Mastering the Game: Balancing Technology and Tradition in Urban Golf with James Day

Prepare to be enthralled as James Day, a pivotal personality in London's golf scene, walks us through the fascinating world of Urban Golf with its perfect marriage of vintage aesthetics and cutting-edge simulation technology. Discover the art of selecting golf equipment that not only optimizes your game but also resonates with your soul, as James advocates for an authentic, self-empowered approach to golf. Throughout the episode, we challenge industry norms, exploring the emotional landscape of the sport and how personal ownership over one's golfing journey trumps the seductive allure of quick technological fixes.

James Day's insights illuminate the complexities of golf club fitting, the nuanced dance between technology and skill, and the potential pitfalls of an industry often more focused on selling than on genuine performance enhancement. We delve into how the Shaft Max system's 15-year legacy offers a detailed understanding of shaft dynamics, and how a unified approach to golf mechanics can revolutionize the game. Amidst an industry rife with confusing marketing tactics and data manipulation, this conversation serves as a beacon for those seeking clarity and a deeper appreciation of the game's heritage and mechanics.

As we wrap up, we celebrate the shifting culture of golf, where younger players are increasingly skeptical of grandiose marketing claims and are rediscovering the charm of vintage and custom clubs. Sharing personal anecdotes about club selections that enrich the joy of the game, James and I reflect on how the right equipment can intuitively guide a golfer towards improvement, emphasizing that sometimes, the most effective training aids are the clubs that have been with us all along. Whether you are a seasoned pro or a newcomer to the green, this episode is a masterclass in finding balance, enjoyment, and performance on the course.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Measured
Golf Podcast, where I, michaelDutro, have incredible guests
from around the world.
And today we really are diggingin around the world and finding
some cool guests, and we havebeen fortunate enough to get the
amazing James Day to join us onthe podcast, who is kind of a

(00:29):
pioneer in the London golf sceneand has been doing some indoor
golf stuff for about 20 yearsnow and really has an
interesting perspective on thegame of golf and how it's played
and how it's enjoyed.
And if you're watching rightnow, you can see James has a lot
of golf clubs sitting behindhim from a older era and that's
kind of what his speciality inNAC is is that James is the

(00:51):
Procure of all golf clubs, oldand cool.
So we're going to have anamazing conversation about not
only how the golf ball affectsthings, but also how the
equipment affects things and howwe don't necessarily always
have to go chasing optimization.
So I think James brings areally cool perspective and a
really unique perspective intothe industry, so I'm excited to

(01:13):
have him.
So, without further ado, james,you want to say hello to
everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Hello, Thanks Michael .
Yeah, that's very nice intro.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, I mean well deserved.
I was fortunate enough to be atUrban Golf.
That would have been what Lastyear around the open and dude,
it's a cool spot, man.
Like I think I have a cool spot, but yours is cool in a
completely different way, likeit's a classy, london-y kind of
a cool spot, man.

(01:41):
I hope, if you haven't seen it,definitely check out Urban Golf
on Instagram or you can go onmy Instagram at the ForcePlay
guy and check out the video.
But it's a cool spot.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, I mean it hasn't, I mean, I would say,
only the last year.
I've really kind of decidedthat we're going to pour a huge
amount of love into thisparticular site, the one that
you came to, which is inSmithville, which is near St
Paul's in London.
We've been in the business for20 years and at one time we had
three sites and we had one thatdidn't work and another one

(02:12):
which we we've saw out our leaseon 15 years and we couldn't, we
weren't able to renew the leasebecause somebody else wanted it
and that was quite emotional.
Walking away from that onewhich was in the West End, which
was the first one we did, andyou know, ever since then, just
having one and that was quitelucky that that happened in a
way, because that was justbefore COVID, but just having
one now, it just feels like Ireally kind of want to make it

(02:35):
part, you know, an extension ofmy home really, yeah, and you
know, I think, as long as Well,you're like me.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
you spend more time there than you do at home, I'm
sure so.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, yeah, well, certainly awake, but you know
we've got some really nice stuffhere.
We're always trying to dothings a little bit differently.
We don't have partnerships withgolf brands purely because you
know, if we're going to do nicesets of hire clubs for people to
use in the sim, for example,we'd rather make them here in
our workshop and have that kindof stamp of approval on them

(03:08):
than have them come out of afactory where you know it's just
the run of the mill stuff.
So we're just trying to takethings up a notch and indoor
golf is finally taking off.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
It's finally happening right, like Schmucks
like me, are making it work, soit must be pretty easy to do.
I think what you're talkingabout, though, james, is I don't
walk into urban golf and feellike I'm there having a golf
experience, like there's anenvironment, there's a culture,

(03:41):
there's a sensibility to it all,and it has like kind of a club
and kind of an old school kindof vibe, and it definitely fits
the motif of where it's locatedthere in London.
I mean, it's just a really coolspot, and it's like you've done
an amazing job of kind oftaking the feel and the love of

(04:03):
the game that you have andtransferring that into a vibe at
the facility.
Man, I mean it's really a coolspot.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, well, thanks for saying that.
I'm actually more proud of ittoday than I have been, and I
was very young when I startedthe business and that was a bit
of a rollercoaster ride.
But you know, now I am reallyproud of what we've got down
here.
And thanks for saying that.
You know we've got greattechnology, and when I say great
technology, I mean it's a goodexample of what you were saying

(04:31):
earlier, which is that you know,when it comes to golf
simulators and ball tracking ingeneral, the best technology for
what we do here is thetechnology that you can really
play golf on and the tech thatyou can kind of that enables you
to hit all of the shots.
And I think that's one of thethings that gets missed
sometimes when people are justsort of trying to take a launch

(04:53):
monitor and turn it in, you know, attach it to a graphics
package and turn it into asimulator, is that.
We know this from developmentwork that we were working on 15
years ago.
You know it's actually veryhard in an indoor environment to
be able to be accurate on allthe weird shots that you need to
play in a round of golf.
You know, I'm sure there'splenty of launch monitors now
that can do a good job on thestandard shots, but can they get

(05:14):
curvature before it reaches thescreen on a lob shot, things
like that?
You know, it's all those quirkythings.
So the simulators that we usewith the ball tracking we have,
they really are.
You know, you can hit all theshots you can putt.
You can hit a chip and run thatchecks up.
You can do all that stuff.
And you know, sometimes I thinkwith technology it's easy to get

(05:36):
wrapped up in the status quoand to kind of miss the bit that
it really needs to do.
And I think to your pointcoming down here, it's not, you
know, it's not all technical,it's not all modern.
There's a lot about, it's allabout the game really, and the
fact that we're able to use thistechnology when we're in
central London and we're allmiserable and it's raining

(05:57):
outside and the golf course istwo hours away.
You know it's nice that we cando that in these environments,
but for me it's still.
You know, all the technicalstuff is great, but it's still
all about playing golf.
You know, it's all about being.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, I don't think that you would ever trade, you
know, if I gave you the choiceto where you could either play
indoor or outdoor the rest ofyour life, like that's, that's a
non non starter for you.
That's pretty easy.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
But the weather is doing.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, right For sure.
So at the end of the day, Idon't think that simulator golf
is ever going to truly replacethe experience of going out and
playing a real golf course inthe real environment.
I do think that there arecertain simulators that have
done a lot better job of tryingto connect us more with the

(06:44):
environment in which we actuallyplay.
Right, because there's a lotmore factors that go into
hitting a golf shot than justknowing the distance and hitting
the golf ball.
That distance, like there's alot of elements that go into
that, as you know, and you know,that's kind of what I really
love about coming over there andplaying golf with you boys is,
you know, it's a lot more elixir, it's a lot more real.
It's a lot less about hitting aperfect, optimized shot and

(07:07):
it's a lot more about figuringout a way to get it to stop
close to the hole, and those twoskills are like very different
skills.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
You know, I know we've talkedabout this before, but it's a
bit that that that particulartype of golf that we have over
here stops that kind of one'sone size fits all model of, like
you say, hitting a stock shotand hitting your number and
hitting your spin rates andeverything.

(07:34):
It stops that from working.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Right.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Not to say, you know, on a calm down, a link score,
so that can't work.
But there's a lovely bit of thegame that gets missed sometimes
, which is the ability to beflexible and hit different shots
.
And you can.
You know, I can correlate thatthrough the way that equipment's
gone, in terms of how the craftof making equipment has gone.
But it'd be a shame to losethat stuff.

(07:57):
It would be a shame to losethat stuff because you lose a
big bit of the sort of characterof the game and a big bit of
the nuance and the skill.
I mean, I'm sure you, I'm sureyou weren't expecting our great
friend David Ford to be as gooda player as he was, Absolutely
expected David to be a greatplayer, and it's.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
it's fun.
It's a great player in adifferent way, though.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah.
So the question of that is, ifyou just saw him hitting in the
bay, you wouldn't put any moneyon it, all as good as when we
went outdoors, right, correct?

Speaker 1 (08:32):
And that's what I think.
That's where the point is rightIs.
I think you know I'll usemyself as an example, but I
remember I was high school I wasabout, you know, junior senior
in high school and I would goout in the summers and play
early morning golf every day inthe summertime before I had to
go work for the day and then I'dcome back to the golf course

(08:53):
later.
But besides the point, I wouldplay with this old guy every
single morning and this old guywould routinely beat me and he
hit it about half as far as Idid and like he just kind of
bunneted it around the golfcourse and always got it up and
down and always got it up anddown and the guy could get up
and down out of a trash can andthe guy would always beat me,
even though I'm hitting waybetter golf shots I'm obviously

(09:16):
a better golfer in terms ofhitting a shot than he is this
guy would routinely beat me andI remember getting really
frustrated about it and he wouldconstantly remind me he's like
you're so worked up and hittingthese golf shots that get close
to the hole, but then you can'teven make the pot.
He's like you can't lose sightof the fact that it's not just

(09:37):
about hitting long drives andhitting it close to the hole.
Like you can't do that everytime, it's not sustainable.
So at some point, like you haveto learn how to score and how
to get up and down and that'sreally what the game of golf is,
and when we talk about that,you have so many different lies
and you have so many differentways of doing that.
And that's really where theartistry is.

(09:58):
And it's, to your point, kindof sad that it seems like we're
doing everything we can to tryto move away from that as fast
as possible and try to say thatif you see X, do Y.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah well, I have this mantra, which you probably
heard before, which is the golfindustry has built unplausible
stories which capitalize onhuman frailty.
You know, I think that's one ofthe things, one of the
challenges of this game, and youknow, all of us know, it drives
you mad and it hurts.
You know, I play in tournamentswhen I was a kid and you know,

(10:34):
all I wanted to do was leaveschool and play golf.
So obviously I wanted to dowell in the tournaments and you
know it did hurt.
You know, when it all goes intomeltdown and it starts going
backwards or you choke orwhatever, you know those are
pretty painful experiences andso, as human beings, we have
this natural reaction to thatwhich is, and especially as
adults, you know, we look for away that means that we won't

(10:56):
make mistakes.
You know, we look for somebodyto tell us something which is
you know, I'll be on the frontof a golf magazine, I could cure
your slice or whatever.
You know I hit it 15 yardsfurther.
But we all kind of want to hearthat that's exactly what we
want to hear and obviously, youknow, sometimes that makes
things easier to believe,because it's what we want to
hear and this idea that you cankind of learn a swing and then

(11:21):
you can walk out and you justwalk it around the course and
you walk up to the ball and it'sthat's not how the game is and
I the problem is, I think tryingto pursue it in that way
actually takes you further away,especially in the early stages.
You know, it's a bit like ifyou took you know I would kind
of say this about certainapproaches to swinging the club.

(11:43):
You know, when you get thesereally regimented, position
based approaches to swing in theclub, the reason that works
with tour players is because ifyou take a tour player right
there, always going to pound itright, they've been hitting
balls since they were six yearsold.
Whatever happens, you knowthey're just going to pound the
ball right.
But if you take somebody whomaybe has only played the game
for a few years and they haven'tgot any smash yet, they've got

(12:05):
no pound and then you get themto swing it that way, very
conscious hitting positions,kind of ignoring the forces of
the club.
They never pound, they willnever pound it.
You've literally locked them ina prison of no pound.
It's like it's.
They're just never going tosmash the ball, and so that's
where those things don't quitecorrelate.
And they work for play becauseit gives them structure.

(12:27):
You know, it's like, oh greatif I'm doing the same thing all
the time and I've got this P1,P2.
I'm going to override that whenit comes to pounding it, but
that gives me this certainstructure to work to.
And guess what, if I'm a fewshots better per month, you know
, over the number of roundswe've played a month, that that
leads to quite a lot more money.
So this thing of like play whatthe pros play, do what the pros

(12:49):
do, act like the pros play, notonly is it not very good for us
guys, necessarily it alsoremoves this big chunk of the
joy from the games, which is thereal crime feel.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
You are, you are speaking to a man that really
believes in that.
I'll be perfectly honest.
You know, growing up playingcompetitive golf, it is it's
soul crushing when you don't dowell, but then the highs that
you get when you do well and youwin are also incredible as well
.
The thing is is you know, whereI think we've missed the boat

(13:24):
with technology is that if I canuse technology to help somebody
figure something out or learnsomething faster, that's a great
use of the technology.
But if I use the technology toonly explain how they are
different than average, that'sreally going to hurt more people
than it helps.
So where I think we need to usetechnology is we need to use it

(13:47):
to help us better understandQuestions that we bring from the
golf course and the environmentin which we actually play.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, I mean I, I was .
I used to teach.
I still teach friends.
So I did my PGA qualificationswhen I was no.
I think I was fully qualifiedwith the PGA when I was 20 or 21
.
And I trained in that verytraditional way of giving golf
lessons.
So you go through fault.

(14:17):
Finding sequence back then iswhat it was when we did our
coaching exams.
They wanted you to like stickto.
The major thing was they didn'tactually care if you got it
wrong.
The actual lesson and the guyhit it was the girl it was
whatever.
What they cared about was thatyou went through the correct
sequence.
So you start with grip, you goto a club, you do the stuff and
then I think what happens is youknow that's the sort of

(14:39):
traditional form of a golflesson, which is you've tells,
you find you figure out two, oneor two things that somebody's
doing wrong and you try and fixit.
And I know things have moved onfrom that now.
But I think there's adifference between developing
skill and giving somebodyownership.
So I've got a big thing aboutownership.
I remember when I first startedteaching, you know, I I

(15:04):
probably thought that the mainfunction of the golf lesson was
to get somebody to hit it goodin the lesson.
You know, until I was justteaching this is 25, 30 years
ago, so I'm just teaching adriving range, just no
technology, nothing.
So I thought the main functionbetter.
So I'm going to try and tellthis guy some things that get
him hitting it good and thenhopefully he's going to book in
next week and somebody wouldbook in next week and we might

(15:27):
work on something different.
We might just evolve it,because I felt like I had to
give that person somethingdifferent to work on and there
was no value and so in thatsituation there's no ownership
for that person.
That is like a codependent thing.
You know they, they have tocome back to you and Hopefully
you'll sprinkle some magic orit's again and they'll start
hitting it good, but they don'tbuild any knowledge and I think

(15:49):
that's one of the things thatgets me about.
You know certain, we know thewhole spectrum of golf lessons
and different things work fordifferent people, but I feel
like there should be someownership, like people should
come away with this feeling oflike.
Okay, well, actually Iunderstand.
I think that's what's greatabout what you do actually is
that you can tell somebodycategorically.
You know kind of where theyneed to be, how they need to be

(16:11):
moving in a general way, and Iknow you get very into it, you
get very, but that I'm sure alot of people come to you and
they go.
Oh, actually I was completelyunaware that I should have been
on my left foot at this point ormy right, with whatever, and
that general understand that'snow something they can own and
something they can keep.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
No, I mean my big, my big past, I always feel like,
is it's so easy for a coach toover coach, and the thing that
coaches generally forget is thatthe person you're talking to
doesn't actually know what itfeels like to do it the way
you're asking them to do it.
They've never done it that way,so they don't have that feel so
like Got.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
There's a disconnect, isn't there between?

Speaker 1 (16:53):
massive, massive, right.
So what I kind of think is okay.
If there is this massivedisconnect between feel and real
, okay, well, like, what are?
If, like, I actually showedthem what I want them to do in
totality and like, let them seethat and feel that and go, yeah,
you're right, that does allowme to do those things I want to

(17:14):
do.
Then, all of a sudden, it'slike, okay, great, obviously,
this is where we want to be longterm.
This is where we want to get to.
We want to learn how to makethis adaptable to the
environment so we can play golfwith it outside, but right now
we got to get on the ship that'sheading that direction.
So my job is to take the onething that's going to help the

(17:35):
most the get us there thefarthest and make sure that when
you get to your car after thiscoaching experience, when you
sit down, you go all right, cool.
I got one thing I really needto focus on the next couple
weeks to start get me where Iwant to go, and I know that it
looks like this, I know it feelslike this, and now I know what
I want to see when I'm workingon this over the next couple

(17:56):
weeks, but I got to get them onething, man, because, to your
point, we can only really handleso much, especially the worst.
We are with our score overall,like that guy really needs a
simplified and, to your point,sometimes are just not aware of
even what's really happening.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Well, I think that, yeah, I agree with you
completely.
And I think this is this otherthing, which is I always say,
the gosh, it's not me that saysthere's a friend of mine who's a
pro actually in the US, so hecalls it the tidal wave bullshit
.
And if you can, if you canestablish certain things which
are okay, I truly believe thatthis is.
This is something that I will.
You know, people give tips andthey swing thoughts, work for a

(18:34):
week and then they stop workingor whatever, but these are the
things that, like, these are thethings I know.
Well, actually, if you can pin,if you can say these are the
things I know in an absolute way, you can knock out massive
chunks of that tidal wave, whichmeans that you're not going to
get pulled in all differentdirection.
And I always say this aboutequipment you know the reason I

(18:54):
work with equipment, the reasonI started working with equipment
.
I'm just I'm obsessed with allthings golf, but I love kit.
You know I love the stuff.
As you can tell I do.
When I was growing up, playingand trying to be a better player
, I felt like equipment was justthis random thing where I would
just have to try loads of clubs.
Some of them would work, someof them wouldn't.
Some of them I'd really want towant them to work and I stick

(19:17):
with them for way too long, eventhough they probably never
going to work.
And the thing that got me goingwith clubs just wanted to know
why was just wanting to pin downabout like okay, that's the
thing that I like about thisclub, and I think that within a
golf club, you've probably gotlet's call it, you know 10
factors that make a perfect cluband typically, when if we're

(19:42):
just doing that thing of tryingstuff out, the clubs that we
like have probably got three orfour of those key things working
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
You're absolutely right.
What's great about me?
When you really nail it and youget a club, that's perfect, all
of it's right.
But you and it's that obsessionwith trying to understand how
those things work and the typeof things that so I agree with
you right and and you're spot onright.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
So remind me, I got something to show you here in a
minute.
But I kind of feel the same way, but less from the gear
perspective and more from thethe human movement perspective,
right, and kind of to your point.
Like there's certain metricsthat you're going to find that
all the golf clubs you've lovedover time kind of share.
Well, you're going to find thatwith all the different goofy

(20:29):
things you think you're doingthat you know change your golf
swing, there's really a coupleof things in the ground that
really set it all up to work foryou.
And if we can't createstability with the lower body,
we're never going to create goodmobility with the upper body,
like that's just kind of howhuman beings work.
So I truly feel that usingtechnology to help people kind

(20:49):
of understand the feeling theyneed to feel in the ground and
with their body is always goingto be super helpful for what
they do with the golf club,because the golf club produces
way less force than you dopushing against the ground.
Therefore, you're always goingto really be beholden to what
you feel in your feet and that'swhy I love doing the force
plate thing, as you've seen medo, is it allows me to connect

(21:12):
you with what you're actuallyfeeling in real time, and when I
show you the pressure shift andI show you how you're moving on
your feet, nobody's ever arguedand said, well, that's not me.
But when I've shown peoplevideo in the past, they go
that's not me.
So what do we feel and what dowe connect with?

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Video is still probably probably very bad for
understanding of the golf swing.
It shouldn't have been.
You wouldn't have thought itwould be, but I think it
probably has been.
I don't think it's been good,that's for sure, and then it's.
I think what happens is and Iwould even see this on you know,
when they do a swing analysison the golf coverage of the PJ
Tour or whatever, A lot of timespeople would do an analysis of

(21:52):
the swing and they would analyzeeach position and talk about it
in this way, which is as if theplayer is doing that, and it's
like hang on a minute thatclub's pretty heavy.
It's on the end of a long stick.
It's swinging pretty fast.
You know a lot of what he'sdoing is in opposition to that.
Absolutely it's not.
You know he's not kind ofguiding it through space and a

(22:13):
lot.
If you listen to swing analysisthey would still talk about the
golf swing in that way.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, they're talking in a very static manner, for
sure, they never talk in adynamic way.
Yeah, yeah, and that's kind ofthe shame of it, because I think
that to your point.
You know, what I see is mostlypeople who are interested in,
like an American golf right,like the only thing people
really want to do right now islike hit bombs, like they want

(22:39):
to smash drivers.
They don't care about chipping,putting any of that, they just
want to hit bombs.
So I get a lot of people whocome to me with the pure
intention of hitting the golfball farther.
So in my space, like I use theforce plates to help them
generate more clubhead speed.
And the funny thing is is that alot of people that I work with

(23:02):
will gain an excess of 10 milesan hour of clubhead speed in a
single session.
I'm not saying that they'regoing to do that forever, but I
can show them how to do that bybetter taking advantage of what
they already do.
And that's kind of the thingthat really bums me out is that
most people think that they justkind of move as the way they

(23:22):
move and that's as good as itcan be, and if they hit it off
the middle of the face that thatball is going optimal and it's
not in most cases, because mostpeople create more speed than
they actually transfer to theball.
So that's where I think yourkind of world steps in really
cool, because I think peoplewere often like, given the old
bait and switch and it's likehey, here's a new driver, gain a

(23:44):
bunch of yards.
But because you understand howgolf clubs work and I understand
how golf clubs work we knowit's all marketing gimmick.
And once you understand thegimmicks and you understand what
actually works well for you,then you get to kind of start
going back and digging into someof the old clubs and really
pulling out some of the relicsand in my opinion are as good,

(24:05):
if not better, than a lot of thestuff today.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, Well, my thing is club interaction.
So what are the bits of theclub that we interact with,
which, for me, is length, weight, shaft, lion goal?
And it's the exact thing thatyou see.
We walk into a shop, we pick upa club, we waggle it.

(24:30):
It's exactly what we're doing.
We, we, we all gravitate to acertain type of way and a
certain type of.
I guess the thing is is whenyou talk about, feel if you're a
real kind of data science guy.
They just hate that.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
They hate talking about feel, but you have to
because it's such a key,important part of that's where I
get frustrated is because youcan't live in a vacuum and you
can't purely live in a worldwhere you know nothing either,
like there's.
You have to have a combinationof the two, right?

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Yeah, and I think that that feel for me is
attached.
It's attached to a certainmemory of what clubs that were
great, that we loved and thatworked really well felt like in
the past.
You know, I think that's whatwe're doing when we do that, but
there's just if you get thosethings right, if you get those
things in the sweet spot, so theright shaft profile.

(25:21):
So I showed you when you camedown but I use this shaft max
system, which is a whole longstory about how I ended up with
it and was kind of throughtrying to develop simulate golf
simulators and somebody I metthrough that.
But it's based on this oldshaft lab system which True
Tempore developed.
And True Tempore reallydeveloped it because they were

(25:44):
trying to figure out.
You know, true Tempore's bigissue for years and years, to be
honest with you, has been howdo we find a shaft that people
like more than dynamic gold, andyou know.
So they were trying to figureout the type of shaft profile.
So when you talk about shaftprofile, how stiff is it in the
butt, how stiff is it in themiddle, how stiff is it in the
tip?
Three sections what type ofshaft profile would work for

(26:06):
people and they developed thistechnology which at the time was
strain gauges attached to ashaft and wires hanging off all
over the place.
And it's way back in the early90s and they were testing how
golfers load and work the shaft,how they work the shaft during
the swing, basically.
And they did this thing andnothing ever came of it and it

(26:27):
kind of got mothballed.
And that was what the systemthat I now use came out of,
which is called Chaff Max, whichis now it's wireless connects
to a transmitter on your wrist.
But I get information about.
You know, what's the shaftdoing at the top, what's the
shaft doing halfway down, what'sit doing through impact?
And you can kind of relate thatdirectly to the shaft itself

(26:48):
and what I've seen over theyears of working with that and
I've had this system for 15years and you know I don't do
that many fittings I fit becauseI just I like to to be honest
with you.
I just think it's really it'sreally selfish endeavor to be
this obsessed and not reallykind of share it with anyone.
So it's just it justifies.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
I think that's.
I think you just described mybusiness model for coaching.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
It justifies giving this amount of headspace to
something so meaningless, Iguess.
But so when I, when I use thatsystem of people because I've
used it for 15 years I've got apretty clear like the moment I
see it, I'm kind of I've got acertain shaft profile in my head
or whatever.
But what we see is and whereI'm going with this is, even if

(27:31):
you gave somebody the rightshaft flex but you gave them a
different shaft profile to theone that's optimum to them, they
won't just hit worst ballflight, they will hit it worse
right.
They won't hit the middle ofthe club as much.
They won't generate as much asgood energy transfer, they won't
generate as much.
So the problem with this is andit speaks to the point of like

(27:54):
data's great, but if you haven'tgot all of it and if all of it
is not measurable, it's kind ofworthless.
So when you go back to like Letme throw this one at you.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Why are you just looking on that?

Speaker 2 (28:08):
No, no, somebody goes , wait a sec, Somebody goes for
a fitting and they make all thebad shots on themselves.
So the thing with this is it'slike you will hit it better with
this club.
So if you make that connection,so if you're saying to somebody
you will hit more good shotswith this club, because,
generally speaking, what peopledo is they separate the clubs.
They go that was me, I hit thatone bad, that was me, that was

(28:28):
me, that was me, I hit one good.
Okay, well, this club works.
Therefore, when I hit a goodshot, it's the right club for me
.
That's not true.
There are clubs that you willjust hit it better with, not
just better ball fight, not allthe stuff that comes out of a
launch moment.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
You swing it faster, you have more confidence.
There's a direct correlationthere, like I agree.
And the thing that reallydrives me kind of bananas is
there's, without a doubt andyou've seen me talk about this
before, but there's without adoubt, a forward towards a
target and away from the targetpush during the golf swing,
right, I push towards a targetand then away so I don't fall

(29:04):
over.
But there's also this anterior,posterior breaking force where
I'm working from my heelstowards my toes.
And the thing that reallydrives me wild is when I went
out and got to view the machineto test all these shafts for
everybody, that machine issitting on the ground and that
machine doesn't produce any kindof shearing effect.
So the thing that's really wildto me is like a lot of the

(29:27):
claims that they make and theway that they test these shafts
and the way that the engineersare kind of viewing it all is
not even really from a completeset of data.
It's really looking at it froma couple planes of motion and
not really factoring in how ahuman actually loads and unloads
that club shaft.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Well, I don't want this to be just a total negative
kind of soapbox session but, tobe honest with you, I've worked
with, I've been pretty up closewith, a lot of the shaft
companies.
I've got to know a lot of thereally good club makers and
fitters and I've just beenaround that stuff quite a lot
Not really as part of my mainbusiness life as Urban Golf and

(30:11):
I'm not a player in theequipment business, I'm just
into it.
But if you take shaft companiesand I won't name any they find
it very difficult to know whatto make in terms of shaft
profiles and all of this stuff.
The reason for that is becauseif you put, if you took, 20 of

(30:33):
the world's best club fitters ina room, no one would agree on
anything.
So it's like there's no, it's.
The weirdest thing in golf isthat there's a massive lack of
accepted wisdom.
I know I've listened to yourpod a bit and the stuff you did

(30:54):
with Dan, and because we've gotso much better technology now I
think there's a big, the newgeneration of thinkers which I
think is probably you, not meYou're coming through and you're
much more united in saying,okay, this is this and that's
that.
These are the areas that we arestill exploring, but we accept

(31:15):
these certain things, and so Ithink that's great.
But the equipment industry isso fractured in terms of there
is no accepted wisdom, none.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
And I agree with that .
I mean it's really bad.
I mean we've talked about thisa great length and it's I get it
like a lot of the clubcompanies are publicly traded
companies now and they have toproduce numbers every quarter
but it's just in acommercialized sense.
Man, we've really gotten awayfrom actually trying to help

(31:48):
golfers.
I think I think we're in it tosell products now, not actually
like improve the enjoyment ofgolfers.
I think what you said earlierwas spot on.
If I'm telling you that thisdriver makes you better and you
come into a fitting and itdoesn't make you better, then
you feel like you did somethingwrong.
But in reality we didn't knowif that driver was actually

(32:09):
gonna make you better, becauseperhaps you optimized your old
driver and they're not actuallychanging that much year to year.
So I mean there's a lot of baitand switch.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Exactly, really.
And the worst one of thosereally and it's so simple and so
straightforward is that mostgolf equipment is sold on a demo
day.
Everyone knows the drivers havebeen on the limit for the last
10 years longer, so that's whydrivers in the shops that you'll
pick up in the stores will havea 46 inch shaft.
Well, if somebody goes for ademo day and they just middle

(32:41):
one that probably go furtherthan their old driver because
it's 46 inches long.
The problem is the others aregonna be catastrophic.
So if you took it on an averageof 10 shots it wouldn't be
better, but they hit the onegood one and all the bad ones
were not involved.
Here's what kills me man.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Like anytime you throw a math out there, james,
like anytime there's mathinvolved, right, there's always
somebody that learns how to useit to an advantage.
And the golf industry's figuredit out really well.
And what they do is they keepflipping back and forth between
what's important and what isn't.
So, just from a real simplesense, they love to talk about

(33:17):
total and they love to talkabout carry and they love to
flip them back and forth all thetime.
So people are generallyconfused as to what should be
paid attention to.
And here's what happens.
So I live in Michigan and ittends to be pretty soft and you
don't get a lot of roll.
And maybe in the summer you get10 yards of roll out, if you
really catch one pretty good andspend it like 2,500 or less.

(33:37):
So it doesn't roll much here.
So the thing is is, guys, toyour point, go to demo day and a
17 year old kid fits them on atrack man and goes hey, man,
your total was 280.
And the guy's like what really?
And he's like yeah, and theguy's like all right, I only had
mine 260.
I'll take that one Right.
So now the guy goes out to hisgolf course opening day and it's

(33:57):
still a little wet because it'sspringtime, and there's a
bunker sitting there at 250,right, and he used to
comfortably carry that bunker.
Well, he goes off and hits onebig hitter, the llama, and,
wouldn't you know it, he'sexpecting that thing to be 20
yards by that bunker and itlands 10 yards short.
And the reason for that isbecause every simulator, every

(34:17):
launch monitor I should say notsimulator every launch monitor
is going to assume optimalrollouts about 35 to 40 yards,
and you don't get that incertain environments like here.
So they're Robin, peter to payPaul and totally bait and switch
in this guy and confuse him onwhat's important, which is carry
, because carries all you'reever gonna get in this

(34:38):
environment.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Well, do you know where I think all these problems
come from?

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Lack of education.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
No, it's maybe, but it's separation.
So the moment that you get lotsof separation.
So if you know, for example,tour players now would have the
psychologist, the personaltrainer, the swing coach, the
short game coach, the putt andcoach.
You know, they've got all theseloads of people with different
areas of expertise.

(35:09):
And similarly you might havesomebody that comes from an
engineering background that goesinto a golf equipment company
but you know, maybe played a bitwhen they were a kid or
something, and I think that youhave to have like a base level
of expertise to do anything ingolf.
So you've got to have a broadknowledge of I think you've got
to be able to hit it.
To be honest, I mean, when Isee certain coaches, one might

(35:33):
be related to a very famouscoach who you know really can't
hit it at all.
I think alarm bells should beringing at that point.
You do, man.
If you're done with a golflesson, you should probably be
able to shoot under 80.
And you know I had.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
I'm not going to name names because I don't want to
get in trouble, but I recentlyhad a guy come in and they
brought one of their childrenfor a golf lesson to me, right,
and they proceeded to kind oflike more or less big time me
the whole time.
They were in my facility andtold me how like, if I keep

(36:08):
plugging away at it, eventuallyI'll be coach of the year,
teacher of the year, all thisstuff.
And he's telling me that hischild plays pretty good golf and
his child has a positive attackangle with their seven iron
Like what did?

(36:28):
they hit it like?
What do you think they hit itlike?
With a positive attack angle,with a seven iron?

Speaker 2 (36:33):
pretty good off a tee , I don't know, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
I mean dude, you're not wrong man Like that's your
child.
Okay, so that's who you'regoing to put your most effort in
time into and you can't evenget that one right Like how is
that a sales pitch for you?

Speaker 2 (36:47):
But all of a sudden you know you'd have somebody
that's done a degree in sportspsychology and they come to golf
and they kind of learn.
They look at what they do isthey take the status quo, so
whatever the kind of acceptedstuff is, and plug that into
their thing.
That's a great narrative.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, it's all confirmation bias games.
That's the problem with theindustry is everybody only sees
what they want to see.
Yeah, and it's that, because weshouldn't be that way.
Man, You're right.
In my opinion everything issiloed and we know that all the
magic is in between the silos.
But we can't ever get the silosall broken down to where, like
we can get everybody to kind ofshare the good stuff and we can

(37:29):
actually like make a difference.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Yeah, I mean, I think the unfortunate thing probably
is that what the internet andkind of social media and stuff
does is it just creates morestuff.
I think if you go back to likeif you took, if you went back 50
years and you were on the rangeat Tor event, you'd have people
walking around that range.
You know the coaches at thetime, the club makers, all the

(37:54):
people they would just be likeon a level you know, you kind of
wouldn't be in that throughunless you had probably been a
certain type of player at acertain time and there would
just be this kind of expertisethat really didn't go any
further because you didn't have.
You know, somebody might writea book or, you know, maybe later
on make a video or somethinglike that, but that information

(38:17):
that went on at that leveldidn't really go any further.
Right, you know, when you getsome of the stuff that you know
like funny little ways ofplaying shots around the greens
and you know that type ofinformation that would just get
passed around at that time, andthe same with equipment, you
know different sole grinds andyou know Jack Nicholas likes a
straight leading edge with thismuch offset.

(38:37):
But those conversations aren'treally taking place anymore.
They're actually these days wethink we're so clever with all
this technology, but it'sactually much more dumbed down
than that, certainly from anequipment perspective on tour.
And the unfortunate thing is isif you could have just taken
all of that knowledge andexpertise that was quite organic
and quite it was about.
It was built through, you know,before Trackman they were

(38:58):
divots.
You know they kind of have alook at the divots so reading
the tea leaves.
But you know, if you could havetaken that kind of knowledge
and expertise and amplified thatwith today's technology, got
videos going out on YouTube andsocial media, it'd be brilliant.
But unfortunately what'shappened is there's now so much
information that that stuff justgets drowned out.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Which is quite interesting.
I think that we forget, likethe main thing right, which golf
is a game, by and large, for99% to play it and you know, 99%
of the people, man, wanted toshow up and play a game, like
they don't want to learn allthat stuff and like that's.
That's really where where Ithink it gets tough, because

(39:40):
I've said this before butbifurcation I think needs to
happen between golf the game andgolf the sport, because the two
things are not related.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
The resistance to doing that is so well.
It's irrational, it's.
I can understand the basereason why the commercial
entities don't want it, but it'sso short-sighted.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
I mean it's if you could say that, but that's the
industry in a nutshell.
It always has been.
It's never been about growthand long-term development of the
game.
It's always been about squeezeevery nickel out of it that you
can.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah, but I think it's it's it's also squeeze
every nickel out of it in thenext two to three years rather
than the next 10 years.
Because, oh, absolutely 100%.
And non-conforming equipment iskind of I wouldn't say it's
taken off or it's boomed.
But you, there is a decentamount of non-conforming
equipment that is on sale inJapan.
It's a more.

(40:35):
I don't know how much you knowabout the way that equipment is
sold in Japan but, like you know, tailor-made have to make a
higher quality product in Japanthan they make for us, because
the customer is a bit more inJapan.
They're very discerning, theycare about what it's made from
and where it was made and theyjust they're willing to pay more
.
So I'm sure it's veryprofitable for equipment

(40:57):
companies.
But it's amazing I've beenlucky enough to go there a
couple of times just going intoa golf shoot especially
secondhand shops.
It's incredible Some of thestuff you find it's really fun.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Sounds like we need to make a trip, my friend.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, exactly, it's very hard to play golf there,
though.
That's the only problem, butthe reason I'm saying that is
that they, they, there is anon-conforming equipment by the.
They were, and it's mainlybased on wedges that spin like
crazy and drivers that go miles,and you know it's.
It's not for me, but it would.

(41:31):
It would sort of set thingsfree a little bit, and I think
what it means is that if you forall of Japan that are for you,
there you go.
I've got a couple of those here.
But for all of the moaningabout how this will, how this
will stop development and oh wow, that's great, yeah, look at
that, I've got.
I just got it this week fromJapan.
I've got a couple of those inthe cupboard.
I know you do, but for all ofthe moaning, I'm not sure what

(41:54):
they would do, I mean, otherthan make drivers go a bit
further.
Um, you know, if you reallywanted to make drivers easier to
hit for the average golfer,you're going to hit them 44 and
a half inches.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
You're not wrong.
You're not wrong at all.
Honestly, though, I mean, makethe equipment that conforming
and all that out of it.
You know.
Okay, like, let's just say,we're going to stay where we're
at in terms of the way theequipment and the ball is uh,
because I I don't see if the PGAtour decides to play by the

(42:25):
USGA and the RNA uh ball rule,which it sounds like they're
going to, if they decide to dothat, if I was live I would
immediately say, okay, we're notdoing it.
Yeah, like, you know what Imean.
And if, if you're a golf ballmanufacturer and all your peers
are selling balls more than youbut they're the conforming ball
and you still can make these andpeople want to buy these, I'm

(42:45):
making these.
Like I'm not going to bebeholden to rules.
If I'm a golf ball manufacturer, like that doesn't.
Like the.
The idea that the RNA and theUSGA still drive the industry.
I think it's just a time ofpast.
It's not true anymore.
Capitalism and economics drivethe industry of golf.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
There's two things there really.
One is uh, when live came along, it blew apart the this thing
which was uh, the governingbodies, the important people in
the decision making process,were always going to move in
step with each other.
You know, they were going todiscuss things first and they
were going to make jointstatements and they were never
going to break that sort ofbrother that they had, which is

(43:23):
USGA, rna, the Augusta NationalGolf Club and the USPGA, and
live just smash that.
So it happened like overnight.
It was so now destructive.
Yeah, so now nobody kind ofknows what, um, what each other
are going to do.
But the other point that youmade there, which I feel quite

(43:44):
strongly about, is that if, um,it is sort of incumbent upon
USGA and RNA to take a long-termview over the game of golf, so
to try and take a view which isthe game's absolutely brilliant,
best thing ever it's beenaround for years.

(44:06):
Loads of people love it.
Um, let's not compromise it.
Let's try and make sure thatthe things that make it great
are always going to be there.
So in order for them to do that, they have to take a longer
term view.
You could say it's 10 years,you could say it's longer.
If you take that away and allof a sudden it goes to whether
it's tour or whether it'sequipment companies, or it all

(44:28):
becomes self-regulating.
What happens is everything isrestricted to a three to five
year view, and that usuallydoesn't really make things
better.
Uh, it makes.
It means that it kind of eatsitself, and so here's what I
love Like.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
I love that, though, I deal with a lot of people who
are under the age of 20, like Ihave a lot of youngsters that
I'm constantly around and a lotof people give the younger
generation a hard time about alot of things.
But one thing that I kind ofappreciate about young people is
they kind of have pretty goodbullshit detectors and they tend
to kind of like see throughthings.

(45:09):
And one of the things that Ithink is really interesting is
that, you know, golf is kind ofmoving into a precarious spot
it's never been in, to, where,like, if you tell somebody under
the age of 30 that that driveris going to go 20 yards farther,
they're going to ask you how.
And now, all of a sudden, theequipment isn't prepared to

(45:30):
answer that question because,quite frankly, for years it's
been lies.
So now I think what you'reseeing is that, like I just had
Todd Dempsey on the podcastearlier today, who's really kind
of become known for makingmodern persimmon golf clubs, and
then behind you is just a wallof older golf clubs that aren't

(45:50):
ancient golf clubs but arerather really good golf clubs
that you routinely take out andstill play golf with.
And we're seeing more and morepeople that I think are kind of
revolting against the wearingyour Sunday's best, listening to
loud music and showing up tothe golf course and having no
ability to play.
And you're starting to seepeople get back into it and fall

(46:11):
in love with it for maybereasons closer to us and there
may be a little bit more intothe vintage equipment and not
necessarily spending tons ofmoney on brand new stuff that
doesn't work any better than theold stuff.
I mean, I think it's cool, man.
I like this kind of push into adifferent approach.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
And look, mate, there's.
There's a couple of thingsthere as well.
You know I do.
I'm lucky enough, I get to playgolf in the US a little bit and
you know we have caddies andstuff and you know, very often
especially less so here but whenI come over there they'll look
at my driver.
So I'm using a 2006 TaylorMadeSuper Quad and they'll be like

(46:49):
oh well, you know they'll talkto me on the level of like
you're definitely givingsomething up by using this club
and I'm like no mate, I feellike I'm for all the kids
listening.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
That's what Gade is using.
Oh, that's a quad, that's not asuper.
I'm sorry, you're right.
You're right, I'm not the wrongone.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
It's never far away, Duke.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
There it is.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
This is a bit of a niche one, it's a 282, which
with the Taurus shoe, head lowerspinning but failurely, went
boring.
But yeah, they kind of talkedto you on the level of you
definitely giving something upby using this club.
I'm definitely not Right.
And the other thing is I'mdefinitely up because I know
I've tested it and I've I've gotto.
I think the best drivers at themoment if I somebody comes in

(47:31):
and they, a lot of people justwant the modern stuff, so I
probably would fit them with abit.
The only modern drink the onlyup to date driver I'll sell is
the tightest tears, so it's theonly good, the only one.
And I got a T s R for recently.
I do this fairly regularly, youknow I've like, okay, you know
I start to get affected.
I'm like okay, yeah, fine, fine, I can see things must have

(47:53):
moved forward a bit.
And I got this T s R for and Ibuilt it to my exact spec.
So I love this shaft, the old,hazardous, this one's all beaten
up when I use.
I've got loads of those becausethey don't make them anymore.
And I put, build it to exactlythe same spec and look, I hit
this thing pretty good.
But I didn't really hit it anyfurther and I felt like I just
was not getting any pleasure outof it.

(48:15):
You know, it just felt a bitdead to me.
But the other thing is the youknow, if you go, if you're a car
enthusiast, obviously cars, youknow constant progress.
They've got Apple car playingthem and all this stuff now.
But if you're a real carenthusiast, a lot of times you
know you probably kind of likeyou might have a sweet spot

(48:35):
Transmission maybe.
Yeah, you like the Porsche 911sfrom the late 90s and you know
that's where things likeSingapore's come out of its.
You know Singapore's, I don'tknow people was bit niche but
whether, whether anyone knowsabout this, but basically they
customize what they consider tobe the best Porsches.
So the late 90s ones, the aircooled ones, and they customize

(48:56):
them and they make everythingjust as good as it can be, but
not techy.
You know, everything is stillanalog.
Everything is just beautifullycrafted.
I guess, like you know youmight say a Muur Iron, a great
Japanese forging or whatever.
And car enthusiasts appreciatecars from the past because
there's something that you can'tquite measure.
It's like I get from A to Bquicker in today's 911 or

(49:20):
today's Ferrari, but you'regonna.
This is the best way I know howto describe it.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Here's how I got, and somebody that's really a lot
smarter than me explained it tome.
So I have CD like I'm old enough, right, like I have a ton of
CDs still at my house somewherein a box, but like I also have
vinyl right Like full on vinyl,and I have a turntable and I
have really nice speakers at myhouse and here's the really cool

(49:48):
thing I can listen to any albumI want on vinyl and then I can
also listen to it on my phoneand they sound almost identical.
But here's what happens when youhave the ability to have
everything all at once in thenewest thing and I don't have to
carry it around and it's justin my phone on demand, they have
to compress that thing to makeit fit with all the other stuff

(50:09):
that they make available to me.
So when you compress things,especially music, you actually
lose entire instruments in thebackground.
So it's kind of wild that youknow.
Yes, this is super easy, but Iwould say that this is super
convenient.
But I would say that if youactually want the best listening
experiences, it's going to beon vinyl every time, over me

(50:31):
streaming it through my phone.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Yeah, and that comes back to this thing, which is we
were not always better.
But also we're told, if youpick up a golf magazine, if
you're new to golf, if you lookat YouTube videos, you got to go
pretty deep before you get toldanything different.
And what we're told is the wayto approach the game, is the way

(50:54):
the pros approach the game.
And it's like, wait a minute.
Even you know I love the game.
Whether I'm highly competitiveon it, I don't know, I'm
probably not.
But you know I don't reallylike losing and I want to be as
good as I can be.
I still work on my game.
I still have my hands arescrewed because I had too many
balls in the bay here.
But you know I hit balls everyday here trying to be better.

(51:18):
But I don't necessarily want togive up the pleasure of playing
the game.
I don't necessarily and I'm notsaying you have to give up the
whole pleasure, but I don'treally want to give up any of it
, because all of the stuff thatI'm being told to do, I mean it
could be, you know, somepsychologist telling me to

(51:39):
basically lobotomize myself, putmyself into a trance as I'm
going around the course.
It could be a stats guy tellingme I should be aiming at the
middle of every green and, youknow, only hitting one shot.
All of that stuff.
I'm just that's, that.
I'm not going to do that bit,because I still love it and I
still do it because I loveseeing a ball in flight and I
love hitting shots.

(51:59):
So it's it's.
We are able to make thesechoices, as long as we're able
to just slightly extricateourselves a little bit from the,
from all of the stuff that isin golf magazines and that's in
YouTube videos, and just go.
You know, really and honestly,what does it mean to me?
And I guess you know for me.
I was very much in the golfindustry until I was 24.

(52:20):
And, to be honest with you, Ididn't really question anything
up to that point.
I was young, I was in it.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Me too.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Me too.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Yeah, I'm glad that I'm not the only one that ever
is honest enough to say that Idrank a cool.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Yeah, and then when I started this business, I two
things happened.
The thing that happened firstwas I didn't have to go and play
in these horrible pro Ams,which you know I'm not saying
pro Ams are horrible, but theprams I was playing him were
horrible, right, they were onred for golf courses.
I had no status I'm talkinglike regional PGA stuff in you

(52:58):
know Buckinghamshire and nothingwrong with that county or
anything in England but it's notgreat.
It's not exactly a golfinghotspot.
Let's say, yeah, we wereplaying, and we weren't even
playing the best courses.
So we were playing terriblegolf courses and, to be honest
with you, I did lose the lovefor the game.
And then when I started thisbusiness and all of a sudden
none of that really mattered Iwas still teaching a bit but I

(53:18):
wasn't going to play to all ofthem.
So I was living in London, Ireally got the love back for the
game and I just played and Iplayed for 12 years.
From that point onwards, Iplayed for 12 years without
market of scorecards.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
It's just a golfing, no matter.
That's where I'm at, man.
Like, honest to God, like Ilove Todd so much.
Todd Dempsey, he's just anawesome human.
He's building me some persimmon.
You see, I've got the superquad here.
I'm debating on maybe bringingthat to London to play golf with
you here in a few weeks.
But like, honestly, man, I'mdone.

(53:50):
Like I have a QI 10 on the orthe new QI 10 on the way to.
But like, at the end of the day,man, like I want to go out
there and start playing golf tohave fun again.
And like, try to hit shots andtry to score.
And you know, this year I'mgoing to have some persimmon in
the bag and I'm going to havesome short sets and I'm going to
do some different things.
But at the end of the day, man,it's to your point, it's at the

(54:11):
end of the day, the scores neverreally made me that happy.
It's normally made me angry.
So like, instead of going outthere and worrying about the
score, which is only going tofrustrate me, like I'm going to
go out there and focus on, youknow, hitting the shots to the
best of my ability and reallyfalling in love with that
process again and I've beendoing a little bit of that over
the past year or so and it'sreally helped a lot.

(54:32):
But I totally get what you'resaying with trying to find joy
in the game again, because ifyou take this super, super kind
of vacuumy approach toeverything and it's all binary
and ones and zeros and pass fell, it really does it.
It starts to really take thejoy out of the game, for I think
a lot of people yeah, and Ithink that's so.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Add pleasure to the matrix.
You know, and I I say this withabout equipment is I still
haven't found a situation wherethe pleasure and the performance
do not meet.
The only time there's adisconnect is when you have the
illusion of performance and thatdriver, that Q10, that you've
got right.
There's no greater example thanthat.

(55:15):
I mean, there's you what yougive up with that particular
club.
So the high MOI story, I get itright.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
I do 10K, just so you know I'm not like one of those
10K nuts.
I don't think that's the answerfor I don't think you are at
all.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
but it's a really good example because I played
with the front of mine who tookone out the other weekend on a
Saturday morning and it was kindof funny because he's a friend
of mine who I haven't spoken tofor a little while.
And the reason I haven't spokento him is because he was a very

(55:48):
good friend of mine that we'restarting making it.
He was very he loved golfequipment and it's a bit of an
insatiable appetite for golfequipment and I was making so
many clubs for him but I wasn't.
I was charging him costsbecause he's a pal and he just
got a bit too much and then weended up having a little bit of
an argument and we didn't speakfor a few years.
So the reason I'm telling youthat is that I turned up on this

(56:09):
Saturday morning, having notspoken to him three years, and I
looked in his bag and they werejust like.
He still had the mirror bladesI've made him, but all the other
clubs have been changed andobviously I just tore into every
one of them.
But he had the Q10 driver and Iwas just I'm like, ah, do you
remember that TP Taylor made TP425?
Never made you.

(56:30):
Wouldn't you like to have thatright now?
But it's true.
You know that that Q10 itdoesn't.
You put it this way?
If you.
The way I would describe it isif you blindfold somebody and
ask them to hit some shots andthey hit them out of the middle
with that Q10, they would nothave any clue where they went.
They would have no idea.

(56:51):
They'd know they might knowthat they hit the middle of the
club, less so than maybe withcertainly a pessimist or
something like that but then ifyou just gave them the
Supercorder or 425 or somethinglike that, they would be able to
tell if they were good enoughplayer.
They'd be able to tell youwhere it went.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
I don't disagree at all with that.
I think that's very true.
I mean, you know, I would saythat one of the lowest points of
my life as a golfer and myenjoyment of the game was I was
playing a set of titleist TMB'sand you couldn't tell where you
hit that thing anywhere on theface and you know it was chasing

(57:27):
numbers and performance at allcosts and totally getting away
from what I liked and what Ifelt good and what I kind of
wanted to do.
And to your point, man, like,even though the numbers were
better, the results were worse.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Yeah, and that's where you know if you missed a
point.
So, going back to this thing ofwhat happens with you know
everyday golfers like us, likewe are now we if you take soul
grind, soul grind on clubs is areally good example.
So that titleist TMB, massiverounded Bulbas soul Okay.

(58:05):
So on a catastrophic duff thatsoul will perform a little bit
better.
But you're not really trying tomake the most out of a
catastrophic duff.
What you're trying to do isstop hitting catastrophic duffs.
So if soul grind is one of thethings like, if you, if you give
somebody a sensible soul grindwhere they can actually pinch

(58:28):
the ball between the club andthe turf, they'll learn to hit,
they'll learn what a greatstrike feels like and they'll
learn to chase that feeling andthey'll become a better ball
striker.
But if you give them a big bulbwas rounded soul, where they
never get that feeling but itdoes tidy up the catastrophic
duff, you're sort of condemningthem to never getting there and
I think that's where that itdoesn't always join up and

(58:48):
that's the thing where I can getquite worked up about.
Is that it's not no famouswedge.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
This is interesting because a really famous wedge
coach or not wedge coach, but areally famous tour coach that I
speak with sometimes recentlyput a video up where a company
had made him a custom wedge withno groups Right, and he was
using that and like havingplayers hit shots and they were
producing the same amount ofspin without the group.

(59:16):
So it was kind of cool.
But I asked him.
I said, hey, you should get awedge with zero bounce.
And he's like, why?
And I was like Because youshould take hacks that are no
good with a wedge and give thema wedge with zero bounce and
tell them that they're notallowed to get a normal wedge
until they stop taking divots.
And you would actually teachpeople to be pretty good wedge

(59:38):
players.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Yeah, yeah, that is it, that's.
That's the bit where, andthat's where Chevy Chase might
have been right when he said theshortest distance between two
points was a straight line inthe opposite direction, because
that's definitely true and youcan, I'm, I'm really fascinated
by what you can get people to dowith no instruction through

(01:00:02):
different equipmentspecifications.
It's unreal, it's unreal.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
The best training aids I've ever used bar none
always are golf club related andalways totally like blow their
minds it for like okay, like Ireally like Martin, Chuck, Okay.
So I want to be up front andsay, Martin, I think you're the
man.
I really appreciate what you do.
I was not the biggest fan ofthe tour striker and the reason

(01:00:28):
that I wasn't the biggest fan oftour striker is because people
didn't learn that they had toget their pressure left to
create a descending blow.
Instead, people were stillhanging back on the right foot
and just leaning the shit out ofthat thing to get the face on
the ball.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
And then in their minds that I oh, that's clearly
what I've got to do, butactually it's not.
That's just right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
But it's a myth.
You have a well thought outidea, right.
It's just unfortunate thatpeople constantly misuse that
thing.
But once again, like if yougave the tour striker to a
competent guy who can getpressure left, now that's a
really good training aid for him, because now it's actually
encouraging the thing we want.
So that's kind of the problemthat we tend to have is that, to

(01:01:11):
your point, we're often told dowhat the tour guys do.
But then when we try to do that, they're like no, no, no, no,
no, you got to feel it this way.
Well, if you're not a tourplayer and you've never done
this, how are you supposed tohave the feeling already to know
how to do it?
And that's where I think likedata can really step in and be
used to quantify feelings andhelp people develop, feel.

(01:01:31):
But when we start trying toreplace that feel with data,
that's always a recipe fordisaster in my mind.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
Yeah, I agree with that completely.
I don't, I think, where.
Where I'm going to focus myattention in terms of the
simulator world and thetechnology side of what we do is
in a few areas, but relative toour discussion today, it's
about skill gaming built aroundskill development.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Correct.
So, by the way, real quick,we're getting tight on time here
.
So I don't drink, as you know,but I've started collecting
vintage things instead of wine.
I've started collecting vintagegolf balls and I would like to
show you.
I might bring some with me, butlook what I have.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
I see your talk of the answers.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
Come on, I can keep going.
What do you got?

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
I'm gonna have to get out of the other room.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
Well, I had some fun.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
I had some exciting to say oh my God, all right,
give me two minutes, wait there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
All right.
So for those of you that arewatching this and I hope you do,
if you're listening normally doyourself a favor and check this
video out on our YouTube pageat measured golf, because you
can see now in the camera someof the golf clubs that James has
, and the cool thing about thatwall is that there's no junk.

(01:03:09):
Everything in there is likesuper cool, super specced out,
super rare, and it's just if yougrew up playing golf in the 90s
and early 2000s like he kind ofhas the wish list that
everybody had, because it'sdefinitely all the clubs all the
cool kids had, for sure, whatdo you got?
I can't say something, so itgoes big.

(01:03:30):
Say something.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Even earlier.
These are the ones that arereally good these are the liquid
centers.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
They're squishy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Yeah, the 90s.
And then I've also got these,which are very niche.
Ooh, what's that?
Mcgregor championship?
Quality Golf balls, brand new,god knows, look at that High
energy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Yeah, do you have a listen to this?
If this doesn't sell golf ball,I don't know what does hang on.
Where's the set?
Liquid center Wound technologyfor workability, soft feel and
control.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
So I used to when I was a kid.
There was two things I used to.
One was my dad.
My mom and dad would be havingSunday lunch at the golf club.
I'd wait, you know.
We would come up.
My brother and I was justhanging around, probably about
10 or 11 years old, and as theafternoon went on, you know, dad
would have got more and morestuck into the red wine.
And there was just this perfectmoment to come and ask him for

(01:04:33):
10 pounds and you could get apacket of tour ball artis for
six.
I think there was six, 96pounds, 95 then.
And of course you've got thispacket of balls.
That's in the packet, but youopen them up First time.
You take them out.
You're so scared of thinning one, you know, because the moment
you thin one, the balls they'relying in it.
I mean it's bad that you'd beworried about losing it, but

(01:04:56):
when you just think, oh God, youthin one, you get out there and
you have a look.
And the other thing was I usedto hang around on the 18th green
at Wentworth when the Volvo PGAwhich is now the BMW was on and
I was one of those kids that'dbe like can I have your ball?
Can I have your glove, you know, and they'd give you balls and
stuff and I would end up usingthose balls because I don't sign
it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
I'm going to use this thing later.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Yeah, so that and that was ultimate pressure of
not cutting one.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Oh, my God, that's great man.
So so, if you've enjoyed thisat all, james is obviously great
and does some cool stuff onInstagram so you can check out
the amazing facility, urban Golfin London over in Smithfield
Street Really cool spot.
You can check that out onlineat Urban Golf.

(01:05:41):
You can Google that and find itand then he's on Instagram at
Urban Golf as well as UrbanCustom Clubs and you can see
some of the sweet like Max Fly,australian blades and all those
cool things that he's got overthere.
So, james, I really appreciatehaving you on man and I'm really
looking forward to seeing youhere in a few weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Yeah, so and you're, we should say you're coming over
, yeah, it's going to be fun.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
I'm going to be back in the bunker which is 20 yards
guaranteed.
Yeah, 20 yards guaranteed for myman, no problem, we'll work
that right in.
So, no, it's going to be good.
I was over.
Like I said last year, jameshas an amazing facility and has
a private room in the backcalled the bunker, which you can
run out for private events.
But we're going to go backthere, set up some force plates

(01:06:27):
and get some coaching going onin London and try to make that
kind of a regular thing to whereI'm getting over there and
working with some players viasome video conferencing software
that James has put in.
So I think it's going to begreat.
Man, I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, so if you're interestedin coming over and hanging out
with James and myself in London,I'm going to be there between

(01:06:48):
March 27th and April 1st, sofeel free to reach out to us
about setting up an appointment.
I think we have a few left.
So thanks again to James,always a great guest and very
gracious with this time.
So thank you so much to him andmake sure to download and
subscribe to this podcastanywhere you download your
podcast already and, as always,until next time, keep grinding.