Speaker 1: It's the Son of a Butch podcast. We come to
Speaker 1: you every Wednesday. My guest today Nico Daris Blueprint golf
Speaker 1: blueprint dot Com. Talk to me about what that is.
Speaker 1: We'll get into your background, because I think the background
Speaker 1: you've got coming into golf as a sport is very different.
Speaker 1: But golf blueprint dot Com, what is it and why
Speaker 1: is it?
Speaker 2: So? Great question? First of all, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Appreciate you, longtime listener, first time, first time being here.
Speaker 2: And as I was driving up here, I was thinking
Speaker 2: about what is golf Blueprint? So Golf Blueprint is really
Speaker 2: the ethos of my golf journey, of the relentless pursuit
Speaker 2: of better and me needing to get better in a
Speaker 2: short amount of time. Like you said, I didn't come
Speaker 2: to golf in a traditional way, and Golf Blueprint was
Speaker 2: the journey of how I went from having never played
Speaker 2: golf at twenty three to now at thirty working in
Speaker 2: golf and journey along the way of my education and
Speaker 2: my background and creating dialed in practice plans because some
Speaker 2: days I only had thirty minutes, some days I had
Speaker 2: thirty five minutes, some days I had forty minutes and
Speaker 2: I needed to get better to close the gap on
Speaker 2: the people that I was playing against in a really
Speaker 2: short amount of time. And I couldn't do that traditionally
Speaker 2: through lessons. I didn't you know, I didn't have the time,
Speaker 2: I didn't have the resources to do that at that time.
Speaker 2: So I needed to find an academic way that I
Speaker 2: could marry what I was doing in school with what
Speaker 2: I was doing on the golf course.
Speaker 1: Your background, like you said, you're not a golfer. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about your background. You were a baseball player,
Speaker 1: wanted to be a professional baseball player, got to which
Speaker 1: level of professional baseball?
Speaker 2: So growing up as a kid, when I was I
Speaker 2: was in preschool and my mom told me this story
Speaker 2: the other day that every picture of me as a
Speaker 2: child was in a baseball uniform. And one of the
Speaker 2: not so nice moms came up to my mom and said,
Speaker 2: why do you insist on dressing your son in a
Speaker 2: baseball uniform every single day for school? And to her,
Speaker 2: you know, horrified self, she goes, do you think I
Speaker 2: want my preschooler to wear nothing but a baseball uniform?
Speaker 2: So when I was a kid, it was all I
Speaker 2: wanted to do. To quote card Ale Jones of Ohio
Speaker 2: State football. You know, we didn't come here to play school.
Speaker 2: That was very much my mentality as a kid. I
Speaker 2: just wanted to play baseball every day, all day. That's
Speaker 2: all I wanted to do from the time I was
Speaker 2: two years old, and ultimately it was a pretty good
Speaker 2: player in high school, got recruited all over, got my
Speaker 2: pick of the school. I was very fortunate and ended
Speaker 2: up going to University Connecticut my last three years. Got
Speaker 2: hurt right before the Big League Draft. Blew out my
Speaker 2: rotator cuff, my laborum, and my lat and that ended it.
Speaker 2: And so one day, you know, at twenty two, everything
Speaker 2: I had worked for for the first twenty two years,
Speaker 2: my life was gone, taken away and I needed to
Speaker 2: start over.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, I think so many people have. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you look at athletes in general, and you look
Speaker 1: at the people that make it and that are on TV,
Speaker 1: that doing all these great things that are everybody's heroes,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are just so many people that have
Speaker 1: tried to have a career in professional sports at any level,
Speaker 1: and there are so many people that injury causes so
Speaker 1: many careers to just get derailed. Yeah, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that people realize, you know, not only in golf,
Speaker 1: but in every sport. To be great, to have a
Speaker 1: very long career, there is an element of just dumb
Speaker 1: luck that you just don't get hurt. Sure you just
Speaker 1: weren't you know. Tom Brady's a great example. Tom Brady
Speaker 1: never really had any major issue injuries. Roger Federer never
Speaker 1: really had any major major injury issues. You know, Tiger
Speaker 1: Woods really throughout the majority of the early part of
Speaker 1: his career, the Big Tiger Roun my Dad era, the
Speaker 1: Hank Haney era, there were never any injuries. He just
Speaker 1: basically was able to just play injury free. Why golf
Speaker 1: and why did you pick up golf Because a lot
Speaker 1: of ex athletes are just obsessed with golf. I've had
Speaker 1: them on the pod before. They you know, they're they're junkies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why do you think that is?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my golf story is very unique, and I'll give
Speaker 2: you a funny story to start. So, my family had
Speaker 2: just moved to Hawaii. I was twenty two, depressed, heartbroken,
Speaker 2: you know, my life is over. And we move in
Speaker 2: and our golf course had a community. Now my sister
Speaker 2: had played college golf, so my sister was fifteen. She
Speaker 2: had never played college, she had never played golf before,
Speaker 2: and she went one day to the driving range met
Speaker 2: a coach and this coach said to my dad, hey,
Speaker 2: this girl's pretty good, and my dad was like, okay,
Speaker 2: you know how good is good. Well, they end up
Speaker 2: pulling her out of high school and she had a
Speaker 2: college scholarship two years later. So at that time, I
Speaker 2: had I'd been to the golf course. I've watched her
Speaker 2: play golf. I wasn't playing golf. Baseball players at that time.
Speaker 2: You know, it'll mes of your swing, that kind of deal.
Speaker 2: So I had probably played at that to that point,
Speaker 2: maybe nine holes in my life. So we're in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: I sign up for this nine hole scramble and I
Speaker 2: get paired with i'd Loane, denounced later the biggest jerk
Speaker 2: in the club because no one else wanted to play
Speaker 2: with him. They stuck me with him because you know,
Speaker 2: here's this new guy who doesn't know any better. So
Speaker 2: we played nine holes. This guy's smoking cigarettes in my face,
Speaker 2: just ripping me. You know, I hit balls out of bounds,
Speaker 2: I topped him. I did this, and the whole time
Speaker 2: he's telling me about this. You know club championship that
Speaker 2: he's going to play in and he's the member guest champion.
Speaker 2: So I call my best friend at the time, who
Speaker 2: played college golf, and I said, hey, there's three months
Speaker 2: until this guy's important member guest. You're gonna teach me
Speaker 2: how to play golf and we're gonna win. And he
Speaker 2: for seas ago. Okay, buddy. So I'm working valet at
Speaker 2: the time, and if I wasn't valeting, I was hitting balls.
Speaker 2: I probably hit you know, five hundred ball, who knows
Speaker 2: how many balls a day. And three months later I
Speaker 2: shot seventy nine in that member guest and we ended
Speaker 2: up beating the guy and it just got hooked and
Speaker 2: that pro laughed. He goes, maybe I should pair him
Speaker 2: with every new golfer, you know, maybe that's what fifth
Speaker 2: people need to do to get motivated to learn. But
Speaker 2: I just I fell in love with the process of
Speaker 2: getting better and it gave me an opportunity to improve
Speaker 2: at something every day. That was my favorite part about baseball,
Speaker 2: and I have that in golf now.
Speaker 1: You also, your background from an education background is to
Speaker 1: me a big part of what golf blueprint became.
Speaker 2: Totally totally so as I said. As a kid, something
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't know about me. I had
Speaker 2: pretty severe learning disabilities in school, so I skipped the
Speaker 2: third grade. I went from the second grade to the
Speaker 2: fourth grade. At the time, there was an edd which
Speaker 2: is what my doctorate is now in education. Funny how
Speaker 2: life comes full circle. I was pretty advanced and they
Speaker 2: said you should skip him ahead. Well, what we now know,
Speaker 2: you know twenty years later, is that third grade is
Speaker 2: where you learn sentence structure and mathematics, and the basic
Speaker 2: building blocks of school is third grade. So today I
Speaker 2: struggle with math. I struggle with sentence structure, basic things
Speaker 2: like that that created a lifetime of difficulty in school.
Speaker 2: High school was so hard for me because I could
Speaker 2: get the math answer, I didn't know how to prove
Speaker 2: the answer. I didn't know how to get to there.
Speaker 2: I could write beautiful sentences, but I didn't know what
Speaker 2: an adverb was because I never learned it. I had
Speaker 2: to learn multiplication and division in a weekend when I
Speaker 2: went from second to fourth grade, and it really created
Speaker 2: a challenging high school and undergrad experience for me, where
Speaker 2: I just really had a tough time getting through the
Speaker 2: basic classes and I wasn't that interesting, souse. I just
Speaker 2: want to play baseball. But luckily for me, I have
Speaker 2: wonderful parents. My mom told me she goes go to class,
Speaker 2: you have to go to class. So for any student
Speaker 2: athletes that are listening out there, dude, I showed up
Speaker 2: to the eight am geography class when no one was there.
Speaker 2: Did I learn anything? No, But you know what I learned.
Speaker 2: I learned how to show up. I learned how to grind.
Speaker 2: I learned how to do something that you don't want
Speaker 2: to do every single day. And then after baseball ended,
Speaker 2: I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do.
Speaker 2: My father's a lawyer. I thought maybe I'll go to
Speaker 2: law school. You know, he's a successful lawyer. And as
Speaker 2: I was looking around for classes, I found a program
Speaker 2: called Social Innovation from the University of San Diego. And
Speaker 2: for those of you who don't know what it is
Speaker 2: at home, it's essentially creative problem solving. Think Google Think.
Speaker 2: A lot of people from our program went to the
Speaker 2: three letter government agencies, CIA, FBI, things like that. I
Speaker 2: went down that road for a little while, got recruited,
Speaker 2: and ultimately it wasn't for me.
Speaker 1: Ryan Chrysler, who was on the pod last week. Who
Speaker 1: works for me? He he did the he was trying
Speaker 1: to be an FBI agent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So I'm sure we got to talk. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you know, off camera about it. And it was fun.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the process. But that's what a lot of
Speaker 2: the people in that program went to. Creative problem solving.
Speaker 2: And while that time I was I was so right
Speaker 2: around the same time about my master's, I learned golf.
Speaker 2: So I was living in San Diego. Shout out to
Speaker 2: the San Diego Country Club boys. I'm sure they're listening.
Speaker 2: There was a group of high school kids there at
Speaker 2: the time that were some of the best juniors in
Speaker 2: the country, and I ended up becoming a pseudo mentor
Speaker 2: to them, and in exchange, they essentially taught me golf.
Speaker 2: And so every single day we would play golf after
Speaker 2: they get out of school and I'd be done with
Speaker 2: my classes. And it was amazing getting to watch them
Speaker 2: play because they didn't have the fear of the adults.
Speaker 2: They played creatively, they played, they tried shots, they hit shots.
Speaker 2: I tried to swing as hard as I could for
Speaker 2: like two years. No one laughed at me because when
Speaker 2: you were with children and children don't have that same
Speaker 2: level of you know world lea, I guess anxiety and
Speaker 2: now they're all playing Division one and they're all, you know, studs.
Speaker 2: But right around that same time started playing golf and
Speaker 2: then to get into my doctorate. My doctorate is an education.
Speaker 2: I studied specifically learning theory and how people can optimize
Speaker 2: what they're doing through their learning.
Speaker 1: And that's where I think so many people. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's something I talk about on the podcast all the time.
Speaker 1: I think everybody believes that the way they're going to
Speaker 1: get better at playing golf is just to hit more
Speaker 1: golf balls, to go to the driving range, to put
Speaker 1: the time in to work on your technique. And it's
Speaker 1: something that I talk about and I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why you and I connected. I mean,
Speaker 1: Dave Phillips was like, You've got to meet Nico because
Speaker 1: you guys talk about the same stuff, this balance between
Speaker 1: technique versus execution. And I say this all the time
Speaker 1: every competitive golfer. And we'll get to the work that
Speaker 1: you do with John Rahm. John Ram's trying to make
Speaker 1: his golf swing better. Rory McElroy is trying to make
Speaker 1: his golf swing. Everybody that plays competitive golf is trying
Speaker 1: to improve their technique, but there is so much more
Speaker 1: to getting better than just standing on a driving range
Speaker 1: and hitting golf balls. Because I think there's also a
Speaker 1: rate in my opinion, of diminishing return in that too.
Speaker 1: You will get to it. I think you can overpractice totally.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of junior golfers that I see
Speaker 1: who's parents come, they're overpracticed. Yeah, all they do is practice,
Speaker 1: They don't fundamentally play the game. And did you notice
Speaker 1: that coming? I think also you coming from a baseball
Speaker 1: background and getting into golf and watching how competitive baseball
Speaker 1: is practiced versus how competitive golf is practiced. I've heard
Speaker 1: you say this before. There's no other competitive sport in
Speaker 1: the world that has the approach that golf has.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and you said a lot of important things there,
Speaker 2: specifically about overpracticing. So many people are overpracticing, spending eight
Speaker 2: hours a day. You know, we always laugh, you and
Speaker 2: I laugh, and we'll see the posts online about our
Speaker 2: guys schedules where they wake up at five point thirty
Speaker 2: and they're running, you know, six miles and they put
Speaker 2: for three hours.
Speaker 1: It's not Real's you that's all. That is all Instagram bullshit, right,
Speaker 1: That is a get ready with Me video of a
Speaker 1: day in the life. And all the golf influencers out
Speaker 1: there are really good at portraying this life that Okay,
Speaker 1: they wake up, they go to the gym, they do
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But you talk to real competitive golfers,
Speaker 1: they don't do any of that.
Speaker 2: Sure, their dads, their their husbands, their fathers, their friends,
Speaker 2: they have lives. They do things right.
Speaker 1: But also they compartmentalize their practice. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: around Tiger for the glory days of the Tiger and Butchierra, right,
Speaker 1: he didn't hit golf balls for eight hours a day. Really,
Speaker 1: we weren't at the golf course till dark. There were
Speaker 1: days where we would hit balls and stuff. But Tiger
Speaker 1: had a much more balanced life. Did he practice a lot, yes,
Speaker 1: did he work hard? Obviously he worked hard, But he
Speaker 1: didn't stand and hit golf balls for eight hours a day.
Speaker 2: He just didn't do that makes sense. Working hard is
Speaker 2: a really interesting word because because what is hard work
Speaker 2: is hard work standing there in the heat hitting balls
Speaker 2: for eight hours a day. Is it putting for three
Speaker 2: hours a day? I don't think it is I'm trying
Speaker 2: to get our guys to work smarter the same as
Speaker 2: your guys are where they're taking. The nice thing is, now,
Speaker 2: with statistics and data, we can look at what you're
Speaker 2: good at, what you struggle at, what you need work in,
Speaker 2: and we can emphasize the areas that you're great at
Speaker 2: to make you better at what you're already great at.
Speaker 1: Because most golfers tend to practice what they're good at. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's all they work off. Sure, So if you're a
Speaker 1: great driver of the golf ball, if you're a junior
Speaker 1: golfer and you're a good driver of the golf ball,
Speaker 1: you're a stand on the driving range and hit tons
Speaker 1: of drive, watch me, because it gives you a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of validation. You feel good about the skill that
Speaker 1: you've got. You're able to peacock and show off. People
Speaker 1: watch you, and you get external validation for being a
Speaker 1: great driver of the golf ball. If someone's got a
Speaker 1: great short game, if someone's a great potter, whatever that
Speaker 1: skill is, most people just overpractice the skill that they've
Speaker 1: got totally.
Speaker 2: And that's okay, and some people, some people should do
Speaker 2: that in the beginning, especially as a beginner. If I
Speaker 2: was going to if I was going to say, someone
Speaker 2: who's a beginner golfer, or.
Speaker 1: You're trying to break a hundred for the first time.
Speaker 2: Perfect example, if you're trying to break one hundred for
Speaker 2: the first time. I had this conversation last night with
Speaker 2: another young pro and I said, there's no player in
Speaker 2: the country who's a good driver of the ball that's
Speaker 2: an eighteen handicap. Can't happen. Can't happen. A good driver
Speaker 2: of the ball will hit the ball in play, they
Speaker 2: will consistently score. And so, like you said, if you're
Speaker 2: trying to bring.
Speaker 1: You good driver of the golf ball, you're an eighteen handicap,
Speaker 1: you don't ever need to hit a driver in practice.
Speaker 1: You need to find a potty green. You need to
Speaker 1: find a short game.
Speaker 2: Area, something something good, lord, something else to where to
Speaker 2: where you can raise your game. But at the highest levels,
Speaker 2: the thing that I think that people need to understand
Speaker 2: is you and I work at the highest levels of
Speaker 2: professional golf. They're shaving margins, right, We're looking for a
Speaker 2: quarter of a shot here. We're looking to take sand
Speaker 2: game from fifty seven percent to sixty three percent, or
Speaker 2: you know, gir to seventy two percent. The amateur player
Speaker 2: is playing such a different game that they can make
Speaker 2: such great leaps by practicing smarter.
Speaker 1: I want to thank our partners at Rapsodo and share
Speaker 1: more about their exciting, award winning combine that is launching
Speaker 1: this month. I'm partnering with them to give away two
Speaker 1: virtual golf lessons. All you have to do is complete
Speaker 1: a combine on your MLM or the new MLM two
Speaker 1: Pro during the month of August. Each combine is an entry,
Speaker 1: so the more you take, the more chances you have
Speaker 1: to win. If you've been listening since the beginning, you
Speaker 1: know that I'm a massive fan of both their launch
Speaker 1: monitors and the new MLM two Pro. I think it's
Speaker 1: a game changer. It's got two integrated cameras Doppler radar,
Speaker 1: giving you three ways to see your swing. It's easy
Speaker 1: to use, extremely portable, and provides the same metrics competitors
Speaker 1: do at a fraction of the price, which I think
Speaker 1: is really really important to have tech that is affordable
Speaker 1: to help you with your game. In addition to the combine,
Speaker 1: they're also still giving Son of a Butcher listeners an
Speaker 1: exclusive discount code ch three will get you seventy dollars
Speaker 1: off your purchase of a MLM to pro on rapsodo
Speaker 1: dot com. They'll throw in a free dozen of the
Speaker 1: RPT balls to measure spin. You also get a first
Speaker 1: year of premium membership for free. Again, that's codech three
Speaker 1: at rapsodo dot com for seventy dollars off, and don't
Speaker 1: forget about their award winning combines. You're on John Ram's team.
Speaker 1: How did that come about? And what is it that
Speaker 1: you do in the scope of being part of John
Speaker 1: Ram's kind of inner circle and team.
Speaker 2: Sure? So, first of all, shout out to Dave Right.
Speaker 2: You and I both love.
Speaker 1: Dave ay Phillips, who who's a friend of the Pod.
Speaker 1: We've had them on many times.
Speaker 2: Dave Phillips is the greatest and I owe so much
Speaker 2: of my golf journey to Dave. Dave called me up
Speaker 2: out of the blue one day. We met through a
Speaker 2: mutual friend and he said, Hey, I'd love you to
Speaker 2: come work with some of my guys. Dave has an
Speaker 2: incredible team of not only John Rahm, but David Pooge
Speaker 2: on Live, Cameron Trengali on Live, Alejandro del Rey on
Speaker 2: dep World, and Max Rotliffe as well, and it's just
Speaker 2: such a pleasure to work with Dave, and you know,
Speaker 2: we met through Dave and I think the thing that
Speaker 2: I appreciate the most about you and Dave with my
Speaker 2: work and it ties in is you're both creatives who
Speaker 2: are willing to look at things from a different perspective.
Speaker 2: Because I don't come from golf, I look at it.
Speaker 1: Which I think is a massive, massive strength because I
Speaker 1: do think occasionally if you just are in the golf
Speaker 1: centric world, I would say in the last you're in
Speaker 1: meeting Greg Rose and Dave Phillips. You know I met
Speaker 1: them in two thousand and four, but I'd really say, Nico,
Speaker 1: in the last ten years, people ask me all the time, Hey,
Speaker 1: what books are you're reading, what podcast you're reading? What
Speaker 1: you know? Talk to you a lot. The majority of it,
Speaker 1: I would say now is non golf related. It's coming
Speaker 1: from outside of the golf world. Do I spend time
Speaker 1: talking to golf instructor, sure, I mean we have a
Speaker 1: lot of time on tour where I'm lucky when I
Speaker 1: was on the PGA tour and now my guys they
Speaker 1: have gone to live, but we have a lot of
Speaker 1: time and downtime to where we're waiting for players. Players
Speaker 1: are doing other things. So I'm able to sit with
Speaker 1: Boyd Summer Hayes and talk about golf, talk about what
Speaker 1: he's working on with his kids, what he's working on
Speaker 1: with Tony Finow, what he's working on with Taylor Goot.
Speaker 1: I'm able to stand and pick these guys' brains. Mike Walker,
Speaker 1: who's been on the podcast, I'm able to sit and
Speaker 1: talk to him about Hey, talk to me about the
Speaker 1: stuff that you and fits are working on. But i
Speaker 1: think the majority of my influences in the last decade
Speaker 1: have been non golf related. They've been other coaches from
Speaker 1: other sports. And I'm always fascinated at the approach that
Speaker 1: the team sport concept has versus the individual concept, because
Speaker 1: I find it really interesting as a coach that you'll
Speaker 1: be working with a player and let's say they're a
Speaker 1: junior golfer, and we've all most people that play golf
Speaker 1: have played other some sort of team sport at some point, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm always fascinated that you can be working with
Speaker 1: a player, Let's say you're working on hitting a draw
Speaker 1: and they're hitting you know, you're trying to get them
Speaker 1: to get the path right to left. You're trying to
Speaker 1: get the ball to start to the right and curve
Speaker 1: to the right. And if they're struggling, I always say, listen,
Speaker 1: do you understand the concept right? Do you understand what
Speaker 1: we're trying to get you to do as a player.
Speaker 1: So tell me what we're working on. Tell me all
Speaker 1: of the things that we need to do to execute this.
Speaker 1: Show me the mimic. Let's go through it in slow motion.
Speaker 1: But you'll watch a player hit two, three, four balls
Speaker 1: completely sideways, almost doing the exact opposite of what they
Speaker 1: know they're supposed to do what they've been practicing. If
Speaker 1: that's a team sport, the coach immediately says, can we
Speaker 1: get someone in here. If you're a wide receiver and
Speaker 1: you go and you ken't dropping the ball, they will
Speaker 1: pull you out of practice in a heartbeat. And what
Speaker 1: you don't do in team sports is you don't go
Speaker 1: to another practice area and work on catching. You sit
Speaker 1: on the bench and watch someone else and there's people
Speaker 1: fighting to take your spot, and then eventually the coach
Speaker 1: will come to you and say, okay, do you want
Speaker 1: to get back in the game and do your job
Speaker 1: the way that we have taught you to do it,
Speaker 1: and the way that we have practiced to do it.
Speaker 1: Somehow in team sports, through no external other practicing, you
Speaker 1: figure that shit out real quick and you go execute
Speaker 1: what you've practiced. Why do you think it's so hard
Speaker 1: for golfers to find that execution part of it? Because
Speaker 1: my theory is they just spend all their time hitting
Speaker 1: golf balls. Yeah, they just that's it. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: test for them to see if anything works is going
Speaker 1: out and playing the game. There's and we've talked about it,
Speaker 1: there's no other sport in the world where they do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basketball is a great example where if you think
Speaker 2: about shooting free throws, shooting free throws are a huge
Speaker 2: part of basketball, and it's a part of the game.
Speaker 2: But if you and I went out and we were
Speaker 2: trying to get better at the game, we wouldn't shoot
Speaker 2: free throws and say I.
Speaker 1: Worked on basketball eight hours.
Speaker 2: You would play basketball because you have to dribble, rebound, shoot,
Speaker 2: you know, pass and one.
Speaker 1: Point defense, do all the things that the game. And
Speaker 1: I think so many people forget that golf is a game.
Speaker 1: And I say this all the time on the pod.
Speaker 1: It's a game. Because they get they First of all,
Speaker 1: they tell you what the rules are, and then they
Speaker 1: give you a scorecard, and they tell you what the
Speaker 1: object of the game. Yes, right, this is not golf,
Speaker 1: is not equestrian or figure skating. It's not gymnastics. And
Speaker 1: I say this all the time. If golf was being
Speaker 1: judged on your technique, Nellie Corda would win it a
Speaker 1: lot of times. He's got a great looking golf perfect
Speaker 1: Adam Scott, the classic golf swingers would win because the
Speaker 1: judges would look at the aesthetics of what it looks
Speaker 1: like and say their golf swing looks the best. But
Speaker 1: John Rahm doesn't have a classic looking golf swing. Sure,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have a golf swing that anyone is really
Speaker 1: coaching or teaching. No one's saying, hey, do what John
Speaker 1: Rahm does, because John Rahm is very easy. Unicornton Johnson
Speaker 1: is a unicorn. Colin Montgomery, Freddie Couples, all of these
Speaker 1: great unique golfers were somewhat unicorns. They had techniques that
Speaker 1: you don't teach. Sure, And so from an execution standpoint,
Speaker 1: you get a call from Dave Phillips to have an
Speaker 1: opportunity to work with someone like John Rahm. For you,
Speaker 1: that's got to be like, Okay, wow, this is a
Speaker 1: unique opportunity. Absolutely, And let's be honest. It's always that
Speaker 1: thing to where Okay, how can I help a player? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is already a great player.
Speaker 2: So good. So the thing with Johnny that we always
Speaker 2: laugh about is his a He's unbelievable. Right, let's just
Speaker 2: start from that. The dude does everything well. When you
Speaker 2: look at his numbers, there's no flaws, there's no gaps,
Speaker 2: there's no holes.
Speaker 1: You guys say this all the time. I don't know
Speaker 1: guys like him, Guys like Rory McElroy. You wonder how
Speaker 1: they don't win every single week with the toolbox sure
Speaker 1: that they have. Sure with all of the things that
Speaker 1: they can pull out of their toolbox, there isn't a
Speaker 1: situation that John Rahm or someone like Rory McElroy is
Speaker 1: going to get into to where they don't have an
Speaker 1: arrow to pull out. Sure they've got that in.
Speaker 2: There are always the ACEP this sleeve and getting to
Speaker 2: work with Dave and the team, Spencer Tatum who runs
Speaker 2: THHP and his whole team has been such a joy.
Speaker 2: And getting to learn what it's like from the best
Speaker 2: in the world. And I think the thing that you
Speaker 2: said circling back to where do I learn from? The
Speaker 2: best advice I ever got was from my business partner,
Speaker 2: doctor Kevin Moore. He's a professor of mathematics. And about
Speaker 2: three years into my golf journey, I started playing mini
Speaker 2: tours in Arizona and I was going to read golf
Speaker 2: books and he said, Nico, stop. He said, you don't
Speaker 2: know the rules yet, so you continue to break them.
Speaker 2: And it was the best advice I ever got in golf,
Speaker 2: being able to bring something to a team where I
Speaker 2: don't know the rules of golf. I don't know how
Speaker 2: you're supposed to practice. I don't know how you're supposed
Speaker 2: to look at a driving range or a golf course
Speaker 2: or a hole. Like you said, golf is given us
Speaker 2: a set of rules and a scorecard. We can play
Speaker 2: the hole however we'd like. We can hit out.
Speaker 1: Always says there's no place on the scorecard for anything
Speaker 1: other than a number.
Speaker 2: Yes, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: The box is so small you can't write anything else
Speaker 1: other than the score.
Speaker 2: That's it. And so being able to look at the
Speaker 2: game creatively like an artist, although I'm an academic I
Speaker 2: look at golf as an artist and be able to say,
Speaker 2: you know, what is presented in front of me when
Speaker 2: someone goes to a driving range. You know, for people
Speaker 2: at home, look at your driving range, ask yourself the question,
Speaker 2: what does this range give me? Do I have a
Speaker 2: great chipping green? Do I have a putting facility that's nice?
Speaker 2: Do I have a driving range that I can go
Speaker 2: to to be created?
Speaker 1: I have a lot of targets on the driving totally.
Speaker 2: Is there two trees out there that I can look
Speaker 2: at and say, hey, that looks about forty yards wide,
Speaker 2: That'd be a great fair way for me to hit
Speaker 2: drivers into. And so being able to bring that non
Speaker 2: golf team sport mentality my dissertation research, A lot of
Speaker 2: it was written on special forces. So as a kid
Speaker 2: I loved reading military books and still to this day.
Speaker 2: You asked, you know you listen to other team sports
Speaker 2: and coaches. I listened to military podcasts. Specifically I listened
Speaker 2: to the Sean Ryan Show. He has a lot of
Speaker 2: Seal Team six guys, Delta Force, really high performers. What
Speaker 2: are they doing? What are they doing that's different than
Speaker 2: what you and I are doing when we go to
Speaker 2: the driving range. They don't have a day off, they
Speaker 2: don't have the ability to have a bad day. A
Speaker 2: bad day for them has real consequences. A bad day
Speaker 2: for me, I shoot seventy seven. It's a very different mentality.
Speaker 2: And looking at them they gave The military gave me
Speaker 2: so much confidence in something called operant conditioning. It's essentially
Speaker 2: where you can take someone off the street. You can
Speaker 2: take a civilian who's seventeen or eighteen years old, put
Speaker 2: them through buds, and in roughly two years they can
Speaker 2: become a functioning Navy seal. Who's to say that in
Speaker 2: sport we can't take someone off the street and turn
Speaker 2: them into a world class player. The military has already
Speaker 2: shown us it can be done through training, through.
Speaker 1: If they fall up exactly specific exactly thanks.
Speaker 2: Instead, we show up to the driving range and we
Speaker 2: have a seven iron, and we look out there and well,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna work on my swing today. I'm gonna film
Speaker 2: my swing. Look, I play golf seven days a week.
Speaker 2: I want to make my swing better. But what is better?
Speaker 2: What is better? Is it the esthetic contest? Or is
Speaker 2: it the ability to put the ball in the hole.
Speaker 2: You know, I have a dear old friend. We call
Speaker 2: him Uncle Skip. He caddied on tour for a long
Speaker 2: time and he always says to me, he goes, you
Speaker 2: gotta dance with the date that you brought. Every one
Speaker 2: of us wants a better swing.
Speaker 1: But I also think that people forget that unless you
Speaker 1: are going to go in a vacuum in a laboratory
Speaker 1: type situation and you're just going to go work on
Speaker 1: your technique. Sure, right, if you are trying to play
Speaker 1: golf recreationally or competitively, every time you go to the
Speaker 1: golf course is an opportunity for you to play the
Speaker 1: game better as regardless of what you're doing on the
Speaker 1: driving range. Yes, right, because if you are going to
Speaker 1: play golf, and I think we have generations now who
Speaker 1: are just practicers. They don't fundamentally know how to play golf.
Speaker 1: Sure and through technology, through science, through data, through all
Speaker 1: of the things that are available on social media, all
Speaker 1: of the things you can watch, you can work on
Speaker 1: your technique. Ad nos, you work on techne forever you
Speaker 1: can find anything online to work on.
Speaker 2: Google how to fix my slice? There's ae hundred millions instantly.
Speaker 1: But even if you're trying to fix your slice, unless
Speaker 1: you were just going to be a lifetime practicer or
Speaker 1: a professional practicer. Sure you have to at some point
Speaker 1: take the test. Yeah, the test is going out and
Speaker 1: playing nine holes or eighteen holes with the rules of
Speaker 1: the game, with the scorecard. You have to at some
Speaker 1: point go out to the ocean. You just can't sail
Speaker 1: in the harbor and think you're a sailor. Sure right,
Speaker 1: you have to go out into the big blue sea
Speaker 1: and learn how to sail.
Speaker 2: You said a fascinating anything about whatever level you're at,
Speaker 2: And I think that this is for the listeners at home.
Speaker 2: The professional game, in the amateur game is really far apart, right,
Speaker 2: But it doesn't matter my own game. Right now, I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about my game. I'm probably never going
Speaker 2: to play in the Masters, and that's okay. My Masters
Speaker 2: might be the minor league Tour. It might be coming
Speaker 2: down the stretch with a lead at sand Hill Crane
Speaker 2: Golf Club playing against you know who knows who on
Speaker 2: a Tuesday afternoon. My heart rate's going to be the
Speaker 2: same as somebody is coming down with the chance to win.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite clients, doctor Lonnie Malo has been
Speaker 2: with us for basically since the beginning his goal when
Speaker 2: he started with us was to break a hundred. He
Speaker 2: had to play with his boss. He's an er doctor
Speaker 2: and he had to play with his boss in I'll
Speaker 2: never forget. It was the end of September and it
Speaker 2: was June, and he said, I don't know how to
Speaker 2: play golf and I'm terrified. His Masters was that round
Speaker 2: with his boss. It didn't matter to him. He has
Speaker 2: no aspirations of being a you know, world beater, world
Speaker 2: number one. His Masters was that round. He ended up
Speaker 2: shooting about you know, ninety eight or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: And this year he played in his club championship. Next
Speaker 2: year his goal is to compete in the club championship.
Speaker 2: And I think that when you sit there and you
Speaker 2: look at what your own goals are and being realistic
Speaker 2: about them, it's okay. If I never play in the Masters,
Speaker 2: career will still be a success because I'm trying to
Speaker 2: be the best player that I can be next week,
Speaker 2: next month, next year, five years from now. Who's to
Speaker 2: say I can't.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty interesting that I think most people, I
Speaker 1: think most people in golf have massively out of kilter expectations.
Speaker 1: Sure right, I mean, they're just their expectations of what
Speaker 1: they're going to be able to do versus what they
Speaker 1: can do. Circling back to John. So you get on
Speaker 1: John's team, you go spend time with him. He's a
Speaker 1: freak athlete. He's a freak golfer. He has all of
Speaker 1: the tools, sure everyone, I mean he has all of
Speaker 1: the tools. I mean he is a he's a joy
Speaker 1: to watch play golf, and he plays golf in a
Speaker 1: way that is incredibly simplistic, like he really does play
Speaker 1: golf in them people is form where I think people
Speaker 1: would think that it would be much more complex. The
Speaker 1: way he plays.
Speaker 2: The beauty is the simplicity, the truest form of art
Speaker 2: think about. I watched Hero Dreams of Sushi, the Netflix
Speaker 2: documentary where the chef he makes sushi all day long,
Speaker 2: and the sushi is so simple, but it's perfect. It's
Speaker 2: so clean, the lines are elegant, the way it's done.
Speaker 2: And with John, the way I look at it and
Speaker 2: my time with him has been trying to make it
Speaker 2: more fun, just trying to make practice not a job.
Speaker 2: These guys do it every day all day. At the
Speaker 2: highest levels of the game. There's stress, there's financial there's
Speaker 2: you know, all the expectations of trying to be the
Speaker 2: best in the world. And I try to create games
Speaker 2: that are enjoyable, that are engaging, that are you know,
Speaker 2: taking what they do well already and make it a
Speaker 2: little better. And then hey, here are some areas that
Speaker 2: we need to work on. Let's try to have a
Speaker 2: little more fun doing that. And so for me, I
Speaker 2: look at children as the greatest model of learning. How
Speaker 2: do kids learn? They play? Kids play. When we become adults,
Speaker 2: when we stop playing. You know, I'm a serious person.
Speaker 2: I need to have serious you know, I'm gonna grind.
Speaker 2: What does that even mean? Are you not gonna enjoy?
Speaker 2: You're gonna stand there and hip balls till you bleed,
Speaker 2: thanks man, Like I'll take anyone else against that guy
Speaker 2: in the field. Right The children are out there learning.
Speaker 2: My have a four yeal niece who I get to
Speaker 2: watch her, how she learns, the questions that she asks. That's,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, my role with players is taking them
Speaker 2: back to when they were a child and how they learned,
Speaker 2: how they had fun, and more importantly, judgment free. Us
Speaker 2: as human beings are egos and are the stories that
Speaker 2: we tell ourselves. The stress that we put ourselves under
Speaker 2: It can become very constraining where you don't want to
Speaker 2: take that risk. John's always willing to take the risk.
Speaker 2: I will always say this if I ask the same
Speaker 2: question to all of my guys, everyone you know, seeing
Speaker 2: Tory Pine's the eighteenth hole, and I always give them
Speaker 2: the number two fifty five because it's a weird tweener number,
Speaker 2: like maybe it's a five five iron lay up, maybe
Speaker 2: it's a you send it hit three wood. And a
Speaker 2: good question to ask yourself is you're tied for the lead,
Speaker 2: your opponent just hit it in the water. What do
Speaker 2: you do? Who are you? Do?
Speaker 1: You go for the green from two fifty five, which
Speaker 1: a guy like John rom can easily get any pin
Speaker 1: on the eighteenth hole at Torrey Pines, where he won
Speaker 1: his first major championship, the US Open. But he can
Speaker 1: get from two fifty five, He can get any You
Speaker 1: can get to any pin, sure, And he's got a
Speaker 1: variety of different shots he could git to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So does he go for it or does he lay
Speaker 1: up and then try and make a birdie with a wedge?
Speaker 2: Sure? And the questions that I ask all of my guys,
Speaker 2: I always tell them there's no right answers. It's your
Speaker 2: answer because at the end of the day, something that
Speaker 2: I will never take credit for an athlete's success. You know,
Speaker 2: we have some amazing athletes on our team. They're the
Speaker 2: ones hitting the shot. I'm the one asking the questions
Speaker 2: to try to give them some thought as to what
Speaker 2: do we do in that moment. We go back to
Speaker 2: the military. You know, how do you you know what
Speaker 2: you're gonna do if you haven't trained it. We go
Speaker 2: back to our level of training under stress, under duress.
Speaker 2: Something we spend so much time on is our heart rate.
Speaker 2: All of our guys we monitor their heart rates when
Speaker 2: they're playing because we know that when your heart rate
Speaker 2: gets up, your decision making changes, your physical body changes.
Speaker 2: Your hands. Everyone's felt it. Your hands go a little
Speaker 2: numb when you're putting. What is that sensation?
Speaker 1: So we want to thank our partners at ag one,
Speaker 1: the daily foundational nutrition supplement that supports whole body health.
Speaker 1: I've been drinking it literally every day. I initially gave
Speaker 1: ag one a try because I'm getting older. I want
Speaker 1: to feel my best by making sure my nutritional bases
Speaker 1: are covered each and every day. So obviously with my
Speaker 1: travel schedule. I'm on the road about twenty weeks a year.
Speaker 1: It's not always easy for me to make the best
Speaker 1: choices when it comes to my diet. But ag one
Speaker 1: is a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole
Speaker 1: food source to nutrients. Ag One is raising the standards
Speaker 1: in quality for the supplement category. I'm around top athletes
Speaker 1: every day and they all have one thing in common.
Speaker 1: They take care of their bodies, and a huge part
Speaker 1: of that starts with optimizing whole body health, like drinking
Speaker 1: ag one. If a comprehensive solution is what you need
Speaker 1: from your supplement routine, then try ag one and get
Speaker 1: a free one year supply of Vitamin D and five
Speaker 1: free ag one travel packs with your first purchase. The
Speaker 1: ag one travel packs are my go to when I'm
Speaker 1: on the road. Go to drink ag one dot com
Speaker 1: slash son of a Butch. That's drink ag one dot
Speaker 1: com slash son of a Butch. Check it out. This
Speaker 1: is something I think is really fascinating. So all of
Speaker 1: the technology out there. You know a lot of the
Speaker 1: guys on the PGA tour used the whoops during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: They gave everybody on the PGA Tour a whoop, because
Speaker 1: that was one of the ways that they were looking
Speaker 1: at seeing which guys were coming down with COVID. The
Speaker 1: Nick Wotney that that famous story Nick Wotney. He shows up,
Speaker 1: he doesn't tell positive at Harbortown, he's not feeling good.
Speaker 1: He sees Roy McElroy in the parking lot. Roy talks
Speaker 1: to him a little bit about it. He said, look
Speaker 1: at your whoop data. I'm not feeling good today. They
Speaker 1: looked through that, they found out that he had contracted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, COVID.
Speaker 1: They gave everybody. So now a lot of PGA Tour
Speaker 1: players and because of the PGA Tour, everybody mimics every
Speaker 1: amateur that I work with. Now every Mini tour player
Speaker 1: has got a whoop on. You're able during tournaments to
Speaker 1: actively get live heart rate data from your players.
Speaker 2: So one of the coolest stories during that same era,
Speaker 2: one of the first guys we worked with, I will
Speaker 2: mention his name. He had a put to tie in
Speaker 2: an event that he really needed to play well in
Speaker 2: and he had six feet on the last hole and
Speaker 2: his heart rate go up to one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: six beats. And for those of you at home who
Speaker 2: don't realize this. That's right on the cusp of where
Speaker 2: your vision starts to change and neurological things start to happen.
Speaker 2: Physical things start to happen. And I called the buddy
Speaker 2: of mine who was a Green Beret, and I asked
Speaker 2: him about this, and I said, hey, have you guys
Speaker 2: researched this? And he turned me onto this amazing research
Speaker 2: from someone within the military who monitors all the Special
Speaker 2: Forces heart rate and he told a great story. He said,
Speaker 2: one of the final tests they have, they give you
Speaker 2: essentially a paintball gun and you know, they're like not
Speaker 2: real bullets, and they put a hood over your head
Speaker 2: and a scenario is presented in front of you. It
Speaker 2: might be a woman holding a baby, it might be
Speaker 2: you know, two pertend terrorists. And they said, the first
Speaker 2: time everyone's heart rates through the roof, it's one sixty.
Speaker 2: And then you know, they shoot, They shoot the paintball
Speaker 2: gun at whatever's in front of them, and they said,
Speaker 2: by the end they're able to calm down. Hood comes off.
Speaker 2: They assess, they assess, they pull the trigger in the
Speaker 2: right way, and it just clicked off. This idea in
Speaker 2: my mind that what if I test everything on myself.
Speaker 2: I am my own crash test dummy. For those of
Speaker 2: you who follow me on Instagram, you know I'm doing
Speaker 2: this every day all day. It's it's it's every day,
Speaker 2: all day. And so I just monitored my own heart
Speaker 2: rate and I put myself in and tournaments had said, well,
Speaker 2: when I'm hitting balls in the driving range, I'm out
Speaker 2: about eighty. When I play a tournament, there's no consequence.
Speaker 1: I just and if you hit That's the thing I
Speaker 1: think everyone listening when you are hitting golf balls on
Speaker 1: the range, there really is no consequence because if you
Speaker 1: hit a bad one, you just fire one over. And
Speaker 1: a lot of times what I'll do with players is
Speaker 1: they get into that rut to where they start hitting
Speaker 1: bad shot after bad shot after bad shot, and the
Speaker 1: worst they hit it, the faster they're hitting the next ball.
Speaker 1: So there's really no thought process. And I'll let players
Speaker 1: sometimes go through that to where they'll hit three, four
Speaker 1: or five shots, and a lot of times I'll start
Speaker 1: filming without them realizing they don't know what I'm filming,
Speaker 1: and I'll say, listen, watch how fast you just hit
Speaker 1: the last five balls. Sure, now tell me what you
Speaker 1: were thinking, tell me what the object of each shot was,
Speaker 1: and you can't because you're in that drowning phase. Right.
Speaker 1: I think golfers more than any other sport you get.
Speaker 1: Everybody goes through this. Tour players go through this, but
Speaker 1: the average golfer that's listening, we all go through that
Speaker 1: phase of where you feel like I've lost it and
Speaker 1: now I'm drowning. Oh yeah, And the more you feel
Speaker 1: like you're losing it, the more you feel like you're drowning.
Speaker 1: You're in quicksand and you're just in your arms around
Speaker 1: that boat is sinking. So you were saying the heart rate.
Speaker 1: Most people in the range, they hit a bad shot,
Speaker 1: there's fifty of them in front of them, they just
Speaker 1: grab another one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the consequence of that is so different when we're
Speaker 1: on the golf course because you don't have another ball.
Speaker 1: It matters every ball when you're playing the game of golf,
Speaker 1: matters when you're trying to keep score, when you're in
Speaker 1: a competition, whether you're just out for a weekend with
Speaker 1: your friends. The playing of the game is so different
Speaker 1: than the practice sing of the game. Yes, but everybody
Speaker 1: just spends all of their time practicing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fascinating concept for me where I look
Speaker 2: at it and I'm with you, I don't quite understand it.
Speaker 2: I can't put my finger on the why. And that's okay.
Speaker 2: I've stopped trying to ask the why, and I've started
Speaker 2: just trying to find solutions. I've just said, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm willing to do burpies on the driving range and
Speaker 2: have everyone laugh at me, because here's the thing about
Speaker 2: being an overnight success. Everyone laughed at me until they didn't.
Speaker 2: I was doing burpies on the driving range three years
Speaker 2: ago by myself and everyone would giggle. I didn't have
Speaker 2: any PGA tour clients. I wasn't on your podcast. I
Speaker 2: was some four handicap in Scott's Arizona, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to play in my club championship. I was willing to
Speaker 2: be different because I didn't know that was wrong. I
Speaker 2: didn't know the So.
Speaker 1: Doing burpees on the driving range is trying to get.
Speaker 2: Your heart right up, jamming my heart right up, I
Speaker 2: know what, try.
Speaker 1: And get what you're Everybody comes to people like you.
Speaker 1: Everyone comes to people like me that is trying to
Speaker 1: play and say, okay, how can I simulate what happens
Speaker 1: on the golf course, on the driving rang. So in
Speaker 1: my practice, how can I how do I get because
Speaker 1: I'm struggling. I'm hitting it good on the range, I
Speaker 1: stripe it on the range. I strike it on the range,
Speaker 1: and then I get on the golf course and I
Speaker 1: feel like I haven't been practicing. Things go wrong, I
Speaker 1: think I always say, and it's something I've been saying
Speaker 1: for a while now. From an American football standpoint, competitive
Speaker 1: golf is the two minute.
Speaker 2: Offense one hundred.
Speaker 1: It's the red zone. Yes, sometimes you're going to get
Speaker 1: a lot of time in the red zone, but sometimes
Speaker 1: at the end of a game, you're going to get
Speaker 1: a team is going to get the ball back. They're
Speaker 1: going to have forty five seconds left, they're on the
Speaker 1: their own ten yard line. Maybe they've got a time out,
Speaker 1: maybe they don't. And I'm always fascinating that the greater
Speaker 1: the quarterback, the less the time, the more the announcers say,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of time for Aaron Rodgers, he's got
Speaker 1: a chance, a lot of time for Patrick Mahomes. The
Speaker 1: greater the quarterback, the less time they have there are
Speaker 1: people are more surprised if they don't score, then they
Speaker 1: are right.
Speaker 2: So I'll tell you. I'll tell you a baseball story
Speaker 2: and the same I played at cal State Fullerton my
Speaker 2: freshman year.
Speaker 1: We're the number one hour house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're the number one team in the country. And
Speaker 2: our coach always said to us, if we're down one
Speaker 2: in the ninth, we're winning the game because the other
Speaker 2: team is going to be more. They're gonna panic. We
Speaker 2: are not. We are going to win. And I can't
Speaker 2: tell you how many how many leads that we flipped
Speaker 2: going into the eighth, going into the ninth, when we
Speaker 2: were like, yeah, of course we're gonna win. Of course
Speaker 2: we're gonna win. Well, that's exactly we were more surprised
Speaker 2: if we lost, like no, no, no, no, this is we're
Speaker 2: gonna beat you. We are the team that's worked harder.
Speaker 2: We've done it, We've done the reps. And if you
Speaker 2: here's a funny story going back to what you said
Speaker 2: about competitive team sports. I was a freshman. I was
Speaker 2: scared to death. Our biggest rival in college baseball, think Alabama,
Speaker 2: Auburn is Long Beach State, cal State Fullerton. I'm zero
Speaker 2: for two. On Saturday, I get the start because one
Speaker 2: of our guys got hurt, so I get the start.
Speaker 2: My first two at bats were terrible, I mean awful.
Speaker 2: As I'm walking up to bet, my head coach puts
Speaker 2: his arm around me in the on deck circle and
Speaker 2: he looks at me. And what do you think you
Speaker 2: say to a scared freshman who is there's thousands of
Speaker 2: people there. You say, hey, you can do it, son,
Speaker 2: You know you can do this, Nico. He looked at me,
Speaker 2: he goes, do you ever want to play here again?
Speaker 2: And I turned and there's a video of it somewhere.
Speaker 2: My eyes are like saucers. He goes, get a hit.
Speaker 2: I rolled one over the five to six hole and
Speaker 2: I got a base hit. And he comes up to
Speaker 2: me and he goes, I told you, And you sit
Speaker 2: there and you compare that to golf, where as you said,
Speaker 2: you hit a bad shot, and then you go spend
Speaker 2: you know, a week on the driving range working on
Speaker 2: my te technique. Golf, the ball doesn't move, so we
Speaker 2: have so much time to think and evaluate and ask
Speaker 2: ourselves why did the ball go there. I'm not that
Speaker 2: interested in the why. I'm interested in competing. I want
Speaker 2: a dog who gets in there and competes on their
Speaker 2: worst day. Everybody in professional golf, every Mini Tour pro
Speaker 2: can shoot sixty three.
Speaker 1: Padrick Harrington a couple weeks ago they interviewed him live
Speaker 1: amazing at I think he was playing at the Senior
Speaker 1: British opening. Padrick said, you know, Padrick is a multiple
Speaker 1: major champions stuff. He is a Wryder Cup hero for Europe.
Speaker 1: He is a Writer Cup captain. They didn't win when
Speaker 1: he was captain, but he is a I mean, he's
Speaker 1: he's the man.
Speaker 2: I love his Paddy's golf tips. By way, if you're listening,
Speaker 2: I love your Patty's golf tips.
Speaker 1: It's great. And he was saying live on our Tim
Speaker 1: Barter from Sky was interview him and he said, listen,
Speaker 1: at this level, there are people that hit it better
Speaker 1: than I do that aren't at this level, not even close,
Speaker 1: but at the elite competitive level, the way that you
Speaker 1: think on the golf course is the differentiator because everybody
Speaker 1: is good. So if you're trying to break to me,
Speaker 1: it's the barriers one hundred ninety, yes, eighty seventy. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to break one hundred for the same for
Speaker 1: the first time, pretty much everybody that's in your handicap
Speaker 1: level is the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all the same.
Speaker 1: You're you all have the same amount of talent. So
Speaker 1: everybody trying to break one hundred out there for the
Speaker 1: first time, everybody trying to break ninety, trying to break eighty. Sure,
Speaker 1: whatever bucket of those you're in. Sure remember that everybody
Speaker 1: that's never broken eighty before pretty much probably has the
Speaker 1: same skill set, similar, same kind of technique. Sure, there's
Speaker 1: no differentiator there right from a technique standpoint.
Speaker 2: Probably there's some. Obviously there's outliers. There're largely golfers fit
Speaker 2: in buckets and they're.
Speaker 1: So if you're trying to break eighty for the first
Speaker 1: time or ninety for the first time, there are so
Speaker 1: And I talked to Ryan about it last week on
Speaker 1: the podcast. There are so many golf life hacks that
Speaker 1: you can come up with that don't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with the way you're swinging the golf club. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the way that you practice can help you so
Speaker 1: much when you get into these situations on the golf
Speaker 1: course that everybody is going to get into. I think
Speaker 1: one of the people always ask me why Brooks is
Speaker 1: so great in the majors, and I always say the
Speaker 1: same thing. And I say, because Brooks doesn't expect everything
Speaker 1: to go well. He expects there to be turbulence, He
Speaker 1: expects there to be he expects to make bad swings. Sure,
Speaker 1: he expects to hit bad shots. I think so many
Speaker 1: people go into playing golf thinking, Okay, the way I'm
Speaker 1: going to break one hundred and ninety or eighty for
Speaker 1: the first time is I have to do all of
Speaker 1: these things perfect and the stars almost have to align.
Speaker 1: And I think that the way that you've come up
Speaker 1: with a way to try and gamify practice is something
Speaker 1: that I think can help so many people. So circling
Speaker 1: back to John, what were some of the practice games
Speaker 1: that you came up with? When you're looking at a
Speaker 1: guy like John Rum, who's good at everything, how do
Speaker 1: you go, Okay, what can I get him to practice?
Speaker 1: From a game standpoint? Give him games? Because I've seen
Speaker 1: you for around all the majors. You come up with
Speaker 1: a list of games, sure, based off of the tasks
Speaker 1: that he's going to have to control. So at AUGUSTA,
Speaker 1: you identify the shots that he's going to have to
Speaker 1: hit the type of conditions that he's going to be playing.
Speaker 1: Insure firm greens, not a lot of landing areas, slopey, slopey,
Speaker 1: all of those things. So you come up with games
Speaker 1: and you say, okay, here are the games. See if
Speaker 1: you can now achieve these tasks or tests in practice.
Speaker 2: So my dissertation was written on a guy named doctor
Speaker 2: Robert F. Major who created criterion reference instruction. It's exactly
Speaker 2: what you're describing. It's little tests, it's here's the task.
Speaker 2: It might be to hit an eight iron one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty yards, normal task every PGA tour pro. I
Speaker 2: don't care how short you are. You can hit it
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty. Then it might be to hit
Speaker 2: at one seventy that might be a stretch. So they're
Speaker 2: little tests before the test. And John's a unique case
Speaker 2: because he's so talented everything. But I work really closely
Speaker 2: with Dave John's I almost throw John out because he's
Speaker 2: such an anomaly. He's so gifted. He's so gifted. So
Speaker 2: if we were going to speak more generally about regular
Speaker 2: I guess tour pros, I would work with first a player,
Speaker 2: sit down them, learn who they are. Who are are
Speaker 2: you going for it on eighteen or not? At toy
Speaker 2: it's okay if you don't, it's okay if you don't.
Speaker 2: And then working with Dave, working with him to identify
Speaker 2: what are they doing in their swings, because I need
Speaker 2: to understand what is the technique that they're trying to do.
Speaker 2: And then my job is down the line of saying,
Speaker 2: all right, let's make some fun games. Augusta is a
Speaker 2: great example. Backfoot wedge on thirteen. You might need to
Speaker 2: hit a backfoot edge on thirteen, not something that you
Speaker 2: can do on a flat driving range. And so for
Speaker 2: most people you go to a flat, you know, municipal
Speaker 2: driving range, they don't have the opportunity to hit a
Speaker 2: backfooter off of the rough or you know, hit balls
Speaker 2: out of the wodship exactly, hit balls out of a
Speaker 2: wood chips or you know, fair way bunkers, whatever it
Speaker 2: might be. And so if you're listening at home, your
Speaker 2: golf course could turn into a practice facility on the
Speaker 2: rounds that you play by yourself. One of the things
Speaker 2: that I do for all of our guys is we
Speaker 2: look at their golf course and say, all right, the
Speaker 2: first hole at Floridian, let's call it, it has a
Speaker 2: fairway bunker left that how far do you think that
Speaker 2: is in.
Speaker 1: Probably from from the back tea, it's probably two eighty
Speaker 1: to ninety. So, you know at our club at the Floridian,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty you know, it's a good
Speaker 1: t ball bunker's right, Yeah, bunkers left, good ball. If
Speaker 1: you've never played there before, you're trying to the first
Speaker 1: question anybody asks if I take a player there is okay,
Speaker 1: can I reach the bunkers? What's it to get into
Speaker 1: the bunker on the right, what's it to get into
Speaker 1: the bunker on the left?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, if you're a player at home, number one
Speaker 2: at the Floridian might be a great driving hole. So
Speaker 2: the days that you're going to maybe go to the
Speaker 2: driving range or maybe play, what if we reimagined until
Speaker 2: we get places like the Grove, Floridian, Silver Leaf that
Speaker 2: have these unbelievable world class practice facilities. If you reimagine
Speaker 2: your golf course into a practice facility, that first hole
Speaker 2: might be your driving focus and you could work on
Speaker 2: maybe you hit two. Obviously this is assuming that you're
Speaker 2: in the afternoon and not holding play up. You might
Speaker 2: hit fairway bunkers out of the one on the left.
Speaker 2: Then you might find a green. Say the second green
Speaker 2: has a really good slope, you might work on putting
Speaker 2: for an extra three minutes on that putting slope, Say
Speaker 2: the third hole you find a chip shot and you
Speaker 2: hit one extra chip shot from there. So now, if
Speaker 2: you're playing alone, or if you're playing with one friend
Speaker 2: who's motivated that eighteen whole round, look, you can't. The
Speaker 2: thing that I think people mistake is every round can't
Speaker 2: be your lowest round. It's not a thing. You're not
Speaker 2: gonna shoot your lowest score every single day. Some days
Speaker 2: are gonna have to be days that you work. Maybe
Speaker 2: you use a half set, maybe you don't use a driver.
Speaker 2: One of the most common things I do with our
Speaker 2: guys is I take their driver in the three it away,
Speaker 2: I make them hit irons. Why because then they have
Speaker 2: to hit long irons into par fours, something that is uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: especially for the guys who are playing in the wind.
Speaker 2: In Florida. We're lucky here where it's windy, But for
Speaker 2: my West Coast guys, Arizona guys, I mean Pooge. He
Speaker 2: plays at the ASU two. They don't have wind, so
Speaker 2: for him, hitting a four iron into a par four
Speaker 2: is like all right, Hey, I gotta work at this.
Speaker 2: They're hitting driver sixty driver, you know, fifty six into everything,
Speaker 2: And so as you're thinking about practice, take the veil
Speaker 2: off of every round has to be my lowest score.
Speaker 2: Some days you can just improve and it might be
Speaker 2: working on your extra putting. On every day on every
Speaker 2: green you drop an extra ball and you just work
Speaker 2: on lige putting. That's enough.
Speaker 1: I think people would be surprised. I think most golfers
Speaker 1: would would want to go out and watch players if
Speaker 1: they could be inside the ropes. They would want to
Speaker 1: watch them play a tournament round.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I think would be fascinating for the majority of
Speaker 1: the people listening to the pod is would be to
Speaker 1: come to a practice round. Yeah, specifically at a major chansonship, right,
Speaker 1: and the ideal practice round if you were if you
Speaker 1: were going to go watch and you were going to
Speaker 1: try and learn something from a tour player, if you
Speaker 1: could go inside the ropes and watch a player try
Speaker 1: and prepare at Augusta Nash because that is such a specific
Speaker 1: golf course for specific shots. So I think everybody you
Speaker 1: would watch where they would go putt from, you would
Speaker 1: watch where they would go chip from. You you would
Speaker 1: watch what they would talk about off the tea with
Speaker 1: their caddies saying, Okay, what are we going to hit here?
Speaker 1: What is my strategy here? Right? That to me would
Speaker 1: be a very very accelerated learning process totally for a
Speaker 1: lot of for a lot of golfers.
Speaker 2: I think if people could, people would learn so much
Speaker 2: on the questions that they're asking. What are what are
Speaker 2: the questions this golf course is asking me? And then
Speaker 2: how am I answering them? The player's response?
Speaker 1: And I said this last week in talking to Ryan,
Speaker 1: we were talking on a similar theme. The majority of
Speaker 1: people listening to this podcast do not play all their
Speaker 1: golf at Oakmond. Sure, they don't play all of their
Speaker 1: golf at these iconic, major style, tournament style golf courses.
Speaker 1: They the majority of people, I think, play golf courses
Speaker 1: that tend to be pretty flat, Yeah, a little rough
Speaker 1: around the edges right there, fairways tend to be fairly wide. Sure,
Speaker 1: the greens tend to be somewhat flat to maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit slopey.
Speaker 2: It's not world class.
Speaker 1: The greens are not running at thirteen or right. So
Speaker 1: if if you think about the golf course that you
Speaker 1: play all the time, and you're trying to break eighty ninety,
Speaker 1: one hundred for the first time. You can gamify your
Speaker 1: practice based off of the golf course that you play.
Speaker 2: You play which is.
Speaker 1: Not tucked pins three from the left, three from the back,
Speaker 1: and there's a ton of slope and the fairways ten
Speaker 1: yards wide and if you miss the fairway you're making
Speaker 1: X like you see on.
Speaker 2: TV, yah ches highright, whatever.
Speaker 1: So you can look at your own golf course and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: what questions does my golf course at home that I
Speaker 1: play the majority of my golf what questions is it
Speaker 1: asking me?
Speaker 2: One hundred percent? And you have a fascinating thing about
Speaker 2: breaking the number because when people ask me that about
Speaker 2: breaking eighty or ninety or one hundred, whatever it might be,
Speaker 2: and I say to them, Ken McDonald and Arizona is
Speaker 2: a municipal I bet you can break eighty there. It's
Speaker 2: wide open, it's flat, it's easy. But the question comes
Speaker 2: down to, like you said, your own golf course. I
Speaker 2: play a course down here called Locks of Hagi Club
Speaker 2: requires a lot of two irons for me really uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: There's shots there that I don't have elsewhere that if
Speaker 2: I played that club every day, I would need to
Speaker 2: get a seven wood because there's par fives that I
Speaker 2: need to hit it high into. But for the tournament golfer,
Speaker 2: the thing that amazes me the most about the high
Speaker 2: level player. I'm a pretty decent player myself, but I
Speaker 2: need to have seen in a place a few times
Speaker 2: to understand the strategy to you know, where do I
Speaker 2: hit it? The best players in the world to show
Speaker 2: up and shoot sixty five. It is just a different
Speaker 2: It's a different game. And for those of you listening
Speaker 2: at home, that's okay. If you're not that guy. You
Speaker 2: shooting seventy five in your club championship might be your goal.
Speaker 2: That might be your process goal. Your outcome goal might
Speaker 2: be breaking eighty. You know what you should do. Go
Speaker 2: play the easiest course you can do, shoot seventy nine
Speaker 2: and you did it. Does that mean you broke eighty.
Speaker 2: It's your own decision, right, That's that's that kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: I talk a lot about with our guys, and we
Speaker 2: can talk about it about process and outcome goals. In outcome goals,
Speaker 2: I want to break eighty. Is that a good goal? Maybe?
Speaker 2: But I want to break eighty at my home course.
Speaker 2: Me shooting eighty at Bayhill this year when the greens
Speaker 2: were you know, thirteen in rock Hard, that'd have been
Speaker 2: a hell of a round. Me shooting eighty at my
Speaker 2: home club here, Hey man, I'm not losing all the
Speaker 2: money like I am having a tough day, right, So
Speaker 2: that's an important thing that I think people should differentiate
Speaker 2: as well their own games. Score is important, but you
Speaker 2: want to enjoy the game and play it for a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 1: Give me some gamified practice ideas for someone trying to
Speaker 1: break one hundred for the first time, someone trying to
Speaker 1: break ninety for the first time, someone trying to break
Speaker 1: eighty for the first time. So if you're trying to
Speaker 1: break one hundred for the first time and you love golf,
Speaker 1: you're practicing golf, you're trying to improve. What are some
Speaker 1: good practice games that you can play on the range
Speaker 1: at your home course, regardless whether you're hitting off of
Speaker 1: a mat, regardless of what the driving range looks like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have a few, And this kind of
Speaker 2: goes into our takeaway as I want people to walk
Speaker 2: away with Number one. You have to self assess human beings.
Speaker 2: Because of our egos, were not very good self assessors.
Speaker 2: We protect ourselves. When I first started with doctor Kevin Moore,
Speaker 2: we went through my numbers and I found out as
Speaker 2: a terrible wedge player. That didn't feel good. When I
Speaker 2: started doing wedge tests, sucked and it didn't feel good.
Speaker 2: I was I'm not a bad wedge player. I make
Speaker 2: six birdies around? Why I make six berties? I drive
Speaker 2: four par fours? You know, like it's not this isn't
Speaker 2: a thing, right, So Number one, you have to self
Speaker 2: assess what are you good at? Why can't you break
Speaker 2: a hundred? Darren may our friend down at the Grove,
Speaker 2: amazing guy, works with Keegan the Grove guys. He has
Speaker 2: one of the best things. How far do you hit
Speaker 2: a driver? Distance right now, whether you want to deal
Speaker 2: with it or not, is a predictor of golf success.
Speaker 2: So that's a first question. Do I hit it far
Speaker 2: enough to compete? And I'm not talking about three point fifty,
Speaker 2: not that many guys hit it three fifty and even
Speaker 2: less guys hit it three fifty in play. If I'm
Speaker 2: an amateur golfer trying to break a hundred, can I
Speaker 2: hit it too forty in play? Can I hit a
Speaker 2: driver two hundred and forty yards in the air.
Speaker 1: Which if you're trying to break one hundred for the
Speaker 1: first time, if you could carry a driver, you are
Speaker 1: Rory McElroy. You're elite, you are eight Do you are
Speaker 1: from a distance? Oh my goodness, you are in hammer
Speaker 1: it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think most golfers that are trying to break a
Speaker 1: hundred for the first time, if they could consistently carry
Speaker 1: the golf bowl two hundred games in the air, it
Speaker 1: would be a game.
Speaker 2: Change, life changer. So number one, you self assess and
Speaker 2: if you don't, if you're not able to self assess,
Speaker 2: ask a friend. One of the things I do with
Speaker 2: all my tour guys I play with all of them,
Speaker 2: I ask them about my own game. Peer review is
Speaker 2: something I took from the Navy seal teams. They peer
Speaker 2: review and it sucks. Tring told me, I love cameradge Golly.
Speaker 2: One of my guys he said to me, to day
Speaker 2: goes your three wood stinks and that I looked at
Speaker 2: him and I went, wow, my threewood does stink. I
Speaker 2: hit it in the water all the time.
Speaker 1: So you're asking the people that you play with on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, Hey, you and I play every Saturday together,
Speaker 1: play together.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: What am I good at?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And what am I bad at?
Speaker 2: Yeah? What do you see in my game?
Speaker 1: You watch me play all the time. We've got a
Speaker 1: Saturday game.
Speaker 2: Hey.
Speaker 1: You and I've known each other for five, six, ten years,
Speaker 1: however long we play every Saturday at the club. Tell
Speaker 1: me what I'm good at. They tell me what I'm bad.
Speaker 2: And maybe they're a bad maybe they're a bad cess
Speaker 2: or too. So there's a million stats programs out there.
Speaker 2: You can pick whichever one you want. You don't need
Speaker 2: to keep stats. You can if you'd like. That's an
Speaker 2: easy way to do it. It'll give you an objective
Speaker 2: view of I'm an eighteen handicap. Here's my strokes gained.
Speaker 2: You don't need to do it, you can do it. Then,
Speaker 2: once you know what you're good at, then you have
Speaker 2: to ask yourself how much time am I willing to
Speaker 2: put in? Look, you're a dad, you have kids, You
Speaker 2: have a family. If I'm a father who has two
Speaker 2: kids and works forty hours a week and I'm trying
Speaker 2: to be a loving husband, I'm probably not going to
Speaker 2: be at the range six days a week, am I? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I hope you're I hope you're not. You know what
Speaker 2: I mean. But you can ask yourself. When I was
Speaker 2: doing my doctorate, I had thirty minutes. Some days I
Speaker 2: had a lunch break. I brought a putter. I put
Speaker 2: a putting mat in my office and I would sit
Speaker 2: there and I would roll putts for thirty minutes. That's
Speaker 2: what I would do. So then you have to sit
Speaker 2: there and you have to say to yourself, Okay, what
Speaker 2: can I do with the time that I have? And
Speaker 2: you talked about expectations, be realistic. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: be world number one this year, probably never in my life.
Speaker 2: That's okay. What are my real, clear process and outcome goals.
Speaker 2: My outcome goal might be I want to qualify from
Speaker 2: the City Amateur. Great goal, fantastic goal, you got to
Speaker 2: shoot seventy seven, you know, whatever it is. My process
Speaker 2: would then be, in order to qualify for the City Amateur.
Speaker 2: And I'm a father and I got two kids, I
Speaker 2: got to ask my wife if she'd watch the kids
Speaker 2: for an hour once a week so I can get
Speaker 2: to the driving range and I can get that extra
Speaker 2: hour in, take her on a date, get you know,
Speaker 2: bring home ice cream, do something, process and outcome. And
Speaker 2: then finally, it's really just learning to play the game.
Speaker 2: And I don't mean on Instagram watching golf tips. My
Speaker 2: dad love the guy to death, great father. He's an
Speaker 2: eighteen handicap who watches more golf tips than any human
Speaker 2: being on the planet. Dude, the guy has more sets
Speaker 2: of clubs. He shows up, he's gonna, you know, screw
Speaker 2: in the light bulb and then squish the bug. And
Speaker 2: it's like, Dad, you know why you're an eighteen handicap,
Speaker 2: I said, because you think you carry it two forty
Speaker 2: and he carries it two zero five. That's why. Because
Speaker 2: he thinks he can fly the bunker on the right,
Speaker 2: he can't. He swings hard and he quack hooks one
Speaker 2: into the water. So it's understanding your gain and more importantly,
Speaker 2: your goals. Your goals don't need to be being world
Speaker 2: number one. Your goals can be being the best player
Speaker 2: you can be, whatever that means for you, and setting
Speaker 2: those clear process goals processes everything to me. Obviously, this
Speaker 2: is what I do. You don't need to buy golf blueprint.
Speaker 2: You can, if you'd like, create a plan for yourself.
Speaker 2: Claude talked about it. Hey, here are the shots that
Speaker 2: my golf course needs. I want to break ninety. I
Speaker 2: know I got to hit that five wood on the
Speaker 2: twelfth hole. That makes me uncomfortable. Spend ten minutes at
Speaker 2: your practice session hitting that five wood. Have a plan
Speaker 2: showing up to the range so that when you're there,
Speaker 2: you don't have the cognitive fatigue, which is so real
Speaker 2: in golf. If trying to plan what do I do next?
Speaker 2: The guy next to him's hitting driver. He's hitting it
Speaker 2: pretty far, man, I bet I could hit it farther him. Okay, fine,
Speaker 2: But is that your everyday plan? Is my question.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated every year here in the US Hard Knocks,
Speaker 1: which is on HBO, which talks you know, it follows
Speaker 1: a US football team and goes through their spring training
Speaker 1: and I'm always fascinated that, you know, I was watching
Speaker 1: it the other night, and this year it's on the
Speaker 1: New York Jets. And they played the first game preseason, sure,
Speaker 1: and they played terrible, and the coach, the head coach
Speaker 1: came in and said, we didn't play our brand of football.
Speaker 1: And then the next game they went out and won
Speaker 1: a preseason game, and the coach came in and said,
Speaker 1: that was who we are we played our brand of football?
Speaker 1: I think everybody can look at their own game and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do I need to do? What does my game?
Speaker 1: What am I good at?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: What am I not good at? Okay? And what can
Speaker 1: I do today when I go out on the golf
Speaker 1: course to play my brand of golf? What is called
Speaker 1: your everybody listening will there? Everybody's game is going to
Speaker 1: be different. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. So identifying, Okay,
Speaker 1: what am I good at? What am I not good at?
Speaker 1: If I am good at something, play towards those strengths.
Speaker 1: We all look at I think Niko, we all look
Speaker 1: at John Ram's trying to turn weaknesses into strengths. Absolutely right,
Speaker 1: Rory McElroy. The elite players are saying, okay, where am
Speaker 1: I deficient? Tiger was the best at that. Tiger was
Speaker 1: when when he turned pro. I watched for ten years
Speaker 1: at a ringsight. See, Tiger was a shit wedge player.
Speaker 1: He was a terrible bunker player. Tiger turned all of
Speaker 1: the weaknesses into strengths. That's really hard for a twenty
Speaker 1: handicapper because they don't have a lot of strengths. So
Speaker 1: find out the things that you're good at sure, Right,
Speaker 1: we're not talking that you have to be an elite level,
Speaker 1: but you're gonna look at your game and say, listen,
Speaker 1: there is going to be some part of my game, yeah,
Speaker 1: as a twenty handicapper that stands out more than the others,
Speaker 1: whatever that strength is, and then do everything you can
Speaker 1: do to play to that strength.
Speaker 2: My girlfriend as a med student in tennis pro, she's
Speaker 2: learning to play golf. She loves hitting driver. You know
Speaker 2: what we do at the driving range, we hit drivers.
Speaker 2: She loves hitting driver. So we get on par four,
Speaker 2: She's like, I can make a par She's so excited
Speaker 2: to play part fours and par five's because she's like,
Speaker 2: I can hit part three the worst. Right, hates part three's,
Speaker 2: but like he is up there on a par five.
Speaker 2: She made a birdie a couple of weeks ago and
Speaker 2: it was the best day ever. Her making a birdie
Speaker 2: on a par five was that it was more elation
Speaker 2: than I feel, you know, making a hole in one.
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's it's it's it's it's relative to your level.
Speaker 2: And I think that people at home need to understand that.
Speaker 2: Watching the guys play on tour on perfect manicured greens
Speaker 2: that roll out of twelve every week with physios and teams. Look,
Speaker 2: you and I work on the teams. We know what
Speaker 2: these guys have behind us. Joe who works as a
Speaker 2: computer sales you know it guy and then goes out
Speaker 2: and plays a Saturday game, isn't getting massage and chiropractic
Speaker 2: And you know you're not on the range behind him, Like,
Speaker 2: hey man, you're you know, one degree inside.
Speaker 1: To me, the low hanging fruit for people trying to
Speaker 1: break one hundred, ninety to eighty, Like you said, that's
Speaker 1: such an arbitrary goal, right if you're trying to break
Speaker 1: one hundred for the first time, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: break ninety, try and play an entire eighteen hole round
Speaker 1: of golf. And the goal is, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: make a triple bogey.
Speaker 2: Today, perfect goal.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make amazing a triple bogey.
Speaker 2: To love that goal.
Speaker 1: I'm if I make a double bogie fus, if I
Speaker 1: make bogie Stunes. But what I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: today is make a triple making ten. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make X. Yeah right, great, and just say listen,
Speaker 1: and I say this all the time. The easiest way
Speaker 1: for the for the majority of golfers to achieve their
Speaker 1: score goals, breaking one hundred, breaking eight, breaking ninety eighty,
Speaker 1: even breaking seventy, is to make more pars and bogie,
Speaker 1: not birdies. Yes, everyone thinks the one hundred shooter thinks
Speaker 1: I'm going to break a hundred if I make more birdiees.
Speaker 2: I gotta make six birdies.
Speaker 1: You're not going to make a lot of birdies if
Speaker 1: you're shooting consistently in the hundreds. So maybe the goal
Speaker 1: would be to say, hey, if I can play eighteen
Speaker 1: holes today and I can give myself more than one
Speaker 1: look today at making a legit.
Speaker 2: Birdie, Dude, if you hit three gi rs, amazing, three looks,
Speaker 2: you might have great, great question, What is a legitimate
Speaker 2: look at bertie at that level? If you have a
Speaker 2: twenty foot birdie putt, you are flushing it amazing for you.
Speaker 2: The difference that I learned and I learned competitive golf
Speaker 2: in pro golf because I never played amateur golf, I
Speaker 2: never played youth golf, high school, off whatever. Pros are
Speaker 2: really good at making pars and bogie. When you think
Speaker 2: they're going to make a double, they make a five.
Speaker 2: When you think they're gonna make bogie. They find a
Speaker 2: way to make the seven footer for par. It's not
Speaker 2: making eight birdies around. Yes, when guys shoot sixty two,
Speaker 2: when they have the heater going, they're going to make
Speaker 2: everything insighte.
Speaker 1: Look at the reaction next time you watch a tour event,
Speaker 1: and look at the reaction when someone holds a ten
Speaker 1: footer for Park versus the ten foot birdie pot Sure
Speaker 1: the reaction is very different. You will see people make
Speaker 1: the ten footer for Birdie and basically show no emotion.
Speaker 1: And then you will see someone with a downhill left
Speaker 1: to right putt for par on tour on the back
Speaker 1: nine to keep the round going, and the body language
Speaker 1: and the fist pump will be very different. And the
Speaker 1: interaction between when the player goes over to the caddy,
Speaker 1: the fist pump, the high five, the slap on the
Speaker 1: back for the ten footer for par is very different
Speaker 1: than the ten footer for Birdie.
Speaker 2: The loss of version theory, it's literally what you're just driving.
Speaker 2: Loss of version theory. Human beings want to not lose
Speaker 2: more than they want to win, and so making the
Speaker 2: birdies good but not making bogies even better. Fascinating research
Speaker 2: study out there. I'm sure someone can look it up.
Speaker 2: But if you tell someone a six footers for par
Speaker 2: versus six footer for birdie, the make rate is different,
Speaker 2: same putt, same as if you tell someone a par
Speaker 2: four is a par five. Bryson had a fascinating thing
Speaker 2: about calling Augusta a par sixty seven, and he got
Speaker 2: roasted for it. He got crushed for it, but it
Speaker 2: was an interesting concept. Him saying to himself, it's a
Speaker 2: par sixty seven.
Speaker 1: Changing his didn't help that he missed the cut.
Speaker 2: Didn't help me miss the cut, and obviously it didn't
Speaker 2: work out, you know whatever. Bryson has some fascinating theories,
Speaker 2: but it was it was an interesting idea by saying, look,
Speaker 2: I'm preparing myself today. If you're playing a Monday qualifier
Speaker 2: and you're a you know, corn fairy guy, it's a
Speaker 2: par sixty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you if you shoot four under your good life,
Speaker 1: you might as if you're four under truck, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're four understanding on the eighteenth hole, you're trying
Speaker 1: to Monday qualifier for a PGA Tour event, hold it.
Speaker 1: Most of the time you're either gonna hold it, or
Speaker 1: you know that if you make par, it's over. You've
Speaker 1: shot four under and you've got no chance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's the thing that like playing professional golf Monday qualifiers.
Speaker 2: It's such a unique skill versus as you and I
Speaker 2: are talking about the average golfer who's listening to this podcast.
Speaker 2: It's ninety nine point nine percent of golfers. That's golf.
Speaker 2: The professional golf is such a niche, little game of
Speaker 2: margins and freak athletes with skill. The average golfer listening
Speaker 2: at home, listen to what Claude said, Right, don't make
Speaker 2: triple in your break one hundred. That's what it is,
Speaker 2: my girlfriend, don't four putt? I love you, please three putt,
Speaker 2: make the three footer for your third putt.
Speaker 1: If you go back and you look at your round,
Speaker 1: you will look at something in your round and go,
Speaker 1: man if I just don't do that, I actually didn't
Speaker 1: really play that bad today, regardless of what your handicapped.
Speaker 2: Doesn't matter, right, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: You will look at a stretch of holes where you
Speaker 1: say to yourself, man if I just bogey all those holes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I go saving six shots right there right there by
Speaker 1: just making bogies, not making doubles, not making triples.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Lastly, Nico, I mean we could talk for three hours
Speaker 1: on this golf blueprint dot com. If people want to
Speaker 1: get better, tell me what you've designed, what they get,
Speaker 1: and what the object of Golf Blueprint is four players totally.
Speaker 2: So the number one thing I would say to everybody
Speaker 2: is follow the Instagram. And the reason is I I
Speaker 2: claud season every day. I post every single day what
Speaker 2: I'm learning. So no matter what the research is, if
Speaker 2: I have a tour pro, if I have just what
Speaker 2: I'm learning, I give away all that information for free.
Speaker 2: I don't charge for that. That to me is really
Speaker 2: important that someone might not be able to afford golf
Speaker 2: Blueprint right now. And I understand that it's expensive. I
Speaker 2: have two plans. One of them's forty dollars a month,
Speaker 2: the other one's one hundred. We're always working to make
Speaker 2: it better. But if you sign up for that, if
Speaker 2: you sign up for the one hundred dollars plan, it's
Speaker 2: called the Players, you'll get a customized practice plan based
Speaker 2: on our algorithm. And then the classic plan, which is
Speaker 2: forty is our algorithm's best guess. That's the best way
Speaker 2: to describe it. The tour business is an entirely other thing.
Speaker 2: If you play on the PDA Tour and you work
Speaker 2: with Claude, great, But I don't work with other players,
Speaker 2: if that makes sense. But for the average person at home,
Speaker 2: I would say, you don't need to buy anything today
Speaker 2: to get better right now this afternoon, I hope you
Speaker 2: listen to this, and I hope you took away Claude
Speaker 2: andize takeaways on how to improve for free. Those don't
Speaker 2: cost you any money. Going to the driving range with
Speaker 2: a plan costs you nothing. All you need to do
Speaker 2: is think about your golf course, think about the way
Speaker 2: you play the game, and more importantly, how you want
Speaker 2: to play the game. That's hugely important. If you want
Speaker 2: to play the game like Bryson, do it. If you
Speaker 2: want to hit irons like Tommy Fleetwood do it. If
Speaker 2: you want to hit you know, bunker shots like Tech,
Speaker 2: whatever it might be that's going to keep you coming
Speaker 2: back and keep the game engaging. Golf is meant to
Speaker 2: be fun, and I think that sometimes amateurs forget that
Speaker 2: you might've shot seventy five one time and that's incredible.
Speaker 2: Just because you shot eighty to day doesn't it's not
Speaker 2: a bad round.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that in looking at you know,
Speaker 1: obviously you and I have talked a lot about what
Speaker 1: golf flue print does. I think what it does is
Speaker 1: it gives people another element of their practice to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've worked on my technique today. Sure, there's only so
Speaker 1: much in an hour from a technique standpoint that you
Speaker 1: can make gains. Right, Absolutely, Obviously, practicing is like going
Speaker 1: to the gym. Right, if you're trying to lose weight,
Speaker 1: if you put the time in, got to do it,
Speaker 1: you will. If you're trying to lose weight and you
Speaker 1: go to the gym five days a week, you will
Speaker 1: see improvement. Sure, right by just going by just doing
Speaker 1: show up, show up, will you will see some games.
Speaker 1: But I think the games that I think everyone listening
Speaker 1: can can benefit from is saying, Okay, I've done my
Speaker 1: technical work today. I've worked on the technique aspect of
Speaker 1: my game. Now let me go spend some time on
Speaker 1: playing playing golf, playing on you know, a jungle gym,
Speaker 1: which is the driving range. Your driving range could be
Speaker 1: the equivalent of going to a park and seeing a
Speaker 1: jungle gym and saying, Okay, I'm going to play on
Speaker 1: the jungle gym. Yes, but then I'm also got two
Speaker 1: of my friends, So now we're going to see who
Speaker 1: can climb to the top of the jungle gym the
Speaker 1: fastest or take the most difficult route to go. You're
Speaker 1: learning so much. One of the most fascinating things that
Speaker 1: really changed for me learning is I was at a
Speaker 1: TPI seminar with Greg Rose and he was talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, failure as being a big part of the
Speaker 1: learning process, have to fail. And he was talking and
Speaker 1: so he said, to any he said, we see this
Speaker 1: with kids. He said, anybody in the room have very
Speaker 1: young kids just learning to walk, and they raise you know,
Speaker 1: people raise their hands and he says, okay, did anybody
Speaker 1: in the room's child go from crawling one day to
Speaker 1: just standing up and walking and didn't fall? Sure, And
Speaker 1: someone will invariably, very proudly raise their hand and say, yes,
Speaker 1: my son, little Timmy just got up one day and
Speaker 1: started walking.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget this. You know what Greg Grove said,
Speaker 1: Knock him down, because if he doesn't learn how to
Speaker 1: stand up, get his balance, then fall down, then learn
Speaker 1: how to get and figure out how to pull himself
Speaker 1: back up. That is a massive part about learning how
Speaker 1: to walk, and he was saying that all of the
Speaker 1: studies they show kids that just wake up one day
Speaker 1: and start walking tend to be in later life vastly
Speaker 1: uncoordinated because they never learned the struggle of getting up.
Speaker 1: So I think what you've come up with is a
Speaker 1: way that people can say, Okay, I've figured out I'm
Speaker 1: working on these singles going to work. We're always going
Speaker 1: to be working on parts of your technique. You can
Speaker 1: always drive it better, Yes, you can always groove your
Speaker 1: path more into out than out to in. But then
Speaker 1: you have to spend some time saying, Okay, I'm a
Speaker 1: hundred handicapper, I'm trying to break a hundred. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to break ninety. Let me put myself in game situations
Speaker 1: that are going to help me do that.
Speaker 2: And more importantly, be willing to fail. Yeah, Claude, I
Speaker 2: fail every single day. I fail every single day at
Speaker 2: the driving range because if I wasn't, i'd be the
Speaker 2: number one player in the world, and the number one
Speaker 2: player in the world. You and I both work with
Speaker 2: these guys. They're failing everything, fail all the time. I
Speaker 2: am willing to fail because I'm willing to learn, And
Speaker 2: as you said about the child, that kid is learning
Speaker 2: how to learn, and they're learning how they walk, how
Speaker 2: they crawl, how they fall, how they get back up.
Speaker 2: And I love the idea of the jungle gym. Look
Speaker 2: at the way a kid looks at the jungle gym
Speaker 2: versus how you and I do. What do we see
Speaker 2: when we look at that? I look at a golf
Speaker 2: driving range as the kid in the jungle gym. I
Speaker 2: look at it with endless possibilities. It doesn't matter where
Speaker 2: it is. I go to different driving ranges every day
Speaker 2: on purpose to just look at them differently. As how
Speaker 2: do I, like you said, how do I make this
Speaker 2: more difficult? Hit Ball's out of dibots, you flush it,
Speaker 2: hip Ball's out of divts, hip ball's off the dirt.
Speaker 2: It's fricking hard, you know learning, it's learning, And more importantly,
Speaker 2: I think that people need to be kinder to themselves
Speaker 2: when you're learning a new skill. I am constantly trying
Speaker 2: to be a beginner. I recently restarted jiu jitsu. I'm
Speaker 2: a white belt. I am out of shape. I get
Speaker 2: choked out constantly. I'm the big you know, doctor Nico
Speaker 2: Darris at the golf course, you know, country club guy.
Speaker 2: And then I go to jiu jitsu and I'm just Nico,
Speaker 2: the white belt who doesn't know you know how to
Speaker 2: do any moves. It's important because I'm learning how to
Speaker 2: learn again. I'm learning how to fail and being okay
Speaker 2: with that. The day that I stop failing is the
Speaker 2: day that I stopped learning.
Speaker 1: He goes, like I said, we could spend the next
Speaker 1: ten hours doing this podcast and talking about it. We'll
Speaker 1: get you back on again. Thanks golfflueprint dot com. Check
Speaker 1: it out. Son of a Butch comes to you every Wednesday.
Speaker 1: We will see you all next week.