160 – Martin Ayers

hello and welcome back to another episode of the cookie jar golf podcast Sam here just wanted to put a really
quick cover note on this podcast we sat down with Martin Ayers last week Martin is a
former tour pro basically in Australia um coach coaches a number of players
specializes in coaching players who’ve been great players who’ve lost their form who want to regain that that
greatness again which is just a really cool and fresh take and you’ll kind of get why when he when he rolls into it
he’s a really good bloke he’s got the most intense level of love for the game
it’s it’s infectious uh some great stories in here about Grant weight and
coaching Steve elkington some really cool stuff well you can enjoy it’s a long podcast
but uh yeah there’s some fascinating stuff in there particularly out talking about you know moving in on the shot and
all sorts of stuff so look without without further Ado it’s over to the Pod and we hope you enjoy watch this[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Martin good to good to finally see you
after having spoken on the phone how are you yeah you too good to see you too yeah I’m looking forward to this it’s
been uh something you know since we first talked I’ve been looking forward to having a chat with you guys I uh I’ve
listened to you to your podcast quite a bit I’m a podcast person uh I like to listen to podcasts so yours is now in
the rotation podcast
uh well I I do I’m a big fan of the uh as far as an enjoyment listening wise
the shotgun start boys I like them um I like certain elements of the no
laying up stuff as well um I’m not gonna they name names as to who I don’t enjoy on on that whole thing
but uh they’re a good group of yeah young guys talk young compared to me talking about golf so I like listening
to that different perspective you know did you enjoy the one with James Dave when we did uh I did I listened to that
one I think I think was it you who was talking to him it’s just me yeah yeah well I played
with James in the in the uh we’d gone we played golf at the Addington and then recorded it back to his Workshop
yeah yeah yeah yeah that was good yeah so you know obviously
um that’s how you guys heard about me was through James and and yeah he’s um his little workshop in the back there is
pretty is something else isn’t it yeah that’s uh it’s like two worlds you’ve got the simulator the the the best
simulator that Urban golf has right the best room the most elegant and then you just go around the corner there and then
here’s James days massive Workshop just chock full of goodies you know like amazing old gear
yeah yeah and it’s not organized at all is it they’re just everything’s strewn all over the place I think there’s a
kind of crazy doctor at work he’s just yeah yeah I think he um he’s the one
that can it’s organized in his mind that’s the main thing for everybody else it looks like chaos but I think he knows
exactly where everything is I’m not really sure I’m on speak in terms of James at the moment because he was
building me a set of clubs and and uh uh I questioned whether you needed to weigh
the grips and at that point he absolutely lost his with me oh that’s not that’s you have made a gross
I cannot believe you asked that question it’s essential yeah it’s essential if
you’re gonna if you’re gonna do everything else to the tolerances that James does and you don’t weigh the grips
what do you do like you might as well not even do any of the other things that are precise
yeah right I mean people like James has been a bit of a that’s probably the best part of doing
all this to be honest with you Martin like the podcast is great but mainly because it’s a mechanism to meet really cool people like yourself like James
people who just have this obsessive interest in the game ago which I think
we share yeah but because there’s so much distance between us yeah until you meet them you kind of just feel like
you’re a Nutter on your own and then you realize actually there’s this like a community of complete and articles out
there yeah that’s right that’s right so I thought we’d try and keep this as much about your journey in golf really Martin
and and the stuff along the way I mean there’s going to be so many good War Stories so you’ve just got to make sure
we don’t skip past any absolute gold in there I guess right yeah yeah I think
um like from my point of view what I feel I would be interested in talking about because I wouldn’t want to sort of
relitigate my you know my playing career my my junior playing career and all that I just like
to sort of I think the start’s interesting and then the kind of Middle where I went to
college and all of that was interesting because then then I turned Pro and then it kind of went South and that’s interesting but I don’t want to make
that all you know I don’t want to make that the whole thing because we’ve gotten to now where you’ve arrived at is
yeah that’s the interest for me that’s the interesting thing because it’s it’s who I want to reach and help in golf you
know um there they’re both the people like me who who had could play and then
absolutely couldn’t and then there’s the people many many golfers out there who’d be listening to your podcast who didn’t
get to play much as a kid and so they started playing when they’re a bit older and so they never got that
the kids um imaginative intuitive learning of the
game you know that if you did play as a kid you got that opportunity because you weren’t going to be Technical and
thinking about how you’re doing it you just played the game for the game itself you know
missing types of players then so much very much those kids that were brought
up on it I mean I I was Bruce was you were yeah and people who come at it
later in life it’s it’s an entirely different it was really a completely different species right it really is
that different because no because but at the same time that different
species has like the the same issue now in that you guys I don’t know about you but I
can’t go and play like a kid anymore so I’ve lost that ability right I can’t
I can’t turn my mind off to that extent it’s just not possible I’ve tried it’s not possible so
I’m now having to play golf the way these gents and ladies who never picked it up
as a kid have to play which is that they have to somehow know enough about what they need to do to forget about that and
go and play golf instead of so I always talk about it’s like you’re either playing the game or
you’re playing yourself out there and by playing yourself I mean you’re thinking about what you’re doing where
your Club is you know what what’s the next move you’re making when really it
should be about the ball and where you want that to go right oh I want I want to hit that ball there you know that’s
the game right yeah the game isn’t I want my club to be at 37.5 degrees
halfway back and I wanted it 42 degrees halfway down you know something like
ridiculous uh analogy but you get the idea I mean that’s a cracking sort of just
teaser I guess to what’s going to come ahead but that world where the junior golfer is kind of unconsciously just
moving around the ball and doing what they want to do and then presumably a lot of really good Junior golfers
graduate to become you know elite players and then they start thinking angles and Club positions does some of
that mirror your own sort of experience in the game and you’re playing completely I mean talk to us about your
sort of like growth in the game I guess or your sort of entry point into it and everything yeah well I started I started
out when I was about 11 I think um and I couldn’t join the course I wanted to join
um and play I played two or three games of golf at various courses in Sydney and loved it and my dad’s like all right
let’s go join a club um because he he had given up golf to follow our Sports and he was like oh the
guys want to go play golf I mean you know so my dad’s a Golf Nut but so I had
to wait six months to join the chroma the course I wanted to join so I went to this other place where Kirsten played
there for six months then I joined Kramer at 12 and that was when you were allowed to join there
and from that point on I mean when I was 15 I was playing with a three handicap
so I picked it up pretty quick wow and you know it was like
um in essence actually when I was 15 I qualified for a Australian Tour event
which was crazy to think but I had caddy yeah I’d carried for a guy yeah it is
Bonkers so I live in half years after picking it up you were there sort of in the professional ranks essentially yeah
and I I missed the cut but it was great you know obviously what an experience that was for me so I was just one of
these people and to be fair it was I did Wag a lot of school so like it was three
years I did get a lot of practice in don’t worry so you racked up those 10 000 hours yeah yeah yes exactly so but
but I learned the game quickly and I’d say that what what characterized why I learned it so
quickly was my imagination and the intuitive like it was for me it was
really about the game um I had played a lot of rugby and so I was pretty competitive type of kid
um and for me it was like the ball I want to get this thing in that hole right so when I hit it in the trees for
example I’d get quite frustrated with myself but I wouldn’t get frustrated myself and go why did I do that what was
wrong you know as a kid it was like my balls in the trees off I go into the trees to to see if I can escape from
there onto the green and so it was really all about what’s next and what’s ahead of me and what’s out out in front
of me not what am I doing I never thought about what I was doing
right and you know I had a coach um I didn’t see him very often he’s a great Old Coach John Kelly is his name
and he played uh World Cup for New Zealand so he was a fantastic player in
his own you know in his own way um and really all he told me it was a few little grip things chipping and some
bunker stuff and you know he didn’t he didn’t tell me how to swim he never told me how to swing
they just taught me the game yeah and so he was a brilliant Mentor for me
at that age as well because he could recognizing me that I wasn’t I didn’t need to be told how to swing or
anything like that it’s just like a little tweak here or there to my grip you know so that was the first
really that that first three or four years set me that was enough to get me to going to college golf because I’d won
a lot of junior tournaments and stuff like that and and so the next phase was going to college I think In America which is a
totally different thing altogether I mean that early phase there you
mentioned it’s quite sort of forward-looking for one of a better description you’re thinking about like
the next shot it’s it’s everything that’s psychologist tries to reverse engineer now and talk about you know
kind of staying present all that stuff it just sounds like it came very naturally to you there as a kid I mean
what did sort of practice look like I mean you know you kind of hear a lot of sort of Juniors who are sort of in that
creative mode you know the going into the tree story you mentioned there and whether you’re trying to hit the draw or
a crazy slice around around trees I guess it’s all quite playful and just fun yeah that’s for me no that’s it
you’re 100 like the course I grew up on was like this corridors right trees um and so if I hit it far enough wide it
to the next Fairway then I had to hit it up and curve it over but if I hit it in the trees I had to hit it down and curve
it the other way so I learned all those shots very quickly and very easily again
just through having the shot present itself and a bit like what you know Phil Mickelson would say to Bones is like
there’s a gap there it’s like yeah if there’s a gap I’m going to have a crack at it you know so yeah yeah it’s it’s
really any right it’s all about the the if you think about the psychology but this is a little quick story but I had a
mini tour player I was working with in America and he says to me I’m really just having trouble playing one shot at
a time so we’re on the Range and I thought okay so I dropped two balls down I said all
right hit hit two for me at once and he looked at me and he’s like
what are you talking about I said well you can’t hit one at a time hit two for me you know and he just obviously
he cracked up and he lost it it just it was almost like that he’s like yeah I’m being stupid aren’t I I said well you
know we are golfers so that is kind of the direction we go yeah
junior junior analogy Martin is there do you think the best players in the
world today are just better at kind of channeling they’re in a junior goal for a little bit at the right times you mentioned people like Phil you know I
feel like same as you I feel like a totally different goal for now to what I was when I was a kid yeah and there’s good and bad parts that but a lot of the
time it does feel like you’re thinking technique rather than outcome do you think do you see the best players in the world who are a lot more
yeah I think for our for our viewers to understand that all listeners whoever’s listening to understand the landscape of
golf as you know because there’s so many good players out there now and every one of them has a very unique swing wouldn’t
you agree like Victor hovland and Colin murakawa and Matt wolf three guys who
came out together they have completely different actions the three of them right
um and and that’s great that’s great for people who are now in the game to understand that the shape of the Swing
has got nothing to do with the actual quality right um because when we grew up when I was in
the worst era I’d say end day as well maybe you guys are at the tail end of the worst era of golf instruction slash
mental torture of golfers with all this positional corrective garbage right and
and so we were really greatly affected by that I know I was and I’m assuming you guys have been to some extent as
well and where I think things are on the mend is with the with the data-driven stuff the
trackman stuff now it’s more about what the ball’s doing so that goes back to my junior day what all I cared about was
what the ball was doing and so they’ve got a trackman there for every shot they play and it’s like the ball did this
okay that’s interesting the ball did that great okay wow that’s I’m getting more spin or it’s coming down you know
on a more vertical uh Landing track which is great for these firm greens I’m
playing and so on so they’re more concerned with that than the the minutia of the of the details of their swing and
I think that’s what we’re seeing now with guys coming out more unique swings not cookie cutter
positional teaching and unique swings that all work and so yeah
they’re able to maybe maintain more of that Junior than say players who came up in our era
you know like just circling back back on your story a bit there Martin so yeah
first few years it seems like the game is coming pretty easily and you head off to college into to America what’s that
what does that look like I mean yeah so progress and leave on from there yeah that’s good uh so I I my first year over
there was great so I was I contended quite well in some
tournaments um I didn’t win any but I was you know um
from an average point of view I was on a good team at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and
all the good players were sort of older they were in the I was the only new player in the team and um you know I had
the best scoring average on the team the first year and it’s sort of got a little bit worse from
there every year for me until the last year where it started to pick up again which I’ll I’ll touch on but it’s
the second year there was the first time I dabbled with some swing stuff you see right very first time ever some like
and one of the reasons was at my course growing up there’s just corridors of trees you know and then
when I go to America and play and you guys have probably seen this if you’ve gone to Texas or somewhere like that where there’s houses both sides and
although it’s quite a wide wide gap between the houses right it’s it’s houses it’s out of bounds both sides
right it’s like so that started to sort of do a bit of a number on me yeah and and because you
know I grew up with no internal out of bounds or not certainly not OB both sides you know and and so as I started
to maybe get a little bit more nervy about that I started thinking okay well what can I think about that’ll take my
mind off that and so it became the swing so I started thinking about my swing which was
you know uh frying pan and fire type stuff right I would have been better off just thinking about the out of bounds
you know really oh yeah it’s amazing isn’t it you’re a swing guy as well it’s like
well I I get called a swing guy I think I don’t think of myself as a
swinger you wouldn’t call yourself a swing guy no I wouldn’t no how would you describe that
I’m a golf guy I love the game I think I all I care about it the swing is a means
to an end to hit a shot right so I’m a shot guy I love that so it’s a part of the shot
but it is only a part and you know I I think the biggest thing that anyone
could take away from this conversation me talking about golf has nothing to do
with the swing it has to do with the fact that the ball’s just sitting there right
on the planet somewhere specific like it’s really somewhere specific so there’s somewhere around there that you
can stand that hitting your shot is the easiest thing in the world and everywhere else that you stand
that’s not that makes it harder Okay And Then There Are Places most
amateurs go where they’ve got no chance and never had a chance and it’s got they haven’t even swung yet right they
haven’t gotten themselves to where they’ve got a chance um right so what do you do from there
well you can try and hit the ball where you want it to go from where you are it’s bloody impossible and Tiger Woods
couldn’t even do it but here you are giving it a crack and then you say I’m a swing hold on Buddy you had no chance you set
yourself up failure yeah so lead you on from that is that kind of I think I’ve heard you talk about it in those great
videos that um you put out with James day of urban gold font on on YouTube a
few years back it’s it’s sort of this for one of a better phrases I think structure as to where you where you locate
yourself in space which I guess you know not wanting to to butcher this too much because I’m sure you give us a better
explanation but you can basically allow yourself to kind of make a motion at that that one spot and the ball is kind
of incidental yeah so you can it can become that way see so you know that I think the we’re
getting it pretty deep and I think this is good I like talking about this but if you imagine okay here’s my best analogy
for this you’ve got a pool player say or Stuka Ronnie or Sullivan okay he’s got his structure that his basic thing now
most shots he can play from that structure because the table Height’s the same right but every now and then a ball
will be up closer to the cushion now these bridges on the cushion set of the table right so now his Bridge is a little bit
different so it’s it’s slight change of structure but it’s still it’s very defined
his his cue is going to go very straight right it’s not going to go like Ronnie
O’Sullivan’s Q doesn’t go like this it’s like super straight right and and so
what he does is he goes in there and sets up his shot on the angle for the red so that he can get to the black later on it’s like yeah right here and
he shoots it or he says no that’s the wrong angle so at that point when he says it’s the wrong angle he takes the
whole structure and moves that he doesn’t just move a piece of it hmm in
golf we I’m aiming the club face oh okay what about everything else like it’s all
the same it’s all one thing right so it’s a it’s a whole structure so to your question if you are familiar with your
good structure you and the club then it’s a Doddle it’s quite easy to
know that you’re in the right place to flush the ball because there’s the ball and here you are right it’s like you’re
already there you’re like yeah I can hit this all right whereas if you’re there in pieces going this is square to the
Target and this is square to the Target and meanwhile the ball’s over there going hey I’m over here come down come
on right so it is it’s that yeah compartmentalizing of it did you know
what you were thinking in your mind is if you’ve got your structure and you can take that to the ball then you can say
okay where’s the target from there if if it’s not where you want to be you
move like we’re only a settlement but you’ve got this whole thing that’s that’s real then you’ve connected it to
the ball perfect Now where’s that gonna go okay oh there yeah it’s a much more sort of holistic
way of seeing it than the kind of piece by piece yes this is my position that I
guess it has been the norm for I don’t know the last 20 30 years I mean going back to your time in America then so it
kind of start starts in your second year and and just gradually became a little bit more
addictive or compelling as a way of approaching the game you just thought if I can kind of break this down piece by
piece that that’ll make me better was that kind of weird again you start craving consistency is what I think most
people would agree when when they’re struggling they just I wish I was more consistent you know and so you start
thinking that the consistency would come if I had a consistent pattern of
movement and as we’ve just had a conversation the consistency
in a game that changes every single shot it’s brand new shot each time consistency is is not down to just the
swing you know it’s the way you play so I I think I might have even made my swing better I
don’t know do you know what I mean like the the swing work that I was doing might have made my swing technically better
but I wasn’t playing the game anymore and so the other important facets of
playing a shot I wasn’t even doing them not you know properly because I was so
focused on how I was going to swing this club that I didn’t go to the right place
under a Collegiate level aren’t you because yes you know your scoring average goes towards your starts and you
want to be in the side because if you’re not in the side you’re going backwards and and then that whole thing then becomes self-perpetuate and I guess
because you can’t you’re back in the cycle of more swing stuff all of a sudden scores aren’t getting any better
and then you see it kind of comes out a little bit by the end of end of college right so yeah where’d you go after that
so you start playing quite well back into college you then you know playing career beckoning perhaps yeah so that’s
exactly right I I met a another coach um he was an Australian my dad had met him
through a different sort of Avenue and he he kind of gave me a bit of a new
lease he was one of these old school teachers who just he’d tell you what to do but it would be abstract enough it’s
not like this whole series of things to do it’s just one or two abstract things and he really got me hitting the ball
well and it to the point where I after having come back and seen him in Australia I went back and for the whole season I
played pretty well my last year and and then so I went back after college
and played some amateur golf in Australia we’re getting ready to go to the Q
school for Australian tour back when we had a tour here at Australia so more on that uh another
time probably so but that was you know I got my tour card first time
um that was fun um and I was really playing well and then
my first year as a pro again I was I was playing well scoring well um I didn’t get much opportunity at the
top level of of australasian golf but I played it sort of the middle and lower levels the pro-ams and the and the what
you call the challenge tour type level of the Australian tour so I played all of that stuff and did
really well in that and uh so that was encouraging you know but then it got worse every year after that
okay in the same yeah in the same sort of pattern again right well that just
did the same thing yeah you’re trying to sort of push it on and say okay you know I’ve competed really well at this level
um you saw the the mid-level you’re talking about there and like I want to kick on now and I think yes it’s just I
guess it’s just a natural human um kind of train of thought isn’t it
I’ve got to do something different to elevate myself so what are you searching for yeah exactly you think okay now how
am I going to get better so I would play with guys like I played with Grant weight in the New Zealand open Final Round I mean he just absolutely wore it
out you know and we just Just Three Wood off the tee just I just absolutely wore
it out it’s stunning ball striking right and here’s me I mean my good shots are as good as his good shots maybe even
better to be honest with you um but man I hit a lot of bad shots and so it was playing with guys like that
and and because I knew you know he’d back from the US tour right um so everyone knew who graduate was at
the time he was known as a ball Striker but but when you see that and you know where you feel you are and you’re like
okay well you know if I can get there and a funny funny aside on that I I
missed a four foot Putt in that round where I hit it a bit too hard then it went sort of five feet by and I made the
one coming back and we’re walking off the green and ground Waits telling me that I’m hitting my putts too hard and I just thought the irony of him giving me
a putting lesson in the middle of the New Zealand open was too much because the guy if he could part at all he would
have been Superstar yeah it is funny isn’t it what what
players who are just sort of lacking in maybe one area kind of observing others and trying desperately they’re focusing
on that a lot and I mean yeah he’s someone even today who is held up on social media and all sorts of places
it’s just been absolutely prodigious flusher of the golf ball yeah um that’s
right yeah I don’t know what his background is whether he was sort of that that’s something that’s really been
kind of with him his whole career or how he’s cultivated I would say so I mean I
think anyone again this is where the the Junior see this is what you it’s all right this
is what you lose right so when without thinking about my swing as a kid I
within a very short space of time obviously figured out how to just go into a golf ball where I needed to be to
just flush it just flush it really pure without having to do anything right just
just pound it but if I you walk up to a imagine walking up to a nail that you’re
holding it right with a hammer but you you don’t just go in and Hammer
you measure you measure it and you you measure it and then you hammer right well that’s Golf and if you’re not
if you’re not paying attention to the to the measuring thing and then you swing and you’re like ouch what happened right
so yeah so I think Grant weight probably like me from a young age
just knew where to be to just pound it and uh he’s you know I know he
um I’ve actually worked with uh Mike Weir a bit and and Mike told me some funny stories about I won’t repeat these
but his time with Grant weight you know and and they’re still good mates from what I understand and so
he’s worked with some of the same guys I’ve worked with so I’m familiar with what he teaches and you know it’s very
much in the macro Grady type mold and he’s a great advertisement for that
method I’d say with his own abilities so
yeah yeah I mean it’s it’s a I guess there’s a whole whole other discussion we could possibly have there at another
time about you know how he’s maybe a good advertisement for the the macro
Grady kind of breaking down a swing in that sort of way yeah but how much of
that has he applied to maybe his own game versus is that a sort of outcome of
of kind of actually just kind of getting rid of
um maybe a lot of the Clutter that that people who follow that approach I guess end up
building up because it does seem as an outsider I’m not being fully immersed as an outsider looking in it looks quite
sort of analytical and put this here and then here and here whereas actually that
maybe the reality with someone like Grant is that he’s he kind of flowed through those positions totally
subconsciously as a result of just being much more in the mold of kind of where do I need to put myself and you know I’m
just going to let this out I’m just going to make this one motion I’m just going to let it all out I mean um yeah sort of playing with guys like
that I guess you you’re saying there you’re looking at how you can um move on and progress and where did it
where do you feel like it started to sort of deteriorate that in your own in your own yeah well it deteriorated from
that from that premise if yeah now imagine if the things that I tried to do were correct or potentially helpful then
it would have been good but that wasn’t where I went was there’s the other way and and what I’ve learned since and that
was actually quite a protracted decline right so it wasn’t rapid it was yeah that was very protractable so I
could I could still I could play enough through I was out there for five six years and and had good enough results in
that time even as my game was trending downwards too so for example this is a
kind of a classic case of my career is I get to the Western Australian Open and
I’m swinging it like dog crap it’s terrible right I’m like oh my God what am I going to do I need to make some
cash obviously and uh I’m over in Perth away from home I’m spending money I need to make some
cash what do I do so I decide okay I’m swinging it like crap I’m just gonna cut every ball okay I’m just gonna big cut
and so if I’ve got a seven iron in I’m going to take a six iron and just cut it into the green so
yeah so I shoot 12 under for four rounds and finish fourth and it’s like great
right so yeah so like Stephen Lenny had just finished second in the US Open and
he wins the tournament I’m like I’ve just finished fourth to Steven lead it’s not a bad week and I my Sweden wasn’t I
just cut every ball so here I am now I’m playing junior golf right which is like
just cutting the ball no swing thoughts at all yeah and and that’s the best check I made that year where my swing
was I’d given up on my completely given up on it
yeah I mean you know I don’t know maybe it’s just me but I can imagine a lot of
the people that listen to this this is quite refreshing to hear the fact that when you’re you know things
aren’t going quite right in your game and yeah okay you’re talking about an elite professional level there Martin but
you know just for the club goal for the struggling on a weekend or the Saturday medal the thought that actually maybe
it’s not about just going straight back to technique and swing and positions maybe this is just about getting into a
more comfortable position where you feel like you can make a pretty good pass at the ball you know that’s the whole whole
thing is quite refreshing to hear but it crept in and in and then eventually it kind of just got to the point where it
just got too tricky to play professionally anymore well it just got yeah I mean for me
um I Then I then injured him a shoulder just slipping over on a wet floor landing on it wrong and then so I never
really got back to physically where I needed to be
um so the the gradual decline in my game became catastrophic at that point lost my card
you know wasn’t going to get it back and so I still continued to try to improve my golf I still was trying to
figure this thing out you know and after I rehabbed properly and got myself going
I started going to Japanese Q school every year and I would do that I would teach at a Japanese golf school and then
all year and then go to Japanese Q School it was my my thing but I wasn’t competitive right in mentally because I
was teaching and whatever so that was that was tough that was a different
thing altogether but um but anyway so that’s kind of winds down the playing career was
um basically self-suicide it would be the way I’d call that right because some
people I know like Bradley Hughes for example is now quite a well-known instructor and he was a fantastic golfer
okay and he blames instruction that he received for his Decline and I agree with him that’s true
I I’m not blaming instruction right it’s my own speaking of Club golfers and I’m
speaking to them now their own idea of what they need to do is fundamentally
wrong okay so if the more you listen to yourself the more likely you are to
arm yourself and I say that with absolute sincerity because people just
have no idea what to do if they just played right and and let the game sort of tell
them what to do they’d make all these good decisions but then they think I need to get my swing here or I need to get no you don’t I’m sorry that’s that’s
actually not going to help you and I think that yeah the average Club golfer could benefit a
lot from learning their own experience like you mentioned earlier they’ve got a new swing thought they
play the first four or five holes it worked last time but it’s not working this time so they give up on it and then
they start hitting the ball well yeah it’s like well you know it’s like any sense
it’s like my career I played a good week when I gave up I was like my swing
I’m not even going to worry about it this way I’m just going to cut the ball played great okay it’s like a microcosm
of that is every day that people play golf they’re like I’m gonna start but I’m going to do this today right and they give up on that if not by the
second hole then by the third they’re already onto something new right that it’s not really a good strategy is
it if you’re going to give up on it three holes into a 19-0 plan and there’s
not many parallels you can draw with other sports are there no no I can’t really think of any other sport
where the the amateur or the professional would be as hit and miss with you know thoughts different
techniques things that they would try and Implement for a short medium long term you know the fact that you can almost go Polar Opposites you know week
to week with the thing you’re working on it’s just yeah yeah I don’t know that I
just can’t think of any other sport or or like you know Pursuit just to extend
it be on the sporting context where you can have really accomplished individuals in that one specific field
who are just just by all accounts exceptionally good at what they do and they actually go out with a really Noble
intention of I’m gonna do something to get better I’m going to perfect myself this sort of ethic of self-improvement
and then they just lose every like all that ability that they had it’s like 100 I can’t you can’t see that happening in
you know football or Cricket or going to the gym or it’s you know it’s just it’s a very it seems like a much more linear
kind of progression and yeah yeah it’s it’s just there are so many stories out
there of of really accomplished professionals who change their equipment change their swing change their approach
to it and uh guys like tiger and fowl though who have rebuilt it I mean you could make an
argument that maybe they didn’t make themselves any better maybe they would have been even better without going through the huge overhaul they’re like
sort of the vanishingly sections to this rule yeah yeah well that for a start do
you bring up tiger there and this whole thread of conversation here I love it because I have a sort of joke where you
know tiger having the chipping yips back in 2015 right that’s like Einstein for
getting the times tables four irons wasn’t it in all sorts of stuff like he’s completely lost it now
that makes it to your point in what field of human endeavor forget sport anything
with someone who’s a virtuoso like tiger
who can’t do the most basic things it’s it’s mind-blowing now this is what I
love about this whole I talked earlier about where you are then because nobody nobody thinks about that fact and yet
when I say that to you guys can’t deny that fact the ball is somewhere right now there
are places you could stand around it where you can’t do anything you can’t even reach it okay but then you get in
close enough where you can reach it but is that really the best place and so whatever happened to Tiger
it doesn’t take much for the best player to lose the sense of where he needs to be
and he said it himself he didn’t know where the bottom of his swing was that’s true that’s true fairly
fundamental point of the game isn’t it right and but I would I would argue this is that
he would have if there was no he would have known where the bottom of his swing was if he just asked him before the swing without a ball there but because
he wasn’t sitting up at the right angles for that shot this is James day okay
he’ll hopefully he’ll listen to this and his he knows that that was the Crux with
his short game you guys probably both know he hits the ball fantastic and he’s probably still struggling a little bit
with the short game is he we’re still playing the shovel I mean he plays that he plays that shot which for me is
someone who struggles a little bit of this short game he makes total sense he keeps the soul of the club so close to
the ground on the takeaway because then has almost no if you’re if the only thing you’re doing from you know I don’t
know 45 degrees out on your backswing he’s lifting the club off the floor at that point you can’t bury it in the
floor it’s already on the ground short shots like that he’s a
professional he plays a professional top yeah it’s like a hockey shot it’s like a hockey sort of like yeah that one yeah
I’m just going to say this is a bit harsh on James because he hasn’t got a right reply in this sort of context that
was actually going to be complimentary at this at the end of this I’m not slagging him off but he’s no he is an
instinctive golfer he’s like he’s a great player he’s a proper ball hit you know yeah I mean he flashes it so the
the difference there see in the the reason I bring this up is for James that when it’s a full-on action his action’s
fantastic and he hits great shots and then but in the short game what what specific thing is the game asking you to
do okay more than anything because it’s easy to chip it straight right what it’s not easy to do is Chip at the right
trajectory and spin and and energy right so it’s like there’s a it’s easy to chip
at 20 feet by you blade it or it’s easy to right it’s easy to duff duff at a foot in front of
you right people know this but it’s much harder to hit a 20 foot off line
and so the the the the need to have the right energy and the right angles of
trajectory and everything’s quite a demanding thing now most of that a good player a good chipper will achieve
before The Swinging motion itself so the technique of chipping is more how do you
arrange yourself so that you can just chip the ball and that’s James spent a lot of years
building it to where if you just chip the ball that would go over the greens because he just didn’t know how to bring
it all of his uh full swing setup and everything down and make it
small enough to where as Hogan said Hogan said he could uh hit a 10 foot chip or a 300 yard drive as hard as he
can because he built it small enough that he can just hit it
to round that off is that some players struggle with that and and
the reason they struggle again is a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s required of them they think it’s their
technique that’s got a hole in it or they think I’ve Got The Yips or whatever and they may have The Yips because but
it was developed from this not understanding where they need to be I can identify
with that and I know Bruce Physicians come in here but I can totally identify with that stuff and like we play a lot
of golf together me and Bruce yeah we’ve just come back from playing in the Netherlands you can see it kind of Bruce when I’m in sort of when the chipping
goes I’m in technique mode and I’m thinking about Club where my where all
sorts of parts of the body are that are completely unrelated to the shot and I suppose I can see that as well in any
golfer I play you know Bruce is on the Pod with us I can see that in Bruce when Bruce doesn’t hit it so good he’s going into himself thinking about positions
and everything rather than thinking more around the shot and positions and stuff it’s fascinating you did touch on Hogan
there it would be um I don’t want to walk by that do you do you draw quite a bit of an inspiration from Hogan and how he looked
at the swing and you know if so what parts you know he’s a fascinating character how much are you
kind of into Hogan and his sort of philosophy around the game um I was for years ago I was into it so
far that it wasn’t funny because I had really um well I’d seen I’d seen something in
the way his Club behaved right first and foremost his Club was so free and so
what actually led to there’s two things that led to my current swing philosophy the first one was I was watching tiger
and I saw that he was going in One Direction the whole way and people say what are you talking
about because he’s obviously turning around he’s turning left but he he through his through his length of
his body he was just going in a sort of expanding wave where his hands start
down close to him of course and then the hands go away from you and then they come back right and so that
wave is not in my mind back and then back down the same
uh line it’s waving away and then it sort of drifts over to the
side and comes back and so I always saw that as One Direction well I did from that moment on and that helped that
helped me hugely all of a sudden I told you about my injury all of that the moment I
started employing that framework in my mind power came back to me instantly and
it was always a very powerful player until the injury and I’d lost 30 yards never got it back it was always it was
never coming back and then all of a sudden instantly had it back because I wasn’t throwing energy away it
was just watching tiger um sort of keep all the energy with him and then have that thing go around him
in Emotion so then seeing Hogan doing what I saw was the same thing except he had this flash of freedom
and I was like I want that I want that freedom how can I have that Martin yeah
so I would that’s what obsessed me with Hogan was the freedom with which he swung
and and so that sort of set me off on home um
was he a shot guy I don’t know just based on what I read about him was he he was more of a shot maker you think
because I maybe this is unfair based on what I’ve read but I always thought he was the guy that was just digging out of the dirt in the range we kept it hour
after hour just beating balls but he was still working on shots and moving around the ball and trying to make the ball do
different things right I would say 100 I think he he understood
there’s no doubt he understood his swing but he understood his swing from a framework of of what it was what his job
was for him he wanted to play the best shots no there’s no doubt at his
competitive level he even said the very words is like there’s not enough daylight to practice all the shots I
want to practice he didn’t say there’s not enough daylight to work on my swing so he I think he had to swing well and
truly lit you know and I think the it’s interesting you find this with a fair few great players
that book Five Lessons which he wrote and was it Anthony ravioli did the um illustrations yes that’s come in for
quite a bit of criticism in terms of making a lot of golf was worse weakening so many people’s grip flat swings all
these other kind of um points of criticism that have been directed towards it and I think it
doesn’t I don’t know whether that’s necessarily grasping the right end of the stick I think it’s more
what he’s really driving at is that a great player like Hogan wasn’t really a sort of factual level aware of what he
was doing in terms of positions and how to manipulate the club and when he was kind of asked by a publisher to to kind
of present that to a mass audience it just doesn’t really capture what he’s about because
a lot of that is kind of resulting it seems to minor and the flashes of freedom and how beautifully like sort of
balanced and the the sort of Rhythm that his swinging has when you see it online that’s not you can’t you know he doesn’t
really capture that in words and pictures so it’s very it’s a very difficult thing and and there’s feelings that uh are
maybe quite persuasive where he talks about having five right hands or whatever and um you know there’s there’s perhaps
truth in that but because it’s such an individual sport I guess you know how you kind of describe something in terms of feel the feel to to one person might
be quite different to someone else and and maybe that’s where that that work has been kind of misinterpreted because
um it’s not a work of mechanics and positions or geometry it’s you know the thing about Hogan is that he was yeah he
kind of as well you put it beautifully there Martin he was hitting all the shots he was a shot maker first and foremost rather than a swing maker yeah
exactly and you I think you’re 100 right it’s a very difficult thing to explain okay and so here I’m going to get on
Hogan’s um side in this in this uh court case against him from the from not you
from like you said there are many critics of Five Lessons in the introduction to Five Lessons
Hogan says if you wanted to show a child how to open a door you wouldn’t open the door and say see there it is you would
instead show them how to open the door so if you put that in the golf context this is in the introduction before any
of the instructions I’m going to show you how to swing not
what it looks like not what you should take on board as my swing looks like or anything you know in his swing how it
works what works inside it okay so that was the context and then
at the end of the book so you’ve got the beginning he set to context with most people just blew by
right and they’re looking at it from a modern standpoint of we know what happens right so he’s showing you what
happens but you know he’s showing you what creates what happens and then at the end he he reverses the
order and he says you can have this if you have this and you can have that if
you’ve got this and you can have that if you’ve got this okay so to me those two bookends around the five lessons
for me that’s the book that that tells the story of the book so if you’re not seeing the book through
that lens and I didn’t look I had to work that out like it wasn’t like the
first reading I’m like understanding what’s going on but
I think it’s so important to understand that what you do
is not what the camera sees for what even when you’re playing with each other when you’re watching your own sweet
other your playing partner swings what you’re seeing is from over here
outside looking in they are performing it from where they are almost inside
that looking out it’s a completely different perspective and people say
well golf’s a game of opposites it’s like maybe it’s a game of not opposites from an opposite perspective that’s just
one way to look at it it’s like what you do in looking out yeah
looks the opposite from out looking in why wouldn’t it it’s like completely
different perspective okay so this is the sort of thing that has helped me come back out of wherever I went to
because I was trying to create shapes that I wanted to see from the camera yeah yeah I’m sure we’ve all done that
right we still do it okay Junior lessons you talked about setup and stuff I
remember video lessons with arrows on a screen and working at where my club should be at the top of the back so did
you did you get that as a junior yeah well we’re weird like I mean I do you’re a few years older than me Martin yeah
I’m about 10 years older than Bruce I would say we all had very different diets as a junior golfer when we went
through it and I remember there was a few like Ledbetter sessions that I had not with Ledbetter but led
better Academy video red lines on the screen I remember our club pro all he
ever used to teach me was set up and then shoulder turn at the top of the backswing and I was like I just none of
it ever felt productive like it didn’t turn me off lessons forever well it’s British you’ve been a lot more you know
you’re more sort of a product of some of the more modern swing instruction I think and you’re you’re an intense
reader on the topic as well so probably not fair well yeah I think yeah I I was probably someone who was
quite sort of instinctive with how I played the game and always had a decent short game and grew up you know playing
with brother Harry who’s two years younger who just he’s just flushed the ball from a young age and I was the kid
who was you know although despite being a bit older than him always a lot shorter and sort of skinnier and would be hitting sort of rope hook drivers
just to try and Chase it out there to keep up with him off the tee um and he couldn’t chip you know he was
just you know he’d sort of hit two flush shots onto the green or you know near to
the green just miss it and then you know sort of flub a couple and and you know blow his brains out or whatever and we
kind of had different you sort of have different approaches to it and then as a result I was like well I need to get
better at the long game if I want to compete and get better you know my short game was like exceptionally good when I
was when I was young growing up and then I sort of thought well I’m quite an analytical person I I naturally was
drawn more towards trying to break things down and the Maco Grady stuff’s quite interesting and how that’s maybe been taken on by a sort of new
crop of instructors at more recent times and how they’ve pushed it on and I mean the thing now is you can measure
everything so you can you can measure all these things such as you know the kind of ground reaction forces whatever
that actually means I’m not quite sure but you know um 3D but you’re into it stuff you can
put in all this stuff you can measure and and it’s it’s interesting you know there’s yeah obviously you talk about
the trackman ball flight laws earlier Martin like that’s certainly put to bed I think a fair amount of Doubt when as
to how the what actually makes the ball fly the way it does and I think maybe over the last five ten years
there’s been more um more of an understanding from the sort of the physics standpoint or the
biomechanics standpoint of what produces that kind of Club delivery into the ball
but and it’s helpful to a certain degree if you’re just looking at the golf swing
but you know everything you’ve just said there is absolutely right you know the 3D sensors or the kind of biomechanics
gizmos are still looking very much out correct sort of outside perspective
there’s nothing that can capture like human intention as to how am I going to move this club through space
um right when yeah when they design the machine okay that can get between me and the club
right in that in that sort of Realm whatever it is it’s not even a space
right because the club’s attached to me it can get in that realm then you can start to talk about my interaction with
the club measured right this is it I played with Steve elkinson last week it was great to catch up with
him and his son Sam I hadn’t seen him in a few years with the pandemic and everything and he was talking to me
about this latest thing that they’d gone on which was this 3D stuff okay yeah and
you know they found some things that that helped them to your point you know Dom’s like there is there is good
information in there absolutely you can see the the
most most good players doing very similar things okay so you say okay well that’s that’s what’s good but it’s still
an Open Door in Hogan’s language so we’ve shown you the open door and that
is that the pelvis moves this way but it doesn’t tell you because the pelvis isn’t an independent thing it doesn’t
move by itself so the pelvis is part of the whole thing so what is it that the
player is doing that gets the pelvis to move that way and when is he doing it or
she right so it’s like you’re not getting that information from the data you’re getting the information what
happens you’re not getting information of how to create it because if you create it in and of itself absent what
the good players are doing to create it then you’re not getting the benefit you’re just not so totally yeah so
there’s a you know I’m I’m not a I’m not against technology at all in fact the more information I have the
better because I have a filter through which that information goes and I know that I’m not going to suddenly start going down the
road of you know trying to hit positions of my body or the club anymore I’m done
with that but it’s still good information so I could make the case that what elk
told me was happening with the pelvis and how Sam had changed his and his swing looked better than ever so I was
like beautiful um you know the way the Pelican is I said well that gels with the way I believe
the the feet engage the legs which engages the pelvis to start the swing and so it’s like but
that’s how I would get it to happen right as opposed to it just move your pelvis yeah yeah those two things are
well not the same thing sort of jump on the back of that yeah because I think the the the the missing link here is is
kind of that intention it seems to me or like what are you actually trying to do when you’re stood over that ball and
yeah video cameras the 3D plates you mentioned there all this stuff
they’re great reference points and you could maybe identify and say well you look you’re you know how are you using
the ground there isn’t particularly efficient we don’t see that in great players or you know the angle that the club’s on halfway down in the swing is a
bit Steep and you’re probably gonna hit you know some pull hooks from there or some wipey Cuts but and that that might
be valid but I don’t think any instructor out there is all the vast
majority of instructions out there I should say are are really able to necessarily identify what causes that
because ultimately this golf swing seems to be certainly with better players to be a chain reaction that of of sort of
things that are happening and and where you sort of decide that starts to break down is the
kind of million dollar question which yes we will get a different answer depending on which instructor instructor in quotation marks of a sort of
technical disposition that you go to you’ll get a different answer because they might all agree that it’s sort of
deficient at one place but that’s a result of you know what’s gone on previously and that’s how you identify
the root cause of something is it’s just really really difficult in the in the
current way of looking at the golf swing that’s probably the you know one of the sad indictments of the game these days
is that um and I want a circle background on elk you mentioned out there I know you you worked together for a number of years I
want to Circle back around on that in a minute but there’s so many people out there that now just offer tidbits don’t
they they just want they just want the golden bullet they just want the quick thing the quick thing yes there’s no one
out there that’s really invested in the The Craft of the process and loving it and you know Bruce you’re probably an
exception to someone who’s super into understanding all facets of it but most people just want to get
how do I kill my slice you know how many times in the videos how do I get rid of my slice you know it’s like that that
itself is probably driving everything around swing understanding in the complete polar opposite direction of
where someone like you would want it to go right Martin like you yeah you want to stand the game not just
quick fixes you know and I think the game is the key word there because if you’ve got
if you’ve got an approach to the game that isn’t going to detract from your
ability to swing in fact it does the up it does the opposite I think and there’s there’s
there’s two basic approaches I’ll outline the one that most people employ and they do it it’s logical it’s linear
it makes sense that is that you go in and you aim okay that’s the first thing you do you agree that that’s reasonable
yeah your aim it’s good stuff then you get your stance and your posture and you get yourself ready and then hopefully
you make a good swing and if you do that you’ll hit a good shot correct that’s a normal logical approach to it
that’s what it looks like the best players are doing they aim they posture ready you know and then they’d make a
good swing but that’s nothing like what golf is okay that’s not how it’s played at a decent level at all
it’s more like Ronnie O’Sullivan so Rory when you’re watching or tiger or Brooks
kepka or any of these top guys they just go into the ball and they become there
shot they do that instantly and then from there they target that so they
target their shot hitting the ball gonna go there oh well I’ll just move here okay shoot
so it’s a completely different order of things aiming
okay that’s good that’s that’s done so I’m aimed okay now I’m postured okay that’s done good okay now it’s time for
the swing it’s like it doesn’t work that way it’s all together all the time and so
I think that’s the number one problem with people’s golf if they actually understood just to play golf like they
play pool or snooker just to start there even if their swing’s kind of crappy right it’s still going to be better long
term for their swing and their game then thinking oh I’m hitting it offline I’ve got to really make sure my alignment’s
good today all right well that’s not it so a line
here’s a just to finish this off alignment okay in picture alignment stick right parallel to the Target line okay every
millimeter you walk left as a right-hander on that alignment stick
perfectly aligned every millimeter you move sends it at least a degree further right
the ball okay so as you walk left the ball goes right as you walk right the ball goes left plus it also changes you
know other angles it’s not merely that it’s changing everything in fact so an alignment stick does not give you
alignment okay it’s three-dimensional yeah the ball is round so what you need
to think of is instead is the balls round I have to go around the ball and that selects my line
right so think of it’s like a gun turret on a on a ship right yeah it can go
around 300 wherever you point it it shoots and how do you point it well you go
around the you go around until oh shoots it yeah yeah so I mean alignment sticks
are they’re nothing so you said just in your first um description there with the alignment
stick just to kind of clarify that see yes that stick that’s parallel on the ground you’re saying for one of a better
phrase if you’re moving it up the ball up in your stance from a kind of two-dimensional standpoint or back
that’s actually people don’t realize that’s having an effect on it’s not just a case of are you stood
open or closed it’s like where’s the ball where’s the ball relativity to the left heel yeah so there’s that whole
three-dimensional aspect well this is this is this is this is so like that
alignment stick so there’s one one tiny little spot on that along that stick
where you could say it’s straight and everywhere that’s not that tiny spot
it’s no longer straight and yet the idea of the alignment stick is to align yourself but you don’t need to align
yourself you need to align the ball that you’re going to hit shortly in the future you need that ball
aligned yeah so how do you do that if you don’t do it with intuitive imaginative
um anticipation of what’s about to happen that’s what a good golf is doing and I say all this I know it’s kind of a
complicated uh thought process I hope someone’s not doing this at six o’clock in the morning
like I am to try to wrap their head around it but but just think about the fact that if
you’re playing football okay and and you guys two guys just kicking the football and Sam you kick it over there and Tom’s
got to go get it Tom doesn’t run to where the ball is he runs to where it’s going to be
and if I was to throw a ball at you there Sam and you caught it right you you wouldn’t put your hand
there uh where the ball is at any current time you put your hand where the ball’s gonna be and then you catch it
you’re like well how did you is that voodoo no it’s that relaxing yeah it’s instead
it’s Athletics yeah okay it’s sport okay so in golf the ball’s not moving so we think okay it’s not moving so I can aim
get in a posture right now if I just make a good swing at 110 miles an hour we’re in business
right it’s like whoa okay right and and rather you think okay I’ve got my six
iron in my hand here okay this is what I want people to try and take out the course I’ve got my six sign I’m ready to hit it okay I go in there ready to hit
it okay well it’s going to go left okay let me just move it okay now it feels pretty straight okay whack it
see what happens can you play that way I might I know you
can right you’ve got the ability everyone listening to this has the ability to do that tomorrow
it’s not like they’ve got to learn how to do that they’ve got to just decide to use that skill that they
already have the one that if you fight through a ball sand you’d catch it it’s no problem right although you Englishmen
I don’t know about you know you’re not known for that but let’s go back to the football analogy right you guys are
great at the football so but if you kick it off to the side of someone they run to where it’s going to be okay
just use that same thing apply it to golf it’s okay maybe my crappy swing as crappy as it is
that’s what’s coming but I know I’ve got my club I can hit this ball okay from here
where’s it going to go just ask that question of yourself where would it go if I hit it from here and you’ll get an answer
and you’re like well how did I know how do I know where it’s going to go well you know because you can preview the
future just like you can in any other sport even though the ball’s not moving yet it’s shortly going to be moving and
you’re anticipating that movement just like you do in other sports crazy I mean I don’t know how you feel
about this Bruce but um when I like that sorry I’ve just I’ve
called Bruce Tom twice now don’t worry it’s quite all right you know we uh
also on the podcast he’s fine I know but see that’s the problem I listen to you guys without the faces and of course I
haven’t talked to Tom ever I’ve talked to groups
but the thing is funny enough time sorry no Tom will be listening to this obviously and and he you know bringing
it full circle in a way he’s someone who’s actually picked up the game later on and so the stuff we were talking
about at the beginning in terms of that that kind of childish innocence do you have I think he can can speak to to what
it’s like to maybe pick the game up later on and just all of a sudden it kind of feels quite um uh stifling and
quite sort of claustrophobic in a way or just just you’re not you haven’t got that that maybe that freedom but that
I was like when we when you when we when we play sometimes Martin we drop to half a set and when you drop to a half set
you immediately have to start making shots because you’ve got to think about yes I’m gonna have to hit that seven iron low hard at the back foot it’s
probably going to turn over I’m gonna try and take a load off a five iron or whatever all of those different shots
start to come through your mind whereas and then I think you naturally become a better shot player when you do that and so many interesting people that just
don’t do that they just want to kind of go around 14 clubs in their bag like you say Rin trippy Max every shot out it’s
just you know there’s so much you’re mentioning there that I think resonates with people I do want to talk about elk
and some of your other stories as well from your time as well so you worked with Steve elkinson for a number of years right was uh was was really one
full year and then okay there was a Hiatus um for a couple of years and then when
he when he got back out on the champions tour we reconnected for a short time um
because you’re obviously both great players I mean both fantastic players but also you know I was nothing like him
so uh yeah I want to clarify I definitely was not
like but okay but you’re not like some instructors out there who kind of have the interest in the game kind of the
academic sort of um sort of understanding of it but but you know you’ve gone out and you flushed
the ball and shot 12 under sure sure you’re not bad no no that no fair enough
fair enough um what was that like what did that look like you know because you know yeah I can I can tell
you that um just to run to the end of it when he played at the PGA Whistling Straits
which he was leading with two holes to go and he hit it over the green on the 17th at the flag and he said later to me
said I couldn’t hit that ball over that green there’s no way with that club so what do I what do I do right so
um and that cost him the tournament but he was playing golf and I’ll just say it back to the comment you made early about
us both being great players I didn’t know golf could be played that well I was watching him that week yeah I on
the Tuesday that week I contacted his friend Terry okura and I said Terry he’s gonna win okay I told my mate in Australia I told
my mate in Australia I said get on him go large he’s winning right and so he
almost did but the thing is even though he was playing golf that I couldn’t had not even conceived could be played
that well right and I’d seen a lot of golf right but he did he had six seven other guys around
him that were in contention with him so it’s like that’s the level we’re talking about to win a major okay so it was real
eye-opener for me but and he was back to the was he on the champion store at this point or was he kind of late no this was
he was 48 7 47 48 yeah but before he was knocking on the door he was first made
yeah 20th you know early 20s I’m guessing or even ended up finishing I think either
one ahead of elk or tied with him or something like that so it was he was one of the guys that was in there
um so you know the the start of working with LP he had done what I believe we
all do when you make a decision of what you’re going to do with your swing the chances are that the movement you decide
to make is gonna is gonna detract from the quality of your swing and so as good
as he is and as much knowledge as he has which is a lot he was going the wrong direction and
I sort of could see that you know I had this one directional idea from tiger that I picked up and so the way that I
got out back into that One Direction was with this sort of abstract movement right and he he took to that straight
away he got the what he called the smash on the ball that he’d been missing and
he parlayed that into an unbelievable season run for him um
that sort of culminated in that PGA so um his mate Terry and I mentioned
earlier he he said that Elks never played this much golf in a row so he must be playing well because he elf
would only leave Houston if he was thought he could win because he didn’t want to leave his face he’s a family guy
he just like I’m I’m not leaving here to go play unless I’m serious about it
so that and so that shocked Terry that he was week after week after week he just kept playing and playing play
so that was fun I got to see it all up close which was great
like you know when you’ve got someone there who because I’ve seen some of his way I don’t know if this is subsequent
to that period of time I’m guessing it is but you know secret Golf and I think he’s worked with the likes Jackie Burke
and um news as well and he’s kind of looked at it maybe from a golfing machine kind
of geometry standpoint but you know clearly when he’s playing well he’s just sort of freed it up there to the point
where you know he he’s just keeping it very very sort of intuitive I guess
um how does that look like when you’re kind of working with him and then you’re trying to I mean he’s part of that just
trying to trying to stop him going down that that sort of tempting Rabbit Hole of like let’s go and anchor this in
something tangible like geometry or swing position how do you keep him away from that no he was well he’s he’s very
he would say he’s very into Math and Science and and he is but he
but he’s more into golf like he loves golf more than anyone I know okay he plays golf every I bet she still plays
golf every day right so and he’s not hasn’t played champions tour for years but he’s he’s still playing golf
he loves golf so he
he was never interested in taking what we were working on and making it concrete he wanted to understand it
about it and and we did talk about what it’s creating what it’s doing right but not from a positional standpoint he
didn’t need it from that point of view so if you watch him play golf uh if you wear back and look at the YouTube
highlights and whatever he goes and he takes a little swipe next to the ball right and that’s his sort of imprint of
you know what I said earlier when you know what’s coming yeah it’s like it’s the future right here’s this little
glimpse of the future he goes in and shoots it there’s no complicated he’s not going in there to do seven things
so when he trains it he trains it to become one thing takes that one thing in and shoots that one thing and and that’s
that was obvious to me he didn’t say that to me but that’s obviously what he does when I watched him up close it’s an
incredible process um and you know it’s a sort of mystery to me why he
didn’t win like he won 10 times on two or two players championships Etc it’s kind of a mystery to me and one major
but it’s a mystery why I didn’t win more because he really has you know it just tells me that there’s so many good
players out there that’s what it tells me you know it’s a long career as well though it’s a really long career where
he was playing in you know match Championship golf and stuff and like you say which brings into sharp Focus you
know they’re not many different things to win yeah not men near contending at that age and that against that field you
know Bubba Bubba was there Martin kymer won it DJ was there but for that penalty you know I
mean these are the the top echelona players aren’t they so yeah almost like a generation later you know just just
like thinking about players maybe of just a few sort of slightly abstract questions here Martin but any players
you see today that from a swing point of view just think maybe they’re totally misunderstood I.E the golfing world just
completely misunderstands them or they’re underrated or players that Fascinate you today that you look at I
think yeah just give us a little sort of peek behind the curtain on how you look at it well Brooke Henderson be the first
person I mentioned she her swing is unbelievably good it’s insanely good and
I from my point of view because of what I’ve learned from watching her I’d like put it up there with what I
learned from Tiger was transformational for me just that one directional movement that I talked about earlier
um and if anyone wants any you know I’ve got some videos going up on YouTube that’ll clarify that One Direction but
it’s a bit hard if you’re not seeing it but um in the Hogan the freedom see what came
out of the freedom was I realized that Hogan could have that freedom because he was so structured but Hogan was so structured and so
balanced and so perfect that everything Blended in just all Blended in and so with Brooke
she’s just a little bit outside that Hogan mold of everything Blended she’s it’s
sort of a slower more neutral type loading into a very
much a Hogan type process from there in in the sense that it’s it’s from the
transition to the Finish is just a flash of perfection okay but it’s how she gets
there that taught me the sequence of the swing and it changed my mind as to the sequence of events from the beginning
through transition it’s like that really helped me and she epitomizes that
sequence beautifully so that’s one player that you know
people I think she’s not she’s done you know she’s not uh rated poorly or anything but I know
some people think she should change a swing I’m like no no don’t touch it yeah
please like just leave her alone I mean the men’s game looks quite
um interesting I guess from from the you know the Bear in mind discussion we’ve
had over the last hour or so in terms of um you know the shapes that you see out on tournament in the top level of the
game um you mentioned earlier that you think you know maybe 20 years ago
30 years ago maybe maybe more recent than that that was the sort of an idea of golf instruction because it was so
very prescribed like there is almost one way to swing a club or there’s a couple and now we can look at the top 20
players in the world and say well there’s a huge Variety in terms of the shapes to the swing but um you know how do you see that now
they’ve all got this fundamental sequence and and dynamic at play I believe so slightly differently you know
someone like a John Ram or a um you know has that same sequence but it just looks different to a Matthew
wool for a Holland or a you know take your pitch yeah yeah that’s right and so
you know there’s a there’s a sequence of events and then there’s the rate at which that sequence unfolds right and
and what changes between these players is not so much the sequence but the rate okay and so
John Ram I’d put on one end of a spectrum and Matt wolf on the other I love both of their swings you know and I
think that’s what’s great about you know this modern game again if you think that
the shape of the Swing is is of crucial importance then you don’t understand what you’re talking
about because John Ram’s there with that shape and Matt will share with a completely and utterly different shape
and yet they both uh fantastic ball Strikers and
they’re both you know I know Matt Wolf’s had his issues and whatever and he’s gone to live and all of that but that guy is he is some player I mean when
morikawa won his PGA wolf was right there um and he finished second to Bryson at
that U.S open so I mean you know he’s he’s not uh it’s a game that’s my margin
is half a stroke his scoring average and all of a sudden you look very mediocre at that level don’t you but oh yeah and
it’s like he’s lost a few good talent yeah mentally he’s got obviously he’s got some off course issues and I can look I
can it’s not easy being out there on tour I don’t care even with all the millions of dollars that the guy’s got
it’s just yeah it’s not a very hospitable environment it really isn’t um if you’re a little
bit soft which is nothing wrong with being a little bit soft if you’re a sensitive sort of person there’s a lot
of going on out there that would would could get you down and um oh yeah
it’s just because you know there’s a there’s just so many things pulling you in so many directions
and you’ve got to you’re the only not only do you have to deal with all that but you’ve got to get yourself in there
and shoot that ball right so it’s it’s a tough it’s tough line of work not that I’m you
know hey they get paid well so yeah it’s uh it’s it’s a good job um but it is a
tough one what what do you think there’s one thing that you absolutely I don’t
know what’s the ones that are thing that just keeps you coming back with golf because you like buy your own admission
you just love the game right you love you love the swing you love golf like the most intimate level you totally and
utterly obsessed with the game how can you can you explain why like I
think we all have our own attachment to it but yeah in in the search for all the stuff you’ve done in your career and
working through the swing you must have at times thought what is it that keeps tracking me to this like what’s the draw
what is that I don’t know well from in my own case it was back when I was in my
early 20s um and even earlier when I was as I said that two-year period 12 to 15 where I
really learned the game I really wanted to play top level golf really wanted to play at the very top
and I kind of did my own I dug my own grave on that front right I gave myself no
chance because the decisions I’d made and so and they weren’t you know
I didn’t think I was trying to do the right thing but I didn’t and so I was I’m obsessed in some ways of figuring
out what is the right thing because you know I didn’t do it I did it quite
innocently to myself you know it’s a decision to start swinging it a certain way or whatever it’s like that’s what’s
helped me it held my attention for a lot of a lot of years now is is like instead of being
a a former player who lost his game and and I’m not being critical of any of the
people that are doing this but some of them are out there and they know it the things that they worked on that made
them sort of lose their game they’re now teaching like that to everybody right and it’s because they don’t know another
way and I was I started out doing that okay and I stopped my I was going home
and I was miserable I’m like I’m not going to teach people the things that cost me my game right
I’m just not going to do it so I’m either going to find a better way or I’m just going to do something else you know
well that’s it so that’s an interesting point actually there Martin you mentioned it um when you’re talking
about your days kind of teaching and then going out to to um qualify on there on on the Japan tour
yes and and you know that sort of got me thinking about about professionals who
have managed to maintain a high level of play with their own game while still
teaching and it just seems to be like there’s a vanishingly few of them nowadays who can really do that I think
elk you know it seems like he maybe had a go at it but then again not really I mean Robert Rock
seems to have done it a little bit out on tour but actually it’s quite a sad story that there’s so many Club Pros out
there who um that you see or just just teaching Pros generally who you see who can kind
of give what seemed to be correct and very well-intentioned lessons and yet they actually themselves don’t really
want to play the game because they’ve kind of almost built up so much kind of misery or just just negative emotion
towards yeah applying that to their own game and and it’s a shame that they can teach it but they fall out of love with
with playing the sport largely as a function of of how they see it it’s a
weird contradiction isn’t it yeah it’s it’s I think in part they’re two
different they’re two very different spaces you’re in so in in the teaching space you really really focused on the
behavior of the person in front of you I am anyway I’m not looking at the shapes of their swing or the Angles and I’m
looking at what are they trying to do okay and so if I go out and I play with a student
um I’m really focused heavily on their behavior and what they’re doing and so then I go in and here to shot them a
little bit all over the place right which is which is fine so I’m in teaching mode at that point but even
with myself in playing mode now if I’ve got no if I’m not teaching I’m just going out and playing which I love to do
um my good shots now are better than they ever have been and my bad shots now
are still worse than when I played on the tour because I don’t play golf every
every day hitting a bucket of balls and going out and shooting a score and all that I’m experimenting like crazy out
there like I’m I’m almost trying to break things to see if they break it’s
true it’s kind of what I do on a daily basis because you know if I’m gonna espouse certain things to do I need to
know how they’re broken or or you know and and I actually get a lot of enjoyment out of pushing the boundaries
of the things I’m talking about and so I’m still because I’m still living on the edge of
that my game is not it’s not I’m not ready for the tour so you know to do
what Robert Rock does is great I think that’s a real Testament to his ability just as a golfer to do what he does you
know I don’t know about his teaching but by all accounts he’s a good teacher so you know but he could certainly play
um yeah it’s that it’s interesting you put like that the different skills that you’re sort of bringing there when
you’re looking at someone and you’re coaching them it just yeah I guess I guess it kind of
speaks to how just fully absorbed you have to be in the golf shot and I don’t I don’t really
know how I can put it better than that or like more expensively than that to actually move that ball to the spot that
you want it’s um it’s more than just a case of life I think of a couple of positions or you know yeah a couple of
kind of conscious thoughts so it’ll all be fine it’s it’s like a it’s it’s a state of mind Bruce like this is the
thing it’s like you can have a couple of Swing thoughts and it works for a while right but in the end we know we all know
how long’s the longest lasting swing thought you’ve ever had so yeah they’ve got shelf life Sumner yeah Bruce what’s
your longest lasting swing thought you’ve had or my my swing thoughts tend to be you have to have a shelf life of a
pint of milk more than a fine wine you know they can’t yeah they kind of go out pretty quickly but no I don’t know quite
a long time yeah I can I mean I always no like I mean I mean time at the top in
transition is pretty much a catch-all for automating stuff so I’ll have that
as a swing thought you know I’ve probably been hanging on to that for a year or two like I’ll go back to that
and that’s that’s quite a good crutch but I don’t think that’s a swing thought I think that’s more than anything just
that’s just instilling timing yeah you know I think there’s there’s so much around
the you know have played played a few holes today played nine holes started thinking about kind of angles into out
and stuff for some reason slicing it you know coming right across the face more I
was trying to do what I was trying to do to fix it I was making the problem worse you know yeah you sit down listen to this and you’re like oh it’s totally
refreshing actually just turn up give it a free swing get yourself get your body in a position that feels like when I’m
playing at my best that’s where I’m at and then go from there rather than trying to put yourself in a position that feels unnatural
um but yeah I mean I do agree I think I think swing thoughts have their place
though I think everyone needs oh yeah you know even if even if the swing
thought itself is to stop you trying to do something in other words it sort of fills the
space yeah that’s there right so filling the space is a good thing and I for that I like to have an abstract thought you
know so maybe it’s I’m going to just freely let it swing left let’s say yeah or or whatever it is you know it’s just
something that you know you’ve you’ve made a decision beforehand that you’re going to do this and that the fact that
you’ve made that decision stops you doing anything untoward while it’s unfolding but it just I’ll touch back on
something you just said there Sam about going out there and feeling what I was saying earlier so if you give yourself
permission to get ready to really hit the shot you want to hit like you’ve got the ball
there in the club you okay and if you just give yourself permission to take a look out there and sort of quickly
decide where you think it will go try this on the Range first of course but if you think it’ll go at the Target
just come back in and just shoot it at the Target but if you feel like it’s going to go to the right chances are that is probably where it would go so
move move yourself the whole thing don’t just move the club face or whatever just move it into the way you’re approaching
it even write down to how you walk in on it these sorts of things matter you know like well you’re already in there so
don’t walk out again and come back in just just move around the ball see the ball’s Round And if you move around it
it changes the line that’s the way to look right so alignment sticks should be around yeah
you know Bruce you’ve always got them down I I just don’t get it like that’s
because I can’t see it yeah I know you’re my eyes I just don’t see straight and I particularly when I’m like over
the ball I use it more as a feeling of like just a just to almost experimentation
really because I’m someone who who kind of defaults to I’ve got to do everything Square I’ve got to do everything nice
and square and nice lines and everything’s neutral and and actually I kind of almost use an alignment stick
out in the course or a couple of them just to kind of throw me off and be like oh wow okay like for some reason I’m
kind of set up really far right and the balls of my stance and okay maybe that’s why I’m not getting the squash on it
that I want it’s but but you know just kind of not wanting to turn this into a
sort of therapy session for mine in San Jose but no I know because I think I I think I can give myself permission to
maybe make a half decent Point here but I can vividly remember playing in a medal last year
and um hopefully you’ll come come and play Black Crow on your next server in the UK Martin but the the 14th and 15th
are um back-to-back par fours first time you play um holes that are back to back of the
same part at Blackwell and uh I remember I just saw like carved my t-shirt off the foot off the 14th to eat obviously a
tee shot Square stance flat stance should be the easiest shot in golf right I don’t hit it into the trees and the
struggle kind of with with uh with ball striking all day and then all of a sudden you’re presented with a shot
that’s deep in the woods and you’re kind of thrust back into that childlike mindset of like here’s a window okay I’m
just gonna take five iron to this and if I don’t get this right it could probably come hurtling back at me in the face and
I’m gonna yeah maybe knock myself out or take ten um but you pull it off and all of a sudden you’re like wow okay that was
like I was just so immersed in the sort of the shot and where I needed to put
myself to allow that ball to fly out and then curve back and then you know stand
up on the sort of next tea box trying to hit straight shot and you kind of knock it into the trees left and then you have
to hit like a you know a sort of hook the exact opposite way and again Force
back into it you can do it and yet despite finding myself on The Fairway a few times in that round
and you know obviously on the t-box you that’s you’re kind of starting from scratch there it should be a very very
straightforward exercise that seems like the hardest thing in the world and you try and put these kind of
um Easters in place to keep you on track like stabilizers but when you’re kind of
thrust off the beating track and you’re given what should in theory be a harder more demanding task
you know that’s a brilliant this is something look this is this is a fascinating thing because if you go back
to that tournament I told you about where I just cut every ball and finish fourth right after had no swing
this is where I went wrong back then okay and where you haven’t necessarily
gone wrong because you’re now making this great point but you could potentially go the wrong
direction when you tell that story you say hey what does that story mean okay what it means is that
the reason you’re able to cut it out of the trees through a window and hook it out of the trees through a window is that you’re tapping into something
that turns you into a golf ball shot striking machine right that works
and then you hit on the T and you’re doing all these things like paying well getting a posture just now I just got to
make that good swing you know it’s like it’s it’s it’s not the same thing no and one works and one doesn’t and you’re
saying well why does it work on the harder shots it’s like well because of how you’re approaching them yeah they’re not harder like in in some ways they are
because they’re more than a straight shot but like doesn’t a six foot straight putt require
the same precision as a six as a you know
20-foot braking putt they all require the same Precision yeah even though they’re all different so the shot out of
the trees requires no more or less Precision than the tea shop so they’re not more difficult I would
argue they all require but to drive it perfectly requires Precision so you
can’t go up there and do it the wrong way you’ve got maybe slightly bigger margin
for area instead of a 30-yard fairway there off the tee it’s like okay I’ve got to hit this through a two foot slot
otherwise you know I can’t afford to miss this shot a few feet either way because I’m right he’s gonna hit a tree
and come back I’m actually I’m actually not trying to
make I’m not trying sorry I’m not trying to make your like I’m not trying to uh belabor that particular Point what I’m
saying is that the you play the heart the seemingly harder ones better because your approach to
them is golfy yeah I would argue your approach is golfy and your approach to
the seemingly easier one is not golfy then since I believe they’re equally
difficult even though one’s apparently more simple they both require Precision yeah when you do it in a
non-golfy way you don’t do it very well um right so it’s not really an easier shot
you can’t you can’t play it the wrong way and get away with it that’s that was
my point doesn’t it Martin it validates It ultimately which makes you when you’re
talking about that you look at someone like you know Bubba Watson who is very free when he stands over what is what
looks like you know a typically quite a straight goal shot and he will want to factor in a whole load of movement and
want to picture something that’s much more outrageous than a traditional golfer would and then move around it in
a completely different way and yes you know he’s happy to carve his own path in terms of the way he gets the ball in the
hole and I think you know as people who watch the game and whether it’s people we play with in our club or watch
professionally there’s something very endearing about that and I think if you’re not going to bake a living at it
it’s nice to feel like you’re a shop maker or a ball hitter rather than a technician and a surgeon at it you know
so it’s yeah well I’d go back to Bruce’s story like it that is the story story of
Bruce and me and golfers like us and you too Sam we play as young people we
somehow we have all this success playing golf a certain way and then we all just
throw that out there are literally different ways to play the way you would describe you
playing the shots out of the trees is a way to play a shot and you could play the tee shot the same
way but for some reason you don’t because you’ve got options you’ve got the option to do A B C or D and you’ve
chosen C and D rather than a and b and and here we are yeah
I should have been able to more coherently make that point earlier but that was what I was trying to get at is
that we all know how to do it because we’ve done it but we don’t yeah we don’t accept the truth of that and say well
that actually that might be the best way to go about it it seems like I’m leaving too much to chance though in other words
yeah yeah sorry that was my uh my kind of follow-up question really then is
that it’s I think maybe part of it is why it’s so difficult why we kind of fall into that
that trap is because it almost feels like you’re letting go of the steering wheel as a sort of analogy you just and
I just I think for an analytical logical kind of rational person it just feels
like that that it shouldn’t be that straightforward and I think this is why you’ve given me but yeah you know
when we had our little kind of catch up before we um before we we we we uh we scheduled this podcast and came on air
you know there’s an unbelievable quote I think um that that you tell and one of your students that Cameron Beckman he
says that the hardest thing about this game is how easy it is and I think that maybe sort of TAPS into a little bit is
that it’s almost you you wanna you don’t wanna um kind of give up all control
yes you feel like you’ve gotta you’ve got to make it harder than that well now you now you’re tapping into what I said
at the very start the type of golfers I want to help which is most golfers right it’s ones that played when they were
younger and then lost that youthful Freedom um I think Podrick mentioned this you
know young innocence versus old experience and both have their benefits but neither has both you know yeah the
old guys lost his innocence and right so to your point there is like you have this
there’s no way that I can go out and play like a 12 year old I’ve seen too much done too much good and bad right
and so but let’s make it not simple necessarily
but specific and that’s the difference so when you’re in the trees specifically what you’re doing because you’ve got to
curve it after hitting it through a gap so you’ve got there’s a lot going on there but
with the lot going on there that you have to achieve yeah your approach is to
go where you feel you can create that impact Direction and curvature and then
you hit it on that angle let’s say just like Ronnie O’Sullivan goes in on the pool table snooker table there oh I’ll
go on that angle and shoot the cue ball which hits the red ball and goes off on the angle right it’s there’s a way to do
that that isn’t that complicated and you could do that on the tee you could walk
into a Direction right get the club in your hands and ready to shoot in the right place for
you to shoot it and then look out there and go yep there it is it’s I’m on my line and shoot it you don’t need it to
be more complicated but we think okay surely it can’t be that
easy there’s got to be more to it right and well unfortunately if you make it as
though there is more to it you’re sort of spoiling the soup so to speak and so
the reason it has to be only this much is because even though the ball’s sitting there right you don’t have all
the time in the world you have to be on an athletic timing right so you’re in motion you’re in
sequence right that’s where the motion comes from you can’t just be a robot out there there’s just no way
I think everybody knows that glitter and bad players know that yeah and you can almost actually see a bad shot I I don’t
know whether this is a hopelessly arrogant statement but I couldn’t feel like I can almost see a bad shot coming
from a playing part and I’m sure they can see it in me as well definitely when you get someone over the ball and I
don’t know whether it’s they freeze up and they don’t have the kind of shifting subtle pressure shifts that’s going on
in the fee or just a looseness and a general I think yeah generally they just kind of seized up and everything becomes
static and they don’t have the kind of that sort of dynamic balance that you
need to have if you’re going to get in there and just really kind of yeah point it and then and then shoot it with some
real Freedom 100 in and there’s actually a there’s a yeah my friend Michael Powers we’ve got uh Northbound golf
together which we’re on a bit of a Hiatus the pandemics kind of kept us apart a bit but nevertheless uh our work
is sort of geared around what you’re talking about there’s this this Rhythm that exists
um there is a time that you need to be on right and it’s the time you and the club in motion right because
it’s about to happen at 100 miles an hour right so you you have to get yourself on that time yeah before it
happens because if you’re not on that time before you’re not going to get on that time during right and so that’s
what you see when you see someone and you’re like oh this doesn’t look good right and conversely when you watched a
good player preparing and and you can see it coming you’re like oh right yeah
you can see it coming right that’s Rory like Rory on the main it just wears it
out right he just sticks the Finish it’s just right and off it goes 340 down the middle thanks for coming right
that might be my new favorite expression actually going forward is just wearing it out yeah I was just actually wearing
it out um but yeah yeah yeah I couldn’t agree more Martin you’ve been at an absolutely
fantastic um with you on this uh on the podcast
really appreciate you taking the time we’ve almost gone for I think best part of a couple of hours which has been been
amazing and the worrying thing is we could easily do a couple of hours more but um we we we better let you go
um for our listeners who want to find out more about the great work that you’re you’re doing and and how they can
um kind of look into this a little bit more this this very captivating way of of of playing the game much more
liberating when they’re playing the game how can they how can they find out more about it yeah so um I’ve got
a website with my friend Michael northboundgolf.com um Michael that I mentioned earlier and
then also the YouTube channel currently I’d suggest uh aside from going to Northbound golf to also check out the
YouTube channel which is Northbound golf uh just search that in there and it’ll come up uh I’m going to be I’ve just put
up the first uh video of a playlist it’s it’s called Uh slam and Sam Sam sneed’s secret I
think he had a secret not just Hogan um and I don’t think he necessarily tried to keep it he put it in a book so it’s
right there that’s the first video and I’ll be sort of from now on uploading some stuff to
YouTube that sort of outline this um this different approach and I think that
what I said earlier aim well get in a good posture make a good swing it’s a logical linear approach to playing a
golf shop it’s also fundamentally wrong and hurtful to your golf game so you
know I’ll be putting content up that shows you how to deal with that and hopefully they’re supposed to do
some stuff again in due course as well be that when you’re traveling over be that some some more stuff in terms of
looking and swing and looking at some different things how I mean you could just do five hours with Bruce on just
group therapy and we could stick that behind the panel and I think I think there’s an audience for it if you can fix my short game that’s with me I’d say
yeah yeah my full swing you can do Sam’s short game and chipping I mean yeah we
could just give you a different project of time you can just do whatever you want with him I mean yeah you know that would be something I’d be very
interested in doing we could do a little bit of collaboration there on the on the content sort of side of things so I’d like that and I think you know it is
foreign one of the things you asked me earlier you know what keeps me going with this right so what what keeps me going from
the teaching point of view I know how I I can see just like you can
Bruce when you watch someone about to screw it up royally right on I can see
the potential in even the the most base Chopper right who has no idea what
they’re doing okay I know what they’re capable of if they had the right idea yeah I mean that you
know it’s not I’m not trying to knock the bow space job but you know they’re they’re out there people who just they’ve got the wrong idea because they
started playing golf when they’re 45 and they just they never figured out and they never really had a chance to
because there’s no there’s no information to take a 45 year old and turn him into an athlete playing golf
right so that’s my mission is to I know that
people it’s it’s not so much it’s not that I couldn’t or wouldn’t want to help someone like Steve elkington again get
their swing going again but I’m more interested in providing the information that can make the game vastly different
from enjoyment and ease standpoint for every golfer yeah and the fundamentals
I’m going to put out here on YouTube I’ll be honest with you I think there’s three or four of them and I think in
five years if they’re not the fundamentals that everybody’s talking about then I’ve failed because they are truly yeah they’re I think their
transformation I’m trying to get that out there so I
appreciate you guys having me on the pleasure yeah I mean what a what a great time and
um Martin once again thanks so much for your underpart it’s it’s been class awesome