Speaker 1: It's the son of a which podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Claude Harmon. Just back from three weeks in Asia. Was
Speaker 1: out at my academy in Bangkok. Really excited about that project.
Speaker 1: It's a really cool spot. And then Hong Kong and
Speaker 1: Singapore with Live Dustin Johnson. Did you have a chance
Speaker 1: to win Singapore last group on Sunday? So that was
Speaker 1: really really encouraging. But what I want to talk about
Speaker 1: is some of the stuff that we did in Singapore
Speaker 1: with DJ that I think is applicable for your game.
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to figure out how i can use
Speaker 1: the information that I'm lucky enough to see and hear
Speaker 1: about and work on tour with, because I do think
Speaker 1: you can learn some things from what the best players
Speaker 1: in the world are doing. I did a content shoot
Speaker 1: and put out some content for Rafsoto, a launch monitor
Speaker 1: that I think is one of the best on the market,
Speaker 1: mainly because it's affordable. It's under one thousand dollars. It's
Speaker 1: something that you can use. But one of the persons
Speaker 1: in the comment said, hey, I'm not a tour pro,
Speaker 1: so none of the stuff you're talking about is applicable.
Speaker 1: And yardages and stuff like that, but I do think
Speaker 1: that understanding how far you hit the golf ball and
Speaker 1: understanding what you do on the golf course is massively important.
Speaker 1: So just to give you a little insight, So obviously
Speaker 1: on the PGA Tour, they're shot linked data, right, they
Speaker 1: have some of the best data on the planet, and
Speaker 1: as a player, as a coach, you can go in
Speaker 1: and look at the data. You can look at what
Speaker 1: you're doing, how you're performing, what clubs you're using, things
Speaker 1: like that, And I think most professional golfers now at
Speaker 1: the elite level have some sort of stats program that
Speaker 1: they're either keeping themselves or they have companies using. We
Speaker 1: do that as well, so we kind of get reports
Speaker 1: every week on what the golf course strategy should be
Speaker 1: based off of historical data, based off of what players
Speaker 1: have done there before. So last week we're in Singapore
Speaker 1: and at all the data and from a strategy standpoint,
Speaker 1: the first thing that we noticed is due to the
Speaker 1: length of the golf course and due to DJ's length,
Speaker 1: he was only going to really hit five drivers or
Speaker 1: needed to hit five drivers all week. Yes, he can
Speaker 1: hit driver on a lot of holes, but the risk
Speaker 1: versus the reward where the carries are where the troubles are,
Speaker 1: So we pretty much identified that he was only going
Speaker 1: to hit five drivers, going to hit drivers on the
Speaker 1: two par fives, and then there were a couple of
Speaker 1: other holes that he hit drivers the year before, so
Speaker 1: we kind of knew he was going to hit five drivers.
Speaker 1: So that means a lot of three woods off the tees.
Speaker 1: He carries a nine wood and a seven wood, so
Speaker 1: a lot of those clubs off of the tees. But really,
Speaker 1: in looking at all of the data, the majority of
Speaker 1: the clubs the yardage is that he was going to have,
Speaker 1: We're going to be from one to twenty five to
Speaker 1: two twenty five, So for DJ that's right around a
Speaker 1: pitching wedge, kind of a gap wedge, and up to
Speaker 1: a five iron. So the majority of the shots he
Speaker 1: was going to hit, we knew the clubs that he
Speaker 1: was going to be using pretty much the majority of
Speaker 1: the round. So what we did was in our practice
Speaker 1: session we kind of came up with a test. That's
Speaker 1: Richard Bland, who is just playing some of the best
Speaker 1: golf of his career in his early fifties. One two
Speaker 1: majors on the Champs Tour last year, plays on live
Speaker 1: but Richard's been coming over before some of the tournaments
Speaker 1: into doing some warm weather training at my place in
Speaker 1: Florida at the Floridian. His coach Tim Barter comes over
Speaker 1: sometimes as well. But this year Blandy was over and
Speaker 1: every week I see him on Live. I see him
Speaker 1: with a launch monitor, and he's always got a little
Speaker 1: book out and he's always writing things in a book
Speaker 1: and stuff. And so he was doing that at my
Speaker 1: place in the off season, and I went out and
Speaker 1: I asked him what he was doing. He said, listen,
Speaker 1: what I've come up with is a wedged test. And
Speaker 1: what I do is I take twenty balls and I
Speaker 1: randomize the numbers between eighty and one hundred and thirty yards. Right,
Speaker 1: you can go on Google type in random number generator.
Speaker 1: It'll come up and you can put in whatever number
Speaker 1: you want. Right, you put in fifty to one hundred,
Speaker 1: you could put twenty five to seventy, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: So he puts in eighty to one thirty and then
Speaker 1: hits a number and it spits out a random number.
Speaker 1: And so the goal of the test, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, So he's got twenty balls, he's randomizing every
Speaker 1: single ball. So he doesn't know what the distance is
Speaker 1: going to be. He can use any club in his bag,
Speaker 1: and the goal is to have a total score for
Speaker 1: the twenty balls of forty right. And the idea behind
Speaker 1: that is two yards either short or long out. So
Speaker 1: the way you take the test is you randomize the number,
Speaker 1: and let's say the number is one forty four. You
Speaker 1: take the club that you think you're going to hit
Speaker 1: the golf ball one hundred and forty four yards, and
Speaker 1: whatever the difference is, you write that number down. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if it's one forty four and you carry
Speaker 1: it one fifty for that you're write down five and
Speaker 1: you go through that, and then at the end of
Speaker 1: the test you add up all of the numbers that
Speaker 1: you were short or long out, and the goal would
Speaker 1: be forty right, So two yards out with every single ball.
Speaker 1: And he says over the last two three years he's
Speaker 1: been doing this religiously in every practice session he has, right,
Speaker 1: So it's no surprise that for someone like Richard Bland,
Speaker 1: who's in his fifties not nearly as long as some
Speaker 1: of the players, he's going to play against the lowest
Speaker 1: hanging fruit. And the way that he can really, really
Speaker 1: score and the way that he can really separate himself
Speaker 1: from the rest of the field used to be really
Speaker 1: really good with eighty two, one hundred and thirty. The
Speaker 1: scoring clubs right your wedges and stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: he does this test on a regular basis religiously. And
Speaker 1: I think we are in Adelaide and he told me, hey,
Speaker 1: I just got twenty nine, and if you hit the number.
Speaker 1: So let's say the number is one fifteen and you
Speaker 1: carry the golf ball one fifteen, that's zero, right, So
Speaker 1: twenty nine is an unbelievable score. And in Hong Kong
Speaker 1: we did that a couple of times with DJ. DJ
Speaker 1: got thirty eight. One of the times was doing that
Speaker 1: with another of the players. I teach Noah Kent, who
Speaker 1: we're trying. He's going to play in the Masters this year.
Speaker 1: He'll play in the US Open by finishing second in
Speaker 1: the Usam. So if you get to the finals of
Speaker 1: the Usam, you get into the Masters. In the US Open,
Speaker 1: we've been having Noah do this religiously, trying to get
Speaker 1: that score down. So last week we basically did the
Speaker 1: same thing with DJ. We did one twenty five to
Speaker 1: two twenty five, and we just randomized the numbers and
Speaker 1: got him to just again get out of technique right.
Speaker 1: It wasn't him thinking about his golf swing. And I
Speaker 1: think last week in Singapore, out of all of the
Speaker 1: years that I've worked with DJs to working with DJ
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, I think last week was as little
Speaker 1: technique work golf swing work that we've ever done. We
Speaker 1: didn't really talk a lot about his golf swings. Golf
Speaker 1: swing is in a pretty good place Hong Kong. He
Speaker 1: finished dead last. A lot of people jumped on the
Speaker 1: bandwagon on that doesn't care all that bullshit. That's fine,
Speaker 1: if you want to do that, go for it. Thursday
Speaker 1: night in Hong Kong, DJ kind of slept wrong and
Speaker 1: had a rib out and his physio doctor, matt Ort,
Speaker 1: tried to work on it. Warm up wasn't great. It
Speaker 1: was on Friday in Hong Kong. It was fifty degrees
Speaker 1: in raining all day, so Spotty never really loosened up.
Speaker 1: He got better every day. Bogie the last hole on
Speaker 1: Sunday could have shot seven under. I think he shot
Speaker 1: you know, six under, so really good score. So by
Speaker 1: the time we got to Singapore, I was like listen
Speaker 1: and by the way for the first two days of
Speaker 1: that tournament and for the majority of the third round
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong. For the last ten years, DJ's stock
Speaker 1: shot has been a fade Thursday and Friday because he
Speaker 1: couldn't get through the golf ball. When he did try
Speaker 1: and get through it and try and hit down on
Speaker 1: it and trying to get that path left, he was
Speaker 1: unable to do it, so he had to switch to
Speaker 1: hitting a draw. So he hit a draw for almost
Speaker 1: two and a half rounds, which isn't his normal shape
Speaker 1: at all. But we got to Singapore and every single
Speaker 1: day after the practice rounds Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we
Speaker 1: did this test one twenty five to two twenty five
Speaker 1: and he was choosing the club and we were looking
Speaker 1: at the difference between what it was, and we were
Speaker 1: also having him pick out specific targets, right, not just
Speaker 1: aiming at the middle of the fairway or not just
Speaker 1: aiming at one target, So not only randomizing the number,
Speaker 1: but also trying to randomize his aim and having him
Speaker 1: go through his pre shot routine on every shot, so
Speaker 1: trying to get him in a game type situation. I've
Speaker 1: talked about this on the pod before. One of the
Speaker 1: things that we're always trying to do is instructors. As
Speaker 1: a coach, what I'm always trying to do is how
Speaker 1: can I simulate what is going to happen on the
Speaker 1: golf course for a player on the driving range. So
Speaker 1: it was something that we did for four days and
Speaker 1: I think it really helped him. I think it really
Speaker 1: helped him kind of get into play mode. I think
Speaker 1: it really kind of got him not thinking so much
Speaker 1: about his golf swing, so much about his technique, and
Speaker 1: he had a chance to win shut eight under the
Speaker 1: first day, was in the last group with wach o'neman
Speaker 1: on Sunday. Didn't get it done, but a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of positive So I think a lot of people say
Speaker 1: to me, listen, I don't have a launch monitor, so
Speaker 1: I can't work on my distances. Right, I'm not a
Speaker 1: tour player, so I can't work on my distances. So
Speaker 1: maybe try this. Go to the driving range, and every
Speaker 1: driving range you're going to go to, he's going to
Speaker 1: have some flags, right, They're going to have target flags,
Speaker 1: target greens. And if it doesn't have target flags and
Speaker 1: target greens, it's going to have numbers, right, big scoreboard
Speaker 1: type numbers, one hundred yards, one hundred and fifty yards whatever,
Speaker 1: those yards are, right, But most are going to have
Speaker 1: some sort of green complex and flags on the green.
Speaker 1: And I think most golfers now have a launch monitor.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a launch monitor, I mean have
Speaker 1: a rangefinder. Launch monitors expensive, right, some of the ones
Speaker 1: the players on the PGA Tour use thirty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollars, ten thousand, whatever the numbers. I think
Speaker 1: launch monitor technology is going down, and I think launch
Speaker 1: monitors are getting better across the board. That's why I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of rap Sodo. They've got two launch
Speaker 1: monitors that are I think affordable. If golf is an
Speaker 1: important part of your life and if you are really
Speaker 1: really focused and trying to lower your handicap and get better.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have a launch monitor, if you've
Speaker 1: got a rangefinder, pick out a bunch of different targets, right,
Speaker 1: pick out the different yardages and randomize these yardages. Right.
Speaker 1: Pick out the fifty yard flag and get a number
Speaker 1: on what that is, and then a seventy five yard
Speaker 1: flag and one hundred yard flag, one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred whatever, you've got on the golf course. And
Speaker 1: then if you don't have a launch monitor and you
Speaker 1: can't tell exactly how far the ball is going, maybe
Speaker 1: adjust this test and give yourself twenty balls and say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and aim at this specific target,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to try. If I don't have a
Speaker 1: launch monitor, I'm going to see if I'm long or
Speaker 1: short of it and write that down, right, and you
Speaker 1: choose the club right, So write down the club that
Speaker 1: you're going to use, the yardage that you're trying to
Speaker 1: hit it. So let's say you're trying to hit it
Speaker 1: one hundred yards. You choose the club, write that club
Speaker 1: that you're going to use down, and then if you're
Speaker 1: short or long, right, short or long, do that for
Speaker 1: twenty balls and try to your best ability to randomize
Speaker 1: all of the numbers, or just pick out one hundred yards,
Speaker 1: pick out you know, baseline numbers. Pick out a flag
Speaker 1: that's one hundred yards, pick out a flag that's one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five yards. I think good random numbers.
Speaker 1: Fifty seventy five, one hundred, one hundred and twenty five,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty right, I think those are good
Speaker 1: numbers to start with. And again, if you don't have
Speaker 1: a launch monitor and you can't tell exactly how far
Speaker 1: it's going, but you have a rangefinder and you say, okay,
Speaker 1: that target is seventy five yards, you could just do
Speaker 1: twenty balls and pick out the club that you would
Speaker 1: use for that distance and then do the test of
Speaker 1: being either writing down if you're short or long, and
Speaker 1: then go back in and look at what are the tendencies.
Speaker 1: So if you've got your sand wedge, if you've got
Speaker 1: your pitching wedge, if you've got your nine or whatever
Speaker 1: the club is, figure out if the tendency is to
Speaker 1: come up long or the tendency is to come up short, right.
Speaker 1: And some of this you will probably if you're in
Speaker 1: that mid handicap range, some of it will be contact issues. Right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, when my contact is bad, I come up
Speaker 1: way short of the number, right, way short of the
Speaker 1: flag that I'm trying to hit. In an ideal world,
Speaker 1: you would want the miss. I think it would be
Speaker 1: better for the miss to be long then it would
Speaker 1: be short, because if the miss is long, that's probably
Speaker 1: going to show you that the contact is pretty good. Right,
Speaker 1: If the miss is massively short, that's probably going to
Speaker 1: show you that the contact miss is poor. Then you
Speaker 1: kind of know what to do off of that. You
Speaker 1: know two things. You know, if the tendency is from
Speaker 1: whatever the distance is, if you're short or long, and
Speaker 1: then you know that if you're consistently short and you're
Speaker 1: hitting it fat or you're hitting it thin stuff, then
Speaker 1: you know that's a contact issue. Then you can go
Speaker 1: and say, okay, let me go work on my technique
Speaker 1: to improve my contact, the quality of the strike. You
Speaker 1: know where my weight is, am I taking a divots?
Speaker 1: There's a million different drills you can do to try
Speaker 1: and improve contact, But I just think that knowing with
Speaker 1: the yardages that you've got with sand wedge, pitching wedge,
Speaker 1: nine iron, eight iron, seven iron, I would work with
Speaker 1: those clubs and then say, okay, am I short? Do
Speaker 1: I tend to be short? Do I tend to be long?
Speaker 1: And then next time you go play golf, write down
Speaker 1: all the irons that you hit right on every hole.
Speaker 1: So on the first hole, if you hit the fairway
Speaker 1: right down the club that you're going to use right,
Speaker 1: write it down. And then the next hole, obviously, if
Speaker 1: you don't hit the fairway, you're chipping out right, but
Speaker 1: then write down the yardage that the range finder tells
Speaker 1: you it is and the club that you're using, and
Speaker 1: then figure out if you're short or long, Because then
Speaker 1: I think what you can do is similar to what
Speaker 1: we're able to do on the tour level, is we
Speaker 1: know the data from shot link, from launch monitors, from
Speaker 1: the companies that we use for strategy. For data, you
Speaker 1: can then kind of get an idea of Okay, at
Speaker 1: my home course, I am going to have a lot
Speaker 1: of these clubs that I'm going to have to hit.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to hit a lot of seven irons,
Speaker 1: eight irons, six irons, five irons, hybrids, whatever the club is.
Speaker 1: Because then I think it can really help you streamline
Speaker 1: your practice, and your practice can actually be for something
Speaker 1: specific that will help you on the golf course as
Speaker 1: opposed to just what you're trying to do on the
Speaker 1: range by just getting exercise. Try to then go, okay,
Speaker 1: let me gamify the way that I practice, Let me
Speaker 1: randomize my targets, let me randomize my numbers so that
Speaker 1: I can then figure out what's happening on the golf course.
Speaker 1: And I think you'll get a good idea of some
Speaker 1: trends of what's happening. Most of us play our home
Speaker 1: course on a regular basis, so you want to know
Speaker 1: the clubs that you're going to be using the most
Speaker 1: on your home course, right, And it's simple. Not everybody
Speaker 1: has a launch monitor, right, Not everybody has access to
Speaker 1: the data that we've got. But I think most driving
Speaker 1: ranges can give you a lot that you can use
Speaker 1: to help your game. Invest in a rangefinder and then
Speaker 1: go out and say, okay, let me pick a bunch
Speaker 1: of random targets, are random yardages and go from there.
Speaker 1: And then one of the things that you can do
Speaker 1: is gamify the driving range, right, and say, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: going to try and pretend I'm playing on the golf course.
Speaker 1: So pick a driver, take your driver out, use some
Speaker 1: targets on the driving range, use kind of design a
Speaker 1: fairway for yourself. Use poles, you can use trees, you
Speaker 1: can use flags, and say, okay, I'm gonna choose a
Speaker 1: flag or a tree or a pole on the left,
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna choose a flag or a pole
Speaker 1: or a tree on the right hand side. That's my fairway.
Speaker 1: And what I've got to do is I've got to
Speaker 1: get the golf ball into the fairway and then randomize,
Speaker 1: use that random number generator you can get on Google
Speaker 1: and say, okay, now I've got to hit a club.
Speaker 1: The number says one sixty five. Okay, what is my
Speaker 1: one sixty five club? And then see if you can
Speaker 1: find a target that is somewhere around that distance and
Speaker 1: then hit an iron shot. You choose the club and
Speaker 1: figure out if you're short or long, and then do
Speaker 1: that a bunch of different times. Pick out a bunch
Speaker 1: of different fairways, create your own fairways, pick out a
Speaker 1: bunch of numbers that you know that you're gonna have
Speaker 1: on the golf course, that you know that you need
Speaker 1: to hit, and just see if you're able to have
Speaker 1: good distance control. I don't think it takes a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of money. I don't think it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff that we use on tour. Think of
Speaker 1: the driving range as a playground, right as a massive playground,
Speaker 1: and you're just going to try and use your driving
Speaker 1: range your home course to try and help you on
Speaker 1: the golf course. But I think if you can start
Speaker 1: writing down the irons that you're using, whatever you're using,
Speaker 1: maybe you're using a lot of hybrids on the golf course.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're using a lot of long irons on the
Speaker 1: golf course. But I think if you can start to
Speaker 1: see the trends of the clubs that you're using, I
Speaker 1: think it can be hugely beneficial for you to then
Speaker 1: know what to practice as opposed to just going to
Speaker 1: the driving range and just basically working on your golf swing.
Speaker 1: Where I keep talking about this, there's two rooms that
Speaker 1: you should be living in on the driving range. A
Speaker 1: room that is technique and then another room that you
Speaker 1: need to go into that is execution. And I think
Speaker 1: last week the work that Austin Johnson, DJ's County and
Speaker 1: I we just said, listen, we're going to try and
Speaker 1: gamify as much of the practice as we can. For DJ.
Speaker 1: We're going to try and get him not thinking about
Speaker 1: his golf swing, not thinking about his technique, think about
Speaker 1: what he's going to be doing on the golf course.
Speaker 1: And he had a chance to win and finish top ten.
Speaker 1: A lot to build on from last week for DJ.
Speaker 1: But I do think if you could practice like this
Speaker 1: and start to use your driving range like a big
Speaker 1: giant playground, use the targets on the driving range, not
Speaker 1: just for the shape and where it's going, think about
Speaker 1: are you short or long of it? Are you missing
Speaker 1: it left or right of it? And then I think
Speaker 1: that'll help you kind of form a plan when you
Speaker 1: go to the golf course and say, Okay, I know
Speaker 1: on the golf course today, I'm going to have a
Speaker 1: lot of distances I play my game, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: a lot of distances between this number and this number
Speaker 1: for my second shots. I've been practicing these on the
Speaker 1: golf on the driving range, and I think it will
Speaker 1: help you lower your handicap, and I think it will
Speaker 1: help you enjoy your golf better. And I think it's
Speaker 1: something that you can use and take from the PGA Tour,
Speaker 1: from DP World, from the Champs, from Live from the LPGA,
Speaker 1: all the tours around the world. Right, it's very hard
Speaker 1: for you to swing like the best players in the world,
Speaker 1: like our heroes. We all struggle with that, right, We'd
Speaker 1: all love to do that. We'd all love the swing
Speaker 1: the golf club like Rory McElroy and Scotti Scheffler. We'd
Speaker 1: all love to swing the golf club like Nellie Corda
Speaker 1: or Adam Scott. All these beautiful golf swings, but that's
Speaker 1: not the reality. But what we can do is really
Speaker 1: have a good understanding as to how far you hit
Speaker 1: your clubs, and really have a good understanding as to
Speaker 1: what is your tendency. You tend to be short or
Speaker 1: do you tend to be long. Is it a contact strike,
Speaker 1: is it a directional miss, whatever that is, then you
Speaker 1: can form a plan when you go to the driving range,
Speaker 1: and you can really make your practice effective, and you
Speaker 1: can make your practice help affect what's going on on
Speaker 1: the golf course. So that's just a little insight of
Speaker 1: what you know I was doing last week with DJ.
Speaker 1: I think he can help you and give it a try,
Speaker 1: and I definitely think it'll help. Son of a Butch
Speaker 1: comes to you most week's rate review. Subscribe wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Can't thank everyone enough for listening. See
Speaker 1: you next week.