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The Measured Golf Podcast
With so many amazing things happening in the Measured Golf Community, we have decided to start a podcast to discuss all of the amazing things that we are seeing have a positive impact on our athletes. Whether it be Ground Reaction Forces, Golf Biomechanics, or strategies for making the most out of your limited practice time, we hope that this podcast becomes a resource for you to finally become the player you know you can be!
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To learn more, or to visit the Measured Golf facility in person, please, find us on the web at measuredgolf.com.
The Measured Golf Podcast
Understanding Your Short Game Recipe with the Short Game Chef
Discover the secrets to mastering your short game with Parker McLaughlin, the Short Game Chef, in our latest episode. Parker's transition from a victorious playing career—highlighted by his win at the 2008 Reno Tahoe Open—to becoming a renowned short game coach brings a treasure trove of insights. With a communication style shaped by his athletic family background, Parker simplifies the complexities of wedge play and short game mastery, making them accessible to all golfers. Expect to learn how mastering these techniques can dramatically lower your scores.
In our conversation, Parker breaks down the intricacies of wedge play, sharing practical tips for achieving softer shots with controlled spin and effectively using the club's bounce. By examining the techniques of elite golfers like Dustin Johnson and Davis Love, Parker illustrates how different methods can lead to more consistent and controlled shots. We also tackle common misconceptions and provide actionable advice to help you identify and correct excessive ball speed for better accuracy and control. Whether you're struggling with chipping, pitching, or bunker shots, Parker's insights are invaluable.
after that, like I'll kind of throw it to you and we'll talk a little bit, and I got a few questions and we'll rock and roll. Love it All. Right, cool, you ready.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:All right, my man. Hello and welcome to another episode of the measured golf podcast. It's a new season with lots of new guests and, man, we have been very fortunate this year to really have a great lineup for everybody listening. So, without further ado, this week we are very privileged to be joined by none other than the chef himself, and that is the short game chef. For those of you unfamiliar, mr Parker McLaughlin.
Speaker 1:Great guy, love Parker, loves what he does, and one of the things that is really cool about Parker is that he has this crazy family of athletes. And like, when I say a crazy family of athletes, I mean he's got a family full. I think one was an Olympian, if I'm not mistaken. So I mean I'm talking about volleyball athletes that grew up in Hawaii and probably can jump through a gym. But Parker isn't on here to talk about how he can jump through a gym and hit bombs. Parker is actually here to talk about how he's got these magical recipes for everybody when it comes to the short game. And I think Parker has a very unique perspective on the short game, not so much that his concepts are completely far-fetched and different from what's been taught in the past, but I think Parker has a very different communication style than most would when it comes to how they help people play better with their short game. So, without further ado, the man, the myth, the legend, the chef himself Parker's here. So, parker, how are you doing, buddy?
Speaker 2:I'm great, michael. Thanks for having me, man, I'm stoked to get into this conversation with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's kind of funny because if you look at the industry right now, I think that the hitting bombs phase is starting maybe to cool just a little bit. I don't think it's going anywhere. I think people still are hitting bombs, but I think it's starting to cool a little bit because people are realizing that no matter how good at golf you are, you still miss greens and if you want to try to shoot a low score, then you need to be able to protect yourself when you miss those greens. Want to try to shoot a low score, then you need to be able to protect yourself when you miss those greens, and the chances of being able to hit a bump and run seven iron all the time are probably pretty limited. So I think guys like you are really bringing a lot of attention to the short game and I definitely think it's one of those areas to where we need more attention. So I applaud you for bringing more attention to the short game.
Speaker 1:But I'm just curious, like you know, when you were coming out here and wanting to be a coach and making that transition, because you were a player and I mean you won on tour, right? So Reno Tahoe Open, I believe in 2008 was a win for you. So I mean, it's not just that you were a player, it's not just that you were a guy that won, but, like, you went out there and had that career and that identity and then decided to get into coaching and I'm just curious as to what kind of made you want to, like, sink your teeth into the short game specifically? I know that you're well-rounded and can coach other areas, but you are known as being the short game chef.
Speaker 2:No, I think you know I would say this is going to be probably a fairly long answer, but you know, I think yeah, I think that I think that good coaches you know, they've got good information they can, they can observe what a player is doing, you know, potentially incorrectly or maybe inefficiently, and they can, they can get right to the root cause of that. And then the final piece I think you know of like a main tenant of coaching is like communication skills. Can you communicate in a way that your student is going to understand? So I, you know, you kind of gave me that great intro with like my, you know, my mom was actually an Olympian.
Speaker 2:My dad was a two-sport athlete at Stanford. My brother was a Gatorade Basketball Player of the Year in Hawaii as a senior in high school, but also the National Player of the Year for volleyball and went to Stanford and won a national championship at Stanford. But now my dad has been a. He was a Barack Obama's basketball coach. He's been coaching basketball and volleyball for 45 years. He's also a broadcaster in Hawaii, commentates all the University of Hawaii men's and women's games for volleyball that's awesome.
Speaker 2:And my brother is now. He's at his maybe fourth school coaching volleyball. So he's at USC in Southern California there and he's coaching he's the associate head coach at USC Women's Volleyball. So the communication skills I feel like I've sort of inherited or developed over a long period of time. I remember specifically going to do the PGA Tour Lives.
Speaker 2:I did 30 PGA Tour Lives as I was sort of transitioning out of playing and I was needing some work and whatnot.
Speaker 2:It was a great thing to do, but one of the things that it really helped me with was taking a three or four minute thought and bringing it down to like a 20 second soundbite that I could deliver from when the shot was hit to then when we cut to the next shot.
Speaker 2:And so I really had to develop my thoughts and really put my thoughts in a way that I could. I could deliver a a four minute thought in a 20-second soundbite. And so that communication sort of skill was honed sort of through my parents, through my brother, through myself working at it and trying to become a better communicator. And I think one of the things that we get comments on for our website and the program that we have there is on how easy and digestible and easy to understand it really is, and so I think that's something like I take a lot of pride in is just making it simple, taking it from like something that can be very, very complex and just bringing it down and boiling it down into something simple, applicable and that somebody can really get in the first two or three swings and they're like, boom, I got it to be able to like kind of say it quicker, right, like by doing the PGA tour live.
Speaker 1:And then it was like because you needed to, let's say, optimize your delivery right To kind of turn it back into golf.
Speaker 1:Like you kind of went through the skill of learning how to really be more concise, with not only how you spoke about it but also the thought process behind it that allowed you to kind of turn four minutes into 20 seconds. So I definitely think that that's interesting. I take I've never had to do PGA Tour a lot, so luckily I would be terrible at it because I'm the opposite. I like to take and really explain the concept itself to somebody, because I truly believe that most golfers are truly way better golfers than they think they are, and I think they know that because they've seen themselves do incredible things with a golf club in their hand. So golf is very weird thing to where you can see your potential before you can really own it. You know what I mean. Like you can hit that one great shot out of a large bucket. It doesn't mean you're going to go hit every great shot, you know what I mean. So it's it's tough because we see that potential, but where I think it's really difficult for golfers is that most of the time when you try to explain something to them, even something as simple as hey, your club path is way too out to end or into out. Even just explaining that, sometimes like they don't understand what you mean. Like they understand maybe that that means the golf club is moving rightward at impact or leftward impact, but they don't understand that the golf club had to move from someplace previously. And that's where, like, I think explaining concepts to people is mega, mega helpful and then kind of reverse engineering from the full concept into the simple and the applicable, because me explaining and me coaching, right, like I think I wear both hats when I coach. I think I'm an instructor and a coach. It's my job to instruct in the kind of pre-work of what we're going to try to do.
Speaker 1:Hey, here's the concept we're talking about, here's what I mean when I say this. And then from here we're going to talk about what you're going to do, and that's what I think you do incredibly well is that you have a credential that I can never have, or I mean maybe eventually, but it'd take a lot of work. You're a winning tour player, right? I've never even played on tour. So if I'm standing on the on the short game area and I go hey and I go Mayo on them, I want, like I want you to hit 10 down on this. They're like I don't know man, that sounds a little iffy. I've never heard that before.
Speaker 1:But if I'm you, because I have that pedigree and I have that distinction, people are more likely to buy into what you're saying. And I think what you do is you stay very, very true to where you're coming from and you kind of more or less I hate to say it this way because it sounds like I'm diminishing, because I'm not but you come very much from the player perspective. I feel like I come very much from an outsider perspective, the coach coming in but you definitely are kind of teaching more what I would describe as an inside out approach. Hey, this is what I feel, this is what I'm trying to do, this is what I should see, if I feel that, okay, cool, let's try that and see if it lines up. And I think that's amazing because that's what players have available on the course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and and and. Not all, not all players are great coaches. You know, I think it it takes you sort of have to remove yourself a little bit, because it's like I'm not always just telling people like, hey, this is my feel, right, I've got.
Speaker 1:I mean, you've seen it, there's a million different types of matchups and swings Right, and so you know, in all honesty, recipes, recipes exactly, and there's certain things that match up right, like you're not going to put.
Speaker 2:Like you're going to put vanilla and cinnamon, like those things go together, but you're not going to. You know, be like I'm going to throw some coriander and some paprika and I'm going to also add some lemon spice and you're like, well, that doesn't go together. So it's like, you know, I think one of the things that I wanted to do is like I I know my lane right. Like I was, I was very good at short game. I knew sort of the the tenants of like what what short game, what things worked, what things didn't work under pressure, what things worked and didn't work. Putting as well I was. I was very good at those things, but I mean, I got.
Speaker 2:I got to say that my, my education, a lot of my education, came sort of after I had lost my card and I was able to spend a bunch of time with Paul Azinger and a lot of my education came from learning from him, asking him questions. He was one of those players and I don't know if I mean he's sort of, he's sort of one of those guys where it's like he was on TV and he was like every weekend and I don't think we fully appreciated the golf iq that he has. I remember, you know I, I spent seven, eight years, you know, hanging with zinger uh, he was, you know I. I'd gone to a dark place with my own golf game and my own golf swing and zinger was a a huge friend and mentor to me. I had known him when I was 16 years old, when he would come to Hawaii and play play the Sony open. He'd come a week early and we would. I played nine holes with him when I was 16. So I've known him for a long, long time and you know it was.
Speaker 2:It was funny because, as I started to get to know him in 2008, I won the reno tahoe open, which was like just before the pga championship, which was just before the rider cup that he was captaining, and in that like time frame, basically every european had won. Nobody from america won. Basically the previous two months leading up to, like the PGA championship, the Ryder cup was like Padraig Harrington, vijay Sergio, all these guys were winning. I was the only American that won and it was my second year on tour. It was an opposite event, but Zinger happened to tell me afterwards he's like dude, I almost called you because you were the only American that had won and I was like, oh, I don't know if I'd have been ready for that spotlight.
Speaker 2:But anyway, zinger took me under his wing and and and this guy is unbelievably smart when it comes to digging it out of the dirt and checking things off the box of like okay, I'm going to try to hinge it and release it and see what ball flight that comes with into the grain down, grain tight lie, bear, lie. First cut what you know out of the full rough like and he would check these things off of the box Like. He, like he was so systematic about it and it was really fascinating to to be able to spend this much time with him and then play around with all right, what am I doing with my? With my weight positioning? What?
Speaker 2:am I doing with the hinge? What am I doing with my body rotation? What am I doing with all these things? And then, how do they all match up? And then what can I see?
Speaker 2:As far as a ball flight goes, what am I doing with shaft lean? What am I doing with just all the varieties of things that you can kind of put together when it comes to short game? And as we started playing around with some of these things, zinger's like dude, why are you leaning that shaft so far forward? Why are you? Why like your balls coming out so hot, like let's, how would you soften that thing?
Speaker 2:And one of the one of the first lessons we had was like. He was just like. He's like all right, hit me, hit me a high one, just a slightly high shot off of a bermuda grass, putting green into the grain, and I was like dude, I don't think that I can. And he's like no, he's like let's go. And so, anyway, I took a big old chunk out of the green and he's like you are an absolute idiot, how you're, you've won on tour or whatever. Like you, how do you not know how to hit this shot? So anyway, that was sort of like my first real introduction to like learning how to use the bounce, learning how to engage the bounce, and it was like all of a sudden I'm like, oh my gosh, this, this finger would hit these 30, 40, 50 yard pitch shots, where I was like I've never heard a sound like that in my life. And I've played on tour, I've played with anthony, I played with dustin, I played with phil.
Speaker 1:I mean I've, I've played with real quick speaking of, I think, most underrated wedge player of all time, dj yeah, and d and DJ plays from like slightly shut right Like you don't.
Speaker 1:And lays it dude, like if you watch him work the handle from about mid down through. You want to talk about like getting an ideal situation for never having one come off hot, like you were talking about, because, like you said he delivered, he wants to deliver it closed. So then he almost like backs it out and dude. You talk about just creating this like perfect little face to path scenario and like you can just kind of make those things come off buttery smooth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I watched him at augusta national for about 30 minutes and just amazement and how far and how high he picked it up and would just lay it down, man, and I mean I mean I've seen Tiger do it a bunch. I've seen a lot of really talented guys with a wedge. I was fortunate to be around Davis Love a lot back in like 2009 out in Sun Valley when he was out there not fly fishing, which he was fly fishing most of the time but when he wasn't, I got to watch him and I mean it's just like you see guys make big swings and like we all think of Tiger at Muirfield and the big flop you know that he knocked in and things like that but it's like DJ's kind of made like a career, like that's kind of a stock shot for him and he just kind of throws it way up there and it just lands really soft and he's just kind of like, use that shot, I think really effectively for most of his career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's different ways to sort of soften the golf ball and that, and that's sort of like. You know, one of the things that I learned from Zinger is just like how, how do I soften the golf ball while still maintaining some spin on it? And I think that, yes, you can. You can obviously like roll that club face with your hands or your forearms. You can roll that club face with your hands or your forearms. You can roll that club face open, but you also don't have to right, like you can, you can also leave that face square. Or, like you know, like I was showing a guy this morning that I was working with and and I I was showing him uh, I just started working with this kevin doherty, um, who bombs it, and and used to roll that face open, but he would have like some sort of retraction with his, with his trail elbow, and it was just like he just thought okay super hard to time and he just thought well, I got to take more ball speed off by rolling it more open.
Speaker 2:And it was like, dude, you're you're missing, like that's the bandaid, like you're missing the real focus and the real reason as to why you're creating so much ball speed, which was this trail elbow.
Speaker 1:Would you say that most and I know you're talking about a really good player and I'm going to leave this open to both really good players and not so really good players, players and not so really good players but would you agree with me that one of the biggest problems people have when they're trying to hit wedges is that everybody immediately wants to open the face?
Speaker 2:yeah, and and like, if you get halfway back and and if that face is, let's say, square to your spine angle, um, dude, you can, you can, you can hit some amazing shots from there, whatever you want, it does not it does not need to be open, you do not need to, you don't need to flare that thing open.
Speaker 2:Right, it's just like. Again, I I'm from the school of like let's, let's make it really simple to start with and then we can get really creative off of that. But you gotta have simple. Like DJ, when he revamped his, his, his, his short game and his wedge play, like he just went simple.
Speaker 2:It was like dude, there was minimal wrist right, he, just, he just pivoted a lot of width, no wrist tons of width and then all of a sudden he was like no, he was super shallow through the turf and it was like he could clip it. So he went from like being able to smash it to then and using the ground quite a bit, to then just clipping it.
Speaker 1:But I would describe dj right, like kind of what you were talking about with your player this morning, to where it's like you know a lot of the let's say I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try my best here. Chef, you tell me how I'm doing here. If you like, have ingredients that you tend to use, they give you like a superpower with the driver, which is how I would describe dj. Right, like that was his superpower, right, like those recipes are good for that, but then at the other lane of that recipe per what the task is. So, like I'm not a foodie at all, like I'm a vegetarian, uh, so like, apparently I hate food is what that means, I guess.
Speaker 1:But anyway, like I've been to a couple places where they do some like fine dining and I always enjoy the places to where, like, they deconstruct something and like it's still that, but it's in a completely different presentation. Right, and it's kind of what we're talking about here. It's like you can hit a pitch shot and they can look a lot of different ways, but like, at the end of the day, I still need to taste pitch shot when I eat it. You know what I mean. Like, if I'm trying to do pitch shot and tasting steak, something's gone terribly amiss.
Speaker 2:Like absolutely, and then and then, as a as a good player, even as a bad player, you're going to see compensations or reactions through impact to try to soften it Right. It's like you know I get a lot of guys that smash the golf ball that come to see me and they're like I hit it, I smash it, you know 185 ball speed, but you know I I'm terrible inside of 50 yards and it's like cause it's a totally different skillset Like you want to be able to remove them, the things that you do so well with your driver and your irons. We need to remove all those ingredients and just reconstruct something for inside of 50 yards, off of a tight fairway lie, that's.
Speaker 2:That's where I'm always like it's almost you got to compartmentalize it right, the same way that you're not going to make the same swing with a seven iron as you'd make with a driver two different swings right there's some, there's some similarities, but it's you're hitting way up on one, you're hitting down on another, like you're trying to compress one, you're trying to like send another one, two fair, two fairly different sort of philosophies, and same thing goes once you're inside of 50 yards. It's like dude, I don't want, I don't want a bunch of shaffling, I don't want a bunch of compression on this golf ball. That's inside of 50 yards, off a tight fairway line. And I would say, maybe, you know, maybe that range is sort of different. It depends on how far the guy hits it.
Speaker 2:Like a 185 ball speed guy, it's probably like 50, 55, 60 yards. A 140 ball speed guy, it's probably more. Like inside of 30 yards. Right, it's like for the guy that's 140 ball speed, your recreational golfer, it's like dude, I'm building in a lot more compression from about 40 yards 50 yards. Like. I'm like, dude, we need to like lean that shaft, we need to like get that pressure going more forward. Um, in the downswing, I want you, stepping through and walking through this thing, to create that, create that compression, because they're not getting the same amount of compression as a tour player who normally is really good at compression.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean they're just not very similar things. I mean, when you go, you know I get it and I've been fortunate, I've spent a lot of time out there. I also am fortunate and spent a lot of time on public golf courses playing public golf with people I got paired up with. So I mean I definitely get a fair view of both things and I get it. Like it's really impressive watching guys and girls that are professional players hit tee shots. It really is.
Speaker 1:There's nothing that I can say about it that doesn't make you want to go and see them do it, nothing that I can say about it that doesn't make you want to go and see them do it. But the thing that they totally get undersold on man is like the way that they control trajectories and spin rates and I mean it's just my favorite thing about Augusta National and I know that this is like the one thing that they actually didn't do, right, I believe or not. There are things, ladies and gentlemen, that Augusta doesn't have't have perfect. Please don't take my ticket privileges, but like they have an uphill driving range, right? The tournament practice grounds is an uphill range, correct, right? You've been there a bunch and like, generally, what's a golfer hate the most? An uphill range because the ball doesn't look like it goes very far. Right, but here's the reason I love the uphill range and here's why I think augustaa actually got it right. So now they'll give me my tickets back.
Speaker 1:So the reason I think it's great is because because it's dark as the ball is flying, because it's uphill and you're using the turf as the background, you can kind of like I'm getting older so I can't see the ball as long as I used to, but like you can actually see the ball fall. And that's the thing that like people don't, like I think amateur golfers don't get is that when you watch that golf ball fall, that thing is floating to the ground. It's not in a free fall. It doesn't like change speeds on the way down. Like that is literally them managing the spin rate of that golf ball.
Speaker 1:And I think when you really Augusta's great at this because you have the short game area kind of right next to the range, but like when you're able to sit there and watch these guys hit a lot of partial wedges, you watch them and they're always telling you to like watch the golf ball all the way through. The reason is is because you should be trying to figure out if that golf ball is spinning the right amount or not Right In my opinion. So it's really interesting to see how undersold those guys short game is relative to how oversold the fact that they hit their driver so far is because it's way harder, in my opinion, to hit the wedge shot than it is the drive yeah.
Speaker 2:And I, and I think that you know, one of the things that kind of gets missed is the land angle. I think that that gets missed in the short game measurements that have been so popular in the last year. Is that land angle gets forgotten about? It's all talk about launch angle, it's all talk about spin rate. It's all talk about angle of attack. It's like, bro I, I, I don't care as much about those things as I do about marrying a land angle with spin rate. Those are the things that really matter to me.
Speaker 2:Um, because that's how I'm going to get the golf ball to stop the quickest and if I'm a, if I'm a pga tour player and I'm looking at a a 35, 40 yard shot, and this pins four paces on and as they all are or it's, or it's over a bunker and four paces over the boat.
Speaker 2:They're all four paces Right. And so let's just say it's it's front edge of the green and it's slightly up to the green. Well, I need to figure out how I can land this on the green. Right American golf you have to land it on the green. You play golf in Scotland, england, all the other places Totally different.
Speaker 1:You can absolutely run it up and all that.
Speaker 2:But American golf, if you're hitting a short game shot, the goal is to land the ball onto the green. Okay, that's going to be your most predictable, you know, first bounce. Okay, so you want to land this ball on the green. So I got to land this thing. Let's say it's 35 yards. I got to land it 35 yards onto the front edge of the green. The pin is 39.
Speaker 2:So I need to know exactly like my land angle, mixed in with a good spin rate, so this ball can land and stop within four paces. A good spin rate, so this ball can land and stop within four paces. Now, if I launched this thing at 27, 28 from 30 yards, it's going to be about six, seven, potentially eight, as far as like where it lands to where it stops. That's not good enough at the PGA tour level. You need to marry a little bit of height with a little bit of spin and that's how you're going to get the ball to stop in the quickest fashion or or the most like. Obviously, like I want it to stop within four, that's. That's sort of like my thought process. Like from about 20 to 50, I want it to stop within about four, four and a half paces. So it gives me like kind of that mid trajectory with the right amount of spin rate and it gives me for myself and for my players, it gives me the most sort of margin of error around the golf ball.
Speaker 1:So I love what you're talking about and before we switch gears just slightly, I kind of want to throw this at you. I recently learned something that's been pretty helpful in my life, and what I recently learned is that two things can be right at the same time, right? Yeah, like, feel and real can be completely different, but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter, right? So at the end of the day, I don't think the guys like me who have to use technology to kind of understand it are wrong. I also don't think guys like you that can stand over it and kind of see that and feel that and manipulate that and create that are wrong either. And, as a matter of fact, if you made me pick one of the two and I'm picking against myself here I'm going to pick the guy who can feel it over, the guy who understands it better every day of the week. Cause when it comes to playing golf, man, it's about what you feel in that moment, being able to manage those feelings and execute right. Like you, you gotta have that Like. If you don't have that like, we can't do the tournament golf thing. Like you can know it all, but that doesn't mean you can do it when it matters most, right?
Speaker 1:So, interestingly enough, you know, I kind of think of myself when it comes to this because as a player I was never as good as I wanted to be. I certainly wasn't good enough to play on the PGA tour when I was younger. But, with that being said, I had, like some fundamental probably ingredients in my recipe that were really getting in the way for me to be able to fundamentally create the loft scenario I needed to create at the ball, to create the appropriate amount of spin. So I definitely understood to kind of use some of Joe Mayo's vertical swing plane kind of vernacular and track man terminology. I definitely understood that I wasn't creating enough spin because I wasn't hitting down on it enough. I definitely understood that from a playing perspective.
Speaker 2:But what I didn't understand, what was your what was your attack angle prior I have no idea.
Speaker 1:I wasn't measuring back then okay but I was definitely hitting the ground first, for sure. Okay, so here's what I figured out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, finish up. And then I've got a question I want to pose to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I was trying to get the head up, but I was doing it by raising my hand. I wasn't raising the club head, I was just raising my hand. So then the path would get super steep and out to end right, which we know is working against us in terms of softening that face. So, like for me it was really really difficult to figure that out. But then once I like became who I am and learn the stuff I've learned and like started being able to measure things, then it all kind of started making sense to me. But I didn't have what you have that let you be a PGA tour player and I kind of had to reverse engineer it and figure it out in entirety. And then once I kind of knew what numbers, then it was like I could figure out how to do the individual numbers and then piece it together.
Speaker 1:So I just think it's really, really interesting this conversation, because I don't think anybody's wrong and I don't think anybody's right. The only thing I do know is nobody's all the way right, because nobody helps every single person every single time, no matter how good you are. Like it just doesn't work that way. So I really, really think it's cool, man listening to you talk about this and I think you're right. Like and I haven't said this yet, but I am bad about Taryn commentators a new one because I think they say a lot of things that aren't factually true one because I think they say a lot of things that aren't factually true.
Speaker 1:But what you have to realize is when you're listening to somebody who's played as much golf and like these commentators, man are worth their weight in gold, but they're speaking from more of a feel basis and what they felt and what they did, and that doesn't make it wrong. Yes, they may say that they're crazy shallow and have a 10 angle of have an angle of attack. That's 10 down. That's totally cool. Like what you feel versus what you're like nobody cares if you make a hole-in-one. They tell you to buy everybody a beer. They don't ask you what your club path was right you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like it's, I love how you kind of are and I think this is why you're good at what you do. Like at the end of the like, don't tell me about the delivery, don't tell me about the drive to the hospital. Just show me the baby picture. Does it stop? Within four yes or no, like if it does great.
Speaker 2:If it doesn't, let's always about that individual player and what it is that they need. I've taken away shafling, I've brought back shafling, right, it's like it. It all depends on who is the guy that's showing up to me that day and what is it what? What ingredients does that guy need to hit that the shot that it's like? In my eye I'm like that's that mid trajectory.
Speaker 1:I don't think you're a shallow coach dude. I. I don't like. I know you get. I don't think you're a shallow coach dude, I don't like. I know you get labeled that way, but like I know I get labeled that way but only because, only because I've just been.
Speaker 2:I just don't think that the full story is being told. I think that I think that they want it to fit a narrative.
Speaker 1:They want you know, you to be the alpha, omega, whichever you pick Right, and they want joe to be the opposite. And then they want to say this encompasses all short game. But I don't think what you guys are saying is different. I really don't like. I I think you both are very, very good problem solvers and I think that one of you is probably and I'm not trying to slam either one, but I think one of you is just more creative and how you go about it than the other, and I think the other one is more analytical, and thank God for that man, because we have definitely both types of golfers out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. Well, and I think I think too, I mean, you know, like one of the one of the points of what I was saying about you know that 35 yard shot is that that's a. You know, I get every, almost every tour player that's come to me right, I've probably worked with 25 on the on the PGA tour, 25 or 30 guys on the PGA tour, um, yeah, so let's just say, out of the 25 or 30 guys on the PGA tour that that I've worked with almost everyone to a man. 95% of them is like I hit the low spinner, no problem, I, I have such a hard time hitting the mid trajectory or the higher trajectory spinner, like almost to a man. And so it's like you know they, they don't need, they don't, they don't need to go more this way. They need to understand how to go more this way without losing their spin Right and so them going.
Speaker 2:If they're going 15 degrees down, it's going to be coming out faster. So it's about removing those things that are going to make that ball go faster. So my job is to figure out, okay, what things can I remove and yet still maintain speed and spin right? Because the question I was going to pose to you was let's say you've got player A and player B and player A and player B are both hitting at 20-yard shots. Player A and player B are also both 5 degrees angle of attack down angle of attack down. Let's say you add seven degrees of angle of attack to player a and you add seven miles per hour of club head speed to player b. Who's gonna spin the ball more?
Speaker 1:player b or if that's the guy that had more speed. I think that's what you said yeah yeah, don't, you think, don't?
Speaker 2:you think, don't you think player b would so? I mean assuming like all else remains like he still is at five down and all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I can't do the math that fast, I'll stop my head.
Speaker 2:But yeah, speed is king when it comes to spin especially, especially on these shorter type of shots, right where it's like, yeah, because what people?
Speaker 1:don't get.
Speaker 1:Man is like and and I I do want to mention this, I, I want to be very careful here because I want to mention something that's super positive, but I really think that golfers don't understand wedge design and how it works, and I hate to tell them, but it's not the groove creating the spin, it's the surface friction creating the spin.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's what people are really being misled by, I think, is that they don't necessarily understand that, like, how to create. You're not hitting it hard enough to dig that thing into the grooves at least we hope not on like that 20 yard shot like we were just talking about, right, correct. So it's like it's this surface friction and if I want to make that happen and I want to create, if I go slow nothing happens, but if I get those things moving, I can generate a little heat and friction right. So it's like speed is the king and unfortunately, because of exactly what we've talked about thus far, with people kind of playing from a strong face position mostly, it's like you can't add speed to it because then you're going to knock the thing onto the next t-box unless you take away speed in every other area, where it's set up, where it's shaft, lean, where it's backswing, how much, how much set you've got the path of it.
Speaker 2:All that stuff, in my opinion, plays into how much speed you can actually deliver to the golf ball, and so that that's where that's where I just think that that gets a bit forgotten about. Number one it's it's like it's playability, right, it's like dude. I mean, no doubt the low spinner is fun, it's cool, it's a neat shot to hit, but it's also a shot that I mean like I was hitting that shot it's a high risk shot.
Speaker 1:It's a very high risk shot it's a.
Speaker 2:you know, I was hitting that shot when I was 16, 17 years old, right, and I and I played a lot of it, you know, growing up, and then all of a sudden I'm like, well, that's fairly limiting as far as like playability, wise right and and my and my margin of error is like really small. Yeah, so you know, it's like I, I like, I think, as tour players and I've I've obviously been one, I've now, with 25, 30 of them, I've gotten to be around like Steve Stricker, jason Day, matt Kuchar, cam Smith, who are like unbelievable wedgers and they're just like we know we're not perfect. I want to build in, like these guys are telling me, like I want to build in some bit of ability for the bounce to to come in if I happen to make a mistake they know they're not perfect, and these guys are the best wedgers on the planet and they know they're not perfect.
Speaker 2:So what like they? They're not trying? I mean, if they're the best wedgers on the planet, why would they not just be 12 to 15 degrees down on every shot, because they know they're going to hit it perfect? It's like they know that if they're 12 to 15 down on every shot, they are not going to be perfect and they know they're going to mess up and it's like they want to have their. They want to have their mishits, their mess ups, be four to six feet from the hole or a tap in.
Speaker 1:They don't want their mess ups to be hit too hard or potentially chunked. I don't know where you fall on the list of things like nerdy, wise, like seem like you're a pretty cool guy, Good looking guy from Hawaii, Probably not too nerdy, but like nerds like me. You know we have these lists and we love to rank everything and on my, in my opinion, my personal opinion, I think that on the Mount Rushmore of golf instructors there should only be one guy and I'm okay with it being Pete Cowan.
Speaker 2:Like that's totally fine with me Like.
Speaker 1:I love Pete. Uh, I wear a lot of black in honor of Pete, like he's my hero. I love Pete Cowan. I think he's a master. So, with that being said, I'm curious have you ever heard and I hope I don't get in trouble for this, but I'm gonna tell it anyway because I've always wanted to tell this story? It's my favorite golf coach story ever. But have you ever heard the story about cowan and uh kepka?
Speaker 2:uh, I may have. I spent. I spent a little bit of time with uh jeff pierce who kind of helps.
Speaker 1:Jeff knows kepka real well. Yeah, yeah. So I know jeff pretty well, the cool guy ask him to tell you the story.
Speaker 1:He'll probably tell you the exact same story, but the story is I know it is that Brooks was on the challenge shore, was, you know, kind of doing a thing and learning how to become like a tour player and like learning some different shots and whatnot, and I guess was struggling, maybe a bit, and went and finally got with Pete right and I had a relationship with Pete for a while and Pete kind of had given him the run through and like he'd watched him hit balls and with kind of like giving him the mark of approval and everything and kind of the last thing they were doing was they were in the bunker and they were hitting bunker shots Brooks and Pete right and Pete was just kind of standing there and all black with his arms crossed, not saying much, probably, as I imagine it.
Speaker 1:And Brooks is like hitting these. What I'm told is like kind of a to mid-flight kind of zipper out of the bunker. The outcome is pretty good it's landing where it should and it's stopping by the time it should and it's close to the hole. Pete is like hey, that's kind of awful. Brooks is like what, what are you talking about? Man, I've just staked all of those. You know what I mean. Pete's like yeah, but like can you like make it land and then roll like a putt? And brooks is like uh, sure, and he like I guess, tried to do it once or twice and maybe it didn't turn out so good.
Speaker 1:And the story, as I'm told, is that pete takes the wedge from brooks which is like the cardinal sin of cardinal sins with coaches, as you know like takes the wedge from Brooks, gets in the bunker, lands it like eight feet short, it just goes splat and then rolls end over end, it goes right in the hole and I'm just like man, that is like the coolest story ever and I've seen Brooks hit that shot like in real life person.
Speaker 1:It's just like wild man Because, to your point, like being a young man, like we, like those high risk cool looking shots, dude, and like I see so many like division one college players who you know can hit that shot out of the bunker. But when there's, like you know, the greens working away from you and, like you know, you got some thin sand and a few other things kind of working against you, it's like hey, yeah, place like you're talking about, to where, like hey, these are the core ingredients and this is what we do, and like this is what happens. And then from there, like if you want to add a little more spice one way or the other, we can do that right. But we have to have, like this kind of functional baseline, that where we can like deconstruct it, present it in a different way, but it still tastes the way and works out the way it's supposed to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I and I would say like I mean obviously players at the PGA tour level, I mean they, they can, they can absolutely spin it because they've got speed Right. Like some of my LPGA tour players, they they don't have quite as much speed, but then the second that I start bringing them some speed, boy, their spin rates go up and they start hitting those pitches that have a bunch of spin on it. And I've done it with, I mean, I'll never forget, these two 20 handicap ladies at LA Country Club. I did a two days seminar there and these ladies it was a three hour seminar. These ladies they played once a week. There were 20 handicaps and I taught them the fundamentals of it and they were hitting these 20 to 25 yard pitches like mid-flighted, which looked low to their eyes but mid-flighted, and these things were like landing on the green and grabbing. And the tour pro the pro there, jake tolliver, who had me out, he's like dude. I cannot believe that you just got these 20 handicap females to be able to hit that shot. I was like they once I taught them how to do it. They were spinning it because they just they were starting to deliver some speed.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you a quick story. Um, I caddied for my buddy, ricky Barnes, at the Sony open, probably like seven, seven years ago. He Monday'd in and I'm from Hawaii and so I knew the golf course. I happen to be there. I was like, yeah, I'll loop it for you.
Speaker 2:One of my best pals and he had a rough first day. He didn't hit his first fairway to like the 15th hole and at wailai there, like I mean, like it goes this way and then it goes that way, and so he would miss the fairway and then the run-up would be really small to the green and so he hit into a lot of the green side bunkers out of the rough. And so we'd get in the green side bunker and I'd put the, you know, and I like I don't caddy much, right, but I'd put the bag down and I'd grab his 59, 60 degree, right, I'd grab it right out of the bag. Cardinal sin, right, you're like like I that too. But I grabbed it out of the bag and I handed it to him.
Speaker 2:He's like no, no, no, I want my 51. And I was like I'm sorry, what I was like just over the bunker. He's like I'm gonna land it a yard onto the green and I want it to like run out like a putt. And I was like, all right, I did not see that shot. So, anyway, to hit it, this thing would lip out two feet get to the next one. Well, I put the thing down. I grabbed the 59.
Speaker 2:No, no, I want the 55. He grabbed his 55 degree and he'd land it three, four yards on the green. It would run like a putt and it would lip out. And I was like I'm like this guy, I mean great hands, but at the same time, like the philosophy of it was not like hey, I'm gonna try and max spin. It got great lies. It was like I mean, the lies on tour in the bunkers are so good, right, but it wasn't like he was going for maximum spin. He was going for like, dude, I want the shot that I know that it's gonna come out and it's gonna run like a putt. Similar thing can be can be sort of inferred from on the on some of these pitch shots. It's like you don't always want maximum spin. Maximum spin does not equal better wedge play. You look at when the wedges like they sort of rolled back the wedges. Wedge play got better after they rolled back the wedges.
Speaker 1:In like 2009 or 2010.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it got better Because guys didn't have the grooves weren't as thick and as wide and, like you could, you spun the ball less, but the wedge play dramatically got better on the PGA Tour. So it's like, and speaking of wedge play, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:One thing like you know, you don't get nearly enough credit for my man and like, look, I think Titleist is a great company. I and like I'm, look, I think titlist is a great company. I'm not saying anything negative, but I do not think of titlist when I think of change. Right, like that's not how I generally view things. So for you and I'm pretty sure it's you to be able to get them to not only endorse, kind of some of your methodologies and some of your ways of thinking, but to be able to actually get them to start manufacturing and making it an option, I believe, for everybody with the flight lines on the wedge holy crap, man.
Speaker 1:Like a tip of the cap to you because like I mean there's there's been coaches come and go like and there's been great ones that have had massive impact and there've been ones that have not had impact but like to see like an actual technology change because of something that you're doing, I mean that has to be pretty. I wanted to hit on that real quick because that has to be pretty mega cool, man, and my hats off to Titleist to being open and willing to even take that meeting and talk about that, because that is really got to be mega helpful for a lot of people, because we don't the human being seeing something the same way twice, it's not always like an easy task. So like what you've done with that man I think is incredible.
Speaker 2:Thank you, buddy. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think you know Titleist is one of those companies where they're just like they've done things so well for so long that you know the change piece of it. It's like there's not really a need to change because they're so good and they're so consistent with everything that they bring to the table. So I was I was really grateful to that bob bokeh, um and the team there nicest human being alive bob, he's the best, nicest human being alive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bob and aaron dill and cory gerard, everybody there in titles kevin to see like the whole team.
Speaker 2:there Was JP there when you first started he was not there when I pitched the idea, okay, but yeah, I mean the whole team there was like open to the thought and I was like, look, this is going to give people an awareness as to shaft positioning and club-based positioning at setup to hit a high, a medium and a low trajectory shot.
Speaker 2:And it's like I don't think that people have the awareness, especially amateur shaft positioning wise to hit a mid trajectory or a low trajectory shot and they definitely don't have the club face and shaft awareness to hit a bunker or flop shop. And so to give them that awareness and to just have it as like a just like, hey, it's right there for you. It's available to be used in tournament play. I've had it used on the PGA Tour, the Champions Tour and the LPGA Tour in tournament play, so it's been really neat to see it getting adopted. I think that, going forward, they they just approved it to get used uh, all the variety of colors. So however you want to deck it out, like whatever color you want to put on it, um, you can now do that as of like a couple months ago, and it's I would imagine they came up with bright colors for you.
Speaker 1:Being mr hawaii, you wear some colorful shirts, my man, thank you thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I've I've started to tone that down a little bit, just because I feel like the more tour players I'm starting to work with it's like you know I realized it's not about me, it's about them and I'm I'm in a support role. Yeah, but do you?
Speaker 1:man, like that's cool Cause, it's like it pays homage to where you're from. Man, like you know, like I no offense like and I'm not, mr Fashion, trust me, I wear a lot of black, like my guy Pete. But like dude, I'm telling you like I like when I see you wear that stuff. I would never be caught dead in one of those shirts.
Speaker 1:Like no offense to you, like they're nice shirts just with a bald head, red hair, like it doesn't work quite as well, man. So, but like I love the fact when I see you wearing that, because that, to me, shows me that you're proud of, like, where you come from and you're trying to have some fun and like kind of honor, that kind of Hawaiian spirit man, and like you definitely have that Hawaiian vibe and spirit man, which I totally appreciate and I love that you lean into it. Man, like you're not trying to be anybody, you're not trying to be like well, I'm actually super technical Like dude, I just love the fact that you're you. So hang on real quick, because I want to ask you some questions, okay.
Speaker 1:Now, generally, I'm sure you do a lot of these podcasts and I know that they just hammer your questions and that's no fun, but we've had our fun, we've had a nice chat, so I just want to try to ask you. I've got nine questions, okay, and I'm not saying that your answers have to be limited, but I want you to try to use your skill from PGA tour live and I want you to try to take a four minute thought and put it into a 22nd answer, all right?
Speaker 1:So, here we go, you ready? Question number one what do you believe to be the most frequently misunderstood concept regarding chipping and pitching the golf ball regardless of player ability?
Speaker 2:What's the most?
Speaker 1:misunderstood concept when it comes to chipping and pitching the ball, regardless of skill age.
Speaker 2:I would say ball contact. I would say that that you there's, there's, so you can hit great shots, like, obviously we're always going for great ball contact, right, but people get so caught up in chasing great ball contact, great ball compression from inside of 20 yards, 30 yards, and it's like, buddy, I would much rather you drop, kick it and hit it toe side and get this ball to come out soft than I would you feeling like, oh, I really need to feel that compression. I don't think that that compression is the proper thing to sort of search for inside of 20 yards.
Speaker 1:Okay, beautiful. Is there a? Now, this one's a little bit different for you, probably, but like I know you, you can answer this question. Is there a metric not related to the outcome of the shot that you feel is more important than others when it comes to chipping and pitching the golf ball? So is there a metric other than just pure outcome that you think is super important, or do you think it's purely where the ball winds up relative to the hole?
Speaker 2:man, yeah, I think that's again. That's probably you know, like I. I there's so many different ways of doing it. If I, if I told you like, hey, my, my metric is is is clubhead speed, or my metric is attack angle, or my metric is land angle, I just don't. There's so many other factors that can go into that that you could be like well, I'm hitting your attack angle numbers but I'm not getting the results. So it's like or I'm hitting, I'm hitting the land angle numbers, but I have no spin on it I would have guessed you would have said like ball speed, yeah yeah, I mean the reason I say that is because that's that nobody looks at that number when it comes to like chipping and pitching.
Speaker 1:And that hot shot you're talking about is legitimately five, six miles an hour faster than the one we're probably looking for and like I don't think that people ever actually like the only time people talk about ball speeds off a drive like you never hear people really talk about that around the greens. So I was kind of curious if you went that route or not.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I didn't take the bait, no, and you know, I mean I, I, I uh, your answer is good, I like no, yeah, okay, no, I. I just think again I I'm I'm about playing the right shot to like, because it could be totally, it could be totally different, right, like, if I'm hitting it to a back pin or I'm hitting it to a front pin, it's a good answer.
Speaker 1:next shot, next shot all right, here we go. It's gotta be, it's gotta be it's gotta be the like.
Speaker 2:It's gotta be, like that trajectory matched up to that back flag or that trajectory matched up to that front flag and like, right, you match up really quickly.
Speaker 1:I would say I really demand players, especially the younger and less experienced they have. I really want them to walk up to where they want the ball to land and then walk back. And I don't care if they use that pace number when they're doing. I just want them to know, like I just want there to be a number associated with a field and what they see, and like I call it building a shot. And my big thing is like we're gonna build this shot before we hit it, you're gonna tell me how it's gonna look, you're gonna tell me where it's gonna land, you're gonna tell me what it does and like then we're gonna hit the shot and then we're gonna go to the monitor and see the instant replay and did that shot look the way we thought it should have looked right?
Speaker 2:and I think that's kind of what you're saying dude, that's. That's way more important than any like number, you may get that's way more important.
Speaker 2:And did that? Did that ball come out the way you wanted it to? Did it land on the spot that you said it was going to land on and did it have the appropriate spin, whether it was minimal spin to a back pin or whether it was more spin to a front pin? Did it, did the? Did all those things match up? That? That, that's the way that I would, you know, grade a grade, a shot, that would be the thing I would look for the most yep all right.
Speaker 1:So here you go. Here's a fun one for you. Okay, if you could change every golfer's concept when it comes to chipping and pitching the ball?
Speaker 1:okay, so this is like you have to have a silver bullet what would be the concept you would most like to change that you think would do the most amount of good for the most golfers. So if you could change one concept and you said that you thought the most misunderstood one was like a contact point right or compression right, so you said that that's the most misunderstood. But what would be the one you would want to change the most when it comes to chipping and pitching that you think would do the most good? Maybe it's that one. It might be the same answer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, potentially, but does it have to be a metric or can it be like a?
Speaker 1:body movement, it can be whatever. It's just a concept. So we're not talking we're not telling somebody what to do. We're just explaining a concept that everybody should be doing. That's important. That maybe isn't understood or maybe is misunderstood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I would say, I would say on the amateur side for sure, which I think we're talking to, 99% of the people that are probably playing golf and listening to this yeah. So so what I, what I would say is that you know it's gonna be, um, it's gonna be the amount of of body movement. I think that that's the most misunderstood thing. I think that people see they equate short shot, short movement I agree, and so they go, they just go like this and they don't move and then they do this and it's like it becomes.
Speaker 2:It's a, it's a complete disaster, because there's no like.
Speaker 1:There's no like um rhythm or feel or anything. Rhythm or?
Speaker 2:feel or anything, and you're using these small muscles and it becomes very hitchy, um. So I w, I would say um. I would say, on learning how to pivot properly would be, in my book, one of the most important things if you're going to learn how to chip and pitch better, and potentially the most misunderstood things, because I just think that there's people are focusing on on things that aren't necessarily like. That aren't like if you're focusing on vertical swing plane or attack angle or a spin rate or whatever it might be, launch angle, any of that, that stuff you're not necessarily even thinking about how the body is supposed to move right, right, you're. It's like you got to learn. You got to learn how to pivot this thing first, like that's the body moves the club.
Speaker 1:The club doesn't move itself yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean yeah, and then it's like, yeah, then we're gonna, we're obviously gonna build in some hands and like how to educate the hands to play. But there's gotta be an understanding, especially at the amateur level, of how you use your body. And I even see, I even see tour players um like again like I'll go back to that like Kevin Doherty, um, like I think, victor was that way.
Speaker 1:I think Victor was really handsy, armsy kind of guy and then he's got more pivot into it since he started working with Joe on it. I think Victor would be a great example of that and I think that's why you're seeing he's doing so much better, because he's just got way more room to kind of work with when it comes to hitting the ball, versus kind of being on that razor's edge where he has to time that shit up perfect every time edge where he has to time that shit up, perfect every time, yeah, yeah, and I and I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't ever. I don't necessarily hear Joe talking about the pivot, but maybe that's something that that they are working on, um, but I think that's real quick because this is gold.
Speaker 1:I got to get to this and I know I'm real close. So I want to get good, because we definitely should have talked more about this, because I think it's the real unsung hero of good shipping and pitching about this, because I think it's the real unsung hero of good shipping and pitching. So here you go, you ready.
Speaker 2:In your opinion, what percentage of professional golfers read lies well now we haven't even talked about that and that's like I know I wish we would have. That's like a. I mean, you know I was what percentage let's?
Speaker 1:just get through these questions real quick and I'll let you go on it From. You've worked with 25. So let's just talk about what you know. Let's not make any assumptions. So, out of the 25 you've worked with, what percentage of those guys read a lot Well, would you say?
Speaker 2:well, I'll preface that by saying that if they're coming to me, they're. They're not necessarily doing it very well, they're not, they're not their motion isn't very good it's been. It's been a struggle on their, on their side, um so I I would say uh, 30 percent do you think that percentage changes across the rest of the tour?
Speaker 1:yeah higher or lower?
Speaker 2:it's. I think it's higher. I think the guys that are struggling, the guys that are wanting to work on it, they know that their motion is not quite great. They're usually great ball strikers. They've been great ball strikers so, in essence, they've been great ball strikers their whole life. So they've hit 17, 16, 17 greens their entire life. So they just haven't had as many reps as someone like myself who who hit 50% of those greens this whole career, right? So like I've had way more practice under extreme situations and extreme circumstances than these other guys that have missed one green around or two greens around for their whole career. So I would say, you know, they're just sort of playing catch up and I'm able to give them like, hey, in this lie, this is what you should expect, and be like I never would have thought of that, right.
Speaker 2:So you know and then a solution to escape that lie.
Speaker 1:I think that it really it's a shame that people don't understand that if you play a golf course it's soppy, wet, like I did yesterday morning after a big storm is. It's actually very similar to playing in Bermuda conditions and you have to understand how the grass is actually growing pattern wise and like Bermuda, like it doesn't grab. The problem is is that Bermuda grass sprawls across the top and has different connection points so it literally you can hit here and like the ground four feet away is moving right Because it's like pulling on it, so like you have to sever that root and like where the ball is if you don't want it to like quote, unquote grab the golf club and like same thing when it's soppy, like you got to get down. Unquote, grab the golf club and like same thing when it's soppy, like you gotta get down and get the club on the ball because nothing there is wanting to resist that right.
Speaker 2:So I think it's just really and it becomes. And it becomes tricky if you have to go up with it, yeah right, if you, if you've got to go, if you've got to, if you're down in a low and you've got to go up six, six, seven, eight feet to an elevated green and you've got to pin, you know, let's say, three, four, five, six paces on Right Dude, that just becomes a really difficult shot that you have to like this at some point, like going down is going to equal coming out faster. So you got to, you got to make a variety of sort of compensations to make it.
Speaker 1:I think you hit the nail on the head. You can move pressure left without moving attack angle down, so like there's ways to do it without necessarily just using the methods that we've used in the past. So very quickly. We said 30% of professionals realize well that Parker's worked with personally. What do you think the number would be across amateurs?
Speaker 2:Like 1%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so too. Now yes or no this is a real tough one for you. Yes or no? How much, I'm sorry. In your opinion, can a golfer apply the same technique to every chip and pitch and become a good chipper and pitcher of the ball? So every single chip and pitch shot they hit the rest of their life they're going to do it the exact same technique. Will they ever become a good chipper and pitcher of the ball?
Speaker 2:I think that they, they would be, they would be limited I think so too right, but I think that's where you see more people trying to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like X equals Y, x equals Y, x equals Y.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's like I've I've had this conversation with a lot of, like you know, other tour coaches, other like I was having this conversation with Gabriel Yurtz that the other day, and it was like you know, we were talking about some of the some of the friction in this, in this sort of space, and it's like what gets forgotten about is that the lie dictates what type of shot you're going to hit. Number one it's the lie. Number two is like okay, what's in front of you? Do you have a bunker in front of you or going to a back pin, a front pin? Are the greens soft? Are they firm? Do you need more spin? Is it into the wind downwind? There's so many options that it's not always X equals Y, and that's where I get my most amount of frustration is there are a million shots around the greens and with different trajectories, different spin rates, different carry numbers, different rollout numbers, plus, again, players, eyes. Some players like to see it low, other players like to see it high. It's all those different things sort of blended into like, ok, now I'm trying to take all these sort of factors and bring it into how am I going to execute this shot? What's going to give me the highest margin of success for this shot. What am I most comfortable with for this shot? And so I would say, if you're just let's say you're just a guy, that's like, all right, I'm only going to be three degrees angle of attack down for the rest of my life, you're going to be limited in hitting some shots. If you're only a guy, that's I'm going to be 12 or 15 degrees down, you're going to be limited in hitting some shots. So it's like you just can't, you can't necessarily be like it's a box and again, that that's that's always been my like.
Speaker 2:Biggest frustration is like tell the whole story. There's an entire story to be told about short game. It's not just specifically launch angle, attack, angle, spin rate. That's not it. Because if I'm solely launching it, sub 30 on every shot around the green, that's not what PGA Tour players are doing. That's not true. Some Tour players launch a 30-yard shot and they'll hit it at 28. And then other ones feel way more comfortable or feel like they want to stop it quicker and they'll launch it at 34. And I've seen guys on 15 yard shots they're launching it at 42, 44, like to hit a higher one with some spin.
Speaker 2:So it's like they're like don't, it can't just be here, right, it has to be like this whole encompassing thing of can't just be here right, it has to be like this whole encompassing thing of again you could hit the 28 launch shot and the 32 and the 34 and the 44, like you've got to be able to understand what recipe goes with each I just think that golf has an incredible amount of variety to it.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. It's like my favorite thing to do with young people especially is like hey, we use an app called Clipped and it gives us a player quality and then we're able to look at this total number and then we can look at driving, approach around the green and putting and how each one of those buckets feeds this overall number and like how we're going to develop and get better as a player. Right, because it's not always hitting it farther, it's not always hitting it straighter, it's not always putting and making more putts. It's there, there's a lot of like ebbs and flows to it, but the skills required for driving are not the same skills required for pitching and shipping are not the same skills required for putting.
Speaker 1:So at the end of the day, like I get kind of nuts because, yes, we want to create this pattern to where we do more or less the same thing every time and we want to kind of get all the variability out of it so that this consistency happens, that everybody's chasing, which just means that everybody wants to get close to the hole. They don't really care how it gets there. They don't want to be consistent. They want the ball to go close to the hole, but, like they all want to do, x equals Y and every equation. And it's just not that way with golf. Because we, unless you're, playing the exact same golf course every single day and they set the pins for you the exact same way every day and, like you, only play it on days where it's 75 and sunny, like it's not going to be that way.
Speaker 1:It just it doesn't work that way yep agreed well, bud, I, uh, I gotta say, man, this has been an absolute treat you got are you have other questions?
Speaker 2:I want to make sure we get through them all I?
Speaker 1:I do have. I have two more, but I'm saving these. So what? These are your tests, okay, so I have two questions where I'm really gonna put you in the hot seat and I'm to see if you can do what you say you can do. So I have to imagine that I travel a good amount. You travel more than me, but, with that being said, you probably run across guys in the airport. So here's what we're going to do. You are desperate. You just got off a flight to Tokyo and you haven't been able to pee the whole time because it was out of order and you really got to pee. So you're going to answer this guy that comes up to you and shows you a video and tells you he's a 15 handicap, living in South Florida, and he plays twice a week and doesn't practice very much. That's your guy, okay. And he says something like this hey man, the bunkers are really soft where I'm at. You got a tip for me. What do I do? I can't get out. So I want you to give me your best. Parker.
Speaker 2:Having to take a P-Row bad at an airport 20 seconds can't get out of soft bunkers, let it rip Lower loft, go down in loft, and then I would put five to 10% more weight on his trail foot at setup.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Okay, that's great. Now we got some soft ones like that. Now we also got some real firm baked out ones that haven't been redone. So what do I do on those really baked out hard bunkers?
Speaker 2:20 seconds go.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I would say I would say I want you to get closer to the ball. I don't want to. I don't want you to stand quite as far away. I get closer to the ball.
Speaker 2:I want you to get that thing straight up, like hinge it straight up and go vertical with it, because your only job is to get underneath. Like you know that there's some type of sand or soil or whatever it is underneath that. It's just firmly packed. You know you got to get access to that underneath it. So you got to build the steepest angle of attack so you can get underneath that golf ball, to that underneath it. So you've got to build the steepest angle of attack so you can get underneath that golf ball. Okay, so closest you've ever been to the golf ball, hinge it straight up and then, on the way through, what I want you to feel is I want you to feel that pressure going down into the heel, pressure going down into the heel as you're coming through, impact, and those would be the three things, and then the follow through is going to be like minimally short because you're building such a steep angle of attack down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're kind of trying to thwack it into the ground, right?
Speaker 2:Yep. Your follow through is going to be like this far. Yeah, if you do it right.
Speaker 1:Not but dude Not that.
Speaker 1:Oh, come on, man, you don't want enough here. If you want to blade it, yeah for sure. If you want to bounce into it and blade it. I feel bad because I feel like we could have done the whole episode, just like reading lies and how that could really help everybody's short game, like I have it here, but we got into such good other stuff that we didn't quite get to it as much. And not only that, but it probably would have put some people to sleep if we started talking about different types of grass and how that affects things.
Speaker 1:So I really appreciate it. Man, like dude, you you're doing awesome stuff. Man, like it's it's really been from more of a business side of the of the conversation. Like you know, being a young coach and you know I I've followed you guys, man on, on all sincerity, like I look at what you do and I look at a lot of different coaches and maybe I don't agree with what they coach or how they go about it, but there's definitely like a passion and a originality to what you bring to a otherwise pretty vanilla industry and I really appreciate what you do. I appreciate your message.
Speaker 1:I've never seen you say anything negative about anybody. I mean, I think the industry tries to make you be that way sometimes with certain people. But in all honesty, man, like I said, I think both of you are doing the Lord's work, because if we can get people excited and talking about short game like we could actually get people better at golf. But unfortunately, you know, a lot of the noise goes to hitting bombs and doing all that. And's what people lend their time to. You're offering, in my opinion, usable solutions. It's not this thing to where you log in and, oh my God, I suck. Here's another video of Tiger doing it. I can't do that. It's just it's very refreshing to see somebody like actually try to help people. And I don't know and I'm not talking ill of anybody, but like I don't know how much our industry actually cares about helping Sometimes you know I mean my.
Speaker 2:My mission statement has always been like I want to help people get better, Like that. That's the absolute mission statement. And I tell all my tour players I'm like here's the absolute mission statement. And I tell all my tour players I'm like here's the deal. I'm not.
Speaker 2:This is, this is not going to be like me with you for the next five years yeah, this is going to be like I'm going to give you this info, we're going to work our asses off on it, you're going to own it, you're going to so that when you're choking your guts out on Sunday, you don't need me, and I firmly believe that, like in six, eight months, a year, two years, whatever it is like these, they shouldn't need me. It should be. It should be one of those things where it's like we check in once a quarter, once twice a year, once a year, like not much, but just check in to make sure things haven't gotten too far off. I think that it's a terrible business model, but it I feel like it's the right thing to do as a coach, like I want my players to own it.
Speaker 1:I want my players to own it.
Speaker 2:They have to own it. Is it right Like do you want to do?
Speaker 1:right Do you want to be right. You know what I mean and it's there's like a huge difference there and what you're talking. I mean I'm the same way, man. It is a terrible business model because I'm a consultant and I tell everybody like, look, I'm a plumber, right, and when shit hits the ceiling, you know like you really need that plumber and you're willing to pay to get that plumber there before your dinner guests arrive. So like I'm an expensive plumber because I'm really good at fixing that problem. However, when I leave, you're not going to see an invoice coming from me every month, you know, attached to the like.
Speaker 1:I don't work that way Because, to your point, like my job is to come in and assess and to figure out what's going on and then from there it's like here's the plan of attack and now it's your job and the physios job and everybody on the team's job to kind of recognize this is what we're doing and we're going to check in in three months and see how we did Because, like, change takes time and like, when you're dealing not so much with amateurs, can make change, I think, much quicker than pros, because pros are way more defensive, because they're very good at what they do and they should be defensive of it. So I think it's much easier to get a guy that can't do something a way to do something. He'll do it every time because the other way just doesn't work. As to a tour pro, you know there's a lot of like back and forth, there's a lot of, you know, trying it out a lot before they're really, really willing to try it on the course.
Speaker 1:So I just feel like my job is to not be on the clock, so to speak, to where they feel like we got to work. We got to work, we got to work. Like no man, like this is what we're doing. It's going to take time and this is what we're looking for. So here's what we're doing. Whatever metrics you use, whatever feels, whatever video, whatever it is, this is what we're doing and it just takes time, man. And to your point, like at some point we should move past, like needing one another, like okay, we fixed those problems, we're looking pretty good.
Speaker 2:You're happy with how things are working. I'll see you until next time. Yep, yep, yeah, and that's why you know, that's why I built that online platform. It's sort of like look man, like if you want my information, go go there and like, dive deep into that and stay, stay as shorter as long as you want. Um, but you know, for for my, the people that come and see me in person, it's like I tell them I'm like you should not be seeing me once a week. This is not a like, hey, I'll book you for the next week. It's like no, no, no, no, no. Like we should fix this now.
Speaker 2:You know some people that have dealt with chipping gifts for years and years and years. It's going to take some time, it's going to take some work, but if you're just like, hey, I just need to sharpen up the tools, it should be one time I shouldn't have to see you for six months.
Speaker 1:Here I had a guy. I met him at the airport. Shockingly enough, right Met this guy at the airport and he comes up to me and he's like hey, man, I'll pay you how much ever money you want if you can fix my chipping yips.
Speaker 1:And I was like really? And he's like yeah. And I was like, well, how much? And he's like quite a bit. So I was like, all right. Well, I was like how about this this? How about I tell you what I think you should do? Now you go home and try it and if it works you can look me up and send me a message and you can then loan me some money.
Speaker 1:And he's like all right, cool. He's like what should I do? And I said lock out your legs. And he goes what? And I said lock out your legs when you chip. And he's like are you being serious? And I was like I'm being dead serious. I was like once you get good at that, then you can unlock your legs a little bit. So anyway, I heard back from a guy like a month later. He sent me a couple hundred bucks and he says he's never been so good at chipping in his life. And like the funny thing was is I can never fix the yips until I had a set of plates. And then once I saw somebody yip one on the plates, like I figured it out.
Speaker 1:Like anytime somebody is yipping and if it's a I shouldn't say, because there's different ways to do it. There's different ways, yeah right, but the most typical one yeah, the most typical one is off the hosel, like that's the yip. That really gets a lot of the guys. I don't see nearly as many toe yips as I do heel yips and generally what happens is is that as they go to move the club, instead of lowering the club, they lower their body.
Speaker 1:And then obviously it doesn't line up very well and then they have to do some crazy stuff and it typically involves like shoving the hosel right into the ball. So like the funny thing with like Yip guys is, you know, honestly, you can get them to lock out their legs and like at least the super symptomatic problems kind of go away and now they're at least to a point where they can make contact and kind of learn how to make emotion. But like it's, it's just funny how you know something that for so long has plagued so many people like has such a simple solution when you actually understand what's going on. Yeah, you know what I mean, that's what makes golf fun, man?
Speaker 1:no-transcript, something for him, and that's really what it's all about, in my opinion trying to share the information and try to help people actually play better golf absolutely million percent thank you, this has been. I got all my questions answered I'm ready to out.
Speaker 1:I've got all the recipes I need. Like dude, I seriously I can't recommend shortgamechefcom enough. I think it's really a well done website. Like I've built my own and done all that and I take a lot of pride in my websites, but yours is super nice, man. So, like, what you do is very well done, it's very professional and it's definitely something if you're a young coach listening to this, it's something to kind of take a look at, definitely a way to educate yourself and also kind of shows you what can be done when, like, hey, you put your vision to work and I think that's what you've done, right Is? You know? I want to be out here, I want to be part of this, and how do I contribute? And you found your lane and you're sticking to it. And, dude, you're doing it with some style. So my hat's off to you. Thanks, michael, I appreciate it. Buddy, yeah, man. So if you didn't pick that up, go to shortgamechefcom. Well worth the money, well worth the time. If you want some help with your short game, can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 1:We also talked about the Titleist flight lines. You can go to Titleistcom. You can check out the Vokey wedges that now apparently all finishes, now have the customizable flight lines. So if you're not a black, red and white kind of guy and like a little more neon, they can hook you up with some of that. So super cool stuff Parker's involved with. Can't thank him enough for the time. Please make sure to check him out and if you haven't done so already, please subscribe to this podcast, make sure to download it, and if you have any questions, comments, please leave them below and we'll make sure to get to them as soon as possible. So thanks so much and until next time, keep grinding.
