September 8, 2023 • 27 mins
Jim Waldron of Balance Point Golf Schools returns to warn us that if your set up is not right, then your ball striking is doomed. He shares a story of one of his students who was absolutely convinced that he had a thorough knowledge of ball striking based on watching YouTube videos, but Jim immediately noticed that he was aiming 30 degrees to the right of the target. In the past, Jim has discussed the mind/body connection and mental game, but he wanted us to make sure that he's actually deeply committed to teaching mechanics too.
This is part 1 of a two part conversation with Jim. He returns next week for a Members Only episode. Originally published in February 2012.
This is part 1 of a two part conversation with Jim. He returns next week for a Members Only episode. Originally published in February 2012.
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Episode Transcript
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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. For the average golfer,
they need more distance, and sothe shot shape that I teach most of
my average golfer students is slight drawwith all of their clubs, starting around
in five or six ron all theway through driver, and the longer the
club, the more of a draw. So they might draw it somewhere between
five and ten yards with their driver, and they may only draw it one
(00:44):
to two yards six if they havecavity back game improvement clause, which most
of my students students days. Startingright around a seven iron, they're going
to go with the splay shape I'mteaching them. The ball won't draw,
the go pretty or maybe very littleand basically straight about a seven yard through
a lot blacher. If they playwith forge blades, it'll still draw a
little bit, maybe not a lotblazer. Sand which were starting around pitching
(01:07):
was it like kid a little babyone yard draw. They played with forge
blades? Did they curve the ball? More? Easier? Game improvement clubs
are designed not to curve the ball. With another interview from the archives of
Golf Smarter, here's your host,Fred Green. Welcome back to Golf Smarter.
Jim, Thanks Greg. Great tobe back with you. Great to
be bad man. Great to haveyou back because I've always said, oh,
(01:30):
if you're just getting into listening toGolf Smarter, you gotta find what
Jim Waldron has to say, becauseI always walk away from our conversations shaking
my head like, wow, thatwas awesome. So thank you. Yeah,
thanks, I appreciate it. Yeah, you know, you you're traveling
around the country. I caught youjust before you you're traveling around the world.
(01:53):
I caught you just before. Youknow, your annual truck usually go
to the east, you go orwest, you go to Hawaii, right,
but now you're going even farther westto the far East. Yeah.
I'm leaving on a few days toan exploratory sort of groundwork research trip to
(02:13):
Asia. I'm going to try toopen up a golf school, probably in
Singapore as our main sort of newwinter base. I'll still go to Hawaii
for a couple of weeks in Decemberand for about five weeks in the spring.
But my goal is next year fromJanuary early January to about mid April
to be in Singapore and to kindof draw from the surrounding countries. As
(02:36):
you know, Asia is booming rightnow in terms of the golf community.
We're declining in Asia is booming,not just economically, but the golf industry
as a whole was booming over there. So that's what I'm leaving for in
a few days to do. I'mkind of excited about it. Have you
ever been there? I have,I did. I did about three weeks
almost a month of teaching in Singaporea few years ago and really liked it.
(03:00):
Awesome. That's amazing. Well listen, best of luck on that and
save travels. Of course, whatis it that you're trying to create when
you go, like say you're goingYou're going to a whole New Knock country
but culture and you want to walkin and say I have a golf school.
(03:21):
Well, how do you establish yourself? How do you generate business?
And what is it that you youoffer that is not offered there already.
Well, and we've talked about thisin the other podcasts I've done with you.
You know, the sort of themethodology, the protocol I developed for
teaching golf is very, very differentthan what I would call conventional or traditional
(03:45):
golf instruction, right, And Iwon't come and go through all those points
something I'll just review a quickly justin mind. By the connection approach,
it's it's based on the idea thatin terms of mechanical learning proper mechanics,
it's your subconscious part of your brain, the conscious thinking part of your brain
that has to learn it, whichmeans you have to use a whole different
set of sort of basic concepts asa teacher to help the students subconscious learn
(04:11):
the material. So that's sort ofmy body connection part. It's a very
fast and very effective way of learningmechanics better technique in a very short period
of time. And that seems tobe and this is my nineteenth year of
doing golf school, that seems tobe the big selling point. And we
can talk a little bit about thatand how that differs from say lessons,
(04:36):
which certainly can work as well.I mean, obviously I do lessons as
well. But you know, Icome up with the idea when I started
my golf schools in nineteen ninety five. I had been through some similar training
programs over the years in other fieldsother than golf, and I knew that
this total immersion concept, which wassomething that the US State Department came up
(04:59):
with back in the late fifties earlysixties, when they would send embassy personnel
to you know, to posting toa new new foreign country, they would
have them learn the local language usingtotal immersion language training. In a very
very short period of time, peoplecould attain kind of semi fluency. And
one of the main tenance is it'sliterally immersion. You live with a local
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family, no one is allowed tospeak English to you. So it's sort
of like that whole throw the babyin the in the in the in the
pool and he has to learn toswim. There's that aspect to it.
You just have to sort of,you know, in total immersion, the
students has to know beforehand what heor she was getting into in an all
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day training like that, whether it'sgolf or foreign language or whatever. It
might be yoga, you know,martial arts, and that saturation, saturated
learning environment creates massive insights what wecall epiphanies or light bulbs. Right when
you have what I call a deepinsight about some aspect that say, golf
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swing mechanics. If it's really deep, it goes down deep into the neural
networks in your brain which connect howyour brain works with your body, and
your body can instantly start to doit closer to how a tour pro does
it literally instantly within a few seconds. I'm not saying it will be at
the level of habit formation that takesobviously much more time on practice range or
(06:23):
in front of a mirror, doslow motion training to make it habitual,
habitual movement pattern. But the initialtracks that have to be laid down are
indeed in the brain slash mind subconsciousmind. First, for example, how
to cock your wrist properly in theback swine of you know, a lot
of my new students don't know howto do that particular to use one example,
(06:46):
particular type of or a piece ofmechanics. They have an existing pattern
that is wrong for all kinds ofreasons. And if we isolate that particular
pattern for change and totally under someparticular specific aspects about that Christ mechanics motion
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again, to that level of deepunderstanding, they're not going to see improvement.
And so I always tell what Igive teaching seminars to follow teaching professionals.
I always tell people, look,your goal as a teacher should be
to help your student have a massivesupernovaike lightbulb about whatever it is you're trying
to change in his or her golfswing or chipping stroke or putting stroke.
Because unless they have that sort ofat least approaching that somewhere in the ballpark,
(07:30):
some level of deep insight, they'renot going to change. They're they're
gonna go back and they're gonna staywith whatever pattern they came to, what
they came to you with. Absolutelywell. I mean, that's the kind
of feedback that I've heard multiple timesabout golf schools in general, is that
people will go to a golf schooland upon arrival they'll hear, el,
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boy, you're we've got to changeyour swing completely, And they'll do a
two or three day school and bythe end of the school, well,
they're hitting the ball better farther,with a different style of stroke and body
position and grip and everything is changed. And then they go home and within
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you know, they don't get toyou know, now that they've dedicated two
three days of golf, they can'timmediately go right back to the range because
life gets in the way. Andnow they start playing once a week again,
once every other week, they getto maybe get a chance to hit
a bucket of balls. But withina month it seems to all be gone
and they're reverting back, as yousaid, they're reverting back to their original
ways, right, Yeah. Andthat's because that type of conventional instruction,
(08:37):
for the most part, is aliterally a band aid type of approach.
I mean, it's you know,it's the very nature of the way that
that type of instruction is handed outalmost guarantees that the learning won't stick,
because it is again it is theyaren't teaching the person's mind in most cases
directly, or they're teaching to thelevel of the actual mind only, which
(09:01):
is just theory, right, andthe basic sort of unquestioned premises. If
I get what I would call mostconventional instructors, if I give my student
the proper theoretical information, even ifit's the correct information, which it may
not be because there's a lot ofbad information out there, but even even
given given that part that the scientificscientifically proven, you know, research test
(09:24):
had proven accurate information. Let's sayabout well, you know, like you
had Martin Chuck a couple of weeksago forward chaffeling. That's that's an absolute
what I call law of club motion. If it's only intellectual insight, which
is very very superficial by its verynature, it's not going to produce permanent
(09:45):
improvement. And so that's why,you know, in our golf schools,
by contrast, we have a diet. We consider the dialogue like a Socratic
dialogue between myself and my other assistantprofessionals and the students. And there's a
give and take, there's a questionand answers. There's you know, we're
always saying to the student, doyou understand what we're trying to get you
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to do? And if they ifthe answers no, then we explained it
another way, maybe with a trainingaid, maybe we put our hands on
and move their body in their properposition. Wherever we do it, they
have to get beyond purely theoretical understanding. And although theoretical understanding is certainly part
of it, but you know,I always tell people theoretical understanding alone doesn't
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even get you in the ballpark.It's sort of like your your house is
ten miles from the ballpark, andit gets you started in the general direction
of north. That's all it does. And the reason I say that,
I get students all the time whohave especially lately with this proliferation in the
web of golf swing technical information.I mean, the amount of knowledge of
(10:48):
average golfers. Now what used tobe twenty years ago, maybe you know,
twenty people in the planet knew aboutthe science of the golf swing.
There's literally millions of people all overthe planet now who know the information,
but the vast majority of those millionsonly know it to the level of theory.
And I get these guys and galsall the time, and so you
(11:09):
know, the sad truth is thatdoes not really help very much. Again,
it's definitely a baby step on ajourney of the thousand steps. But
I can just give you one example. I hide a student recently who came
to me and said, literally inthe morning, he was a private school.
I just one on one him andI for eight hours. He said,
he I think he was a seventeenor eighteen handicap. He said,
(11:31):
throw the book at me, Jim, I want to know everything about the
golf swing model that you teach.I want to improve my ball striking.
And I said, well, wecan't. I can't show you everything in
an eight hour school. Will takeme probably three or four days of eight
hours to show you everything. ButI can show you a lot of it,
but it may not improve your gamevery much. From my response was
(11:54):
he goes, oh, no,no, I'm sure it will. Like
well, you know, I go, you know, there might be other
ways we could other avenues we couldwork with, other it then showing you
the total or even just the bigpieces of the golf swing puzzle, right,
maybe we should work We're on aswing corrective approach where we can just
sort of find two or three ofyour really big flaws and do lots of
drills all day long on those twoor three things to where you really get
(12:16):
to some significant improvement that will beboth short term and long term. We
can back it up with some fundamentaltraining, not just the swing corrective.
He said, no, no,I really want to learn the model.
So all, okay, well we'llstart out. So I walked up with
some balls and it became apparent tome very quickly that he wasn't striking it
like a seventeen or an eighteen handicap, not even close, probably more like
(12:39):
a twenty five or twenty eight handicapin terms of ball striking. And there
was there was so many sort ofbasic level of fundamentals in terms of grip,
grip pressure, set up, ballposition, aim that he was so
far off on. I'm thinking,well, why would why would he want
to know all this technical information aboutthe complex parts of the swing when he's
(13:01):
never even learned the most basic ABC'sright, And in a very gentle way,
I sort of said that to him, I go, look, I
go, let's start with aim.I get that flag out there one hundred
yards one hundred and twenty yards away, So he's got a seven yard in
his hand. He's aiming at thisflag one hundred twenty yards away. Now,
if he HiT's a good he'll goover the flag. It wasn't it
wasn't for distance control. Its purelyfor aim, and he aimed consistently.
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I had him do it three times, thirty yards to the right of the
flag. Thirty yards to the rightof your target from one hundred and twenty
yards away is awful. Did hego through a preshot routine or did you
just stand up at the ball andno, he had had no routine.
That's kind of what my point is. He didn't have a grip. He
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didn't have even close to a fundamentallysound grip. He was gripping as almost
as tight as he could grip it, so his grip pressure was off the
charts, too strong. He wasaiming, in other words, in about
twelve fundamental which are fairly non technical, pretty simple. He doesn't. You
don't need any understanding science or geometryor physics, right, which is what
he wanted. He wanted the technicalstuff. He was completely missing the bedrocks,
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relatively simple to understand fundamentals like howto aim the club face properly at
your target, how to get theball position his ball, His ball position
was about at least two or threeball positions, ballwidths too far back in
his stance. So I put itwhere it should be for that club,
which is for most people of sevenhours, should be right in the middle
of your stance, right. Andwhen I put it there to him,
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he said, well, you putthe ball off my left toe, And
I said, no, no,it's not off your left toe. It's
directly in the middle of your stance. Because Jim, I'm telling you,
I'm looking at it, it's offmy left toe. Now, I could
give you example after example, butthis one on for most of the day,
and it was a very frustrating experiencefor him and for me. Finally,
about three thirty, which was abouttwo and a half hours, we
went from nine to six, hefinally broke through and started basically accepting my
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coaching and not fighting me. Becausethis was an example of someone whose level
of self knowledge about his own golfgame was off the charts terrible. But
he felt like he had a completeunderstanding because he's been on the web and
he's watched every YouTube video he couldfind, and he's like and he's already
he's like, well, wait aminute, so and so said this.
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Yeah. Not only that, becausehis mind was so wrapped up in the
thinking theory, but he literally didn'thave accurate sensory feedback as to something as
simple as where the ball actually wasin his stance. Now, of course,
as soon as I put a mirrordown in front of him, since
he wasn't trusting my feedback, healmost fell over because he could clearly see
from looking in the mirror that theball was exactly in the middle of the
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stance right. But when he tookwhen he looked away from the mirror and
looked at the ball directly from fromhis vision, he saw the ball off
his left toe right. When Ihad him put a club down to show
that he was aiming thirty yards tothe right right, we had to put
a club down first to where thetarget line actually was, to where the
flag was. Then I then Ihad him set up with a seven iron.
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I literally held the seven iron andheld the club at so wouldn't move
when he let go of it.He walked behind me, looked over my
shoulder and saw his seven iron theclub face angle thirty yards to the right
of where where the shaft on theground was pointing to the actual target.
It took that level of concrete feedbackto convince the student that this basic sensory
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feedback as to what was objectively occurringin his golf swing was completely flawed.
He had no idea, right.So I think that's a big issue.
I mean, you know, teachingis an art, it's not a science.
Information about the golfs When he canindeed and should be science based.
So the teacher needs to know thescientific information, but how the teacher doles
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out that information is an art andthe words. You can give people the
wrong information, not that it's wrongin the sense where it's literally scientifically invalid.
It could be the right it shouldbe the right information scientifically, but
it could be the wrong information forthat student at that point in the revolution
as a player. Well, Ithink that's one of the things that why
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I enjoy speaking to you so much, because I think you're you are an
excellent communicator. Well, thank you, and I think that you are able
to get the information out and andsuccinctly and be able to make it understandable.
Can you say that again? BecauseI want to record this look and
play it back from my wife.I am recording it and she could hear
(17:30):
it right here on the Golf Smarterpodcast and if she's not listening already now,
I said you're an excellent communicator toyour students. I didn't necessarily say
to your spouse. And that's awhole another podcast we can get started on.
Boy, there's a couple of thingsthat we were going towards here and
I'm actually fascinated about aiming the clubface. I want to pick on that
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for just a moment. I don't. I have never been able to,
Nor do I understand how to putdraw on a I mean, my ball
fades, and sometimes way beyond fade, it goes, you know, hard,
right, I don't understand it isthe way I place my club face
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at a dress have any impact onputting draw on the ball. It can.
It's not the only factor, butit's one factor. Yes, it
may not start where you want togo. Then that's the problems the old
way of doing it, which bythe way, does work because Hogan did
it this way, Nicholas did itthis way, Feldo that still does it.
I believe this way uses what somepeople referred to as the old ball
(18:41):
flight laws, and I have aproblem with that. It's sort of a
misnomer because you know that they're notreally correct. They're not accurate the old
laws, which is why the peoplewho criticize them call them old as opposed
to new laws. But in spiteof the fact that they described the physics
of impact exactly backwards, you couldstill draw the ball or fade the ball
(19:03):
on purpose using them the old laws. By the way, these old laws
were not absolute. It was thebasic idea of the old law was that
the club club face angle creates thecurvature the hook or the slice, and
the clubhead path the direction you're swingingthe clubhead through impact on whether it's on
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plane or you know, at theper particularly the target line of impact,
or out to the right of thetarget line of impact, or to the
left of the target line of impact. But that's called the path. The
old law was that the path createsthe starting line direction. Now in reality
it's exactly reverse. The club faceangle creates eighty percent of the starting line
direction, the path creates twenty percentof it, and all of the curvature
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is caused by a differential, adifferential between the path and the club face
angle. So was at the clubface angle is at zero degrees at the
relters the target line per particular targetline, and the clubhead path is at
zero degrees to the target line atthe moment of impact, then the ball
will go dead straight without any curvatureon it. But if I have the
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club face at zero degrees and Iswing, say ten degrees into out right,
it's going to start pretty straight,a little to the right, with
a little bit of a draw onit. Where's the bigger. The bigger
the difference in degrees between the pathand the club face, the more curvature
will be. And when the clubface angle is pointing to the left or
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closed to where the path is,you're going to put the hookspin on the
ball. And when the club faceangles pointing to the right of the path,
you're going to put slicepin on it. Right. So if you have,
for example, a twenty degree differentialbetween the path and let's say let's
say the face angle was twenty degreespointing to the left of the path right,
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no matter what the studing line directiondoesn't matter the starting line direction.
It could be straight, it couldbe to the right of the targeting it
could because in this case would beto the left because because the face angles
pointing to re shut. But thepoint is, whatever the differentiation differentiation is,
the bigger, the bigger the difference, the more it's going to curve.
And you're saying swing path, thebigger the difference path. The path
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and the face angle, those aretwo separate parts of what happens. But
when you say path, you meantthe swing path. Correct, Well,
it doesn't matter. It's again it'sa difference between the two. Right if
if if you had the path goingone way in the face angle pointing in
the opposite direction, you're going toput curvature. Right, it's going to
curve to the right. If theface angles pointing to the right of where
(21:40):
the path is pointing an impact,it's going to curve to the left.
It's the face angles pointing to theleft of where the path is an impact.
Does it make any sense? Thinkabout how if you were going to
put if you wanted to put slice, spin or backspin on a tennis ball
(22:02):
or a ping pawn ball for example. Right, but that concept, I
understand, it's exactly the same witha golf club in your hand. It's
no different really, Okay, Soit was if you wanted to curve the
ball, you could curve the ballby simply doing nothing to change the relationship
of your club face angle, whichyou know in a straight shot you want
to have your club face angle.The term is square to the arc of
(22:25):
the path. So whatever whatever pathyou're using, and ideally should be pretty
much we call on plane, youknow, not not way into out through
impact, which would be should bea push again, assuming the club fased
angle was square to the arc ofthe path or the opposite out to end
over the top, out to endpull if you're If you're if your swing
shape was pretty much on plane andyour club face angle states square to the
(22:48):
arc of the path, because theclub is moving in an elliptical shape arc
right at all times, because youbecause basically because you're rotating your body right
right. But you can independently,using the uscles in your wrists and forearms,
you can rotate the face angle closeto the path which is to pointing
to the left, or open tothe path which is pointing to the right
(23:11):
right, and that will affect Thatwill affect both the starting line direction and
the curvature. Just by doing thatalone, you can you can change both.
You could also deliberately choose to swingway into out, which will tend
ten not guaranteed, tend to makeyou hook the ball, or you could
deliberately swing way out to end,which will tend to make you slice the
(23:33):
ball. Although you can change youcan alter the curvature by working primarily on
the path or by working primarily onthe face angle or the third way,
a blend of both, and whatwould be more preferable a hitting the ball
straight or putting a curvature to itgoing as for a right hand to hit
(23:56):
it right to left, left toright or it's a matter Yeah, it's
a matter of preference. Well,we need to get more backspin on a
cut shot, on a slice andless backspin on a drawer or a hook
right. So my players, Iwork mainly with average golfers. I do
work with some pros, with mainlyaverage golfers, and for the average golfer
they need more distance, and sothe shot shape that I teach most of
(24:21):
my average golfer students is a slightdraw with all of their clubs, starting
around a six iron, five orsix iron all the way through driver,
and the longer the club, themore of a draw. So they might
draw it somewhere between five and tenyards with their driver, and maybe they
only draw it a yard one oneto two yards with a six iron if
(24:42):
they have cavity back game improvement claus, which most of my students do these
days, starting right around a seveniron, they're gonna go with the with
the shot pattern and teaching them withthe with the slave shape. I'm teaching
them. The ball won't draw.The go pretty or maybe very little,
and it basically go straight from abouta seven iron through a lob wage.
(25:02):
If they play with forage blades,it'll still draw a little bit, maybe
not a lobladge are a sand whichit was starting around. Of pitching wide,
they might get a little baby youknow, one yard draw if they
play with forage blades, because theycurve the ball more easier. Game improvement
clubs are designed not to curve theball. Yeah, They just to get
you to hit it straight correct.Yeah. Their designs, their design so
(25:26):
if your face is a little open, especially, it'll still go well,
they won't. They won't produce abig slice, it'll it'll go straight or
just a little baby face. That'skind of how they're built. And the
game improvement clubs you're you're referring tocavity back clubs mostly yeah, bigger yeah,
bigger heads with the big the bigspace, a lot of bottom waving,
a lot of offset in the hozzle. Those those are designed for people
(25:48):
who tend to leave the face openrelatives of the path, which is the
vast majority of amateur golfers. Sothey're designed for people who slice. That's
why good players who have the oppositeMost good players have the opposite problem.
Most good players tend to the worstmiss tends to be a hook, and
it tends to be a specific typeof hook what we call the push book,
which means it starts out to theright a little bit because they swing
(26:10):
a little bit into out on theirpath right and they'll often tak swing a
lot into a good players so witha slightly closed club face, so the
club face is pointing even though it'sclosing, it's still pointing to the right
of the target line at the momentof impact. So they hit this shot
that starts out maybe you know,ten degrees to the right of their intended
(26:32):
target line, and the hooks twentydegrees over to the left, and they
miss the green to the left,and that tends to be a better players
type of shot where they come inslightly from the inside or even a lot
from the inside, swinging to theout across the target line out to right
field, so to speak, withtoo much right to left curvature, and
so forged blades or the better playersmall cavity back clubs are designed for that
(26:56):
player. To off at the tendencyand look the ball. Yeah, we've
you know, as I like tosay, your your time is up today,
your session is that? Would youmind if if we continue recording,
we'll do Golf Smarter for members only. We'll keep going, all right.
(27:19):
Well, so for everybody who's nota Golf Smarter member and you've been intrigued
by this, maybe you should bejoining Golf Smarter for members only so you
can hear part two of this conversationwith Jim Waldron of the Balance Point Golf
Schools. Jim, give your websiteaddress again, please, balance Point golf
dot com. Okay, there yougo, Jim. We'll be talking to
(27:40):
you again on the next episode.Thank you for agreeing to do that.
Thanks Bred, Thanks for having meback.
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. For the average golfer,
they need more distance, and sothe shot shape that I teach most of
my average golfer students is slight drawwith all of their clubs, starting around
in five or six ron all theway through driver, and the longer the
club, the more of a draw. So they might draw it somewhere between
five and ten yards with their driver, and they may only draw it one
(00:44):
to two yards six if they havecavity back game improvement clause, which most
of my students students days. Startingright around a seven iron, they're going
to go with the splay shape I'mteaching them. The ball won't draw,
the go pretty or maybe very littleand basically straight about a seven yard through
a lot blacher. If they playwith forge blades, it'll still draw a
little bit, maybe not a lotblazer. Sand which were starting around pitching
(01:07):
was it like kid a little babyone yard draw. They played with forge
blades? Did they curve the ball? More? Easier? Game improvement clubs
are designed not to curve the ball. With another interview from the archives of
Golf Smarter, here's your host,Fred Green. Welcome back to Golf Smarter.
Jim, Thanks Greg. Great tobe back with you. Great to
be bad man. Great to haveyou back because I've always said, oh,
(01:30):
if you're just getting into listening toGolf Smarter, you gotta find what
Jim Waldron has to say, becauseI always walk away from our conversations shaking
my head like, wow, thatwas awesome. So thank you. Yeah,
thanks, I appreciate it. Yeah, you know, you you're traveling
around the country. I caught youjust before you you're traveling around the world.
(01:53):
I caught you just before. Youknow, your annual truck usually go
to the east, you go orwest, you go to Hawaii, right,
but now you're going even farther westto the far East. Yeah.
I'm leaving on a few days toan exploratory sort of groundwork research trip to
(02:13):
Asia. I'm going to try toopen up a golf school, probably in
Singapore as our main sort of newwinter base. I'll still go to Hawaii
for a couple of weeks in Decemberand for about five weeks in the spring.
But my goal is next year fromJanuary early January to about mid April
to be in Singapore and to kindof draw from the surrounding countries. As
(02:36):
you know, Asia is booming rightnow in terms of the golf community.
We're declining in Asia is booming,not just economically, but the golf industry
as a whole was booming over there. So that's what I'm leaving for in
a few days to do. I'mkind of excited about it. Have you
ever been there? I have,I did. I did about three weeks
almost a month of teaching in Singaporea few years ago and really liked it.
(03:00):
Awesome. That's amazing. Well listen, best of luck on that and
save travels. Of course, whatis it that you're trying to create when
you go, like say you're goingYou're going to a whole New Knock country
but culture and you want to walkin and say I have a golf school.
(03:21):
Well, how do you establish yourself? How do you generate business?
And what is it that you youoffer that is not offered there already.
Well, and we've talked about thisin the other podcasts I've done with you.
You know, the sort of themethodology, the protocol I developed for
teaching golf is very, very differentthan what I would call conventional or traditional
(03:45):
golf instruction, right, And Iwon't come and go through all those points
something I'll just review a quickly justin mind. By the connection approach,
it's it's based on the idea thatin terms of mechanical learning proper mechanics,
it's your subconscious part of your brain, the conscious thinking part of your brain
that has to learn it, whichmeans you have to use a whole different
set of sort of basic concepts asa teacher to help the students subconscious learn
(04:11):
the material. So that's sort ofmy body connection part. It's a very
fast and very effective way of learningmechanics better technique in a very short period
of time. And that seems tobe and this is my nineteenth year of
doing golf school, that seems tobe the big selling point. And we
can talk a little bit about thatand how that differs from say lessons,
(04:36):
which certainly can work as well.I mean, obviously I do lessons as
well. But you know, Icome up with the idea when I started
my golf schools in nineteen ninety five. I had been through some similar training
programs over the years in other fieldsother than golf, and I knew that
this total immersion concept, which wassomething that the US State Department came up
(04:59):
with back in the late fifties earlysixties, when they would send embassy personnel
to you know, to posting toa new new foreign country, they would
have them learn the local language usingtotal immersion language training. In a very
very short period of time, peoplecould attain kind of semi fluency. And
one of the main tenance is it'sliterally immersion. You live with a local
(05:19):
family, no one is allowed tospeak English to you. So it's sort
of like that whole throw the babyin the in the in the in the
pool and he has to learn toswim. There's that aspect to it.
You just have to sort of,you know, in total immersion, the
students has to know beforehand what heor she was getting into in an all
(05:41):
day training like that, whether it'sgolf or foreign language or whatever. It
might be yoga, you know,martial arts, and that saturation, saturated
learning environment creates massive insights what wecall epiphanies or light bulbs. Right when
you have what I call a deepinsight about some aspect that say, golf
(06:01):
swing mechanics. If it's really deep, it goes down deep into the neural
networks in your brain which connect howyour brain works with your body, and
your body can instantly start to doit closer to how a tour pro does
it literally instantly within a few seconds. I'm not saying it will be at
the level of habit formation that takesobviously much more time on practice range or
(06:23):
in front of a mirror, doslow motion training to make it habitual,
habitual movement pattern. But the initialtracks that have to be laid down are
indeed in the brain slash mind subconsciousmind. First, for example, how
to cock your wrist properly in theback swine of you know, a lot
of my new students don't know howto do that particular to use one example,
(06:46):
particular type of or a piece ofmechanics. They have an existing pattern
that is wrong for all kinds ofreasons. And if we isolate that particular
pattern for change and totally under someparticular specific aspects about that Christ mechanics motion
(07:08):
again, to that level of deepunderstanding, they're not going to see improvement.
And so I always tell what Igive teaching seminars to follow teaching professionals.
I always tell people, look,your goal as a teacher should be
to help your student have a massivesupernovaike lightbulb about whatever it is you're trying
to change in his or her golfswing or chipping stroke or putting stroke.
Because unless they have that sort ofat least approaching that somewhere in the ballpark,
(07:30):
some level of deep insight, they'renot going to change. They're they're
gonna go back and they're gonna staywith whatever pattern they came to, what
they came to you with. Absolutelywell. I mean, that's the kind
of feedback that I've heard multiple timesabout golf schools in general, is that
people will go to a golf schooland upon arrival they'll hear, el,
(07:53):
boy, you're we've got to changeyour swing completely, And they'll do a
two or three day school and bythe end of the school, well,
they're hitting the ball better farther,with a different style of stroke and body
position and grip and everything is changed. And then they go home and within
(08:13):
you know, they don't get toyou know, now that they've dedicated two
three days of golf, they can'timmediately go right back to the range because
life gets in the way. Andnow they start playing once a week again,
once every other week, they getto maybe get a chance to hit
a bucket of balls. But withina month it seems to all be gone
and they're reverting back, as yousaid, they're reverting back to their original
ways, right, Yeah. Andthat's because that type of conventional instruction,
(08:37):
for the most part, is aliterally a band aid type of approach.
I mean, it's you know,it's the very nature of the way that
that type of instruction is handed outalmost guarantees that the learning won't stick,
because it is again it is theyaren't teaching the person's mind in most cases
directly, or they're teaching to thelevel of the actual mind only, which
(09:01):
is just theory, right, andthe basic sort of unquestioned premises. If
I get what I would call mostconventional instructors, if I give my student
the proper theoretical information, even ifit's the correct information, which it may
not be because there's a lot ofbad information out there, but even even
given given that part that the scientificscientifically proven, you know, research test
(09:24):
had proven accurate information. Let's sayabout well, you know, like you
had Martin Chuck a couple of weeksago forward chaffeling. That's that's an absolute
what I call law of club motion. If it's only intellectual insight, which
is very very superficial by its verynature, it's not going to produce permanent
(09:45):
improvement. And so that's why,you know, in our golf schools,
by contrast, we have a diet. We consider the dialogue like a Socratic
dialogue between myself and my other assistantprofessionals and the students. And there's a
give and take, there's a questionand answers. There's you know, we're
always saying to the student, doyou understand what we're trying to get you
(10:05):
to do? And if they ifthe answers no, then we explained it
another way, maybe with a trainingaid, maybe we put our hands on
and move their body in their properposition. Wherever we do it, they
have to get beyond purely theoretical understanding. And although theoretical understanding is certainly part
of it, but you know,I always tell people theoretical understanding alone doesn't
(10:26):
even get you in the ballpark.It's sort of like your your house is
ten miles from the ballpark, andit gets you started in the general direction
of north. That's all it does. And the reason I say that,
I get students all the time whohave especially lately with this proliferation in the
web of golf swing technical information.I mean, the amount of knowledge of
(10:48):
average golfers. Now what used tobe twenty years ago, maybe you know,
twenty people in the planet knew aboutthe science of the golf swing.
There's literally millions of people all overthe planet now who know the information,
but the vast majority of those millionsonly know it to the level of theory.
And I get these guys and galsall the time, and so you
(11:09):
know, the sad truth is thatdoes not really help very much. Again,
it's definitely a baby step on ajourney of the thousand steps. But
I can just give you one example. I hide a student recently who came
to me and said, literally inthe morning, he was a private school.
I just one on one him andI for eight hours. He said,
he I think he was a seventeenor eighteen handicap. He said,
(11:31):
throw the book at me, Jim, I want to know everything about the
golf swing model that you teach.I want to improve my ball striking.
And I said, well, wecan't. I can't show you everything in
an eight hour school. Will takeme probably three or four days of eight
hours to show you everything. ButI can show you a lot of it,
but it may not improve your gamevery much. From my response was
(11:54):
he goes, oh, no,no, I'm sure it will. Like
well, you know, I go, you know, there might be other
ways we could other avenues we couldwork with, other it then showing you
the total or even just the bigpieces of the golf swing puzzle, right,
maybe we should work We're on aswing corrective approach where we can just
sort of find two or three ofyour really big flaws and do lots of
drills all day long on those twoor three things to where you really get
(12:16):
to some significant improvement that will beboth short term and long term. We
can back it up with some fundamentaltraining, not just the swing corrective.
He said, no, no,I really want to learn the model.
So all, okay, well we'llstart out. So I walked up with
some balls and it became apparent tome very quickly that he wasn't striking it
like a seventeen or an eighteen handicap, not even close, probably more like
(12:39):
a twenty five or twenty eight handicapin terms of ball striking. And there
was there was so many sort ofbasic level of fundamentals in terms of grip,
grip pressure, set up, ballposition, aim that he was so
far off on. I'm thinking,well, why would why would he want
to know all this technical information aboutthe complex parts of the swing when he's
(13:01):
never even learned the most basic ABC'sright, And in a very gentle way,
I sort of said that to him, I go, look, I
go, let's start with aim.I get that flag out there one hundred
yards one hundred and twenty yards away, So he's got a seven yard in
his hand. He's aiming at thisflag one hundred twenty yards away. Now,
if he HiT's a good he'll goover the flag. It wasn't it
wasn't for distance control. Its purelyfor aim, and he aimed consistently.
(13:22):
I had him do it three times, thirty yards to the right of the
flag. Thirty yards to the rightof your target from one hundred and twenty
yards away is awful. Did hego through a preshot routine or did you
just stand up at the ball andno, he had had no routine.
That's kind of what my point is. He didn't have a grip. He
(13:43):
didn't have even close to a fundamentallysound grip. He was gripping as almost
as tight as he could grip it, so his grip pressure was off the
charts, too strong. He wasaiming, in other words, in about
twelve fundamental which are fairly non technical, pretty simple. He doesn't. You
don't need any understanding science or geometryor physics, right, which is what
he wanted. He wanted the technicalstuff. He was completely missing the bedrocks,
(14:07):
relatively simple to understand fundamentals like howto aim the club face properly at
your target, how to get theball position his ball, His ball position
was about at least two or threeball positions, ballwidths too far back in
his stance. So I put itwhere it should be for that club,
which is for most people of sevenhours, should be right in the middle
of your stance, right. Andwhen I put it there to him,
(14:31):
he said, well, you putthe ball off my left toe, And
I said, no, no,it's not off your left toe. It's
directly in the middle of your stance. Because Jim, I'm telling you,
I'm looking at it, it's offmy left toe. Now, I could
give you example after example, butthis one on for most of the day,
and it was a very frustrating experiencefor him and for me. Finally,
about three thirty, which was abouttwo and a half hours, we
went from nine to six, hefinally broke through and started basically accepting my
(14:56):
coaching and not fighting me. Becausethis was an example of someone whose level
of self knowledge about his own golfgame was off the charts terrible. But
he felt like he had a completeunderstanding because he's been on the web and
he's watched every YouTube video he couldfind, and he's like and he's already
he's like, well, wait aminute, so and so said this.
(15:18):
Yeah. Not only that, becausehis mind was so wrapped up in the
thinking theory, but he literally didn'thave accurate sensory feedback as to something as
simple as where the ball actually wasin his stance. Now, of course,
as soon as I put a mirrordown in front of him, since
he wasn't trusting my feedback, healmost fell over because he could clearly see
from looking in the mirror that theball was exactly in the middle of the
(15:39):
stance right. But when he tookwhen he looked away from the mirror and
looked at the ball directly from fromhis vision, he saw the ball off
his left toe right. When Ihad him put a club down to show
that he was aiming thirty yards tothe right right, we had to put
a club down first to where thetarget line actually was, to where the
flag was. Then I then Ihad him set up with a seven iron.
(16:00):
I literally held the seven iron andheld the club at so wouldn't move
when he let go of it.He walked behind me, looked over my
shoulder and saw his seven iron theclub face angle thirty yards to the right
of where where the shaft on theground was pointing to the actual target.
It took that level of concrete feedbackto convince the student that this basic sensory
(16:22):
feedback as to what was objectively occurringin his golf swing was completely flawed.
He had no idea, right.So I think that's a big issue.
I mean, you know, teachingis an art, it's not a science.
Information about the golfs When he canindeed and should be science based.
So the teacher needs to know thescientific information, but how the teacher doles
(16:47):
out that information is an art andthe words. You can give people the
wrong information, not that it's wrongin the sense where it's literally scientifically invalid.
It could be the right it shouldbe the right information scientifically, but
it could be the wrong information forthat student at that point in the revolution
as a player. Well, Ithink that's one of the things that why
(17:08):
I enjoy speaking to you so much, because I think you're you are an
excellent communicator. Well, thank you, and I think that you are able
to get the information out and andsuccinctly and be able to make it understandable.
Can you say that again? BecauseI want to record this look and
play it back from my wife.I am recording it and she could hear
(17:30):
it right here on the Golf Smarterpodcast and if she's not listening already now,
I said you're an excellent communicator toyour students. I didn't necessarily say
to your spouse. And that's awhole another podcast we can get started on.
Boy, there's a couple of thingsthat we were going towards here and
I'm actually fascinated about aiming the clubface. I want to pick on that
(17:57):
for just a moment. I don't. I have never been able to,
Nor do I understand how to putdraw on a I mean, my ball
fades, and sometimes way beyond fade, it goes, you know, hard,
right, I don't understand it isthe way I place my club face
(18:18):
at a dress have any impact onputting draw on the ball. It can.
It's not the only factor, butit's one factor. Yes, it
may not start where you want togo. Then that's the problems the old
way of doing it, which bythe way, does work because Hogan did
it this way, Nicholas did itthis way, Feldo that still does it.
I believe this way uses what somepeople referred to as the old ball
(18:41):
flight laws, and I have aproblem with that. It's sort of a
misnomer because you know that they're notreally correct. They're not accurate the old
laws, which is why the peoplewho criticize them call them old as opposed
to new laws. But in spiteof the fact that they described the physics
of impact exactly backwards, you couldstill draw the ball or fade the ball
(19:03):
on purpose using them the old laws. By the way, these old laws
were not absolute. It was thebasic idea of the old law was that
the club club face angle creates thecurvature the hook or the slice, and
the clubhead path the direction you're swingingthe clubhead through impact on whether it's on
(19:23):
plane or you know, at theper particularly the target line of impact,
or out to the right of thetarget line of impact, or to the
left of the target line of impact. But that's called the path. The
old law was that the path createsthe starting line direction. Now in reality
it's exactly reverse. The club faceangle creates eighty percent of the starting line
direction, the path creates twenty percentof it, and all of the curvature
(19:47):
is caused by a differential, adifferential between the path and the club face
angle. So was at the clubface angle is at zero degrees at the
relters the target line per particular targetline, and the clubhead path is at
zero degrees to the target line atthe moment of impact, then the ball
will go dead straight without any curvatureon it. But if I have the
(20:10):
club face at zero degrees and Iswing, say ten degrees into out right,
it's going to start pretty straight,a little to the right, with
a little bit of a draw onit. Where's the bigger. The bigger
the difference in degrees between the pathand the club face, the more curvature
will be. And when the clubface angle is pointing to the left or
(20:33):
closed to where the path is,you're going to put the hookspin on the
ball. And when the club faceangles pointing to the right of the path,
you're going to put slicepin on it. Right. So if you have,
for example, a twenty degree differentialbetween the path and let's say let's
say the face angle was twenty degreespointing to the left of the path right,
(20:56):
no matter what the studing line directiondoesn't matter the starting line direction.
It could be straight, it couldbe to the right of the targeting it
could because in this case would beto the left because because the face angles
pointing to re shut. But thepoint is, whatever the differentiation differentiation is,
the bigger, the bigger the difference, the more it's going to curve.
And you're saying swing path, thebigger the difference path. The path
(21:18):
and the face angle, those aretwo separate parts of what happens. But
when you say path, you meantthe swing path. Correct, Well,
it doesn't matter. It's again it'sa difference between the two. Right if
if if you had the path goingone way in the face angle pointing in
the opposite direction, you're going toput curvature. Right, it's going to
curve to the right. If theface angles pointing to the right of where
(21:40):
the path is pointing an impact,it's going to curve to the left.
It's the face angles pointing to theleft of where the path is an impact.
Does it make any sense? Thinkabout how if you were going to
put if you wanted to put slice, spin or backspin on a tennis ball
(22:02):
or a ping pawn ball for example. Right, but that concept, I
understand, it's exactly the same witha golf club in your hand. It's
no different really, Okay, Soit was if you wanted to curve the
ball, you could curve the ballby simply doing nothing to change the relationship
of your club face angle, whichyou know in a straight shot you want
to have your club face angle.The term is square to the arc of
(22:25):
the path. So whatever whatever pathyou're using, and ideally should be pretty
much we call on plane, youknow, not not way into out through
impact, which would be should bea push again, assuming the club fased
angle was square to the arc ofthe path or the opposite out to end
over the top, out to endpull if you're If you're if your swing
shape was pretty much on plane andyour club face angle states square to the
(22:48):
arc of the path, because theclub is moving in an elliptical shape arc
right at all times, because youbecause basically because you're rotating your body right
right. But you can independently,using the uscles in your wrists and forearms,
you can rotate the face angle closeto the path which is to pointing
to the left, or open tothe path which is pointing to the right
(23:11):
right, and that will affect Thatwill affect both the starting line direction and
the curvature. Just by doing thatalone, you can you can change both.
You could also deliberately choose to swingway into out, which will tend
ten not guaranteed, tend to makeyou hook the ball, or you could
deliberately swing way out to end,which will tend to make you slice the
(23:33):
ball. Although you can change youcan alter the curvature by working primarily on
the path or by working primarily onthe face angle or the third way,
a blend of both, and whatwould be more preferable a hitting the ball
straight or putting a curvature to itgoing as for a right hand to hit
(23:56):
it right to left, left toright or it's a matter Yeah, it's
a matter of preference. Well,we need to get more backspin on a
cut shot, on a slice andless backspin on a drawer or a hook
right. So my players, Iwork mainly with average golfers. I do
work with some pros, with mainlyaverage golfers, and for the average golfer
they need more distance, and sothe shot shape that I teach most of
(24:21):
my average golfer students is a slightdraw with all of their clubs, starting
around a six iron, five orsix iron all the way through driver,
and the longer the club, themore of a draw. So they might
draw it somewhere between five and tenyards with their driver, and maybe they
only draw it a yard one oneto two yards with a six iron if
(24:42):
they have cavity back game improvement claus, which most of my students do these
days, starting right around a seveniron, they're gonna go with the with
the shot pattern and teaching them withthe with the slave shape. I'm teaching
them. The ball won't draw.The go pretty or maybe very little,
and it basically go straight from abouta seven iron through a lob wage.
(25:02):
If they play with forage blades,it'll still draw a little bit, maybe
not a lobladge are a sand whichit was starting around. Of pitching wide,
they might get a little baby youknow, one yard draw if they
play with forage blades, because theycurve the ball more easier. Game improvement
clubs are designed not to curve theball. Yeah, They just to get
you to hit it straight correct.Yeah. Their designs, their design so
(25:26):
if your face is a little open, especially, it'll still go well,
they won't. They won't produce abig slice, it'll it'll go straight or
just a little baby face. That'skind of how they're built. And the
game improvement clubs you're you're referring tocavity back clubs mostly yeah, bigger yeah,
bigger heads with the big the bigspace, a lot of bottom waving,
a lot of offset in the hozzle. Those those are designed for people
(25:48):
who tend to leave the face openrelatives of the path, which is the
vast majority of amateur golfers. Sothey're designed for people who slice. That's
why good players who have the oppositeMost good players have the opposite problem.
Most good players tend to the worstmiss tends to be a hook, and
it tends to be a specific typeof hook what we call the push book,
which means it starts out to theright a little bit because they swing
(26:10):
a little bit into out on theirpath right and they'll often tak swing a
lot into a good players so witha slightly closed club face, so the
club face is pointing even though it'sclosing, it's still pointing to the right
of the target line at the momentof impact. So they hit this shot
that starts out maybe you know,ten degrees to the right of their intended
(26:32):
target line, and the hooks twentydegrees over to the left, and they
miss the green to the left,and that tends to be a better players
type of shot where they come inslightly from the inside or even a lot
from the inside, swinging to theout across the target line out to right
field, so to speak, withtoo much right to left curvature, and
so forged blades or the better playersmall cavity back clubs are designed for that
(26:56):
player. To off at the tendencyand look the ball. Yeah, we've
you know, as I like tosay, your your time is up today,
your session is that? Would youmind if if we continue recording,
we'll do Golf Smarter for members only. We'll keep going, all right.
(27:19):
Well, so for everybody who's nota Golf Smarter member and you've been intrigued
by this, maybe you should bejoining Golf Smarter for members only so you
can hear part two of this conversationwith Jim Waldron of the Balance Point Golf
Schools. Jim, give your websiteaddress again, please, balance Point golf
dot com. Okay, there yougo, Jim. We'll be talking to
(27:40):
you again on the next episode.Thank you for agreeing to do that.
Thanks Bred, Thanks for having meback.
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