September 15, 2023 • 39 mins
Jim Waldron is concerned that he’s being too technical when he discusses the physics of ball flight, club face angle, body rotation, and other details that are raging in the teaching community. He also let’s Fred know that most students are more concerned with consistency than accuracy. Originally published on February 14, 2012 as a Members Only episode, so this is really valuable information that is being released to the public for the first time.
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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
(00:20):
that are no longer available in anypodcast app. Avoid anybody who promises instant,
permanent swing like a pro results,it's just not going to happen.
It may happen on some shots inthe golf school, and that does happen
for most of our students in ourgolf school. We also tell people,
look, this is a process ofyour starting. If you think you're going
to come to the school and we'regoing to teach you in three days how
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to swing like a pro, andthat's going to be your swing that you'll
take to the golf course for evenmost of your rounds of golf, you're
kidding yourself if you can't be done. If anybody's promising that level or I'm
talking permanent improvement in three days,obviously avoid those people like to play because
they're liars. You want to expectit to get information that you can use
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for the rest of your life toget better at golf, and you want
to learn how to learn it,and you have to learn from the golf
school how to practice effectively, bothhome practice, which is the most effective
way to practice, and what youdo at the range. With another interview
from the archives of Golf Smarter,here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome
back to Golf Smarter from members only. Jim, Thanks Fred R. Be
(01:26):
Pack. We never left and that'sit. I really appreciate you. I
mean, when we started, Isaid, you got about thirty minutes,
and you went, yeah, fine, and now we're going to go for
another thirty So as long as yourwife lets you have the phone, this
is okay. So we were talkingabout, you know, just in between
(01:47):
the time we were recording, aboutthe technicality here, and you were kind
of apologizing for being so technical.But you know, I don't think that's
an issue. I think people loveto hear this kind of of tech chnical
talk and detailed talk. But yousay, this is just not a common
conversation. This is more like anargument that takes place in the teaching world.
(02:09):
Uh. Yeah, it's a bigit's a big, raging argument.
It has been for I don't know, maybe the last three years, especially
because there's so many older pros guysmy age are even older I'm sixteen now,
who you know, not for notfor bad reasons, but for legitimate
reasons. We're basically, you know, the information at the time when when
(02:30):
when they were younger pros was nota getting out one hundred percent. But
in general, if you look atthe old PG teaching manual especially, it
doesn't say what people offer accusative saying. But over time because some well known
teachers I won't even say who theyare, but there's been some well known
teachers for years taught that the ballwill start on the direction the path is,
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pointing that the club ed is movingmelted the target line through an impact
at the moment of impact. Soif it's so, the club that is
moving just before and just after impactdown the target line, it never moves
in the straight line literally and Imean it's moving in the arc. So
it's the tangent of the arc whichwhen the ball happens to be sitting there
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where the club head approaches the targetline, allosto the straight line not literally
still moving in an arc. Right, But if it's if the clubhead itself
is moving predictionary of the target line. As it hits the ball, the
ball will go straight. Now,obviously that there should have been a what's
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for them thinking of a red warningflag? This is not, you know,
the red warning flags. It's alsosomething that was understood by myself at
the time when I was first comingup in the behaveing in a lot of
teachers. I know, that's assuminga quarters at the club face and goal
is not changing. The problem isthat golf club had is one unit right
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there that this is going we callthe golf clubhead, which is obviously attached
to the shaft, or I justsay the shaft is attached to the clubhead.
But it's possible to swing the clubheadpath in one direction and have the
club based angle pointing in a completelydifferent direction. They don't. There's no
guaranteed the club face angle is goingto be square in the art of the
clubbit path, right, yeah,because you can you can simply though if
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you can, you cannot change theshaft plane angle, which is the way
the same clubhead path, or youcan change the face angle independent of what
the shaft plane or clubhead path is. Some people by rotating the muscles in
your wrists. If you rotate thebuscles in your wrists in a counterclockwise direction,
the clock face angle is going toclose or point to the left.
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If you rotate your wrists to theright to the right in the clockwise direction,
the club is going to be openor point out to the right.
Right. Yeah, and so.But on the other hand, if you
if you have a proper brip andproper grip pressure, and that's two things.
The third thing you learn how tocop your wrists or should more accurately
cock and hinge your risk correctly sothat the clubcase stays square to the arc
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of the path as you do torisk cock and risk hinge, and you
swing on plane, which is theother way of saying, having zero degrees
of a club clubhead path at impact, you're gonna get a pretty straight shot.
Right, it's not gonna go I'mnot gonna go way off to the
right your left, I'm not gonnacurve very much or even at all.
(05:27):
And in the real world, mostpeople who have path problems or other put
this way. In the real worldof golf, most golfers who have directional
starting line direction problems, not curvatureproblems. People who push the ball off
the tea, for example, orpeople who pull the ball off the tea,
they don't have that problem because offace angle. Typically. I mean,
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there are people who do it,for sure, but there's probably less
than ten percent of amerateure golfers.Ninety percent of amateur golfers, if they
pull the ball, they pull theball because they come over the top and
they rewrote the club head half fromfrom on plane to severely out to end,
each pointing to the left to impact, and the club face angle is
basically square to that path or maybevery slightly open more commonly very slightly so
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the ball will start out to theto the left of the target line,
sometimes way left, and then curlmoderately typically to the right. But aren't
aren't the the wrists and the armsworking independently of each other, See like
your path and your your point ofcontact will be different because they don't.
It's not all one unit there.Well, that's part of the challenge of
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Letty good gostomchanis you've got to You'vegot to train the three main subsystems which
are in your pivot, how yourbody rotates, how your upper arms work,
how your right elbow bends and straightens, and your forearms rotate if any,
and your rist cocking hinge. Thoseare the three subsystems good golf swing.
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They work as a team in synchronywith each other, and the result
as a club face angle this day, for most of the swing until just
before impacts, stays square to thearc of the path. That's what you
want, you know, if youwant a backsman where the club face angle
changes not at all. It stayssquare to the path. And you want
a path that's on plane right,not severely into out, not severely at
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the end, which looks simple andclean. You look them down the line
view. If you look at themodels all the on players to pay,
they swim pretty much exactly on plane. Whereas you look at somewhere like pure
he looks like you've got like sixteendifferent loops and depths and curls in his
motion. Right, you can seethe loops that could take place. So
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his piece changing his path dramatically.Right. But if you don't change your
path dramatically, swim the club shafton the proper plane angle, which is
again changing in the proper path,if a way of describing it, and
you don't rotate the face open orshut at all on the backs. When
you keep it square to the arc, then it's just a simply matter of
how you let the clubbed release whenyou let the risk cock angle open up
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on the down swing, do youadd full on rotation or do you keep
the club based square the arct youknow, through impact, or do you
let the let the club face gothe other way. It'll open up a
little bit at some point. Itdepends if you want hit the ball straight,
if you want to draw the ball, if you want to hit a
little fake right. So there's optionsthere, but you don't want is a
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big change if any. If youare going to change the face angle with
tiny bit during release, you don'twant a big change in terms of shutting
it because they'll git a big hookright because it'll be too big a difference
between the path of the face angleand it'll start to the left and it'll
curve more to the left. Andyou don't want a big change in the
face angle to the right because it'llstart to the right of your target line
and it'll curve more to the right. So the reason why people had this
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argument that's just so it's just you'rein the golf wing forums. It's still
raging for some reason. It hitspeople's emotional buttons. Right, People forget
I posted this before. Here's whatI say. In a nutche I say,
here's the deal. It's better tothink about the old ball flight laws
for the for the transition into thedown playing, and even even at thirty
first part release, the old wallflaw laws have more influence on what the
(09:09):
ball does than the new ball flightlaws. Even though the new ball flight
laws are correct from physical standpoint andthe old ball flight laws are incorrect.
And always it's much more important forthe average confer, especially to understand what's
happening well before impact, that is, at the moment of impact, because
there's nothing you can do to influenceimpact. Right. But I have a
question about impact and about my lefthand, and this is a question about
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me, not about golfers. Whenwhen I'm making contact at that point of
impact and contact with the ball,should the back of my left hand where
should it be pointing? It dependson how you grip the club. I
hate to sound like an equivocator,but it's true. Although I am an
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equivocator, it's a kiding. Butit depends how you grip it. If
you grip it really strong with withyour hand, your left hand well over
to the right of the club facewhen you grip it right, So maybe
like you have all your knuckles showing, like a like a Paul Aisinger or
a Fred Couple or a Bernard Longor type of grip right when you say
all my knuckles are showing. Waitwait, wait, wait, just you
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mean that? I can then whenI'm looking down, I can see all
the knuckles on the When you're ina dress and you yeah, on the
left hand, you should if youcan see more than a three knuckles are
more right, and you probably don'twant to have you know, less than
that showing. So if you so, let's say you had three knuckles at
a dress and only have one knuckle. Okay, let's say let's say you
have two and you only you canonly see one knuckle or even half a
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knuckle at impact, you're gonna hita pull hook. If that's it's gonna
start to the left and it's gonnabe well again, assuming your path is
either on plane or out to theright a little bit, you're gonna hit
a pull hook if that's where yourleft hand is an impact right, Yeah,
because you because you rolled your fourcounterclockwise too much, which is why
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if you grip it too strong inyour left hand, you cannot let that
natural momentum type of left form counterclockwiserotation aspect of release happen without hitting even
a severe SnapLock where it starts wayleft barely gets airborne, you know,
just dives into the into the ground. So this is in the opposite.
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If if you look down at adress and you only have a half a
knuckle right, you better you betterbe pretty much have a half a knuckle
an impact if now you've got knucklesshowing. If you those if you really
call reverse roll your forearms and youroll clockwise during release or at any time
during this one doesn't really matter,then the face is going to be open
relative to probably where your path isgoing to be, and it'll start to
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the right and it'll fade to theright or slide to the right. So
well, that's why good is soimportant. You don't want to you don't
want to have I feel like mostpeople, you don't want to have a
severely weak or severely strong grip.You know, which basically means for most
people, if you I don't liketo use a knuckles thing, it's just
it's it's easy to do it overa rate, you know the podcast interview.
But there's actually a better way todo it using a mirror. But
(12:09):
but you know, it'll do fornow. So basically, if you're around
two two and a half knuckles,that's prob and you have your the club
cheft pretty much right where your zipperis, maybe a little bit to the
left of your zipper, then that'sprobably in the ball park and being a
good grip. When I address theball, I can see two knuckles,
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okay, but when I make contact, I can see three maybe four okay,
and it's not good is open?Yeah, I think you're gonna shit
a loss license. I'm gonna hitthe ball, it's gonna fade or it's
gonna slide again. Assuming if youhave an if you swing on plane her
you have a good clubhead path,that ball is gonna start to the right
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of your target line and it's gonnaslice off to the right even further.
Now, in reality, most proshave good grips. They don't have extremely
strong or extremely weak grips. Thereare exceptions of sucking. Most pros have
around the two knuckles right and there, and the right hand is pretty similar.
It's not way underneath the shaft orway over to the pointing to the
left. It's pretty much close tomimicking the left hand in front of the
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just well I'm talking about I'm talkingrelatives the club face. I mean,
they don't have they don't have theirthey don't have their right hand too far
to the right or too far tothe left. It's sort of, you
know, it's a little bit.Most pros have both palms a little bit
anywhere from ten to twenty degrees tothe right of the club face angle when
they hold on to the club whichmeans the vs, which I think are
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better than the knuckles, the VSbetween the V being there, Yeah,
yeah, that V will point somewhereup between their right ear and the tip
of their right shoulder. Most ofthem are right almost exactly in the middle
between those two extremes, between theirright ear and their right shoulder, right
in the middle. There would neverhave noticed that position on my hand at
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impact if it wasn't for the workI've been doing on the range with the
tourist striker. Uh huh. It'samazing to me how much I learned about
my swing with just one bucket withthat tourist striker. Because you're trying to
you're doing that mistake because you don'ttrust the idea that if you hit down,
go up. You're trying to addloft by opening the face you're subconsciously
do. I know you've been doingit consciously, but your subconscious mind thinks,
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if I hit down with this tourwith any club, not just a
dour striker, I'm gonna drive theball deeper into the grounds. That's not
even good airborne. And so whathappens is this is this is the beauty
of the what I call the mindbody connection. Your subconscious sends an impulse
to the muscles in your left farmand you reverse roll. You roll clockwise,
which adds a offt to the faceand also makes the point off to
the right bolt at the same time, and you're probably gonna be flipping your
(14:48):
wrist sideways to your right. Riskis they probably flip, you know,
towards the target to the left right, and that will also add loft,
although little shut the face is theopposite effect. But the point is you're
you're gonna drive to one or oneor both of those things at the same
time to add loft to try toscoop it. And that's you know,
(15:11):
that's what I spent a lot ofmy time. I make a lot of
my living. I probably make twentypercent of my annual income teaching people not
to do that seriously, which iswhy I liked Why I like Martin's Adventure,
I like the Tour Striker. Ithink it's a great, great training
a. Yeah, he has comeup with something really really because I you
know, I get thrown to thesetraining aids all the time and I'm like,
but this one, Like as soonas I as soon as I hit
(15:35):
a ball with I was like,oh, it makes so much good light
it really is. It made somuch sense to me. And he's a
great guy, and I'm just sohappy for him that you know that he's
come up with something that works andthe people love and you know, I
mean, and it just makes somuch sense. That's why, you know,
(15:56):
from a teaching standpoint, I alwayssay I keep iterating, and every
podcast I tell I've said this toyour listeners. You know, it doesn't
matter what you think intellectually your bodyonly listens to your subconscious when you're moving
at normal speeds in any sport.Now if you're moving in super slow motion,
yeah, then your intellectual mind cancontrol your body. But you can't
(16:17):
play golf in slow motion, youknow. William James said it. I
think I've used this quote before withyou, you know, the founder of
American psychology said back, and Ithink it was in nineteen o five.
He said, in a conflict betweenthe will in parentheses conscious mind and the
imagination in my parenthesis against subconscious mind, the imagination always wins. Always.
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If you want to lose weight onlyat the level of intellectual understanding, and
your subconscious wants to keep eating youknow, a lot of sugar, a
lot of a lot of carbs,you're going to fail at your weight loss
program. You have to want tochange at a deeper level of your of
your mind for the change to you, for the change to become a reality.
(17:03):
And it's the same way in teachinggolf. I mean, I had
a guy who was who was scoopingso bad trying to addle off, and
we've tried everything before before the tourstriker, which I got last summer,
I tried for two hours everything Iknow, and the guy wasn't really getting
better, right. I finally tookhim. We're lucky because the front of
our range and we get this passedto where the range is cut, you
know short for people hit off ofit. It goes down on about a
(17:25):
forty five angle on a hill forabout maybe thirty feet. And the only
way I got this guy he hitdown was to have him hit off a
forty five degree angle downward slope,and I said, let your back leg
go forward so it crosses over yourfront leg just after impact, kind of
like that Gary player walk through drilling, you know people thought. And finally,
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after an hour of doing that,he was hitting down. And of
course as soon as he hit down, the balling up in the air really
high and he finally got it.But until then it was like a wrestling
match between me and his subconscious.That's what it is. That's why I
do all day. You're not goingto win. I do win eventually because
I'm good, but sometimes I needmore time, which just gets back to
(18:11):
the golf schol by way. That'sthe advantage of a golf school in an
all day format versus a one hourlesson you have more time to finish and
win the wrestling match with the studentssubconscious, because that's literally what that's the
big advantage of doing an all dayboot camp eight hour a day total emerging
golf school. We wear down theold movement patterns because we help We helped
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the students have more and more.It's not just one light bulb than three
days. It's like it's like,you know, five or six or eight
or ten light bulbs a day forthree days in a row. Right,
Well, how does somebody when whensearching for a golf school, how do
they know that they're on the righttrack? I mean, what should they
be looking for? What? Youknow? They because there's so many golf
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schools out there's so many opportunities,and you really you've never were with these
people before. He most likely you'regoing to travel to go to do this,
and you know the follow up Now, Luckily, because of the web,
you can do follow up. That'sgreat because you really need that.
But how do you know this isgoing to be the right school? What
is it that we should be leting? If I was, Yeah, if
I was a golf school consumer,here's what I would think. First of
(19:18):
all, you've got, you've got. You've got to realize what the expectations
of the average probably the average golfer, to put it moddly, has unrealistic
expectations for how to go about improvingtheir game. They it's like that guy
I mentioned, He didn't he thoughthe was at graduate school level of learning
and training and he was still inpreschool. He just didn't know it right.
(19:41):
So you know what you do is, first of all, avoid anybody
who promises instant, permanent swing likea pro. Results. It's just not
going to happen. Now, itmay happen on some shots in the golf
school and our and that does happenfor most of our students in our golf
schools. We get people get someof their shots like a pro. But
(20:02):
we also tell people before they signup, look, this is a process
that you're starting. This is ajourney. If you think you're going to
come to the school and we're goingto teach you in three days how to
swing like a pro after you leave, and that's going to be your swing
that you'll take to the golf coursefor even most of your rounds of golf,
you're kidding yourself. And then Iusually say it's a joke. By
(20:22):
the way, we do have thatschool, that that one costs a million
dollars. You get what you payfor, right if you can't be done,
If anybody's promising that level, I'mtalking permanent improvement in three days.
The obviously avoid those people like toplay because they're they're they're liars, right
there, Connors. What you wantto expect is to get information that you
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can use for the rest of yourlife to get better at golf. Right,
even if it's just again the earlystage of learning, even even though
it will be only theoretical, youwant rock solid information and you want to
learn how to learn it. Myoperating assumptions of my students don't know how
to learn it, because I knowfrom twenty years of doing this that ninety
five autom one hundred people have noidea how to learn golf skills. They
(21:10):
don't know there are rules for learningeffectively, and so we cover that in
the first day, the morning ofthe first day especially, and you have
to learn from the golf school howto practice effectively, both home practice,
which is the most effective way topractice, not range practice, but there
also is in need for some rangepractice So there's two types of practice.
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What you do at home, whichis probably eighty percent of that slow motion
mirror work, and what you doat the range. And there are rules
for effective practice. So if they'regoing to teach you how to learn,
what to learn, the content andmechanics, the information, and how to
practice it sold that for you hitnumber four on the list, you end
up at some point in the futureand not ten years out. But we're
(21:55):
like, you know, three monthsout, six months out, nine months
out, you start to strike theball significant will be better most of the
time eighty percent of the time ormore often. That should be your goal.
Not not to expect to walk awaybut after three days with a new
golf swing. But you know,people tell us that all the time.
People go, oh, I almostdidn't come because I knew my buddies would
tease me if I took this golfschool, spend all this money for three
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days, and if I come back, I'm not like, you know,
a thousand percent better at ball striking, They're going to tease me and say
you wasted your money. I go, can you name any other skill based
activity in the world that if youwent away for three days you'd be expected
to perform like a professional or evenclose to a professional. If you went
to a violin camp or a pianocamp for three days and none of your
(22:37):
none of your music friends would wouldsay to you, Oh, you're still
playing rock monet off really badly?Why all right? Why aren't you playing
like a pro? Why aren't youplaying the violin like eatsa prolman? What's
the matter? What happened is thatdraw school ripped you off. Yeah,
it's incremental, and you've got toaccept that it's going to be incremental,
not exponental exactly. It's a process. So that's that's what people should expect.
(23:02):
You know. In the irony isthe people who come to us,
even though they hear this, it'son our website. We tell people,
you know, because you know,the more successful you are as a teacher,
the more the more of those kindof students flock to you because they
hear about you and the media orfrom from word of mouth that you're a
great teacher, and they assume thatyou have some kind of magic touch that
you're gonna you know, you're gonnatouch their shoulder. They're gonna become instant
better ball striker. So it's evenharder for people like myself with kind of
(23:25):
national reputations, right, because weget that type of person. So the
irony is the people who come tous who with exactly the opposite attitude.
So I have zero expectations. Infact, people say to me, I
don't expect to improve at all inthe next week, and I'm probably gonna
be worse when I leave, Andof course that never happens. People always
leave better than when they started,right, Most people are significantly better.
(23:47):
Again, not permanent yet because theyhaven't had time to make it a habit,
but they have. They're definitely hittingthe ball better than when they first
arrived. But the guy who hasthat attitude, who has zero expectation is
the guy who improves the most inthe three days. And the guy who
thinks he's going to learn it allin three days is the one who struggles
the most. Isn't that weird?Yeah? Yeah, So that that should
be a lesson to all your listeners. The more you expect, the more
(24:11):
yourself sabotage, right right, right, Yeah, expectations you're gonna lose.
Yeah, absolutely, You're getting yourbecause you literally get in your own way
it retards learning. And if youhave now expectations, you can't be disappointed.
(24:33):
If you have now expectations, youcan't be disappointed. Yeah, Well,
when you have no expectations, onething happens is you've got these we
call the three centers. You've gota mental center, a movement or body
center, and an emotional center.And they're all three. Is what we
have. A triangle is our logofor a company. All three influence.
Each of those three centers influence theother two. Right, So you could
have a PGA Tour Pro level mentalcenter, be mean, the ability to
(24:56):
focus your mind, and we talkedabout in the last podcast a couple of
months ago. You could have aPGA Tour Pro body in terms of fitness,
core flex core strength, flexibility,body awareness, feel sense awareness.
Right, and you could have aseverely neurotic woody allmen, you know,
Nebbish kind of you know what I'mtalking about, kind of uh yeah,
(25:18):
in that bish you know, Yeah, you know, I know all the
words. I'm Irish Catholic, II grew up in Jewish neighborhood. But
the point is you could have avery neurotic, fear based, anxiety based
emotional center, and it'll retard learningand it'll inhibit you in the other two.
It'll it'll contaminate the other two ofthe mind and the body. So
(25:40):
that's a part of golf that's almostnever discussed. But I mean, the
emotions have a huge impact on howyou learn, how you practice, and
obviously how you play. So wesaid we want a quiet emotional center.
We want to calm, almost neutralfor learning. Especially the more you can
keep your emotions sort of in neutralgear, the better you're going to learn.
(26:00):
But the more you have an egoor emotion attached to having a successful
learning outcome, the harder is itto be to learn. So that means
you have to. You know,if you want to be a good golf
school student, you want to ideallybefore you leave your house to come to
see us or any other girlf school, you should basically be willing to fail,
(26:22):
embrace failure, you to save yourselfsomething along the lines as well.
And then it probably hit a lotof bad shots in the next three days.
That's okay, I'll learned from mymistakes, right, But if you're
the kind of person says as soonas I hit two or two or three
bad shots in a row. Youknow I'm gonna quit. I'm not,
I'm not going to follow the program. Then that that person's not going to
learn anything. And I've see studentstry a new, a new way of
(26:45):
understanding the golfs. Say let's sayagain went back to risks. Let's say
we're working on risk cock and I'vehad a person literally walk away when I'm
halfway into a five minute lecture demonstration, leave the group, which is obvious
people standing around the group in circle, walk over to his teeth, his
little spot on the tea. Youhave a ball, take a full speed
(27:06):
swing in his mind thinking about whatI just said, but not doing it,
thinking about it right, pop theball and looked at me and say,
well that doesn't work. And thena few jim and I'm like,
wait any minute. You didn't dowhat I asked you to do, and
your risk you did your old riskmechanics, and that's why you topped the
(27:27):
ball. There's a difference between thinkingabout doing it and actually physically doing it
right. But again, the personwhose ego, in a very neurotic way,
is so wrapped up in achieving successand avoiding failure at all costs,
that guy is learning dysfunctional for golf. So you you know, you've got
(27:47):
to approach it with a with ahealthy emotional attitude to be successful. One
of the things that you said aboutyour students people who come to your school
is they'll like just the first thingthey'll tell you is I need more distance,
Right, I want more distance?And very common, I would think,
how often do you get people sayI need more accuracy? Not not?
(28:14):
In fact, I'll give you theorder of the three things. Consistency,
accuracy, distance are the three primarygoals for ball striking. Number one
of those three, by far,is consistency. Okay, And how do
they define how do they define consistency? I mean, it's like I had
a guy say to me on thegolf course. He says, you know
what I went for Christmas this year? Two good shots in a row.
I know it's correct. That's That'slike that's like a gambler going to Vegas
(28:37):
and saying I want I want towin, you know when at the roulette
table two times in a row ora blackchack two times in a row.
No, we actually define at fourpeople as most people don't really know.
That has sort of a vague conceptualunderstanding of what consistency means. We tell
people, look, I go,if you could hit somewhere in the vicinity
of your target, not exactly thetarget, but but you know, either
at the target exactly or you know, you know, close to it,
(29:00):
you know you know. If youwant to be more precise, we could
say the driver, for example,the hardest club in the bag to hit.
From those people, let's say theguy's hitting five fairways around right out
of fourteen faraways in a typical aroundto golf, you'll really the driver fourteen
times off the tee. And Iwould say for someone like that, if
(29:22):
they could get it up to youknow, ten or eleven fairways around,
that'd be a pretty one specific wayto find consistency. But in general,
we say, if you could hityour target or close to your target eight
out of ten times on the rangefirst it starts there first before transfers to
the golf course, that would bea reasonable goal. And we define that
as skill. And if you're justthe opposite, if you're hitting, if
(29:45):
you're hitting at or close to yourtarget one out of ten times, that's
luck. Because the beginner can dothat. The total beginner could do that
right, And most of our studentsare probably in there three to five range,
and so they want to move fromsay a four or five till like
a seven or eight. And whenthey get there, they're really happy and
(30:07):
they start and their scores start comingdown. Because the number one stat for
lower scores for all skill ranges,from pros to beginners is greens in regulation.
And that means your first shot,your t shot, has to be
decent because if you if you hitit in the rough and you're an average
golfer, unless you bomb it amile off the tea, you're probably not
going to hit the green and yoursecond shot, so that beats ball striking,
(30:29):
which is you know, it's somethingI've always talked about for years.
It's a guy I call it theshort game myth. The myth is that
short game and putting is the wayis the only way or the main way
to significantly lower your scores. Andit's just not true. I mean,
if you if you don't count thekick in puts, the gimme putts right,
take those away, and putting inthe short game combined are not as
(30:53):
many shots as most people think theyare. Right, And the other reason
Why I say that is if youcan, if you're if your ball striking
skills are good, it automatically transI mean eighty percent of the fundamentals in
the short game are the same fundamentalsas they are in the long game,
which most of my students when theyfirst come to see us don't know.
They think they think there's a wholeseparate set of fundamentals that are completely different
(31:18):
between short game and long game.In the reality, there's a set of
universal fundamentals that are common to both, and there's a set of separate,
unique fundamentals common to the short game. Right, both things are true,
but you're wasting your time trying tolearn the unique aspects the unique short game
fundamentals. If you haven't mattered theuniversal fundamentals common to both first like spine,
angle like balance, like like finishlike riskcock or riskcock, release like
(31:44):
way transfer, like pivot, ifyou haven't mastered the grip, set up,
aim, and alignment. If youhaven't mastered those things that are common
to both short game shots and byshortcames not partting putting a separate game.
But if you haven't mastered those fundamentalsthat are universal, then you're gonna basically
suck at short game, analong game. And I have to believe that the
(32:05):
people come in when when they sayI want to be more consistent, and
you say, well, hit acouple of balls for him me, and
you're standing there watching them and youjust see that you have to make some
major changes in their address, theirapproach, their grip bell, you know
the basics there that they're like,no, no, no, no,
no, I'm fine with that.I just want to work consistent. You
must expect to Part one. That'sthe guy mentioned in Part one. He
(32:28):
thought he had already known all thathe didn't need to know that. Again,
yes, not wanting to be anequivocator. To be honest, Well,
he was an extreme example, whichis why I'm using him right because
his again, the gap between wherehe thought he was and where he actually
was in terms of his physical skillwas way bigger than the average person I
(32:49):
worked with. But the average personI work with has the same quote unquote
disease or rosis, but at amuch much more milder level. But yeah,
most people have never learned the basics. I hear it all the time.
I think get people who are singledigits like seven eight handicaps come to
see me, and they said,oh, for some reason, all of
a sudden, I can't I can'tchip the ball anymore. And then I
watch him chip, and I don'tsay anything. For like, if I
(33:12):
just watch him chip for like fiveminutes and at five minutes they'll maybe hit
you know, you know, Idon't know fifteen chips or so say right,
another fifteen none have what I wouldconsider proper mechanics, not one out
of the fifteen. Without the fifteen, he'll put three or four within a
foot or two of the whole right, and then he'll put you know,
(33:34):
three or four just terrible, noteven maybe not even hitting on the green
or being a way over the greenor way short right, and the rest
will be you know, eight feetfrom the hole right. You'll go,
see I can put three or fourpretty close. And then I say something
like to be honest, because thisis how this is my teaching style.
I go, well, the problemis is that even the ones they are,
(33:54):
even the three that are like youknow, within you know, short
part range to say a footer orthree feet away, those are also mishit
you what do you mean they're missing? They were a mishit. You can
hit it solid, you chunked ita little bit, or you or you
hit a little thin. But becauseyour path and your face angle was good,
you know, they went pretty straightand you got lucky under distance control.
(34:19):
And it's the same though it's thesame flaw that caused the other all
the other shots be much worse.It is present, but it was compensated
for through basically through luck. Therewas your your subconscious is trying to guess
how to do it right if youdon't really know how to do it like
a pro. And sometimes it compensatesjust to write them out to the right
degree for your bad technique, andyou can ship it in the hole.
(34:40):
You can hold it out right stillstill miss hit. There's it has to
sound a certain way of impact.It has to look a certain way to
someone like me who has a goodeye for this, or on video if
you want to tape it. Ithas to have a certain contact with the
ground after impact. You know,not not too much you would did it,
(35:00):
not too much of a downward blow, not too little of the downward
blow, but just just the rightamount of downward blow for that particular shot.
They're trying to hit with that particularclub. So these are all what
I would call laws of shot makeThere's certain things that must occur for it
to be struck properly right, Andmost people don't know what those laws are.
They just know that every once ina while they get it close,
(35:20):
and most of the time they don't. I can't tell you how many times
I've been on a driving range andyou talk about consistency, is hitting their
target, you know, like eightto ten times if they're all lucky.
But people are like, it's noteven a target. I mean, if
they hit the ball straight one time, you know, they'll go, Okay,
I'm ready, I'm done. That'swhat I was looking for. I
(35:43):
got it right. It's not evenhitting a target, it's just hitting it
straight, yeah, exactly, Andso accuracy doesn't fall that high on this.
To me, I would think thataccuracy would be huge conversions for people
who are people who are really reallyhot, handy kappers who slice a lot.
That's obviously number one, although wedon't get as many of those people
(36:06):
as we used to because the technologytoday's it's hard to slice it bad or
looking bad bad. Yeah. Becauseof the game. Yeah, I mean
when I was a kid growing upwith I actually played with hickory shafted clubs
from the from nineteen o three.I think they were my grandfather's clubs.
You didn't, I didn't, notthat old. I played my grandfather's clubs
(36:29):
with hickory shafts. Wouldn't shafts.It was super flexible and the heads were
really heavy. They had they hadlike lead shot and you know, embedded
in the bottom of the soul ofthe club, so which was great for
talking about training, it's like havinga training game. What you want is
a golfer when you're learning is isrelatively flexible shafts so you can feel the
head, so you can feel theshaft bend, you feel the still called
lag pressure, help time your releaseright. And you want a heavy head
(36:52):
to get feedback to so your handswake up. So those are heavy clubs.
Overall they are very heavy, butflexible shaft did with heavy heads are
like the ideal way to learn golfin my opinion. You now you can
hit the real crooked for sure,they're gonna go. But but plus the
ball back then the old round ballota ball you could easily hit one hundred
and fifty yard slices or hooks inthe air one hundred and fifty yards curvature
(37:15):
easy. Wow, And today maybeyou'll slice at fifty yards if you're really
I mean, I can't imagine howyou can possible slice it more than that.
So that hasn't been a big anissue, especially in the last ten
years with these new high tech drivers. But no, it's it's consistency what
drives people crazy, fred is beinginconsistent, particularly in their long game,
where they could hit a decent shotby there. Let's say they're a fifteen
(37:37):
handicap, they hit it, theyhit it like a fifteen handicap in wood
for their average shot, and thenthe follow it with a shot like a
thirty handicapper, and so there's likean identity crisis. The person goes,
wait a minute, am I athirty or a fifteen year who? Who?
Who's who's in control of my body? Right then? If you hit
the third shot like a thirty rightnow, they're going to have a nervous
(37:59):
about to have a nervous breakdown.Writing of course, so this is what
this is the nature of golf.It's right right safely applies to a zero
handicaps, zero hand to get myhit like a plus five like a tour
pro and one shot and like afifteen in the next drives him crazy too.
So well, it's it's playing RayRay Ray Golf, Ray Ray.
Yeah, you don't know Ray.You don't know Ray Ray Golf. I
(38:21):
don't know. Oh you hit oneshot like Ray Floyd and the next one
like Ray Charles. I've never heardthat. That's a good one. I've
been writing this one down. OhJim, it's been great to talk to
you again. Thank you so much, and listen, save travels, best
of luck in Asia and Singapore startingyour school. But I want to send
(38:43):
people to balance Point golf dot comand and check it out. Obviously,
Jim is a very articulate and educatedinstructor, and you should look into speaking
with him yourself, and at thevery least go back into other the older
Golf Smarter episodes that Jim's been onand you're going to learn a tremendous amount.
(39:05):
Thanks so much, Jim for comingback on Fred. Was a pleasure.
Let's do it again sometime soon.
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
(00:20):
that are no longer available in anypodcast app. Avoid anybody who promises instant,
permanent swing like a pro results,it's just not going to happen.
It may happen on some shots inthe golf school, and that does happen
for most of our students in ourgolf school. We also tell people,
look, this is a process ofyour starting. If you think you're going
to come to the school and we'regoing to teach you in three days how
(00:43):
to swing like a pro, andthat's going to be your swing that you'll
take to the golf course for evenmost of your rounds of golf, you're
kidding yourself if you can't be done. If anybody's promising that level or I'm
talking permanent improvement in three days,obviously avoid those people like to play because
they're liars. You want to expectit to get information that you can use
(01:03):
for the rest of your life toget better at golf, and you want
to learn how to learn it,and you have to learn from the golf
school how to practice effectively, bothhome practice, which is the most effective
way to practice, and what youdo at the range. With another interview
from the archives of Golf Smarter,here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome
back to Golf Smarter from members only. Jim, Thanks Fred R. Be
(01:26):
Pack. We never left and that'sit. I really appreciate you. I
mean, when we started, Isaid, you got about thirty minutes,
and you went, yeah, fine, and now we're going to go for
another thirty So as long as yourwife lets you have the phone, this
is okay. So we were talkingabout, you know, just in between
(01:47):
the time we were recording, aboutthe technicality here, and you were kind
of apologizing for being so technical.But you know, I don't think that's
an issue. I think people loveto hear this kind of of tech chnical
talk and detailed talk. But yousay, this is just not a common
conversation. This is more like anargument that takes place in the teaching world.
(02:09):
Uh. Yeah, it's a bigit's a big, raging argument.
It has been for I don't know, maybe the last three years, especially
because there's so many older pros guysmy age are even older I'm sixteen now,
who you know, not for notfor bad reasons, but for legitimate
reasons. We're basically, you know, the information at the time when when
(02:30):
when they were younger pros was nota getting out one hundred percent. But
in general, if you look atthe old PG teaching manual especially, it
doesn't say what people offer accusative saying. But over time because some well known
teachers I won't even say who theyare, but there's been some well known
teachers for years taught that the ballwill start on the direction the path is,
(02:53):
pointing that the club ed is movingmelted the target line through an impact
at the moment of impact. Soif it's so, the club that is
moving just before and just after impactdown the target line, it never moves
in the straight line literally and Imean it's moving in the arc. So
it's the tangent of the arc whichwhen the ball happens to be sitting there
(03:14):
where the club head approaches the targetline, allosto the straight line not literally
still moving in an arc. Right, But if it's if the clubhead itself
is moving predictionary of the target line. As it hits the ball, the
ball will go straight. Now,obviously that there should have been a what's
(03:34):
for them thinking of a red warningflag? This is not, you know,
the red warning flags. It's alsosomething that was understood by myself at
the time when I was first comingup in the behaveing in a lot of
teachers. I know, that's assuminga quarters at the club face and goal
is not changing. The problem isthat golf club had is one unit right
(03:59):
there that this is going we callthe golf clubhead, which is obviously attached
to the shaft, or I justsay the shaft is attached to the clubhead.
But it's possible to swing the clubheadpath in one direction and have the
club based angle pointing in a completelydifferent direction. They don't. There's no
guaranteed the club face angle is goingto be square in the art of the
clubbit path, right, yeah,because you can you can simply though if
(04:21):
you can, you cannot change theshaft plane angle, which is the way
the same clubhead path, or youcan change the face angle independent of what
the shaft plane or clubhead path is. Some people by rotating the muscles in
your wrists. If you rotate thebuscles in your wrists in a counterclockwise direction,
the clock face angle is going toclose or point to the left.
(04:43):
If you rotate your wrists to theright to the right in the clockwise direction,
the club is going to be openor point out to the right.
Right. Yeah, and so.But on the other hand, if you
if you have a proper brip andproper grip pressure, and that's two things.
The third thing you learn how tocop your wrists or should more accurately
cock and hinge your risk correctly sothat the clubcase stays square to the arc
(05:06):
of the path as you do torisk cock and risk hinge, and you
swing on plane, which is theother way of saying, having zero degrees
of a club clubhead path at impact, you're gonna get a pretty straight shot.
Right, it's not gonna go I'mnot gonna go way off to the
right your left, I'm not gonnacurve very much or even at all.
(05:27):
And in the real world, mostpeople who have path problems or other put
this way. In the real worldof golf, most golfers who have directional
starting line direction problems, not curvatureproblems. People who push the ball off
the tea, for example, orpeople who pull the ball off the tea,
they don't have that problem because offace angle. Typically. I mean,
(05:48):
there are people who do it,for sure, but there's probably less
than ten percent of amerateure golfers.Ninety percent of amateur golfers, if they
pull the ball, they pull theball because they come over the top and
they rewrote the club head half fromfrom on plane to severely out to end,
each pointing to the left to impact, and the club face angle is
basically square to that path or maybevery slightly open more commonly very slightly so
(06:12):
the ball will start out to theto the left of the target line,
sometimes way left, and then curlmoderately typically to the right. But aren't
aren't the the wrists and the armsworking independently of each other, See like
your path and your your point ofcontact will be different because they don't.
It's not all one unit there.Well, that's part of the challenge of
(06:35):
Letty good gostomchanis you've got to You'vegot to train the three main subsystems which
are in your pivot, how yourbody rotates, how your upper arms work,
how your right elbow bends and straightens, and your forearms rotate if any,
and your rist cocking hinge. Thoseare the three subsystems good golf swing.
(06:56):
They work as a team in synchronywith each other, and the result
as a club face angle this day, for most of the swing until just
before impacts, stays square to thearc of the path. That's what you
want, you know, if youwant a backsman where the club face angle
changes not at all. It stayssquare to the path. And you want
a path that's on plane right,not severely into out, not severely at
(07:18):
the end, which looks simple andclean. You look them down the line
view. If you look at themodels all the on players to pay,
they swim pretty much exactly on plane. Whereas you look at somewhere like pure
he looks like you've got like sixteendifferent loops and depths and curls in his
motion. Right, you can seethe loops that could take place. So
(07:38):
his piece changing his path dramatically.Right. But if you don't change your
path dramatically, swim the club shafton the proper plane angle, which is
again changing in the proper path,if a way of describing it, and
you don't rotate the face open orshut at all on the backs. When
you keep it square to the arc, then it's just a simply matter of
how you let the clubbed release whenyou let the risk cock angle open up
(08:01):
on the down swing, do youadd full on rotation or do you keep
the club based square the arct youknow, through impact, or do you
let the let the club face gothe other way. It'll open up a
little bit at some point. Itdepends if you want hit the ball straight,
if you want to draw the ball, if you want to hit a
little fake right. So there's optionsthere, but you don't want is a
(08:22):
big change if any. If youare going to change the face angle with
tiny bit during release, you don'twant a big change in terms of shutting
it because they'll git a big hookright because it'll be too big a difference
between the path of the face angleand it'll start to the left and it'll
curve more to the left. Andyou don't want a big change in the
face angle to the right because it'llstart to the right of your target line
and it'll curve more to the right. So the reason why people had this
(08:46):
argument that's just so it's just you'rein the golf wing forums. It's still
raging for some reason. It hitspeople's emotional buttons. Right, People forget
I posted this before. Here's whatI say. In a nutche I say,
here's the deal. It's better tothink about the old ball flight laws
for the for the transition into thedown playing, and even even at thirty
first part release, the old wallflaw laws have more influence on what the
(09:09):
ball does than the new ball flightlaws. Even though the new ball flight
laws are correct from physical standpoint andthe old ball flight laws are incorrect.
And always it's much more important forthe average confer, especially to understand what's
happening well before impact, that is, at the moment of impact, because
there's nothing you can do to influenceimpact. Right. But I have a
question about impact and about my lefthand, and this is a question about
(09:35):
me, not about golfers. Whenwhen I'm making contact at that point of
impact and contact with the ball,should the back of my left hand where
should it be pointing? It dependson how you grip the club. I
hate to sound like an equivocator,but it's true. Although I am an
(09:56):
equivocator, it's a kiding. Butit depends how you grip it. If
you grip it really strong with withyour hand, your left hand well over
to the right of the club facewhen you grip it right, So maybe
like you have all your knuckles showing, like a like a Paul Aisinger or
a Fred Couple or a Bernard Longor type of grip right when you say
all my knuckles are showing. Waitwait, wait, wait, just you
(10:20):
mean that? I can then whenI'm looking down, I can see all
the knuckles on the When you're ina dress and you yeah, on the
left hand, you should if youcan see more than a three knuckles are
more right, and you probably don'twant to have you know, less than
that showing. So if you so, let's say you had three knuckles at
a dress and only have one knuckle. Okay, let's say let's say you
have two and you only you canonly see one knuckle or even half a
(10:43):
knuckle at impact, you're gonna hita pull hook. If that's it's gonna
start to the left and it's gonnabe well again, assuming your path is
either on plane or out to theright a little bit, you're gonna hit
a pull hook if that's where yourleft hand is an impact right, Yeah,
because you because you rolled your fourcounterclockwise too much, which is why
(11:03):
if you grip it too strong inyour left hand, you cannot let that
natural momentum type of left form counterclockwiserotation aspect of release happen without hitting even
a severe SnapLock where it starts wayleft barely gets airborne, you know,
just dives into the into the ground. So this is in the opposite.
(11:24):
If if you look down at adress and you only have a half a
knuckle right, you better you betterbe pretty much have a half a knuckle
an impact if now you've got knucklesshowing. If you those if you really
call reverse roll your forearms and youroll clockwise during release or at any time
during this one doesn't really matter,then the face is going to be open
relative to probably where your path isgoing to be, and it'll start to
(11:46):
the right and it'll fade to theright or slide to the right. So
well, that's why good is soimportant. You don't want to you don't
want to have I feel like mostpeople, you don't want to have a
severely weak or severely strong grip.You know, which basically means for most
people, if you I don't liketo use a knuckles thing, it's just
it's it's easy to do it overa rate, you know the podcast interview.
But there's actually a better way todo it using a mirror. But
(12:09):
but you know, it'll do fornow. So basically, if you're around
two two and a half knuckles,that's prob and you have your the club
cheft pretty much right where your zipperis, maybe a little bit to the
left of your zipper, then that'sprobably in the ball park and being a
good grip. When I address theball, I can see two knuckles,
(12:33):
okay, but when I make contact, I can see three maybe four okay,
and it's not good is open?Yeah, I think you're gonna shit
a loss license. I'm gonna hitthe ball, it's gonna fade or it's
gonna slide again. Assuming if youhave an if you swing on plane her
you have a good clubhead path,that ball is gonna start to the right
(12:54):
of your target line and it's gonnaslice off to the right even further.
Now, in reality, most proshave good grips. They don't have extremely
strong or extremely weak grips. Thereare exceptions of sucking. Most pros have
around the two knuckles right and there, and the right hand is pretty similar.
It's not way underneath the shaft orway over to the pointing to the
left. It's pretty much close tomimicking the left hand in front of the
(13:20):
just well I'm talking about I'm talkingrelatives the club face. I mean,
they don't have they don't have theirthey don't have their right hand too far
to the right or too far tothe left. It's sort of, you
know, it's a little bit.Most pros have both palms a little bit
anywhere from ten to twenty degrees tothe right of the club face angle when
they hold on to the club whichmeans the vs, which I think are
(13:41):
better than the knuckles, the VSbetween the V being there, Yeah,
yeah, that V will point somewhereup between their right ear and the tip
of their right shoulder. Most ofthem are right almost exactly in the middle
between those two extremes, between theirright ear and their right shoulder, right
in the middle. There would neverhave noticed that position on my hand at
(14:03):
impact if it wasn't for the workI've been doing on the range with the
tourist striker. Uh huh. It'samazing to me how much I learned about
my swing with just one bucket withthat tourist striker. Because you're trying to
you're doing that mistake because you don'ttrust the idea that if you hit down,
go up. You're trying to addloft by opening the face you're subconsciously
do. I know you've been doingit consciously, but your subconscious mind thinks,
(14:26):
if I hit down with this tourwith any club, not just a
dour striker, I'm gonna drive theball deeper into the grounds. That's not
even good airborne. And so whathappens is this is this is the beauty
of the what I call the mindbody connection. Your subconscious sends an impulse
to the muscles in your left farmand you reverse roll. You roll clockwise,
which adds a offt to the faceand also makes the point off to
the right bolt at the same time, and you're probably gonna be flipping your
(14:48):
wrist sideways to your right. Riskis they probably flip, you know,
towards the target to the left right, and that will also add loft,
although little shut the face is theopposite effect. But the point is you're
you're gonna drive to one or oneor both of those things at the same
time to add loft to try toscoop it. And that's you know,
(15:11):
that's what I spent a lot ofmy time. I make a lot of
my living. I probably make twentypercent of my annual income teaching people not
to do that seriously, which iswhy I liked Why I like Martin's Adventure,
I like the Tour Striker. Ithink it's a great, great training
a. Yeah, he has comeup with something really really because I you
know, I get thrown to thesetraining aids all the time and I'm like,
but this one, Like as soonas I as soon as I hit
(15:35):
a ball with I was like,oh, it makes so much good light
it really is. It made somuch sense to me. And he's a
great guy, and I'm just sohappy for him that you know that he's
come up with something that works andthe people love and you know, I
mean, and it just makes somuch sense. That's why, you know,
(15:56):
from a teaching standpoint, I alwayssay I keep iterating, and every
podcast I tell I've said this toyour listeners. You know, it doesn't
matter what you think intellectually your bodyonly listens to your subconscious when you're moving
at normal speeds in any sport.Now if you're moving in super slow motion,
yeah, then your intellectual mind cancontrol your body. But you can't
(16:17):
play golf in slow motion, youknow. William James said it. I
think I've used this quote before withyou, you know, the founder of
American psychology said back, and Ithink it was in nineteen o five.
He said, in a conflict betweenthe will in parentheses conscious mind and the
imagination in my parenthesis against subconscious mind, the imagination always wins. Always.
(16:42):
If you want to lose weight onlyat the level of intellectual understanding, and
your subconscious wants to keep eating youknow, a lot of sugar, a
lot of a lot of carbs,you're going to fail at your weight loss
program. You have to want tochange at a deeper level of your of
your mind for the change to you, for the change to become a reality.
(17:03):
And it's the same way in teachinggolf. I mean, I had
a guy who was who was scoopingso bad trying to addle off, and
we've tried everything before before the tourstriker, which I got last summer,
I tried for two hours everything Iknow, and the guy wasn't really getting
better, right. I finally tookhim. We're lucky because the front of
our range and we get this passedto where the range is cut, you
know short for people hit off ofit. It goes down on about a
(17:25):
forty five angle on a hill forabout maybe thirty feet. And the only
way I got this guy he hitdown was to have him hit off a
forty five degree angle downward slope,and I said, let your back leg
go forward so it crosses over yourfront leg just after impact, kind of
like that Gary player walk through drilling, you know people thought. And finally,
(17:48):
after an hour of doing that,he was hitting down. And of
course as soon as he hit down, the balling up in the air really
high and he finally got it.But until then it was like a wrestling
match between me and his subconscious.That's what it is. That's why I
do all day. You're not goingto win. I do win eventually because
I'm good, but sometimes I needmore time, which just gets back to
(18:11):
the golf schol by way. That'sthe advantage of a golf school in an
all day format versus a one hourlesson you have more time to finish and
win the wrestling match with the studentssubconscious, because that's literally what that's the
big advantage of doing an all dayboot camp eight hour a day total emerging
golf school. We wear down theold movement patterns because we help We helped
(18:33):
the students have more and more.It's not just one light bulb than three
days. It's like it's like,you know, five or six or eight
or ten light bulbs a day forthree days in a row. Right,
Well, how does somebody when whensearching for a golf school, how do
they know that they're on the righttrack? I mean, what should they
be looking for? What? Youknow? They because there's so many golf
(18:55):
schools out there's so many opportunities,and you really you've never were with these
people before. He most likely you'regoing to travel to go to do this,
and you know the follow up Now, Luckily, because of the web,
you can do follow up. That'sgreat because you really need that.
But how do you know this isgoing to be the right school? What
is it that we should be leting? If I was, Yeah, if
I was a golf school consumer,here's what I would think. First of
(19:18):
all, you've got, you've got. You've got to realize what the expectations
of the average probably the average golfer, to put it moddly, has unrealistic
expectations for how to go about improvingtheir game. They it's like that guy
I mentioned, He didn't he thoughthe was at graduate school level of learning
and training and he was still inpreschool. He just didn't know it right.
(19:41):
So you know what you do is, first of all, avoid anybody
who promises instant, permanent swing likea pro. Results. It's just not
going to happen. Now, itmay happen on some shots in the golf
school and our and that does happenfor most of our students in our golf
schools. We get people get someof their shots like a pro. But
(20:02):
we also tell people before they signup, look, this is a process
that you're starting. This is ajourney. If you think you're going to
come to the school and we're goingto teach you in three days how to
swing like a pro after you leave, and that's going to be your swing
that you'll take to the golf coursefor even most of your rounds of golf,
you're kidding yourself. And then Iusually say it's a joke. By
(20:22):
the way, we do have thatschool, that that one costs a million
dollars. You get what you payfor, right if you can't be done,
If anybody's promising that level, I'mtalking permanent improvement in three days.
The obviously avoid those people like toplay because they're they're they're liars, right
there, Connors. What you wantto expect is to get information that you
(20:45):
can use for the rest of yourlife to get better at golf. Right,
even if it's just again the earlystage of learning, even even though
it will be only theoretical, youwant rock solid information and you want to
learn how to learn it. Myoperating assumptions of my students don't know how
to learn it, because I knowfrom twenty years of doing this that ninety
five autom one hundred people have noidea how to learn golf skills. They
(21:10):
don't know there are rules for learningeffectively, and so we cover that in
the first day, the morning ofthe first day especially, and you have
to learn from the golf school howto practice effectively, both home practice,
which is the most effective way topractice, not range practice, but there
also is in need for some rangepractice So there's two types of practice.
(21:30):
What you do at home, whichis probably eighty percent of that slow motion
mirror work, and what you doat the range. And there are rules
for effective practice. So if they'regoing to teach you how to learn,
what to learn, the content andmechanics, the information, and how to
practice it sold that for you hitnumber four on the list, you end
up at some point in the futureand not ten years out. But we're
(21:55):
like, you know, three monthsout, six months out, nine months
out, you start to strike theball significant will be better most of the
time eighty percent of the time ormore often. That should be your goal.
Not not to expect to walk awaybut after three days with a new
golf swing. But you know,people tell us that all the time.
People go, oh, I almostdidn't come because I knew my buddies would
tease me if I took this golfschool, spend all this money for three
(22:17):
days, and if I come back, I'm not like, you know,
a thousand percent better at ball striking, They're going to tease me and say
you wasted your money. I go, can you name any other skill based
activity in the world that if youwent away for three days you'd be expected
to perform like a professional or evenclose to a professional. If you went
to a violin camp or a pianocamp for three days and none of your
(22:37):
none of your music friends would wouldsay to you, Oh, you're still
playing rock monet off really badly?Why all right? Why aren't you playing
like a pro? Why aren't youplaying the violin like eatsa prolman? What's
the matter? What happened is thatdraw school ripped you off. Yeah,
it's incremental, and you've got toaccept that it's going to be incremental,
not exponental exactly. It's a process. So that's that's what people should expect.
(23:02):
You know. In the irony isthe people who come to us,
even though they hear this, it'son our website. We tell people,
you know, because you know,the more successful you are as a teacher,
the more the more of those kindof students flock to you because they
hear about you and the media orfrom from word of mouth that you're a
great teacher, and they assume thatyou have some kind of magic touch that
you're gonna you know, you're gonnatouch their shoulder. They're gonna become instant
better ball striker. So it's evenharder for people like myself with kind of
(23:25):
national reputations, right, because weget that type of person. So the
irony is the people who come tous who with exactly the opposite attitude.
So I have zero expectations. Infact, people say to me, I
don't expect to improve at all inthe next week, and I'm probably gonna
be worse when I leave, Andof course that never happens. People always
leave better than when they started,right, Most people are significantly better.
(23:47):
Again, not permanent yet because theyhaven't had time to make it a habit,
but they have. They're definitely hittingthe ball better than when they first
arrived. But the guy who hasthat attitude, who has zero expectation is
the guy who improves the most inthe three days. And the guy who
thinks he's going to learn it allin three days is the one who struggles
the most. Isn't that weird?Yeah? Yeah, So that that should
be a lesson to all your listeners. The more you expect, the more
(24:11):
yourself sabotage, right right, right, Yeah, expectations you're gonna lose.
Yeah, absolutely, You're getting yourbecause you literally get in your own way
it retards learning. And if youhave now expectations, you can't be disappointed.
(24:33):
If you have now expectations, youcan't be disappointed. Yeah, Well,
when you have no expectations, onething happens is you've got these we
call the three centers. You've gota mental center, a movement or body
center, and an emotional center.And they're all three. Is what we
have. A triangle is our logofor a company. All three influence.
Each of those three centers influence theother two. Right, So you could
have a PGA Tour Pro level mentalcenter, be mean, the ability to
(24:56):
focus your mind, and we talkedabout in the last podcast a couple of
months ago. You could have aPGA Tour Pro body in terms of fitness,
core flex core strength, flexibility,body awareness, feel sense awareness.
Right, and you could have aseverely neurotic woody allmen, you know,
Nebbish kind of you know what I'mtalking about, kind of uh yeah,
(25:18):
in that bish you know, Yeah, you know, I know all the
words. I'm Irish Catholic, II grew up in Jewish neighborhood. But
the point is you could have avery neurotic, fear based, anxiety based
emotional center, and it'll retard learningand it'll inhibit you in the other two.
It'll it'll contaminate the other two ofthe mind and the body. So
(25:40):
that's a part of golf that's almostnever discussed. But I mean, the
emotions have a huge impact on howyou learn, how you practice, and
obviously how you play. So wesaid we want a quiet emotional center.
We want to calm, almost neutralfor learning. Especially the more you can
keep your emotions sort of in neutralgear, the better you're going to learn.
(26:00):
But the more you have an egoor emotion attached to having a successful
learning outcome, the harder is itto be to learn. So that means
you have to. You know,if you want to be a good golf
school student, you want to ideallybefore you leave your house to come to
see us or any other girlf school, you should basically be willing to fail,
(26:22):
embrace failure, you to save yourselfsomething along the lines as well.
And then it probably hit a lotof bad shots in the next three days.
That's okay, I'll learned from mymistakes, right, But if you're
the kind of person says as soonas I hit two or two or three
bad shots in a row. Youknow I'm gonna quit. I'm not,
I'm not going to follow the program. Then that that person's not going to
learn anything. And I've see studentstry a new, a new way of
(26:45):
understanding the golfs. Say let's sayagain went back to risks. Let's say
we're working on risk cock and I'vehad a person literally walk away when I'm
halfway into a five minute lecture demonstration, leave the group, which is obvious
people standing around the group in circle, walk over to his teeth, his
little spot on the tea. Youhave a ball, take a full speed
(27:06):
swing in his mind thinking about whatI just said, but not doing it,
thinking about it right, pop theball and looked at me and say,
well that doesn't work. And thena few jim and I'm like,
wait any minute. You didn't dowhat I asked you to do, and
your risk you did your old riskmechanics, and that's why you topped the
(27:27):
ball. There's a difference between thinkingabout doing it and actually physically doing it
right. But again, the personwhose ego, in a very neurotic way,
is so wrapped up in achieving successand avoiding failure at all costs,
that guy is learning dysfunctional for golf. So you you know, you've got
(27:47):
to approach it with a with ahealthy emotional attitude to be successful. One
of the things that you said aboutyour students people who come to your school
is they'll like just the first thingthey'll tell you is I need more distance,
Right, I want more distance?And very common, I would think,
how often do you get people sayI need more accuracy? Not not?
(28:14):
In fact, I'll give you theorder of the three things. Consistency,
accuracy, distance are the three primarygoals for ball striking. Number one
of those three, by far,is consistency. Okay, And how do
they define how do they define consistency? I mean, it's like I had
a guy say to me on thegolf course. He says, you know
what I went for Christmas this year? Two good shots in a row.
I know it's correct. That's That'slike that's like a gambler going to Vegas
(28:37):
and saying I want I want towin, you know when at the roulette
table two times in a row ora blackchack two times in a row.
No, we actually define at fourpeople as most people don't really know.
That has sort of a vague conceptualunderstanding of what consistency means. We tell
people, look, I go,if you could hit somewhere in the vicinity
of your target, not exactly thetarget, but but you know, either
at the target exactly or you know, you know, close to it,
(29:00):
you know you know. If youwant to be more precise, we could
say the driver, for example,the hardest club in the bag to hit.
From those people, let's say theguy's hitting five fairways around right out
of fourteen faraways in a typical aroundto golf, you'll really the driver fourteen
times off the tee. And Iwould say for someone like that, if
(29:22):
they could get it up to youknow, ten or eleven fairways around,
that'd be a pretty one specific wayto find consistency. But in general,
we say, if you could hityour target or close to your target eight
out of ten times on the rangefirst it starts there first before transfers to
the golf course, that would bea reasonable goal. And we define that
as skill. And if you're justthe opposite, if you're hitting, if
(29:45):
you're hitting at or close to yourtarget one out of ten times, that's
luck. Because the beginner can dothat. The total beginner could do that
right, And most of our studentsare probably in there three to five range,
and so they want to move fromsay a four or five till like
a seven or eight. And whenthey get there, they're really happy and
(30:07):
they start and their scores start comingdown. Because the number one stat for
lower scores for all skill ranges,from pros to beginners is greens in regulation.
And that means your first shot,your t shot, has to be
decent because if you if you hitit in the rough and you're an average
golfer, unless you bomb it amile off the tea, you're probably not
going to hit the green and yoursecond shot, so that beats ball striking,
(30:29):
which is you know, it's somethingI've always talked about for years.
It's a guy I call it theshort game myth. The myth is that
short game and putting is the wayis the only way or the main way
to significantly lower your scores. Andit's just not true. I mean,
if you if you don't count thekick in puts, the gimme putts right,
take those away, and putting inthe short game combined are not as
(30:53):
many shots as most people think theyare. Right, And the other reason
Why I say that is if youcan, if you're if your ball striking
skills are good, it automatically transI mean eighty percent of the fundamentals in
the short game are the same fundamentalsas they are in the long game,
which most of my students when theyfirst come to see us don't know.
They think they think there's a wholeseparate set of fundamentals that are completely different
(31:18):
between short game and long game.In the reality, there's a set of
universal fundamentals that are common to both, and there's a set of separate,
unique fundamentals common to the short game. Right, both things are true,
but you're wasting your time trying tolearn the unique aspects the unique short game
fundamentals. If you haven't mattered theuniversal fundamentals common to both first like spine,
angle like balance, like like finishlike riskcock or riskcock, release like
(31:44):
way transfer, like pivot, ifyou haven't mastered the grip, set up,
aim, and alignment. If youhaven't mastered those things that are common
to both short game shots and byshortcames not partting putting a separate game.
But if you haven't mastered those fundamentalsthat are universal, then you're gonna basically
suck at short game, analong game. And I have to believe that the
(32:05):
people come in when when they sayI want to be more consistent, and
you say, well, hit acouple of balls for him me, and
you're standing there watching them and youjust see that you have to make some
major changes in their address, theirapproach, their grip bell, you know
the basics there that they're like,no, no, no, no,
no, I'm fine with that.I just want to work consistent. You
must expect to Part one. That'sthe guy mentioned in Part one. He
(32:28):
thought he had already known all thathe didn't need to know that. Again,
yes, not wanting to be anequivocator. To be honest, Well,
he was an extreme example, whichis why I'm using him right because
his again, the gap between wherehe thought he was and where he actually
was in terms of his physical skillwas way bigger than the average person I
(32:49):
worked with. But the average personI work with has the same quote unquote
disease or rosis, but at amuch much more milder level. But yeah,
most people have never learned the basics. I hear it all the time.
I think get people who are singledigits like seven eight handicaps come to
see me, and they said,oh, for some reason, all of
a sudden, I can't I can'tchip the ball anymore. And then I
watch him chip, and I don'tsay anything. For like, if I
(33:12):
just watch him chip for like fiveminutes and at five minutes they'll maybe hit
you know, you know, Idon't know fifteen chips or so say right,
another fifteen none have what I wouldconsider proper mechanics, not one out
of the fifteen. Without the fifteen, he'll put three or four within a
foot or two of the whole right, and then he'll put you know,
(33:34):
three or four just terrible, noteven maybe not even hitting on the green
or being a way over the greenor way short right, and the rest
will be you know, eight feetfrom the hole right. You'll go,
see I can put three or fourpretty close. And then I say something
like to be honest, because thisis how this is my teaching style.
I go, well, the problemis is that even the ones they are,
(33:54):
even the three that are like youknow, within you know, short
part range to say a footer orthree feet away, those are also mishit
you what do you mean they're missing? They were a mishit. You can
hit it solid, you chunked ita little bit, or you or you
hit a little thin. But becauseyour path and your face angle was good,
you know, they went pretty straightand you got lucky under distance control.
(34:19):
And it's the same though it's thesame flaw that caused the other all
the other shots be much worse.It is present, but it was compensated
for through basically through luck. Therewas your your subconscious is trying to guess
how to do it right if youdon't really know how to do it like
a pro. And sometimes it compensatesjust to write them out to the right
degree for your bad technique, andyou can ship it in the hole.
(34:40):
You can hold it out right stillstill miss hit. There's it has to
sound a certain way of impact.It has to look a certain way to
someone like me who has a goodeye for this, or on video if
you want to tape it. Ithas to have a certain contact with the
ground after impact. You know,not not too much you would did it,
(35:00):
not too much of a downward blow, not too little of the downward
blow, but just just the rightamount of downward blow for that particular shot.
They're trying to hit with that particularclub. So these are all what
I would call laws of shot makeThere's certain things that must occur for it
to be struck properly right, Andmost people don't know what those laws are.
They just know that every once ina while they get it close,
(35:20):
and most of the time they don't. I can't tell you how many times
I've been on a driving range andyou talk about consistency, is hitting their
target, you know, like eightto ten times if they're all lucky.
But people are like, it's noteven a target. I mean, if
they hit the ball straight one time, you know, they'll go, Okay,
I'm ready, I'm done. That'swhat I was looking for. I
(35:43):
got it right. It's not evenhitting a target, it's just hitting it
straight, yeah, exactly, Andso accuracy doesn't fall that high on this.
To me, I would think thataccuracy would be huge conversions for people
who are people who are really reallyhot, handy kappers who slice a lot.
That's obviously number one, although wedon't get as many of those people
(36:06):
as we used to because the technologytoday's it's hard to slice it bad or
looking bad bad. Yeah. Becauseof the game. Yeah, I mean
when I was a kid growing upwith I actually played with hickory shafted clubs
from the from nineteen o three.I think they were my grandfather's clubs.
You didn't, I didn't, notthat old. I played my grandfather's clubs
(36:29):
with hickory shafts. Wouldn't shafts.It was super flexible and the heads were
really heavy. They had they hadlike lead shot and you know, embedded
in the bottom of the soul ofthe club, so which was great for
talking about training, it's like havinga training game. What you want is
a golfer when you're learning is isrelatively flexible shafts so you can feel the
head, so you can feel theshaft bend, you feel the still called
lag pressure, help time your releaseright. And you want a heavy head
(36:52):
to get feedback to so your handswake up. So those are heavy clubs.
Overall they are very heavy, butflexible shaft did with heavy heads are
like the ideal way to learn golfin my opinion. You now you can
hit the real crooked for sure,they're gonna go. But but plus the
ball back then the old round ballota ball you could easily hit one hundred
and fifty yard slices or hooks inthe air one hundred and fifty yards curvature
(37:15):
easy. Wow, And today maybeyou'll slice at fifty yards if you're really
I mean, I can't imagine howyou can possible slice it more than that.
So that hasn't been a big anissue, especially in the last ten
years with these new high tech drivers. But no, it's it's consistency what
drives people crazy, fred is beinginconsistent, particularly in their long game,
where they could hit a decent shotby there. Let's say they're a fifteen
(37:37):
handicap, they hit it, theyhit it like a fifteen handicap in wood
for their average shot, and thenthe follow it with a shot like a
thirty handicapper, and so there's likean identity crisis. The person goes,
wait a minute, am I athirty or a fifteen year who? Who?
Who's who's in control of my body? Right then? If you hit
the third shot like a thirty rightnow, they're going to have a nervous
(37:59):
about to have a nervous breakdown.Writing of course, so this is what
this is the nature of golf.It's right right safely applies to a zero
handicaps, zero hand to get myhit like a plus five like a tour
pro and one shot and like afifteen in the next drives him crazy too.
So well, it's it's playing RayRay Ray Golf, Ray Ray.
Yeah, you don't know Ray.You don't know Ray Ray Golf. I
(38:21):
don't know. Oh you hit oneshot like Ray Floyd and the next one
like Ray Charles. I've never heardthat. That's a good one. I've
been writing this one down. OhJim, it's been great to talk to
you again. Thank you so much, and listen, save travels, best
of luck in Asia and Singapore startingyour school. But I want to send
(38:43):
people to balance Point golf dot comand and check it out. Obviously,
Jim is a very articulate and educatedinstructor, and you should look into speaking
with him yourself, and at thevery least go back into other the older
Golf Smarter episodes that Jim's been onand you're going to learn a tremendous amount.
(39:05):
Thanks so much, Jim for comingback on Fred. Was a pleasure.
Let's do it again sometime soon.
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