid and it's repetitive, play it.
Amous play it and enjoy your golf. And if you want to lower your
scores, work on your putting.That's right in your short game, which
now the short game. The ballfled on your short game is at a
(59:10):
different beast. We're talking about fullswings. Correct, yes, okay,
but the thing, the same thingis true for the short game. You
have to land your club with equilibrium. And if you're not landing it with
equilibrium, it's either your golf swinghas gotten what I call too narrow and
(59:30):
too steep, or your golf swingis too wide and sweety and too shallow.
And all you've got it to guesswhat. You got a fifty to
fifty chance of being right. Justtake one of them, and if all
of a sudden it's a disaster,you know you picked the wrong one.
In other words, if your mistakegot worse, it is you stake somebody
(59:51):
who's chopping at the ball too muchsome would you please swing up on one?
And if they say how do Ido that? You don't want to
often say I have no idea.An athlete, of course I have an
idea, but I don't want totell them. You see, just be
an athlete. Don't chop down onthe thing so much. Imagine not chopping
(01:00:14):
down so much? Do you see? Because if I'm a class of five
year old children and I tell oneof them, would you turn more in
your backswing? I have yet tohave any of them ask me how this
turn more? You see so muchof golf, we don't have to worry
(01:00:36):
about the how, just do theopposite of what is occurring. The book
is called Solid Contact, written byJim Hardy, a legend in the game,
a legend in teaching, clearly thefather of the one plane two plane
(01:00:59):
discussion. Yes, all right,Jim, I really appreciate you spending so
much time with us here on theGolf Smarter podcast. It's been a sheer
joy and education. And boy amI hungry. Let's go Let's go out
and have a salad. All right, thanks Bred
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