March 25, 2025 • 59 mins
Tim O'Connor shares his journey from golf-obsessed amateur to performance coach, revealing how the mental game is often what separates good players from great ones.
• Getting into golf initially as a caddy, observing and learning from scratch players
• Moving from technical, "tab A into slot B" approaches to more instinctual, joy-focused golf
• Understanding that mistaking the golf ball for the target creates unnecessary tension
• Recognizing how we typically view golf as a test of competency rather than an experience
• Exploring "inside-out thinking" and finding happiness from within rather than external results
• Balancing competitive drive with present-moment awareness
• Learning to embrace negative thoughts rather than fighting them
• Using awareness as a curative tool to diffuse performance anxiety
• Practicing "quiet mind" putting by simply enjoying your stroke without technical thoughts
Find Tim at www.oconnorgolf.com and follow his blog "Up and Down" on Substack, or listen to his podcast "Swing Thoughts" now in its 10th year.
A big Thank You to Mizzuno and JumboMax grips !
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Fly
Hunters Golf Podcast.
My name is Jesse Perryman and Iam your host, along with my
friend, justin Tang, a leadinstructor at the Tanah Merritt
Golf Club in Singapore, holisticcoach, well-versed,
well-educated, well-spoken, andif you're ever in the Singapore
(00:24):
area and you want to head onover there, I would behoove you
to spend some time with him,because it will be an enriching
hour or two and it's a privilegeand a pleasure to have him as
my podcast partner.
And this week it's a privilegeand an absolute pleasure to
bring to you a performance coachby the name of Tim O'Connor.
(00:46):
Tim is an author, he has comeout with a book Getting Unstuck
and has some incredible productsthat if you go to
wwwoconnergolfcom you're goingto find.
And this conversation was great.
(01:07):
I very much enjoyed theinterplay between Justin, tim
and myself.
We go into really the mentalside of it and we go into being
very careful about what labelswe give ourselves and how we
choose to form identificationsto the game and, quite frankly
(01:33):
in our life, to be aware of that.
Tim is from Canada and he wasinfluenced by Fred Shoemaker.
Those who are longtimelisteners know that I had Fred
on the pod, and Fred has been anice influence for all of us,
quite frankly, with his work,and we just continue that
(01:55):
conversation.
We really go into the thingsthat we can do to make ourselves
better and to play with moreenjoyment and more joy.
Even as a competitive playerwhether you play competitively
for the love of the game or youplay competitively for a living
(02:17):
there still needs to be aperspective and we discuss those
perspective and those grayareas that we can really fly
into the perception and thebalance of trying but not trying
(02:44):
, of grinding but not grinding,and getting in there and
allowing ourselves to play fromjoy even in the midst of
competition.
So I would encourage you to goto his website Once again it's
www.
O'connorgolfcom and check itout, reach out to him.
(03:06):
The best way to get a hold ofhim is through his website for
some one-on-one training and orhis plethora of phenomenal
products.
I'm a big fan.
I absolutely loved this episodeand I'm sure you will enjoy it
as well.
So everyone, thanks forlistening and cheers.
(03:27):
Loved this episode and I'm sureyou will enjoy it as well.
So everyone, thanks forlistening and cheers.
Have a fantastic rest of yourweek.
Hello and welcome to anotheredition of the Flag Hunters Golf
(03:47):
Podcast.
I am your host, jesse Perryman,along with my great friend,
teacher extraordinaire, believesin all things holistic to get
better playing this lovely gamethat we all love.
His name is Justin Tang and ourguest today.
Oh, by the way, justin is aninstructor at the ternamera golf
club in singapore, so if you'reever in singapore, tell him
(04:09):
that you listen to the podcastand he'll probably turn you away
.
I'm kidding anyway.
Uh, justin, he's a brother fromanother mother and our guest
today is tim o'connor.
Tim, uh, welcome, thanks forsaying yes, coming on Well
always.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
thank you for the invite.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Thank you, Tim.
Good to speak with you again,Jess.
Always hey, Tim, so how do youget involved in golf?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
How do I get involved in golf?
Well, as a kid I was, my dadsaid, hey, you could probably
earn some money doing this thingcalled caddying.
So I got into it that way at aprivate club in London, ontario,
in Canada, and caddying.
I was also a junior golfer butI became a much better caddy
(04:59):
than a golfer a golfer.
And so the really good playersat our club would ask me to
caddy for them in, like the clubchampionships and invitationals
and that kind of thing, andwatching these players paint the
sky, just the way they talk,the way they made decisions.
(05:20):
I I golf got its hooks in mebecause I went I want to be like
these guys, you know thesescratch players, just everything
about the way they conductedthemselves and obviously the way
they hit golf shots.
And that's basically how I gotinto golf and, like a lot of
people, I just became a golfobsessive, you know into.
(05:42):
I kind of stopped playing thegame because I got into music I
play.
I play bass in um.
Right now I'm in a punk band,which is one of the most fun
things I do, uh.
But I got into golf, back intogolf in in my 20s and I just was
always working, working,working to emulate those scratch
(06:05):
players I used to caddy for andI wanted they were the models
that I wanted to be like.
But, um, you know.
So I did everything I thoughtwas the right thing to do.
I read every book, I read thevideos, I did everything you're
supposed to do, um, swing theright way, stand the right way,
(06:25):
all that good stuff.
But I never got really betterthan a nine handicap and I just
sort of realized eventually,through the help of people like
Sean Foley, who you've had onyour podcast recently, another
friend, paul Dooland, and somepersonal growth, work, work, I
did I just came to understandthat, oh my God, I was a
(06:46):
paralysis by analysis basketcase.
So I just kind of did a 180 andI did.
I really the work of FredShoemaker really resonated with
me and I just did this, as I say, a 180 from kind of tab A into
(07:07):
slot B, golf and all thistechnical focus to more of just
playing and swinging in a moreinstinctual way.
And so that's how I got intothe game and I think, through my
own struggles with it, thatthat's what helped me become a
(07:29):
coach, because I've experiencedeverything that most players
have gone through in terms ofhow this game just torments us,
in terms of all this investmentemotionally, you know,
monetarily, the time and allthis trying hard and it just the
roi, for that is just so crappy.
(07:50):
Most people just don't getbetter trying to.
You know, do the what they seeon youtube and all the trying to
swing perfectly and um.
So yeah, that's in brief,that's kind of my story.
How I got into into golf andinto coaching and you know
(08:11):
that's that's.
I just find that so many peoplethey love this game but they
kind of have the sense that whydoes golf hate me?
I'm trying to work with them tomaybe patch up that love affair
.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Here's a question for you guys when do you think all
that turmoil comes from?
I would say it comes from theball just being there looking at
you.
That's where it all begins.
And because the ball doesn'tmove compared to other sports,
we think we can do things to theball.
(08:46):
We think we can overpower theball, bend it to our will.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's where all the demons come from Jesse what do
you think?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Well, I think the very nature of the game is to
elicit every possible holisticchallenge known to man.
I mean, can you think of asport that will invite every
dark side gremlin that you haverummaging around in your
subconscious and have itmanifest at a moment's notice,
(09:20):
you seem, if you're looking downthe middle of, say, a par five,
that's got trees on the rightand out of bounds on the left.
If you think for one second, ifthat ball is going left, or you
say that you don't want it togo left, nervous system says
thanks, it's going left, exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Ironic reactance theory.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, yeah, you know it's.
How do you get past that?
How do you accept that part ofour humanness that we are flawed
by a very nature?
But we can use thesedisadvantages to our advantage
with a trained and disciplinedmind yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, I, I think that , um, someone with a trained
mind is going to beat someonewith a new semi-trained swing
any day of the week.
Really, I mean it just that'lljust happen.
But I also there's a couple ofthings.
So, justin, I really resonatewith what you're saying about
that ball being down there.
(10:19):
I think one of the core thingsthat happens for people is like
it's kind of like that ball sitsthere and it's almost like
challenging.
Really, really, you thinkyou're going to hit me with that
little implement thing.
You really think that you'regoing to be able to hit me solid
towards my target?
Who are you kidding?
But I think the core thing thathappens around the golf ball is
that we mistake the ball forthe target and it is not the
(10:43):
target.
It's.
You know we collect it for thetarget and it is not the target.
It's you know we collect it onthe way.
So that's a core thing that Iwork with a lot of players.
It's amazing how, when you takethe focus from the little white
thing at your feet and move itto the target, how it makes golf
a lot easier.
But I think also the thing thatreally, um, jesse, connecting
(11:06):
to what you're saying.
I I think a lot of it is that weview golf and the golf course
as a test.
It's a test of our competency,of our ability to do something
at a level that we wish, and weattach our ability to do
something at a level that wewish and we attach our identity
(11:27):
to it and our self-esteem to it.
And when golf is viewed in thatway, that is setting yourself
up for failure.
It's just too hard a game.
The emotional rollercoasterthat you ride, the peaks and
valleys, it's just nutty andit's none of that.
So to me, if we can just somehowarrive at a balance of you know
(11:53):
what, to me, gratitude is a bigpiece, is that I, you know, I
am so fortunate to be able toplay this game, have the means
to do it the, the, the, the body, the physical, the ability to
go out and be out on a golfcourse and be in this amazing
environment, be with somefriends or maybe some people you
(12:14):
haven't met, but whatever, andto play this, this game, um,
yeah, not unless, not for asecond am I saying you hit it
sideways?
Ha, you know, laugh it off.
No, we all want to hit the ball.
Well, but it's like all therest of our life, I believe it's
.
There's a whole cascade ofthings and if we hold them in
(12:34):
balance, I think we get toexperience joy a lot more, a lot
more.
And as a bonus, I think wegenerally play a lot better when
we're in, come from that space.
That it's not a test.
It's actually, you know, agreat experience that we're
lucky to participate in.
(12:55):
Couldn't agree more.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Hey Tim.
So going back to paralysis byanalysis, right, so the ball
sits there.
I think it's a time issue,isn't it?
You've got so much time tothink about what you want to do
to the ball, and in other sports, like baseball, there isn't
much time to think.
When the pitch comes at you,you just have to react.
(13:18):
Same for soccer, same forfootball, same for tennis, but
in goal, you've got time.
Time is your friend, almost.
Time is also your enemy.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
A thousand percent yes.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
And going back to paralysis by analysis.
We tend to get in our way whenwe think, hey look, if I run
through my pre-flight checklistI'm good.
Can you talk to that for thebenefit of our listeners how
that is actually detrimental toour games?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Well, okay, so when you run through the checklist,
basically you're running throughthe list of things that you
hope to do, right, and sowhenever we're in that space,
we're drawing attention usuallyto our golf swing and how we're
going to move our body parts,and whenever we do that, we are
(14:18):
going to bring extra musculartension to whatever we're
thinking about, and that is justa recipe for bad golf.
You cannot achieve flow, youdon't generate speed, you're
going to be out of sync, allthose things whenever you bring
unwanted muscular tension towhat you're doing and, in
(14:40):
essence, you're self-interfering.
That's the core thing.
See, one of the things that isvery interesting to me is that
in our society, we are a very inour heads culture.
Everything.
We've got so much informationcoming at us that we're so
(15:00):
self-conscious about what we'redoing so we live in our heads.
We're so self-conscious aboutwhat we're doing, so we live in
our heads.
And you know, the reason mostmen are bad dancers is because
they're so disconnected fromtheir bodies, and so when we
live in our heads, we can'tconnect with the tool which is
the golf club, and we just loseall that connection to what we
(15:24):
can do.
Quite naturally, you know mostpeople when you so, coming back
to what you said about sportsand what you react it's much
easier to access a state of flow, you know, responding to a
target and allowing our body togo rather than trying to make it
do things.
So when we're trying to dosomething right, we're going to
(15:46):
be in a state of tension andgenerally self-interfere.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
You know what's my favorite version of trying?
Someone messes up the frontnine, all right.
All right, tom, time to playgolf, let's try hard.
And then I go.
You mean, you were not playinggolf on the front nine, you're
not trying hard, what were youdoing?
There's this idea that if I tryhard enough, I will go under
(16:13):
par.
But that often gets in our way,and I'll give you an example of
one of my top players.
His name is Philip Lee.
He is 12 years old.
He texted me one day and sayshey, coach, just completed a
(16:33):
tournament I won.
I shot 29 and 37.
Played bad.
I'm like, hang on, you shot a29 and you ended up six under
par.
That's his idea of playing bad.
and then he was like, hey, hewasn't focused on.
(16:54):
Hey, I shot 29, like, which isa damn good accomplishment for
anyone, oh my god, yes, letalone a junior golfer at 12
years old.
He was only focused on the 37.
So he's like how did I shoot?
Or why did I shoot that 37?
So I said were you trying toshoot 58?
(17:17):
And then he goes yes, I saidthat's the problem.
When we try to make somethinghappen, the probability of that
happening diminishes greatly.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Absolutely, because it becomes something extrinsic
to us, something outside of us,and it becomes kind of a have to
and it's a standard we'retrying to reach.
And I think that when we'relooking at things external to us
like anything, that's kind of astandard, a score, a result, in
(17:55):
many ways what we're doing isour true self is seeking joy all
the time.
We want fulfillment, we wantgrowth, we want connection, all
that.
But when we are not setting,when it doesn't appear that
we're going to get what we want,that we believe will deliver us
happiness, that's when we aresapped of energy, we lose our
(18:20):
focus, we lose our confidence,because it all becomes about
this external goal that we judgewill bring us happiness and joy
.
And there's no joy from thingsexternal.
You could win the Masters GolfTournament, that'd be a
wonderful thing, but the nextday you still have the same
issues that are on your life,the things that are going on.
(18:43):
There's a great phrase I learneda few years ago.
It's called arrival fallacy.
And we think in our life we getthe, we get the hot car, we get
the promotion at work, our, ourindex goes from, you know,
seven till four.
We'll be happy.
What happens to the guy whogets his index down to four, oh,
I want to be at two.
The guy who wins a majortournament, what happens to him?
(19:07):
I want to win two majors, andso it's all this seeking,
seeking, seeking happiness andjoy and happiness is an inside
job.
So I think that's the but.
Again, our culture says thatyou need to accomplish things,
(19:29):
you have to look a certain wayand you need, you need to
achieve, and we get hoodwinkedas a society that we think that
that will bring us joy andfulfillment.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Can you talk a little bit more about inside out
thinking?
What you alluded to, happinesscomes from within, so give give
our listeners an example.
Right, I've got two beautifuldaughters, eight and six.
On one occasion two of them canbe creating a din.
I'm not affected.
(19:58):
Another occasion they could bedoing the same thing and I get
so worked up, angry, angry,start yelling at them.
Can you explain to ourlisteners how to use the power
of inside out thinking to maketheir lives a better place every
day?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
is to accept that as a human being, we have potential
and capability and connectionsto things that we aren't even
aware of, like I believe thatgolf is a technical, physical,
emotional, physical andspiritual game, and the things
that we think will generallybring us happiness generally do
(20:46):
not.
And so what is happiness?
I think happiness to me is whathappened every once in a while.
Well, yeah, you shoot a goodscore, you post your number in
in the computer and your thinggoes down.
Hey, it feels good, you littlehigh fives with everyone.
But it's, it's ethereal, I mean, it's just ephemeral, it's,
it's ethereal, I mean it's justephemeral, it's just it's here
and it's gone.
But where does true joy comefrom?
(21:07):
I think it comes from you hit ashot and you just see it
through that little window andit just feels so good and that's
just.
You just have this feeling, yousavor it, and, and so whether
anyone else has saw it, whetherit led to you winning a golf
tournament, maybe, but to meit's the experience of just
(21:33):
being yourself and connecting towhat you're truly capable of
and seeing those possibilities.
It's really kind of a hardthing to nail down, but true joy
to me comes from within and weexperience it when you know you
go to Starbucks and you connectwith the server and you say, how
(21:55):
are you today?
And the person who was frowningsuddenly smiles Joy.
Or you just go out on abeautiful day and you just look
at the sun and going and feel iton your face and you hear the
birds sing and just like thisfeeling of just peace and joy
(22:15):
comes through.
Now that just ebbs and flows.
I mean, life is full of sadnessand anger and grief and all
kinds of things, and anger andgrief and all kinds of things.
But I really do think that ingolf and in life, what we're
seeking is to be fulfilled as anindividual.
My life has meaning and purposeand I get joy from those things
(22:40):
.
And if I happen to win a golftournament, hey, that's great,
that's a bonus, but that's notgoing to change your life.
And and I know a lot of, I knowa lot of really good players
and golf professors who aremiserable pricks, people I don't
want to be around.
But oh, boy there.
(23:00):
Yeah, that guy, he's got it,man, what a swing.
The guy brings it intournaments, hey, that's great
and all the power to you, man.
But life there's way more tolife than just that.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I have a question for both of you.
Is there a way to have abalance of wanting the external
goals let's say, for example,playing whatever level of
competitive golf that you play,whether it's high-level, amateur
or professional or whatever ofwanting external stuff and being
(23:39):
okay with, you know,surrendering to the moment and
all that?
So is there a possibility to bea dog and wanting to go out
there and beat everybody's assand having the internal
fortitude or training tobasically be a Jedi master, to
be in a state of acceptance?
(24:01):
It's like a dichotomy betweenbeing an asshole and an angel.
Is there a possibility to haveboth consciousnesses inside of
you while you're playingcompetitively, Like I really
want to win, I want to go outthere and play well, I want to
(24:22):
whoop everybody's ass and I alsoam going to be okay with
whatever happens and still havean undercurrent where the
intention is to play withinmyself and to have the spirit of
joy.
And the reason why I ask thisopen-ended question is because I
felt it from Scotty Scheffler.
I got to spend a day withScotty last year.
(24:44):
I know Ted Scott really welland he exemplifies this very
phenomenon which I'm putting outthere to you two and in the
universe that you could be a dogand be intense but yet have a
smile on your face and yet enjoythe experience.
It's like it's hard for me toput my finger on right now with
(25:06):
words, so forgive me as I'mfumbling over, I'm trying to put
them into understandablevernacular, but boy, it seems to
me that that would be the bestof both worlds.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah Well, jesse, I would give you more credit.
You did a great job there.
I think you framed that.
I think you framed that reallywell.
And, yes, it's absolutelypossible to want to go out and
be the best player, use whateverphraseology you want, kill
(25:42):
everybody, step on their neckswhatever you know and emerge as
the top person.
But you spoke of it as you werelaying that out.
It's holding that in balance,and so Scotty Scheffler, I think
, is a great example of someonewho is so grounded.
So what are the most importantthings to him in his life?
(26:03):
To me, it's faith and family.
So those are the things that heis emotionally invested in.
So he wants to win a golftournament, but will his life?
Will he be?
He'll be super disappointed ifhe loses a golf tournament.
I thought it was so great lastyear when we finally heard Scott
(26:27):
unleash an F-bomb.
Oh, a human being.
Okay, I like that.
You know, yeah, we're going tobe disappointed, but is he going
to be like crushed?
Is he going to be dragging hisass around for a week?
But no, because he holds.
It's that imbalance, and Ithink so.
(26:50):
I've written a book calledGetting Unstuck Seven
Transformational Practices forGolf Nerds, and I talk about
this subject in my book and so Ihave two other examples.
So one of those is JordanSpieth.
So Jordan Spieth, his whole thefamily was always centered
around.
(27:10):
I forget his sister's name, butshe's challenged.
The whole family was around.
How do they support theirsister?
So you know, when he dunks itin the water, makes what did he
make?
The 11 or 12 on 12 at masters?
Yeah, super disappointed.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah, really disappointed.
But did his life?
(27:31):
Did he suddenly have to look athis life in a new way and
reinvent himself?
And all that?
No, because that's important towin the Masters, but what's
more important, family.
And one of the best examples is, if you recall, bruce Litsky.
Bruce Litsky, I interviewed himyears ago.
(27:51):
It was one of the most funnyinterviews I ever did, and so
this Bruce Litsky played kind ofa plotting game.
He had that suddenly over overthe top fade that was.
You know, you could count on it, like the sun coming up every
day, and I think he wonsomething like 12 PGA Tour
events and he won eight, 10.
(28:12):
I'm not sure how many championstour event.
This guy was a super player.
But I asked him what, why doyou play golf, he goes.
I play golf so I can earnenough money so I can restore
cars, I can coach my daughter,my son, playing baseball, I can
be an attentive spouse and I cango fishing.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Essentially a means to an end.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, yeah, but he didn't define himself by his
golf and I think that that's,when you look at a lot of these
players like rory mcelroy, Ithink, is a great example of
someone who's like, he's livedand died with his golf, uh, but
he keeps coming back because thehe he knows, at the end of the
day, it's made him an enormouslyrich person, all these things,
(29:06):
this life of fame and whatnot,but at the end of the day,
that's not what's going to makehim happy.
And, yeah, he's got four majorsunder his belt.
He wants to get that fifth.
But is that going to make himascend to this state of
enlightenment and nirvana,eternal bliss?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
nah, so you jesse, to your question.
I think it begins withunderstanding that there is no
correlation between the assholemeter and success.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Where can you get one of those meters?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Go to flaghuntersgolfcom.
We'll send you an autographededition.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, it'll be ready soon in our merchandise shop.
Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Justin, Sorry.
I wanted to ask Tim about hiscoaching influences and the road
he took to performance coaching.
So obviously Tim has taught alot of high-level golfers, was a
college college golf coach.
For the benefit of ourlisteners.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, I coached the University of Guelph golf team
in Canada.
I've coached all kinds ofplayers, a spattering of
Canadian tour players, somescratch players, but everyone
from novices to mid-handicappersfor sure scratch players, but
you know, everyone from novicesto mid to mid handicappers, for
sure.
But the uh I I grew up likeeverybody else.
(30:43):
Um, you know, jack nicholas wasjust like he was.
You know, the guy uh absorbedeverything that I could about
ben hogan.
I even edited a book on ben BenHogan's golf swing and I wrote
the biography of Mo Norman.
And Mo had a massive effect onon my understanding of golf and
(31:08):
performance.
And what was very cool about Mois that, you know, universally
regarded as the best ballstriker whoever lived, Mo never
took one golf lesson.
Mo's golf swing completelyhomemade and anyone who's looked
at Mo, either in still picturesor obviously on video, I mean
(31:31):
his swing looks, his setup looksso weird.
His arms ramrod straight outlike that.
His legs are super wide.
He looks more tipped over thanany golfer you've ever seen.
But this was a guy who, just asI say, hit it dead solid,
perfect, like close to everytime, and I was really fortunate
to play golf with Mo threetimes.
(31:52):
Watch him do innumerableclinics, but the core thing what
I'm getting to is that hedeveloped his swing his way.
He was not relying on any kindof method or this is how you do
it.
When Mo was an amateur, peoplewould say you'll never be any
good standing like that orholding the club like that,
(32:14):
because it appeared that Mo hadin his trail hand, his right
hand, that the club was in thepalm of his hand.
And of course everyone says, no, you've got to have that in the
fingers right.
So people said, mo, you'llnever be any good doing that.
And he says, well, I guess I'mno good.
Well, he won close to 60amateur tournaments.
(32:35):
You know the guy went toCanadian amateurs.
The guy, as I say, universallyregarded as the best ball
striker that lived and he did ithis way.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
And he was at ease with himself not playing on the
US tour.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Well, here's what I think happened.
See, a lot of people made themistake, the assumption, if you
will, that Mo was like a hermitand that he always wanted to be
by himself and he's kind of avery closed off person with Mo's
(33:17):
friends, who were all golfprofessionals, you, he was
highly social, he loved beingaround them, he was a loyal
friend.
And I think what happened formo was when he was on the us
tour, um, for two years he wasexceedingly lonely.
He just, you know, at the timepros would just finish the round
(33:39):
, go play cards, have drinkswhen mo felt so uncomfortable.
But also, mo came from ascarcity mindset financially,
even though he was givenbursaries by that he won to in
essence finance him through hisstints on the Southern US tour.
(34:00):
He didn't want to spend anymoney because he came from a
mindset of scarcity.
So he never had good shoes,good equipment, anything, so he
always felt like the odd duck.
And then what happened was twoprofessionals, professionals,
and they either were very overthe top in in telling Mo he
(34:24):
needed to dress better, take acaddy, stop fooling around.
There are there's kind ofthere's two ways.
You kind of look at that.
Either they were being veryrude and over the top to Mo or
they're trying to help him.
Regardless.
He was overwhelmed by this andfelt humiliated and left the
tour and so in essence, he cameback to play golf in Canada and
(34:49):
dominated the Canadian tour andI think a large piece of it was
he just felt way morecomfortable with the guys he
knew and Canada and all thatstuff and just very more
comfortable being the the bigfish in a small pond.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
So can you talk about the road you took to
performance coaching?
Okay, thank, you.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Well, like I said earlier, when I came to
understand that I was aparalysis by analysis, basket
case, um see, one of the thingsI um, my background is as a
journalist.
I was, uh, in the 80s I was amusic critic.
I um, given my musicalbackground, I was very fortunate
(35:37):
to interview and meet peoplelike David Bowie, pink Floyd, u2
, those people.
And then I got into golf in abig way again and, as I said, as
a journalist I got to meetamazing people David Ledbetter,
(36:06):
people, david Ledbetter, allkinds of interesting people.
But when I met Sean Foley, hestarted to look.
He looked at the game in awider way than anyone else I'd
ever met before and he alsointroduced me to the work of a
British performance coach namedCarl Morris, of a British
performance coach named CarlMorris, and I just was just
became enamored with Carl'sstuff Back in the day of CDs and
(36:27):
everything.
I must have had 10 of his and Iwould just, I would study them,
because that's what I did in mylife.
I once I get into something,I'm neck deep, and so that's
what I did with Carl's stuff.
I met a guy named Paul Doolandwho is now coaching PJ tour and
(36:48):
LPGA tour players in the mentalgame.
So I started to understand that, oh, tim, you need to be
looking in this other spaceparticularly.
You know, quote like the mentalgame.
So they all had a big uminfluence on me.
But the biggest really was fredshoemaker and I started to.
I I got introduced to his work,his book I think extraordinary
(37:11):
golf is just an amazing book,the most it.
It's so different than any golfbook you'll ever read.
And then, uh, he came up toCanada a few times and went to
his workshops and I just becamea super fan of Fred Shoemaker
and I got to know him and his,his wife, joe, and actually did
some consulting work for themwith some project that they had
(37:34):
going and through that I reallygot to to have a different look
at the game and, um, yeah,that's, those are my core
influences, right there can youtalk a little?
(37:55):
bit about your two products.
Quiet mind is a way of lookingat playing the game in terms of
developing awareness of what'sgoing on for you when you play
the game, and the obediencetraining for your brain is an
(38:18):
online program that I did, thatyou can get access through the
platform called Udemy, and thoseprograms are largely around the
core skills of developingawareness of what's going on, of
what's going on, and thatinvolves things like meditation,
learning, using journaling,doing exercises, like recording
(38:51):
your three best scores, thosekinds of things.
So largely they are all basedaround, in effect, the core
skill of awareness.
So what am I doing, you see?
Because my core premise in whatholds most people back and I've
talked about so you asked aboutmy latest projects, and my
(39:12):
latest one is a book calledGetting Unstuck Seven
Transformational Practices forGolf Nerds, and in this book, I,
I, I found that my core premiseis it's not that we can't.
The reason we feel stuck and wecan't improve in golf is not
because, um, we're not athletic.
(39:34):
Uh, we started golf too late,we have too many bad habits.
Um, your dad yelled at you,you're a choking dog.
It's because of the things wedo, it's our behaviors and most
of us are lurching around,unconscious of what we actually
do.
So, for sake of example, you'reon the golf course and you say
(39:57):
you came to the first tee andyou had some focus, some
intention that you're going todo that day and quite often for
most people it's somethingtechnical.
So they start off and they sayI'm going to finish my backswing
today, finish my back, that'swhat I'm going to do all day.
But you know, by the third holeyou started to blow some shots
up to the right.
So you start to go through yourR rolodex of old swing thoughts
(40:20):
.
You might even ask one of yourbuddies hey, what do you think
I'm doing?
So it's not what you'rethinking and it's not what
you're feeling.
Of course it's what you do andthat's the thing that keeps us,
keeps us shackled.
Is that?
And like for the other exampleis let's say you're playing
saturday morning with yourbuddies.
You got a match coming up ontuesday and you're blowing all
(40:44):
your your drives out to theright.
So what do you do?
You go to the range aftersaturday's round and you panic,
practice, you try to find what's.
How am I going to solve thisproblem with my driver?
And usually what happens is youjust go down this rabbit hole of
of technical mumbo jumbo thatyou're going to try, and you
(41:06):
usually come out the other sideworse than when you arrived.
So it's but these things thatwe do, we're largely unconscious
and we kind of, as I say, wekind of lurch around almost
unconscious of what we do.
And so the core thing that Ithink that one can do is just
(41:27):
bring some awareness what am Idoing, what am I thinking at
this moment, what am I thinkingabout?
And that allows us, as opposedto react as we do habitually,
that allows us to make a choiceand allows us to respond in a
way that could serve us better.
(41:49):
And usually it's staying with aprogram or a thing I call
mission, a thing I call mission.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
You know you talk about thinking.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat you think versus how you
think it?
Let me give you an example.
When I'm playing a practiceround, there could be water
there.
I could say, hey, well, myball's going to go in the water.
I'm saying in such a relaxedmanner because I know I don't
(42:18):
have a slice in the water.
But I'm saying in such arelaxed manner because I know I
don't have a slice in the bagand ball never goes there.
Fast forward to a tournament.
Like, oh water is there, man.
Like I gotta avoid it, like I'mtoo under par, I want to check
into the clubhouse and keep mytwo under par.
Score boom, water goes there.
So it's not so much what youthink, it's how you think what
(42:42):
you're thinking well, I thinkit's large.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
So much of our thinking.
So there's there's nothingwrong with thinking.
You're not doing anything wrong.
When you think about don't hitit in the water, that doesn't
mean you're uh, you're a poorcharacter and you're making a
mistake.
You're a human being.
But it's being aware of whatwe're thinking at the time.
(43:06):
And then how do we respond toit?
And, largely, how do we takeresponsibility for ourselves and
make the choice that's going towork?
So, okay, you're two under par.
You come up to a hole andyou've got water left.
So your choice is you could get.
You could get caught up in astory about oh, if I hit it in
(43:30):
the water, I'm blah, blah, blah,blah, blah, right.
Or you could take what are yougonna do with your attention?
Okay, I'm going to go throughmy process the best I can here
and where do I want to hit thisball?
Okay, I've decided I'm going tohit it here.
That's my target.
Go through my process and I'mimmersed in the physicality of
(43:51):
making that happen, and to me,that's the.
The core thing that we can do isis make golf into a physical
rather than a mental game.
So, when we talk about the, themind, and you know a mental
game, see, the mind is is.
Generally what we're talkingabout is the ego, our conscious
(44:13):
mind, and what we're talkingabout is is thinking.
And so when we're thinking,we're in one of two places.
We're either in the future,projecting, worrying, angsting
about things about keeping yourtwo under par going, or we're
going to be in the past, andwhat often is that we're
ruminating oh, that three putt'sgoing to kill me, it's you know
(44:36):
.
I'm not going to make it in theplayoff because of that and
regret.
And so where do we need to be?
When you're standing on thathole with the water there?
You need to be in the presentmoment, and that's not as hard
as you would think if you canbring yourself to be in the
(44:59):
physicality of hitting the golfshot, which, to me, is largely
relying on your sensations offeel and connectedness to the
club as you go through the shot.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
I was reading your book the Third Practice why do
we play golf?
I think that's such a massivequestion that everyone needs to
ask of themselves.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah, thank you.
I think that why I think thatis a valuable exercise to do and
I'll just be brief here.
I think what I ask all my newclients to do is to simply get
basically three pieces of paperand you're right across the top
(45:48):
why do I play golf?
And then you just start writingand there's no way to do this
right, there's no how.
All you do is you just keepwriting and what happens as we
do this is that as we write, westart to connect, we kind of go
underneath the ego mind and westart to connect with, say, some
(46:09):
memories or a good feeling thatwe had for something, and we
get into sort of our valuesystems, feelings, memories,
those types of things, and oftenwhat happens is people realize
that they don't play golf justso they could lower their index,
(46:30):
beat their obnoxiousbrother-in-law, win the B flight
of Club C or win or win themasters, that there's some
bigger things at play and that,to me, when we figure, when we
go through the exercise of whydo I play golf, then I think we
(46:54):
can have, like we've talkedbefore about having a better
perspective on on why we'replaying golf and what we, what
we hope to get out of golf and,through the through, the
experience of it, rather thanalways being dependent on
getting a certain result orotherwise.
(47:16):
You know I'll be disappointed,or I'll be lost in a story that
I suck, or whatever you want togo with.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
So it's essentially the road to better performance
is being in the present and notthinking about what you can do
or what the future holds.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah.
Well, you see the court see alot of people think, well, how
do I stop?
How do I stop thinking, well,you don't.
Okay, it's not a mistake tothink, oh, I could win the US
Open.
That's natural.
As a human being, you've beengifted with a mind and that's
what keeps you alive and allowsyou to do a lot of amazing
(48:00):
things.
But it's being in that moment,particularly when you're getting
ready to hit a shot.
When you're getting ready to hita shot, you know you step into
that, you know I love the, Ilove that way of processing a
shot that Lynn Marriott and PiaNilsson teach the think box,
play box.
(48:20):
And when you get into that thinkbox to play a shot, we analyze
what's going on, we do ourthinking, we make our decision,
we commit and then it's abouthitting a golf shot.
So that process could take,depending on the player, it
could be 45.
Well, more normally it would belike 15 seconds, but for some
(48:42):
players, maybe 45 seconds to 90seconds, and in that time period
that's when you just need to betaking care of business one
thing at a time, and that allowsyou to be in the present moment
, and once you hit your shot,then you can get back into a
conversation.
And then again it's totallynatural to think about today I'm
(49:05):
going to shoot my lowest score,I could win this tournament,
all that again, it's totallynatural to think that stuff, but
to play well it's.
How do you then respond to thatthinking and make a better
choice that's going to allow youto perform?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Can you give our listeners a quick tidbit on how
to improve immediately so youhave this piece about quiet mind
in the short game where youtalk about puttling.
Can you just run through thatfor our listeners?
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Well, there's a couple of different ways, but I
think one of the mostinteresting.
There's two things that one cando, and one is to go to a
putting green and enjoy yourstroke.
Just enjoy what you're doing.
(50:05):
And it's funny, when I've donequiet mind putting clinic, some
people go.
I tell them, go out and enjoyyour stroke.
And they kind of look at melike what you mean?
Like I'm not supposed to doanything.
And and I say, well, you mean,like what do you mean?
Do anything?
Well, like you know, focus onkeeping my head down or see if I
(50:26):
can make you know five out offive.
I said no, just go and enjoyyour stroke.
And it's funny when people dothat you can.
They start laughing and theybecome more aware of what's
actually happening in theirstroke and they start to feel
what's happening because they'remore in the moment.
So they're witnessing what'shappening rather than thinking
(50:49):
and trying hard to do something.
And because when we're thinkingwe're disconnected, we're not
even really here, Our minds aresort of off in this fantasy land
somewhere.
And so when we enjoy our strokeit's just way easier to
actually experience what'sactually going on, and you'll
(51:11):
learn a lot by doing that.
You'll start to observe.
Oh, you know, maybe I take theputter back a little, maybe
that's a little far, maybethat's why I decel.
You know, or you know, or youknow.
Maybe I have a tendency to um,you know, an old bugaboo of mine
actually was to light my gripat impact.
It was almost because it was afear thing and I became.
(51:35):
But you become more aware ofthese things, and that's part of
what I think really takespeople up the levels of golf.
Is this discovery become awareof things that you never were
aware of before.
In essence, I love the phrasethat Fred Shoemaker uses.
It's distinctions Become awareof things that we weren't aware
(51:58):
of before, and so exercises likethat can really help you.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
Jesse, do you have questions for Tim?
Speaker 1 (52:18):
I have one.
I have one.
It's a big one.
I don't know if we have time,but I'll just put it out there.
So we've all.
We've already analyzed the, youknow, the proverbial water on
the right and all that.
Um.
So if we're playing in atournament, maybe both of you
can answer this.
I'm going to think out loud Ifwe're playing in a tournament
and we do have these negativethoughts, how can we train
(52:39):
ourselves not to get attached tothe negative thoughts If we
already know, as human beings,that they're in there for reason
I'm going to say in mypsychologist background,
self-preservation for the ego.
Um, how can we train ourselvesto accept the very human nature
that we have but not be attachedto them?
(53:00):
So there's no charge for ourmind to grab onto to perceive
future prediction.
This is all part of how can westay in the moment in spite.
How can we train ourselves tostay in the moment in spite of
these human limitations, or arethey limitations?
Speaker 2 (53:26):
You want to go first, Justin?
Speaker 3 (53:28):
Yeah, I think it begins with how our brains are
wired.
So if we need to preserveourselves, then it's better for
the brain to know what's goingto happen in the future.
So back to your question aboutthe water on the right.
I think it became a real speedwagon had.
(53:48):
The answer to that, there'sthis song.
I can't fight this feeling anylonger and I think the problem
with most people is that they golike, wow, water to the right.
I shouldn't be thinking of thisthought.
Let's pretend that the water isnot there.
Now, how your brain works, isthis right?
You keep rejecting the thought.
(54:09):
The brain says, hey, the dummydidn't get it.
Let's amplify that, let's makeit emotional, let's give him
some feelings in his fingers.
But I've done this with myplayers.
I say, hey, look at the water,embrace it and like, okay, it's
there.
I'm not going to reject thesefeelings of doubt that I have.
(54:29):
In fact, let me palpate thesefeelings, like why do I feel
like that?
Why and how?
What am I feeling?
And then, when you are at onewith whatever you're feeling and
thinking, magically it justkind of goes away Because your
brain has done its job, like thedummy got it, that's it.
(54:49):
He's aware, got it.
That's it.
He's aware of it.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
Versus rejecting the feelings.
Emotions are not good or bad.
It's just there.
It's a thing.
It's there to tell you what'sahead.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Yeah Well, I mean, emotions are super valuable.
They tell us to pay attention.
They tell us there there are away that that comes up for us.
There's something going on hereyou need to pay attention to,
and so they're not to be ignoredor made to go away.
And you've probably heard thisphrase many times what we resist
(55:28):
persists.
So I think what happens for alot of players what I talked to
them about is just it's like youjust accept and you're aware
that this is happening.
This is happening, but ourthoughts are just thoughts.
We don even knowNeuroscientists can't even tell
(55:49):
you where thoughts come from.
And a core thing is tounderstand that our thoughts are
not real.
They're not real.
We don't know where they come.
If thoughts were real, I wouldhave been put in jail years ago.
They would have put me on anice floe and pushed me out
because you ain't safe dude forsociety.
(56:10):
So it's just kind ofunderstanding that we're going
to get these thoughts, we'regoing to get these feelings.
They're all going to come.
They're going to come.
So a great phrase that Ilearned through Fred Shoemaker
was awareness is curative.
Just to be aware that this isgoing on, that diffuses the
(56:31):
energy that comes in, theemotion oh, I'm kind of nervous
about the water there and that,right away, that dissipates the,
that awareness dissipates thefear.
Oh, I got this going on.
Okay, then I then, rather thanholding a death grip of the club
, okay, I'm going to hold it ina certain way.
(56:52):
So that, to me, is just that'swhy awareness is so big to me.
But also, I think a core thingthat you can take into any round
of golf is what is yourintention for that day?
And when you have an intention,a macro piece of why you're
playing, I think it'sparticularly if you've thought
(57:15):
about it for a while.
And this is my intention forthis day.
In some ways, it's like havinga game plan so that when things
happen as they do in golf,you're going to hit one in the
water, you can make a doublebogey.
When things happen as they doin golf, you're going to hit one
in the water, you make a doublebogey.
Then you come back to what'sthat master plan that I have for
the day?
It could be that I'm going tojoin my shots, whatever I'm
(57:38):
going to be with the club head,I'm going to, you know, whatever
it is.
Then, when this stuff happens,you're just able to roll with it
a lot better.
Because if, if the focus is ongoing low for that day, qualify
we, we want to qualify, we wantto win, but if you're three over
(58:03):
after two holes, where do yougo with that?
It's be able to hang it, ithang in with it.
So, um, yeah, those are some ofmy thoughts on that great
question, jesse thanks, greatanswers, boys.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Uh, I think we're about ready to close this out.
Tim uh, tim, how can ourlisteners find you?
Speaker 2 (58:24):
um, my website is O'Connor golfca.
I have, uh, a blog on sub stack.
It's a T O'Connor at a substackcom.
I write a weekly blog called upand down.
Um, I also do a podcast as well.
It's called swing thoughts, andI've been doing it for well.
(58:45):
We're in our 10th year now.
Uh, so there's that and um,yeah, that's.
Those are core ways you can geta hold of me amazing.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Thank you, tim tim.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
Thank you very much.
I've really enjoyed thisconversation, gents, thank you,
thank you.
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Fly
Hunters Golf Podcast.
My name is Jesse Perryman and Iam your host, along with my
friend, justin Tang, a leadinstructor at the Tanah Merritt
Golf Club in Singapore, holisticcoach, well-versed,
well-educated, well-spoken, andif you're ever in the Singapore
(00:24):
area and you want to head onover there, I would behoove you
to spend some time with him,because it will be an enriching
hour or two and it's a privilegeand a pleasure to have him as
my podcast partner.
And this week it's a privilegeand an absolute pleasure to
bring to you a performance coachby the name of Tim O'Connor.
(00:46):
Tim is an author, he has comeout with a book Getting Unstuck
and has some incredible productsthat if you go to
wwwoconnergolfcom you're goingto find.
And this conversation was great.
(01:07):
I very much enjoyed theinterplay between Justin, tim
and myself.
We go into really the mentalside of it and we go into being
very careful about what labelswe give ourselves and how we
choose to form identificationsto the game and, quite frankly
(01:33):
in our life, to be aware of that.
Tim is from Canada and he wasinfluenced by Fred Shoemaker.
Those who are longtimelisteners know that I had Fred
on the pod, and Fred has been anice influence for all of us,
quite frankly, with his work,and we just continue that
(01:55):
conversation.
We really go into the thingsthat we can do to make ourselves
better and to play with moreenjoyment and more joy.
Even as a competitive playerwhether you play competitively
for the love of the game or youplay competitively for a living
(02:17):
there still needs to be aperspective and we discuss those
perspective and those grayareas that we can really fly
into the perception and thebalance of trying but not trying
(02:44):
, of grinding but not grinding,and getting in there and
allowing ourselves to play fromjoy even in the midst of
competition.
So I would encourage you to goto his website Once again it's
www.
O'connorgolfcom and check itout, reach out to him.
(03:06):
The best way to get a hold ofhim is through his website for
some one-on-one training and orhis plethora of phenomenal
products.
I'm a big fan.
I absolutely loved this episodeand I'm sure you will enjoy it
as well.
So everyone, thanks forlistening and cheers.
(03:27):
Loved this episode and I'm sureyou will enjoy it as well.
So everyone, thanks forlistening and cheers.
Have a fantastic rest of yourweek.
Hello and welcome to anotheredition of the Flag Hunters Golf
(03:47):
Podcast.
I am your host, jesse Perryman,along with my great friend,
teacher extraordinaire, believesin all things holistic to get
better playing this lovely gamethat we all love.
His name is Justin Tang and ourguest today.
Oh, by the way, justin is aninstructor at the ternamera golf
club in singapore, so if you'reever in singapore, tell him
(04:09):
that you listen to the podcastand he'll probably turn you away
.
I'm kidding anyway.
Uh, justin, he's a brother fromanother mother and our guest
today is tim o'connor.
Tim, uh, welcome, thanks forsaying yes, coming on Well
always.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
thank you for the invite.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Thank you, Tim.
Good to speak with you again,Jess.
Always hey, Tim, so how do youget involved in golf?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
How do I get involved in golf?
Well, as a kid I was, my dadsaid, hey, you could probably
earn some money doing this thingcalled caddying.
So I got into it that way at aprivate club in London, ontario,
in Canada, and caddying.
I was also a junior golfer butI became a much better caddy
(04:59):
than a golfer a golfer.
And so the really good playersat our club would ask me to
caddy for them in, like the clubchampionships and invitationals
and that kind of thing, andwatching these players paint the
sky, just the way they talk,the way they made decisions.
(05:20):
I I golf got its hooks in mebecause I went I want to be like
these guys, you know thesescratch players, just everything
about the way they conductedthemselves and obviously the way
they hit golf shots.
And that's basically how I gotinto golf and, like a lot of
people, I just became a golfobsessive, you know into.
(05:42):
I kind of stopped playing thegame because I got into music I
play.
I play bass in um.
Right now I'm in a punk band,which is one of the most fun
things I do, uh.
But I got into golf, back intogolf in in my 20s and I just was
always working, working,working to emulate those scratch
(06:05):
players I used to caddy for andI wanted they were the models
that I wanted to be like.
But, um, you know.
So I did everything I thoughtwas the right thing to do.
I read every book, I read thevideos, I did everything you're
supposed to do, um, swing theright way, stand the right way,
(06:25):
all that good stuff.
But I never got really betterthan a nine handicap and I just
sort of realized eventually,through the help of people like
Sean Foley, who you've had onyour podcast recently, another
friend, paul Dooland, and somepersonal growth, work, work, I
did I just came to understandthat, oh my God, I was a
(06:46):
paralysis by analysis basketcase.
So I just kind of did a 180 andI did.
I really the work of FredShoemaker really resonated with
me and I just did this, as I say, a 180 from kind of tab A into
(07:07):
slot B, golf and all thistechnical focus to more of just
playing and swinging in a moreinstinctual way.
And so that's how I got intothe game and I think, through my
own struggles with it, thatthat's what helped me become a
(07:29):
coach, because I've experiencedeverything that most players
have gone through in terms ofhow this game just torments us,
in terms of all this investmentemotionally, you know,
monetarily, the time and allthis trying hard and it just the
roi, for that is just so crappy.
(07:50):
Most people just don't getbetter trying to.
You know, do the what they seeon youtube and all the trying to
swing perfectly and um.
So yeah, that's in brief,that's kind of my story.
How I got into into golf andinto coaching and you know
(08:11):
that's that's.
I just find that so many peoplethey love this game but they
kind of have the sense that whydoes golf hate me?
I'm trying to work with them tomaybe patch up that love affair
.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Here's a question for you guys when do you think all
that turmoil comes from?
I would say it comes from theball just being there looking at
you.
That's where it all begins.
And because the ball doesn'tmove compared to other sports,
we think we can do things to theball.
(08:46):
We think we can overpower theball, bend it to our will.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's where all the demons come from Jesse what do
you think?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Well, I think the very nature of the game is to
elicit every possible holisticchallenge known to man.
I mean, can you think of asport that will invite every
dark side gremlin that you haverummaging around in your
subconscious and have itmanifest at a moment's notice,
(09:20):
you seem, if you're looking downthe middle of, say, a par five,
that's got trees on the rightand out of bounds on the left.
If you think for one second, ifthat ball is going left, or you
say that you don't want it togo left, nervous system says
thanks, it's going left, exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Ironic reactance theory.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, yeah, you know it's.
How do you get past that?
How do you accept that part ofour humanness that we are flawed
by a very nature?
But we can use thesedisadvantages to our advantage
with a trained and disciplinedmind yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, I, I think that , um, someone with a trained
mind is going to beat someonewith a new semi-trained swing
any day of the week.
Really, I mean it just that'lljust happen.
But I also there's a couple ofthings.
So, justin, I really resonatewith what you're saying about
that ball being down there.
(10:19):
I think one of the core thingsthat happens for people is like
it's kind of like that ball sitsthere and it's almost like
challenging.
Really, really, you thinkyou're going to hit me with that
little implement thing.
You really think that you'regoing to be able to hit me solid
towards my target?
Who are you kidding?
But I think the core thing thathappens around the golf ball is
that we mistake the ball forthe target and it is not the
(10:43):
target.
It's.
You know we collect it for thetarget and it is not the target.
It's you know we collect it onthe way.
So that's a core thing that Iwork with a lot of players.
It's amazing how, when you takethe focus from the little white
thing at your feet and move itto the target, how it makes golf
a lot easier.
But I think also the thing thatreally, um, jesse, connecting
(11:06):
to what you're saying.
I I think a lot of it is that weview golf and the golf course
as a test.
It's a test of our competency,of our ability to do something
at a level that we wish, and weattach our ability to do
something at a level that wewish and we attach our identity
(11:27):
to it and our self-esteem to it.
And when golf is viewed in thatway, that is setting yourself
up for failure.
It's just too hard a game.
The emotional rollercoasterthat you ride, the peaks and
valleys, it's just nutty andit's none of that.
So to me, if we can just somehowarrive at a balance of you know
(11:53):
what, to me, gratitude is a bigpiece, is that I, you know, I
am so fortunate to be able toplay this game, have the means
to do it the, the, the, the body, the physical, the ability to
go out and be out on a golfcourse and be in this amazing
environment, be with somefriends or maybe some people you
(12:14):
haven't met, but whatever, andto play this, this game, um,
yeah, not unless, not for asecond am I saying you hit it
sideways?
Ha, you know, laugh it off.
No, we all want to hit the ball.
Well, but it's like all therest of our life, I believe it's
.
There's a whole cascade ofthings and if we hold them in
(12:34):
balance, I think we get toexperience joy a lot more, a lot
more.
And as a bonus, I think wegenerally play a lot better when
we're in, come from that space.
That it's not a test.
It's actually, you know, agreat experience that we're
lucky to participate in.
(12:55):
Couldn't agree more.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Hey Tim.
So going back to paralysis byanalysis, right, so the ball
sits there.
I think it's a time issue,isn't it?
You've got so much time tothink about what you want to do
to the ball, and in other sports, like baseball, there isn't
much time to think.
When the pitch comes at you,you just have to react.
(13:18):
Same for soccer, same forfootball, same for tennis, but
in goal, you've got time.
Time is your friend, almost.
Time is also your enemy.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
A thousand percent yes.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
And going back to paralysis by analysis.
We tend to get in our way whenwe think, hey look, if I run
through my pre-flight checklistI'm good.
Can you talk to that for thebenefit of our listeners how
that is actually detrimental toour games?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Well, okay, so when you run through the checklist,
basically you're running throughthe list of things that you
hope to do, right, and sowhenever we're in that space,
we're drawing attention usuallyto our golf swing and how we're
going to move our body parts,and whenever we do that, we are
(14:18):
going to bring extra musculartension to whatever we're
thinking about, and that is justa recipe for bad golf.
You cannot achieve flow, youdon't generate speed, you're
going to be out of sync, allthose things whenever you bring
unwanted muscular tension towhat you're doing and, in
(14:40):
essence, you're self-interfering.
That's the core thing.
See, one of the things that isvery interesting to me is that
in our society, we are a very inour heads culture.
Everything.
We've got so much informationcoming at us that we're so
(15:00):
self-conscious about what we'redoing so we live in our heads.
We're so self-conscious aboutwhat we're doing, so we live in
our heads.
And you know, the reason mostmen are bad dancers is because
they're so disconnected fromtheir bodies, and so when we
live in our heads, we can'tconnect with the tool which is
the golf club, and we just loseall that connection to what we
(15:24):
can do.
Quite naturally, you know mostpeople when you so, coming back
to what you said about sportsand what you react it's much
easier to access a state of flow, you know, responding to a
target and allowing our body togo rather than trying to make it
do things.
So when we're trying to dosomething right, we're going to
(15:46):
be in a state of tension andgenerally self-interfere.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
You know what's my favorite version of trying?
Someone messes up the frontnine, all right.
All right, tom, time to playgolf, let's try hard.
And then I go.
You mean, you were not playinggolf on the front nine, you're
not trying hard, what were youdoing?
There's this idea that if I tryhard enough, I will go under
(16:13):
par.
But that often gets in our way,and I'll give you an example of
one of my top players.
His name is Philip Lee.
He is 12 years old.
He texted me one day and sayshey, coach, just completed a
(16:33):
tournament I won.
I shot 29 and 37.
Played bad.
I'm like, hang on, you shot a29 and you ended up six under
par.
That's his idea of playing bad.
and then he was like, hey, hewasn't focused on.
(16:54):
Hey, I shot 29, like, which isa damn good accomplishment for
anyone, oh my god, yes, letalone a junior golfer at 12
years old.
He was only focused on the 37.
So he's like how did I shoot?
Or why did I shoot that 37?
So I said were you trying toshoot 58?
(17:17):
And then he goes yes, I saidthat's the problem.
When we try to make somethinghappen, the probability of that
happening diminishes greatly.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Absolutely, because it becomes something extrinsic
to us, something outside of us,and it becomes kind of a have to
and it's a standard we'retrying to reach.
And I think that when we'relooking at things external to us
like anything, that's kind of astandard, a score, a result, in
(17:55):
many ways what we're doing isour true self is seeking joy all
the time.
We want fulfillment, we wantgrowth, we want connection, all
that.
But when we are not setting,when it doesn't appear that
we're going to get what we want,that we believe will deliver us
happiness, that's when we aresapped of energy, we lose our
(18:20):
focus, we lose our confidence,because it all becomes about
this external goal that we judgewill bring us happiness and joy
.
And there's no joy from thingsexternal.
You could win the Masters GolfTournament, that'd be a
wonderful thing, but the nextday you still have the same
issues that are on your life,the things that are going on.
(18:43):
There's a great phrase I learneda few years ago.
It's called arrival fallacy.
And we think in our life we getthe, we get the hot car, we get
the promotion at work, our, ourindex goes from, you know,
seven till four.
We'll be happy.
What happens to the guy whogets his index down to four, oh,
I want to be at two.
The guy who wins a majortournament, what happens to him?
(19:07):
I want to win two majors, andso it's all this seeking,
seeking, seeking happiness andjoy and happiness is an inside
job.
So I think that's the but.
Again, our culture says thatyou need to accomplish things,
(19:29):
you have to look a certain wayand you need, you need to
achieve, and we get hoodwinkedas a society that we think that
that will bring us joy andfulfillment.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Can you talk a little bit more about inside out
thinking?
What you alluded to, happinesscomes from within, so give give
our listeners an example.
Right, I've got two beautifuldaughters, eight and six.
On one occasion two of them canbe creating a din.
I'm not affected.
(19:58):
Another occasion they could bedoing the same thing and I get
so worked up, angry, angry,start yelling at them.
Can you explain to ourlisteners how to use the power
of inside out thinking to maketheir lives a better place every
day?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
is to accept that as a human being, we have potential
and capability and connectionsto things that we aren't even
aware of, like I believe thatgolf is a technical, physical,
emotional, physical andspiritual game, and the things
that we think will generallybring us happiness generally do
(20:46):
not.
And so what is happiness?
I think happiness to me is whathappened every once in a while.
Well, yeah, you shoot a goodscore, you post your number in
in the computer and your thinggoes down.
Hey, it feels good, you littlehigh fives with everyone.
But it's, it's ethereal, I mean, it's just ephemeral, it's,
it's ethereal, I mean it's justephemeral, it's just it's here
and it's gone.
But where does true joy comefrom?
(21:07):
I think it comes from you hit ashot and you just see it
through that little window andit just feels so good and that's
just.
You just have this feeling, yousavor it, and, and so whether
anyone else has saw it, whetherit led to you winning a golf
tournament, maybe, but to meit's the experience of just
(21:33):
being yourself and connecting towhat you're truly capable of
and seeing those possibilities.
It's really kind of a hardthing to nail down, but true joy
to me comes from within and weexperience it when you know you
go to Starbucks and you connectwith the server and you say, how
(21:55):
are you today?
And the person who was frowningsuddenly smiles Joy.
Or you just go out on abeautiful day and you just look
at the sun and going and feel iton your face and you hear the
birds sing and just like thisfeeling of just peace and joy
(22:15):
comes through.
Now that just ebbs and flows.
I mean, life is full of sadnessand anger and grief and all
kinds of things, and anger andgrief and all kinds of things.
But I really do think that ingolf and in life, what we're
seeking is to be fulfilled as anindividual.
My life has meaning and purposeand I get joy from those things
(22:40):
.
And if I happen to win a golftournament, hey, that's great,
that's a bonus, but that's notgoing to change your life.
And and I know a lot of, I knowa lot of really good players
and golf professors who aremiserable pricks, people I don't
want to be around.
But oh, boy there.
(23:00):
Yeah, that guy, he's got it,man, what a swing.
The guy brings it intournaments, hey, that's great
and all the power to you, man.
But life there's way more tolife than just that.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I have a question for both of you.
Is there a way to have abalance of wanting the external
goals let's say, for example,playing whatever level of
competitive golf that you play,whether it's high-level, amateur
or professional or whatever ofwanting external stuff and being
(23:39):
okay with, you know,surrendering to the moment and
all that?
So is there a possibility to bea dog and wanting to go out
there and beat everybody's assand having the internal
fortitude or training tobasically be a Jedi master, to
be in a state of acceptance?
(24:01):
It's like a dichotomy betweenbeing an asshole and an angel.
Is there a possibility to haveboth consciousnesses inside of
you while you're playingcompetitively, Like I really
want to win, I want to go outthere and play well, I want to
(24:22):
whoop everybody's ass and I alsoam going to be okay with
whatever happens and still havean undercurrent where the
intention is to play withinmyself and to have the spirit of
joy.
And the reason why I ask thisopen-ended question is because I
felt it from Scotty Scheffler.
I got to spend a day withScotty last year.
(24:44):
I know Ted Scott really welland he exemplifies this very
phenomenon which I'm putting outthere to you two and in the
universe that you could be a dogand be intense but yet have a
smile on your face and yet enjoythe experience.
It's like it's hard for me toput my finger on right now with
(25:06):
words, so forgive me as I'mfumbling over, I'm trying to put
them into understandablevernacular, but boy, it seems to
me that that would be the bestof both worlds.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah Well, jesse, I would give you more credit.
You did a great job there.
I think you framed that.
I think you framed that reallywell.
And, yes, it's absolutelypossible to want to go out and
be the best player, use whateverphraseology you want, kill
(25:42):
everybody, step on their neckswhatever you know and emerge as
the top person.
But you spoke of it as you werelaying that out.
It's holding that in balance,and so Scotty Scheffler, I think
, is a great example of someonewho is so grounded.
So what are the most importantthings to him in his life?
(26:03):
To me, it's faith and family.
So those are the things that heis emotionally invested in.
So he wants to win a golftournament, but will his life?
Will he be?
He'll be super disappointed ifhe loses a golf tournament.
I thought it was so great lastyear when we finally heard Scott
(26:27):
unleash an F-bomb.
Oh, a human being.
Okay, I like that.
You know, yeah, we're going tobe disappointed, but is he going
to be like crushed?
Is he going to be dragging hisass around for a week?
But no, because he holds.
It's that imbalance, and Ithink so.
(26:50):
I've written a book calledGetting Unstuck Seven
Transformational Practices forGolf Nerds, and I talk about
this subject in my book and so Ihave two other examples.
So one of those is JordanSpieth.
So Jordan Spieth, his whole thefamily was always centered
around.
(27:10):
I forget his sister's name, butshe's challenged.
The whole family was around.
How do they support theirsister?
So you know, when he dunks itin the water, makes what did he
make?
The 11 or 12 on 12 at masters?
Yeah, super disappointed.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah, really disappointed.
But did his life?
(27:31):
Did he suddenly have to look athis life in a new way and
reinvent himself?
And all that?
No, because that's important towin the Masters, but what's
more important, family.
And one of the best examples is, if you recall, bruce Litsky.
Bruce Litsky, I interviewed himyears ago.
(27:51):
It was one of the most funnyinterviews I ever did, and so
this Bruce Litsky played kind ofa plotting game.
He had that suddenly over overthe top fade that was.
You know, you could count on it, like the sun coming up every
day, and I think he wonsomething like 12 PGA Tour
events and he won eight, 10.
(28:12):
I'm not sure how many championstour event.
This guy was a super player.
But I asked him what, why doyou play golf, he goes.
I play golf so I can earnenough money so I can restore
cars, I can coach my daughter,my son, playing baseball, I can
be an attentive spouse and I cango fishing.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Essentially a means to an end.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, yeah, but he didn't define himself by his
golf and I think that that's,when you look at a lot of these
players like rory mcelroy, Ithink, is a great example of
someone who's like, he's livedand died with his golf, uh, but
he keeps coming back because thehe he knows, at the end of the
day, it's made him an enormouslyrich person, all these things,
(29:06):
this life of fame and whatnot,but at the end of the day,
that's not what's going to makehim happy.
And, yeah, he's got four majorsunder his belt.
He wants to get that fifth.
But is that going to make himascend to this state of
enlightenment and nirvana,eternal bliss?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
nah, so you jesse, to your question.
I think it begins withunderstanding that there is no
correlation between the assholemeter and success.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Where can you get one of those meters?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Go to flaghuntersgolfcom.
We'll send you an autographededition.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, it'll be ready soon in our merchandise shop.
Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Justin, Sorry.
I wanted to ask Tim about hiscoaching influences and the road
he took to performance coaching.
So obviously Tim has taught alot of high-level golfers, was a
college college golf coach.
For the benefit of ourlisteners.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, I coached the University of Guelph golf team
in Canada.
I've coached all kinds ofplayers, a spattering of
Canadian tour players, somescratch players, but everyone
from novices to mid-handicappersfor sure scratch players, but
you know, everyone from novicesto mid to mid handicappers, for
sure.
But the uh I I grew up likeeverybody else.
(30:43):
Um, you know, jack nicholas wasjust like he was.
You know, the guy uh absorbedeverything that I could about
ben hogan.
I even edited a book on ben BenHogan's golf swing and I wrote
the biography of Mo Norman.
And Mo had a massive effect onon my understanding of golf and
(31:08):
performance.
And what was very cool about Mois that, you know, universally
regarded as the best ballstriker whoever lived, Mo never
took one golf lesson.
Mo's golf swing completelyhomemade and anyone who's looked
at Mo, either in still picturesor obviously on video, I mean
(31:31):
his swing looks, his setup looksso weird.
His arms ramrod straight outlike that.
His legs are super wide.
He looks more tipped over thanany golfer you've ever seen.
But this was a guy who, just asI say, hit it dead solid,
perfect, like close to everytime, and I was really fortunate
to play golf with Mo threetimes.
(31:52):
Watch him do innumerableclinics, but the core thing what
I'm getting to is that hedeveloped his swing his way.
He was not relying on any kindof method or this is how you do
it.
When Mo was an amateur, peoplewould say you'll never be any
good standing like that orholding the club like that,
(32:14):
because it appeared that Mo hadin his trail hand, his right
hand, that the club was in thepalm of his hand.
And of course everyone says, no, you've got to have that in the
fingers right.
So people said, mo, you'llnever be any good doing that.
And he says, well, I guess I'mno good.
Well, he won close to 60amateur tournaments.
(32:35):
You know the guy went toCanadian amateurs.
The guy, as I say, universallyregarded as the best ball
striker that lived and he did ithis way.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
And he was at ease with himself not playing on the
US tour.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Well, here's what I think happened.
See, a lot of people made themistake, the assumption, if you
will, that Mo was like a hermitand that he always wanted to be
by himself and he's kind of avery closed off person with Mo's
(33:17):
friends, who were all golfprofessionals, you, he was
highly social, he loved beingaround them, he was a loyal
friend.
And I think what happened formo was when he was on the us
tour, um, for two years he wasexceedingly lonely.
He just, you know, at the timepros would just finish the round
(33:39):
, go play cards, have drinkswhen mo felt so uncomfortable.
But also, mo came from ascarcity mindset financially,
even though he was givenbursaries by that he won to in
essence finance him through hisstints on the Southern US tour.
(34:00):
He didn't want to spend anymoney because he came from a
mindset of scarcity.
So he never had good shoes,good equipment, anything, so he
always felt like the odd duck.
And then what happened was twoprofessionals, professionals,
and they either were very overthe top in in telling Mo he
(34:24):
needed to dress better, take acaddy, stop fooling around.
There are there's kind ofthere's two ways.
You kind of look at that.
Either they were being veryrude and over the top to Mo or
they're trying to help him.
Regardless.
He was overwhelmed by this andfelt humiliated and left the
tour and so in essence, he cameback to play golf in Canada and
(34:49):
dominated the Canadian tour andI think a large piece of it was
he just felt way morecomfortable with the guys he
knew and Canada and all thatstuff and just very more
comfortable being the the bigfish in a small pond.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
So can you talk about the road you took to
performance coaching?
Okay, thank, you.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Well, like I said earlier, when I came to
understand that I was aparalysis by analysis, basket
case, um see, one of the thingsI um, my background is as a
journalist.
I was, uh, in the 80s I was amusic critic.
I um, given my musicalbackground, I was very fortunate
(35:37):
to interview and meet peoplelike David Bowie, pink Floyd, u2
, those people.
And then I got into golf in abig way again and, as I said, as
a journalist I got to meetamazing people David Ledbetter,
(36:06):
people, david Ledbetter, allkinds of interesting people.
But when I met Sean Foley, hestarted to look.
He looked at the game in awider way than anyone else I'd
ever met before and he alsointroduced me to the work of a
British performance coach namedCarl Morris, of a British
performance coach named CarlMorris, and I just was just
became enamored with Carl'sstuff Back in the day of CDs and
(36:27):
everything.
I must have had 10 of his and Iwould just, I would study them,
because that's what I did in mylife.
I once I get into something,I'm neck deep, and so that's
what I did with Carl's stuff.
I met a guy named Paul Doolandwho is now coaching PJ tour and
(36:48):
LPGA tour players in the mentalgame.
So I started to understand that, oh, tim, you need to be
looking in this other spaceparticularly.
You know, quote like the mentalgame.
So they all had a big uminfluence on me.
But the biggest really was fredshoemaker and I started to.
I I got introduced to his work,his book I think extraordinary
(37:11):
golf is just an amazing book,the most it.
It's so different than any golfbook you'll ever read.
And then, uh, he came up toCanada a few times and went to
his workshops and I just becamea super fan of Fred Shoemaker
and I got to know him and his,his wife, joe, and actually did
some consulting work for themwith some project that they had
(37:34):
going and through that I reallygot to to have a different look
at the game and, um, yeah,that's, those are my core
influences, right there can youtalk a little?
(37:55):
bit about your two products.
Quiet mind is a way of lookingat playing the game in terms of
developing awareness of what'sgoing on for you when you play
the game, and the obediencetraining for your brain is an
(38:18):
online program that I did, thatyou can get access through the
platform called Udemy, and thoseprograms are largely around the
core skills of developingawareness of what's going on, of
what's going on, and thatinvolves things like meditation,
learning, using journaling,doing exercises, like recording
(38:51):
your three best scores, thosekinds of things.
So largely they are all basedaround, in effect, the core
skill of awareness.
So what am I doing, you see?
Because my core premise in whatholds most people back and I've
talked about so you asked aboutmy latest projects, and my
(39:12):
latest one is a book calledGetting Unstuck Seven
Transformational Practices forGolf Nerds, and in this book, I,
I, I found that my core premiseis it's not that we can't.
The reason we feel stuck and wecan't improve in golf is not
because, um, we're not athletic.
(39:34):
Uh, we started golf too late,we have too many bad habits.
Um, your dad yelled at you,you're a choking dog.
It's because of the things wedo, it's our behaviors and most
of us are lurching around,unconscious of what we actually
do.
So, for sake of example, you'reon the golf course and you say
(39:57):
you came to the first tee andyou had some focus, some
intention that you're going todo that day and quite often for
most people it's somethingtechnical.
So they start off and they sayI'm going to finish my backswing
today, finish my back, that'swhat I'm going to do all day.
But you know, by the third holeyou started to blow some shots
up to the right.
So you start to go through yourR rolodex of old swing thoughts
(40:20):
.
You might even ask one of yourbuddies hey, what do you think
I'm doing?
So it's not what you'rethinking and it's not what
you're feeling.
Of course it's what you do andthat's the thing that keeps us,
keeps us shackled.
Is that?
And like for the other exampleis let's say you're playing
saturday morning with yourbuddies.
You got a match coming up ontuesday and you're blowing all
(40:44):
your your drives out to theright.
So what do you do?
You go to the range aftersaturday's round and you panic,
practice, you try to find what's.
How am I going to solve thisproblem with my driver?
And usually what happens is youjust go down this rabbit hole of
of technical mumbo jumbo thatyou're going to try, and you
(41:06):
usually come out the other sideworse than when you arrived.
So it's but these things thatwe do, we're largely unconscious
and we kind of, as I say, wekind of lurch around almost
unconscious of what we do.
And so the core thing that Ithink that one can do is just
(41:27):
bring some awareness what am Idoing, what am I thinking at
this moment, what am I thinkingabout?
And that allows us, as opposedto react as we do habitually,
that allows us to make a choiceand allows us to respond in a
way that could serve us better.
(41:49):
And usually it's staying with aprogram or a thing I call
mission, a thing I call mission.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
You know you talk about thinking.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat you think versus how you
think it?
Let me give you an example.
When I'm playing a practiceround, there could be water
there.
I could say, hey, well, myball's going to go in the water.
I'm saying in such a relaxedmanner because I know I don't
(42:18):
have a slice in the water.
But I'm saying in such arelaxed manner because I know I
don't have a slice in the bagand ball never goes there.
Fast forward to a tournament.
Like, oh water is there, man.
Like I gotta avoid it, like I'mtoo under par, I want to check
into the clubhouse and keep mytwo under par.
Score boom, water goes there.
So it's not so much what youthink, it's how you think what
(42:42):
you're thinking well, I thinkit's large.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
So much of our thinking.
So there's there's nothingwrong with thinking.
You're not doing anything wrong.
When you think about don't hitit in the water, that doesn't
mean you're uh, you're a poorcharacter and you're making a
mistake.
You're a human being.
But it's being aware of whatwe're thinking at the time.
(43:06):
And then how do we respond toit?
And, largely, how do we takeresponsibility for ourselves and
make the choice that's going towork?
So, okay, you're two under par.
You come up to a hole andyou've got water left.
So your choice is you could get.
You could get caught up in astory about oh, if I hit it in
(43:30):
the water, I'm blah, blah, blah,blah, blah, right.
Or you could take what are yougonna do with your attention?
Okay, I'm going to go throughmy process the best I can here
and where do I want to hit thisball?
Okay, I've decided I'm going tohit it here.
That's my target.
Go through my process and I'mimmersed in the physicality of
(43:51):
making that happen, and to me,that's the.
The core thing that we can do isis make golf into a physical
rather than a mental game.
So, when we talk about the, themind, and you know a mental
game, see, the mind is is.
Generally what we're talkingabout is the ego, our conscious
(44:13):
mind, and what we're talkingabout is is thinking.
And so when we're thinking,we're in one of two places.
We're either in the future,projecting, worrying, angsting
about things about keeping yourtwo under par going, or we're
going to be in the past, andwhat often is that we're
ruminating oh, that three putt'sgoing to kill me, it's you know
(44:36):
.
I'm not going to make it in theplayoff because of that and
regret.
And so where do we need to be?
When you're standing on thathole with the water there?
You need to be in the presentmoment, and that's not as hard
as you would think if you canbring yourself to be in the
(44:59):
physicality of hitting the golfshot, which, to me, is largely
relying on your sensations offeel and connectedness to the
club as you go through the shot.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
I was reading your book the Third Practice why do
we play golf?
I think that's such a massivequestion that everyone needs to
ask of themselves.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah, thank you.
I think that why I think thatis a valuable exercise to do and
I'll just be brief here.
I think what I ask all my newclients to do is to simply get
basically three pieces of paperand you're right across the top
(45:48):
why do I play golf?
And then you just start writingand there's no way to do this
right, there's no how.
All you do is you just keepwriting and what happens as we
do this is that as we write, westart to connect, we kind of go
underneath the ego mind and westart to connect with, say, some
(46:09):
memories or a good feeling thatwe had for something, and we
get into sort of our valuesystems, feelings, memories,
those types of things, and oftenwhat happens is people realize
that they don't play golf justso they could lower their index,
(46:30):
beat their obnoxiousbrother-in-law, win the B flight
of Club C or win or win themasters, that there's some
bigger things at play and that,to me, when we figure, when we
go through the exercise of whydo I play golf, then I think we
(46:54):
can have, like we've talkedbefore about having a better
perspective on on why we'replaying golf and what we, what
we hope to get out of golf and,through the through, the
experience of it, rather thanalways being dependent on
getting a certain result orotherwise.
(47:16):
You know I'll be disappointed,or I'll be lost in a story that
I suck, or whatever you want togo with.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
So it's essentially the road to better performance
is being in the present and notthinking about what you can do
or what the future holds.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah.
Well, you see the court see alot of people think, well, how
do I stop?
How do I stop thinking, well,you don't.
Okay, it's not a mistake tothink, oh, I could win the US
Open.
That's natural.
As a human being, you've beengifted with a mind and that's
what keeps you alive and allowsyou to do a lot of amazing
(48:00):
things.
But it's being in that moment,particularly when you're getting
ready to hit a shot.
When you're getting ready to hita shot, you know you step into
that, you know I love the, Ilove that way of processing a
shot that Lynn Marriott and PiaNilsson teach the think box,
play box.
(48:20):
And when you get into that thinkbox to play a shot, we analyze
what's going on, we do ourthinking, we make our decision,
we commit and then it's abouthitting a golf shot.
So that process could take,depending on the player, it
could be 45.
Well, more normally it would belike 15 seconds, but for some
(48:42):
players, maybe 45 seconds to 90seconds, and in that time period
that's when you just need to betaking care of business one
thing at a time, and that allowsyou to be in the present moment
, and once you hit your shot,then you can get back into a
conversation.
And then again it's totallynatural to think about today I'm
(49:05):
going to shoot my lowest score,I could win this tournament,
all that again, it's totallynatural to think that stuff, but
to play well it's.
How do you then respond to thatthinking and make a better
choice that's going to allow youto perform?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Can you give our listeners a quick tidbit on how
to improve immediately so youhave this piece about quiet mind
in the short game where youtalk about puttling.
Can you just run through thatfor our listeners?
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Well, there's a couple of different ways, but I
think one of the mostinteresting.
There's two things that one cando, and one is to go to a
putting green and enjoy yourstroke.
Just enjoy what you're doing.
(50:05):
And it's funny, when I've donequiet mind putting clinic, some
people go.
I tell them, go out and enjoyyour stroke.
And they kind of look at melike what you mean?
Like I'm not supposed to doanything.
And and I say, well, you mean,like what do you mean?
Do anything?
Well, like you know, focus onkeeping my head down or see if I
(50:26):
can make you know five out offive.
I said no, just go and enjoyyour stroke.
And it's funny when people dothat you can.
They start laughing and theybecome more aware of what's
actually happening in theirstroke and they start to feel
what's happening because they'remore in the moment.
So they're witnessing what'shappening rather than thinking
(50:49):
and trying hard to do something.
And because when we're thinkingwe're disconnected, we're not
even really here, Our minds aresort of off in this fantasy land
somewhere.
And so when we enjoy our strokeit's just way easier to
actually experience what'sactually going on, and you'll
(51:11):
learn a lot by doing that.
You'll start to observe.
Oh, you know, maybe I take theputter back a little, maybe
that's a little far, maybethat's why I decel.
You know, or you know, or youknow.
Maybe I have a tendency to um,you know, an old bugaboo of mine
actually was to light my gripat impact.
It was almost because it was afear thing and I became.
(51:35):
But you become more aware ofthese things, and that's part of
what I think really takespeople up the levels of golf.
Is this discovery become awareof things that you never were
aware of before.
In essence, I love the phrasethat Fred Shoemaker uses.
It's distinctions Become awareof things that we weren't aware
(51:58):
of before, and so exercises likethat can really help you.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
Jesse, do you have questions for Tim?
Speaker 1 (52:18):
I have one.
I have one.
It's a big one.
I don't know if we have time,but I'll just put it out there.
So we've all.
We've already analyzed the, youknow, the proverbial water on
the right and all that.
Um.
So if we're playing in atournament, maybe both of you
can answer this.
I'm going to think out loud Ifwe're playing in a tournament
and we do have these negativethoughts, how can we train
(52:39):
ourselves not to get attached tothe negative thoughts If we
already know, as human beings,that they're in there for reason
I'm going to say in mypsychologist background,
self-preservation for the ego.
Um, how can we train ourselvesto accept the very human nature
that we have but not be attachedto them?
(53:00):
So there's no charge for ourmind to grab onto to perceive
future prediction.
This is all part of how can westay in the moment in spite.
How can we train ourselves tostay in the moment in spite of
these human limitations, or arethey limitations?
Speaker 2 (53:26):
You want to go first, Justin?
Speaker 3 (53:28):
Yeah, I think it begins with how our brains are
wired.
So if we need to preserveourselves, then it's better for
the brain to know what's goingto happen in the future.
So back to your question aboutthe water on the right.
I think it became a real speedwagon had.
(53:48):
The answer to that, there'sthis song.
I can't fight this feeling anylonger and I think the problem
with most people is that they golike, wow, water to the right.
I shouldn't be thinking of thisthought.
Let's pretend that the water isnot there.
Now, how your brain works, isthis right?
You keep rejecting the thought.
(54:09):
The brain says, hey, the dummydidn't get it.
Let's amplify that, let's makeit emotional, let's give him
some feelings in his fingers.
But I've done this with myplayers.
I say, hey, look at the water,embrace it and like, okay, it's
there.
I'm not going to reject thesefeelings of doubt that I have.
(54:29):
In fact, let me palpate thesefeelings, like why do I feel
like that?
Why and how?
What am I feeling?
And then, when you are at onewith whatever you're feeling and
thinking, magically it justkind of goes away Because your
brain has done its job, like thedummy got it, that's it.
(54:49):
He's aware, got it.
That's it.
He's aware of it.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
Versus rejecting the feelings.
Emotions are not good or bad.
It's just there.
It's a thing.
It's there to tell you what'sahead.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Yeah Well, I mean, emotions are super valuable.
They tell us to pay attention.
They tell us there there are away that that comes up for us.
There's something going on hereyou need to pay attention to,
and so they're not to be ignoredor made to go away.
And you've probably heard thisphrase many times what we resist
(55:28):
persists.
So I think what happens for alot of players what I talked to
them about is just it's like youjust accept and you're aware
that this is happening.
This is happening, but ourthoughts are just thoughts.
We don even knowNeuroscientists can't even tell
(55:49):
you where thoughts come from.
And a core thing is tounderstand that our thoughts are
not real.
They're not real.
We don't know where they come.
If thoughts were real, I wouldhave been put in jail years ago.
They would have put me on anice floe and pushed me out
because you ain't safe dude forsociety.
(56:10):
So it's just kind ofunderstanding that we're going
to get these thoughts, we'regoing to get these feelings.
They're all going to come.
They're going to come.
So a great phrase that Ilearned through Fred Shoemaker
was awareness is curative.
Just to be aware that this isgoing on, that diffuses the
(56:31):
energy that comes in, theemotion oh, I'm kind of nervous
about the water there and that,right away, that dissipates the,
that awareness dissipates thefear.
Oh, I got this going on.
Okay, then I then, rather thanholding a death grip of the club
, okay, I'm going to hold it ina certain way.
(56:52):
So that, to me, is just that'swhy awareness is so big to me.
But also, I think a core thingthat you can take into any round
of golf is what is yourintention for that day?
And when you have an intention,a macro piece of why you're
playing, I think it'sparticularly if you've thought
(57:15):
about it for a while.
And this is my intention forthis day.
In some ways, it's like havinga game plan so that when things
happen as they do in golf,you're going to hit one in the
water, you can make a doublebogey.
When things happen as they doin golf, you're going to hit one
in the water, you make a doublebogey.
Then you come back to what'sthat master plan that I have for
the day?
It could be that I'm going tojoin my shots, whatever I'm
(57:38):
going to be with the club head,I'm going to, you know, whatever
it is.
Then, when this stuff happens,you're just able to roll with it
a lot better.
Because if, if the focus is ongoing low for that day, qualify
we, we want to qualify, we wantto win, but if you're three over
(58:03):
after two holes, where do yougo with that?
It's be able to hang it, ithang in with it.
So, um, yeah, those are some ofmy thoughts on that great
question, jesse thanks, greatanswers, boys.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Uh, I think we're about ready to close this out.
Tim uh, tim, how can ourlisteners find you?
Speaker 2 (58:24):
um, my website is O'Connor golfca.
I have, uh, a blog on sub stack.
It's a T O'Connor at a substackcom.
I write a weekly blog called upand down.
Um, I also do a podcast as well.
It's called swing thoughts, andI've been doing it for well.
(58:45):
We're in our 10th year now.
Uh, so there's that and um,yeah, that's.
Those are core ways you can geta hold of me amazing.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Thank you, tim tim.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
Thank you very much.
I've really enjoyed thisconversation, gents, thank you,
thank you.
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