The Measured Golf Podcast

Coaching Amateurs Vs. Professionals

• Michael Dutro, PGA • Season 6 • Episode 11

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Want to practice like it counts? We open the notebook from a Scottsdale trip and dig into the real differences between coaching tour players and everyday golfers—where benchmarks, decision-making, and data matter more than pretty swings. Pros already meet the speed, approach, and scrambling standards, so the work shifts to human skills: choosing the right shot, trusting a plan, and validating ideas with objective feedback. Amateurs often miss the target by misreading their own games, chasing distance while leaks in putting and chipping quietly add strokes.

We lay out clear scoring benchmarks—why roughly 31 putts per round correlates with breaking 80, how three-putt control and short game proximity drive scoring, and what “makeable” actually means from 6 to 10 feet. Then we compare practice that sticks versus practice that soothes. Pros test feels across lies, use alignment every session, and build motor patterns without a club before confirming ball flight. They activate, not stretch, before tee times, turning on the chains they’ll use under pressure. You’ll hear how to copy that flow with simple activation, constraint drills, and short game games that tie reps to results.

We also get honest about equipment. Tour players benefit from elite fitting and consistent shaft profiles, swing weights, lofts, and lies. Many amateurs game clubs that are too long or mismatched, forcing compensations no drill can fully fix. We break down how to work with a fitter who understands delivery, why proper sole interaction matters, and how the right build can clean up contact, start lines, and distance control.

If you’re ready to stop guessing and start growing, this conversation gives you the blueprint: human-first movement, measurable benchmarks, focused practice, and gear that actually fits. Subscribe for more, share this with a golfer who needs a plan, and leave a review telling us where you’re losing the most strokes—putting, wedges, or tee shots?

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Measured Golf Podcast, where you, the listener, sit down and join me, Michael, as we discuss all things golf. And on this episode, we're going to talk about a question that I have gotten quite a bit here recently, uh, after my latest trip out to TPC Scottsdale, where I was fortunate enough to work with uh Parker McLaughlin, Hannah Gregg, Frederick Lindbloom, and a host of other very, very good players, some of which even playing on the tour. And we're going to do a special release on the YouTube this week as a special treat for all of our podcast subscribers, where we have none other than Mr. Pernice on the force plates demonstrating how he chips and pitches the golf ball, which is going to be really, really cool. You're going to want to see this because not only do we have some uh measurements on him, but we also have him on the smart to move 3D dual force plates. And we can really take a deep dive under the hood and better understanding the chipping and pitching mechanics that Mr. Pernice has used to be described as Tiger Woods as one of the best pitchers and chippers of the golf ball that he had ever seen. So if you get a chance to measure a master, you always want to take advantage of that. And Mr. Pernice could not have been nicer in sharing his time and expertise with us, which we have documented and put together in a YouTube video. So you're going to want to make sure that you see that. We're hoping to have that up this coming Saturday, uh November 15th. And I think it'll be something worthwhile for everybody, especially if you're a fan of what we talk about here on this podcast. So without further ado, after the trip, uh, I did a podcast, and you probably remember that one. That's where I sound a little gravelly. The desert definitely drives me out a bit and makes my voice quite a bit more hoarse than usual. But we've got the voice back and we are ready to podcast. So what we're going to talk about this week is the differences in coaching tour players versus amateurs. And this is a world that I kind of live in and choose to live in. Um, if you know any of the famous golf coaches out there, a lot of them become very difficult to book an appointment with, if at all possible. And they tend to primarily focus on their tour players and better players, and they more or less kind of stop teaching the general pop, we could call it. And I love teaching general pop. Uh, I think it's great, I think it's fun, it keeps me on my toes, and it really forces me to be variable in my coaching as well as creative. Because the biggest difference, I would say, when it comes to teaching touring professionals versus amateurs is that when it comes to touring professionals, if they have a PGA tour credential or a Cornferry tour uh credential, or they're a high-level player, there are a lot of benchmarks that they are already hitting. Otherwise, they wouldn't be at that level. So when it comes to club speed, ball speed, when it comes to being able to hit a green from a certain distance, when it comes to scrambling percentages and total putts per round, um, a lot of these things are already in place. Because if they weren't, they probably wouldn't be able to keep their card and or wouldn't be out there in the first place. But when it comes to our amateur uh golfers and our general population, what we tend to see is they they maybe don't have uh those skills. They don't meet those benchmarks. And there are some glaring holes for them in their golf game, which tends to be what holds them back from shooting the scores that they think they should be shooting. So when we kind of start thinking about this, a a simple way to kind of explain it is when I'm working with tour players, uh, a lot of the things that we focus on are going to be more human kind of skills. And what I mean by that is, like I said, they have a lot of these golf skills already. And what we're going to have to focus on is how you know we execute these things and how we do these things. And are we making the right decision? And is the caddy giving the player the input that they need in order to make that good decision that's going to put them in the best possible position? And we're going to spend a lot more time kind of dealing with a lot of the human equation than we are the golf equation, because typically speaking, a lot of your tour players are going to be very defensive of their golf swings and what they do because they know that they're very good. They know that they're capable of hitting every shot. And the last thing they want to do is go down a rabbit hole and potentially lose what makes them good and what's got them out there in the first place. So, generally speaking, you have to be very selective and you have to be data-driven with objective data, because if you can't show your work with these players and you base it all off opinion and what you think is correct, and that doesn't work immediately on the golf course under pressure for that player, they're generally pretty quick to disregard it. Now, when it comes to our amateurs or our general population, as we said, they maybe don't have uh those benchmarks in place. And the biggest thing that I think is difficult about teaching amateurs versus tour players is that you don't really know where the holes are. And everybody, I shouldn't say everybody, that's a very generalized statement, but a lot of amateur golfers tend to not even understand what is actually holding them back from shooting the scores that they want to shoot. And what I mean by this is there's a ton of young people uh who I'm fortunate enough to work with who already have PGA tour level club speed. So the average PGA tour club speed right now, according to Trackman, is 117.3 miles an hour. And when we think about that, you know, that is kind of where the game is right now. And we know that speed is very, very important, especially for young players. It's something they're very interested in. But my point is that if you take a tour player and you put them on a regular golf course that doesn't have the environmental factors like, you know, the pressure of playing on the tour, the pressure of trying to cash a check, the pressure of having maybe thousands of people watching you hit these shots. If you take all of that away and you just let them go out and play golf with their buddies, what they're gonna do is they're gonna play to about a plus 10 to a plus eight handicap. They really are gonna go low and they're not gonna do it every now and then, they're gonna do it all the time. Now, if they have a hundred and seven mile an hour club speed and we're kind of focused on the driver, let's say, for this argument, if they have this 117 mile an hour average clubhead speed for the tour and they're playing to a plus eight to a plus 10 handicap, and I have a young man come to me and they have 117 mile an hour clubhead speed or more, and they're playing to about a five, six handicap, obviously driving is not the problem. Now, you could say, well, they're hitting it all over the place, and this, that, and the other. Well, that could be true as well. But generally, being the force plate guy, a lot of people come to me to hit it farther. But in a lot of cases, the players that I work with and the amateurs and the general population, they tend to hit it far enough and straight enough with their driver to exceed their current handicap or skill level. Now, where are the gaps? And that's where it gets very, very difficult because when you talk to anybody about their chipping and their putting, generally they tell you something of the effect, oh, you know, I put fine, I chip fine, like that's all good. But I don't think a lot of people will kind of realize where these benchmarks lie when it comes to chipping and pitching the golf ball, nor do they understand the benchmarks when it comes to putting. And I think the biggest reason for that, as I've talked about in the handicap and how Chase is holding us back episode, is that there's a lot of picking up putts and there's a lot of gimme's, especially when we're out just playing with our buddies and we're kind of trying to get the round done and not hold anybody up. But the reason we make everybody putt things out on tour is because even the best players in the world miss the short ones every now and then. And if you don't believe me, look back to Rory at Augusta this past year on 18 when he missed a very short one to kind of seal the deal. And luckily, he was able to get it done in the playoff hole, even at the expense of my favorite player of all time, Justin Rose. But that's a story for another time. But they do miss the short ones every now and then. And that's why we need to be putting everything out, because we need to have an accurate understanding of how do we putt. And if you want to kind of start thinking about benchmarks, and maybe you're somebody who's trying to break 80 more consistently, the number that has more or less been proven from a statistical standpoint that most players do that break 80 frequently is you need to have roughly 31 putts per round. And that's just kind of where the math lays out. So we know that every hole is designed for you to have two putts. And if you hit two putted every single green, which would be great for a lot of players who struggle, that's 36 putts. So that means that we're going to have to make five putts and not three putt. So for a lot of golfers, when you ask them how many putts they're making around, and then you ask them how many three putts they're having around, you can start generally understanding whether their putting is actually good enough for their level. Now, the reason I think that so many people think their putting is fine is because when we hit a bad putt, it doesn't go in the water, it doesn't go out of bounds, it doesn't really do anything that's all that kind of charging to the nervous system. It doesn't give us these big feelings like we get when we hit a ball out of bounds or we hit one in the water, which emotionally create this big effect, which tends to stick with us. And there's a lot of golfers that I have personally witnessed over the years who have gone out and three putted three, four, maybe even five times in a round. And after the round, you're like, hey, what was going on out there? And they're like, Oh, I just didn't hit my irons very well. And it's like, no, we three putted all over the place. And where a lot of people kind of fall short in their understanding of putting is that a lot of the time the reason that we can't get the total putts per round down is because we're not chipping and pitching the ball close enough to the hole. And that is a big problem because if you're constantly chipping and pitching the ball to 10 feet, well, that's pretty darn good. And we would be pretty happy with that in a lot of the cases. If I need to get up and down and scramble for my par to make a score and to break 80, if I'm chipping and pitching it to 10 feet, I'm statistically not going to make a ton of those putts because we know from eight feet, the tour's about 50-50. Now, that's in competition, that's in a tournament, that's on very fast greens. So realistically, for us, we need to be trying to be 50-50 from 10 feet on these normal greens that the amateurs and general population is playing. Now, there's a lot of players who aren't 50-50 from 10 feet. And that is the real problem here because if we're trying to shoot a score and we're trying to make a number and we're chipping and pitching it to 10 feet, well, when you know it, we're gonna end up with a lot of bogeys on the card. And generally speaking, it's much easier to protect par and to make more pars than it is to make more birdies. So if we start kind of doing the math here and we realize that our scrambling percentage is low and it's not at that like 60 to 70 percent range, we're gonna be making way too many bogies during the round of golf, or potentially double bogeys or more. And it's not, we're not going to be able to make enough birdies to cover up those mistakes. And that's where I think a lot of people get lost in the sauce. But overall, like I said, it's very difficult with your amateurs and general population to kind of define where the gaps are and what you're going to be able to do to help them get better. The other big thing that I would say is a huge difference is that we we don't really know where the gaps are, and the timelines are completely different for each group. So if I'm a tour player, this is my career, this is what I'm doing for a living, this is how I'm feeding my family and paying my mortgage. So there's a lot more time commitment and going and working at these things than an amateur, because typically an amateur has, you know, a professional life somewhere, somehow, and they spend a big chunk of their time doing their professional life. And now they don't have eight hours a day to go work on their golf game. And they have to instead, you know, balance family, balance their other interest, balance, you know, a whole lot of things, but they don't have a lot of time to make these changes. And generally speaking, because we're having to do more swing-related things, more golf-related things with the amateur, because they don't have these skills, we need time. And we need them to have the ability to practice in a structured and meaningful way. And that is the other probably big difference, is when we, you know, work with tour players, and when I've worked with tour players, if I give them a drill to do, I'll check in with them, you know, a couple weeks later, maybe, and they're still doing the drill. And I'm getting videos from them doing the drill. And they want to know am I doing this drill correctly? And is this shaping the way we need it to shape in terms of the swing? Now, if I'm in a lesson here at Measured Golf in Ann Arbor and I give somebody a drill, I maybe get three swings out of the drill and they're ready to move on. Oh, I got it, coach. I'm ready now. And and that's fallacy because maybe a tour player could get away with that. Maybe they, you know, we stick something under an arm or we do whatever we do and it creates a feeling for them. And because they are such amazing compensators, maybe that is enough for them. Maybe they can feel that. But generally speaking, I think a lot of the tour players are way more interested in spending the time really working at it and realizing that that's the way to growth versus the average amateur player who has a finite amount of time to practice, and they don't want to really spend, you know, half of the bucket of balls or the full bucket of balls they just paid for doing a drill that's challenging, right? We want to go out and hit golf balls and enjoy it and do all that. So I think that's one of those other big areas is the you know, time that we have to invest in getting better. And then we also, you know, on the tour level, we have goals. We have to make money, we have to keep our card, we have to feed our family, we have to do all of these different things. So the goals are really there. And the time constraint isn't so much a constraint as it is uh when do we peak? And if you're a high-level tour player, you're trying to peak four times a year in the majors. Now, as an amateur, you know, maybe you're not playing competitive golf, maybe you're not playing tournaments, and if that's the case, then you're more able to work on some of these changes throughout the year as to a tour player to where, you know, the offseason, if there is one anymore, which there really isn't, is maybe a total of three, four weeks. Uh, they don't have a lot of downtime to go about making these big changes. Now, luckily, in a lot of cases, because they're very, very good and they hit a lot of these benchmarks, we're not necessarily making these wholesale changes like we would potentially see with our amateurs. But at the same time, we have to make sure that the things that we're telling our tour players were able to kind of work into the system, so to speak, we're able to get them to kind of start understanding. And we have to do it in a very short amount of time so that they're able to go out and compete. So I think that's also very interesting. And as well as for the amateurs, the big thing is, you know, it's more of a long-term improvement kind of game versus a short-term improvement kind of game. The tour player, if they're calling me and looking for help, you know, they got to get it together pretty quick because maybe they're fearful of losing that card. As to an amateur, they're kind of like, hey man, if next year I could lower my handicap by, you know, four strokes, that'd be great. You know, it's harder, in my opinion. It's harder with the amateur to kind of keep them committed and focused because they're not getting that instantaneous feedback from the leaderboard and their bank account. So I think it's a little harder with the amateurs to keep them engaged with what we're doing versus the tour player who's going to be way more focused on what they're actually trying to accomplish. And they're not really going to be the ones to decide that. Once again, it's going to be the leaderboards and the paychecks that show up. So, you know, I I there's a lot, right? So when when we're dealing with these two completely different groups of people, it really requires a different mindset as a coach. And what you're able to say and what you're able to do, you know, is is really really limited by the amateurs and the general population versus the tour players, because the tour players, you know, have been in this game for a while. You know, they've had access to launch monitors, they've had access to force plates, they've had access to 3D motion capture and advanced stat tracking. So, you know, you can kind of lean into that, and in all honesty, you kind of have to, because they're very unlikely to take you at face value and to take your opinion on this. And they want to see the objective data. They want to understand, like, hey, why am I doing this? Where is the proof in the pudding, so to speak? They really don't take things just on a whim because once again, the stakes are very, very high for them. Versus an amateur player who knows a lot of people that come here to measured golf, they've never seen track man, they've never seen force plates, they've never seen 3D motion capture, uh, they don't keep any stats. And all of a sudden, it's the more of this that you kind of layer in, the more their wheels start to spin, and you're at a greater chance of losing them in the session because they start getting transfixed on the data, transfixed on the graphs, and they just kind of get lost in the sauce a little bit. So the feedback that we provide across the board to these different groups is vastly different. So I can be very specific and I can use, you know, a more scientific kind of language with a lot of my tour players due to their experience in this field versus my amateurs to where I have to really almost kind of keep it close to the vest, if you will, and then uh use a lot more analogies and feels for them because that is more of the world that they're used to. And by trying to really get deep with them uh through just pure information, tends to be a little bit of a circuit overload for them, which is never good. So the feedback is is really, really key in how we how we try to you know coach both groups of people, right? It's it's a completely different kind of kind of way that we go. Um, you know, the other thing that I think is really interesting about the difference is, you know, if I'm working with an amateur and you know, we're hitting seven irons and maybe some drivers and maybe some wedges or whatever the case is, we're generally doing this off a perfect lie. Maybe it's at the driving range, maybe it's on the golf course, whatever the case may be. But generally we're kind of working off a level lie, and you know, we work on these things and it gets a little better and they're very happy. And then it's like, okay, well, I think I got what I need. I'll see you next week, coach. And it's like, okay, great. But then, you know, with your professional players, it's like, okay, let's go try this in different lives. But, you know, let's go try this with my ball above my feet, let's go try this with the ball below my feet, let's try this out of heavy rough, let's try this, you know, all these different situations that you can imagine because they inherently understand that golf isn't perfect. And even though they are very, very good, they are going to have to hit these different shots from various positions on the golf course with various lies. So generally, there's a lot more testing, if you will, from the tour player of what they're working on versus the amateur who's kind of like, all right, I'm good. I'll figure it out as I go. But once again, the stakes are lower. And maybe the awareness of, you know, you're not going to ball strike a golf course to death. The odds that you go out there and hit every fairway and every green are pretty small. If you're the best in the world at this, I believe the best driver or the most, I should say, the most accurate driver of the ball this year hit something like 73% of their fairways. And I think the most accurate approach player this year, pretty similar. I think it was like 74, 75% of their greens for the season. So, with that being said, you know, over 20%, almost 30% of the time, we are going to be missing fairways, we're going to be missing greens. And depending on your strategy for how you approach the green, you know, you could be short-sighted, you could be in a bunker, uh, you could be on a big slope, you could be in heavy rough. So if we're kind of working on things, then the player's going to want to see how these hold up in these different situations from the tour player perspective, versus the am that kind of gets out there and plays it by, you know, the seat of their pants a little bit. Um, I think that's cool, though. I think that's really interesting. And it's really awesome to see somebody, you know, take it out there and test it through these different situations and see how it holds up and how it stacks up because it's a great learning opportunity for me as a coach to kind of not only, you know, go, hey, yeah, that's what we want to see, but maybe, hey, this is how we have to tweak this a little bit in this situation, or this is how we have to tweak that. And now we're really getting into that deep learning, which I always think is a good place to be. So, you know, probably the biggest, you know, other than the fact that the play the tour players have the skills, the amateurs, the general population doesn't really have these skills, I would say the biggest difference is how they practice. And we talked about time and we talked about these constraints on our time, but the level of practice that I see out of the tour players that I work with versus the level of practice I see out of my amateurs, uh, is they're not close. And I tell people this all the time, and I think people get upset with me. But, you know, if you go grab a bucket of balls and whack them and just kind of go out there and you don't really have any alignment aids and you don't really have any, you know, training aids, and you don't really even have a goal, to be honest, for the for the session, if you're just out there, you know, trying to hit it at a target and then maybe trying to hit it farther and all those things, that's not really practice. That's just more or less decompression and doing something you enjoy doing. And we see it all the time, right? Like I practice uh outside of measured golf at a public facility, and you see people show up and they, you know, hit a lot of drivers, they hit a lot of seven irons, they hit a few wedges. Um, but there's there's really no rhyme or reason to what they're doing other than they're doing what they know they can do and they enjoy doing it. But you generally don't see the amateurs out there practicing their five iron, and they're going to hit a lot of five irons because you know they don't hit it that far, or they hit it a little crooked, or whatever the case may be. But very rarely do you see the five iron come out or the hybrid or the fairway wood. It's generally a lot of drivers, seven irons, and wedges. And, you know, even the wedge practice is a little suspect because you know, you don't see them varying the trajectory, you don't see them, you know, hitting it at a target and trying to get it close to a hole. You just kind of see full swings with everything. And with a tour player, you know, every shot means something, uh, especially your high-level tour players who are good and kind of understand practice. And, you know, they they make their windows tight, they make their aiming points tight, uh, they generally are very aware of their grip, they're generally very aware of their posture, they're generally very aware of their aim. Uh, they'll use a lot of things. So if you go out and you're lucky enough to go to a PGA tour, live tour, uh, go out to an LPGA event or high-level amateur event, and you get to the driving range before they tee off, you're gonna see a lot of alignment aids out there at a minimum. Everybody talks about the trackmans and the foresights and all the technology, but a lot of sticks out there, too, folks. And those sticks are important because we need to understand are we hitting the ball where we think we're aimed? And a lot of us go out there, and myself included, I'm I can be guilty of this, but I don't put the stick down where I'm lined up. And what we don't realize in this situation as amateurs and gin pop is that a lot of the times we're compensating our aim to kind of line up with the ball flight we're creating to get the ball on target. And it's not great because we're kind of doing that on a subconscious level a lot of times. And now it's very difficult for us when we go out on the golf course and we see the pen and we're like, oh, you know, I've I've only got 120 yards of this, I'm taking dead aim. The pin's on the middle, whatever the case may be. And we don't realize that for us to hit that pitching wedge or gap wedge of the 120 yards uh that we just saw ourselves do on the driving range. We maybe don't realize how we aligned our body on the driving range to get that to fly at our target. And now we kind of aim straight and then maybe we pull it. We're like, oh, I pulled another one. But there's a chance that maybe we were pulling it on the driving range as well, but we were unaware because we didn't have that alignment aid out there, kind of making sure that we're staying honest. So I think, you know, a lot of how we practice, uh, where we practice, I think that's big. You know, it's much easier for me to get a tour player to do the practice away from the golf course, away from the driving range, um, away from golf, in all honesty. And we do a lot of practice without a golf club in our hands, because if we're trying to make a motor pattern change, generally speaking, we're not going to change the motor pattern with a golf club in our hands. And the reason for that is that the minute as a the minute a golfer puts a golf club in their hands, they feel judgment over what the golf ball does. Now, if we're kind of creating this, you know, stress-inducing situation for ourselves and we're going to judge ourselves, our brain, our nervous system, is going to do what it knows how to do because it's trying to get that dopamine hit. It wants to make you happy and make this work. So the idea that we're going to go and make a movement change with a golf club in our hands, and our brain and our nervous system is just somehow going to let go and let us do this new thing, not very likely, especially early on in the change process. So I think it's important that, you know, amateurs recognize that when they do go and practice, lots of us consider that to only take place at the driving range on the golf course. But I think a lot of amateurs could do a lot of good for themselves by practicing at their house and not swinging a golf club and maybe picking up a very lightweight and moving it in a way that makes sense according to the human anatomy and the physiology of human beings. And now we're kind of working that motor pattern in a more sequential way that's going to align with being a human being. And now all of a sudden, once we kind of develop some of those fields, we can go out and try to recreate those at the driving range or on the golf course. But now we have a chance because now at least we've kind of trained the nervous system as to what we want it to do. And that's important. Um, that's really important. And I see so many people, you know, come in, have a lesson. It's kind of a rent-to-own situation, right? Because, you know, I'm here telling them what to do, giving them the feedback. And, you know, we kind of we give them some ways to trick themselves into doing it. And they're like, oh my God, I've I've never hit it like that. That's so good. Uh, it feels so much better, so much easier. And then what do they do? They as soon as they leave, they run to the golf course, they run to the driving range, and they just want to keep doing it. And all of a sudden, you know, after a couple shots, they start moving closer and closer back to that old motor pattern. And now all of a sudden the old golf swing shows up, and then there's the old miss. Oh, well, this doesn't work, you know. The the whole if it doesn't work quickly for most amateurs, it's it's no good. But it takes time, you know, going back to that conversation, it takes time to make these changes. And even if we put time in, we have to be very regimented about how we spend that time. And getting the golf club out of the hands is definitely a big part of that. So I think that for a lot of us, you know, that's that's where we really can learn uh from what the tour players are doing. You know, I I really think that you know, when you think about a a tour round, if you think about a tournament, the day starts for the players, you know, in the mobile gym that travels with the PGA tour uh or at a facility that's it's close to the site, but they're there with. Their trainer and they're not stretching. Like, I hate to tell you, they're not stretching, they're activating, and that's the key difference. They're they're not like in there doing some stretching and putting the golf club over their heads and bending side to side and all of that. Rather, they are actually activating and moving their body the exact way they intend to on the golf course. And they're really waking up those neurological pathways and really reinforcing, hey, body, hey, nervous system, this is what I want to happen today. And I would say that that is their version of going to the range before they tee off. Now, I'm not saying they don't go to the driving range, of course they do, but when they go to the driving range, it's more of a confirming, like, hey, these are my feels today. Does the ball do what I need it to do? Okay, perfect. I'm actually ready to go. So I think instead of going to the range and hoping to warm up and find it, I don't think that's what they're doing. And a lot of people will probably push back on that. But I think a great example of this is I think the year that Brooks won, um, I forget which tournament, uh, it might have been a US Open. I apologize for for not looking this up, but I I hadn't even thought about this for a while. But Brooks Kepka, you know, famously like showed up 15 minutes before his tea time. And I think he maybe hit two balls on the range, if any. And there was, you know, a lot of reporters asking him about that after it. And he's like, Oh, I was ready after the gym. You know, he's he's not going out there on the range trying to find it. He's not going out there on the range to really do anything other than to confirm what he already knows. But he's doing the activating, he's doing the warm-up at the gym with his trainer. And once he's gone through that process, he's ready to go. And I think that's really interesting. You know, when we think about, you know, boxers, for example, they don't have a fist fight in their locker room to get ready. Like they're not trying to simulate the actual fight, but they do work through and activate the muscles and the sequences and the patterns and the combinations that they're going to try to use in that fight, given the opportunity. So I just think it's, you know, a lot of people think that, oh, you know, I go to the range and you know, dance with the partner you brought. And if I'm fading it real good at the range, that's what I'm gonna do. If I draw it real good, that's what I'm gonna do. Um, you know, I I don't I don't think we want to leave it up to, you know, what's happening in the moment. I think we want to show up with a plan. I want us to show up with an expectation of, hey, this is the ball flight for me, this is what I do. Uh, and then we go confirm that and feel like we got it at the range. It's more of a mental check-in, I would say, than a physical check-in. And then from there we go out and try to execute our plan on the golf course. But I would say honestly, you know, that's one of the big differences is this, you know, going and having this physical process, uh, working with a trainer, doing these muscle activations, understanding which muscles we actually want to use in the golf swing. But I would say that that's probably one of the biggest differences as well, uh, between amateurs and tour players. And, you know, there's golf forever now. There's a lot of these bands out there that people are getting out of the bag. And I think you're going to continue to see more of that because that makes a lot of sense to me. Um, you know, the the physical strength, the coordination, uh, the range of motion, you know, a lot of those things are are preached pretty heavy within the golf industry these days. And a lot of amateurs are kind of told, well, you know, you're not as strong, you're not as quick, you're not as mobile as tour players, so you'll never be able to do what they do. But amateurs also aren't being charged to do what the tour players do. They're not playing from 7,400 yards and eight-inch rough that's super thick and overseated and everything else. You know, I think if you're playing the right set of T's and you are playing more or less casual golf, I think most general human beings are strong enough and coordinated enough and have enough range of motion to be able to do those things. I think where those things kind of get messed up is that they don't sequence it well and they don't move within the proper sequence of a human being, which is what tends to mess things up for a lot of golfers. So, you know, I don't think you have to be a gym rat to get better at golf. Uh, I think it could help. Uh, I think if you can get stronger physically, I think that's going to be an advantage. Uh, you don't have to have the biggest ranges of motion within each joint segment. However, if you increase some of those ranges of motions, I feel like that could help too. But I don't think it's the secret sauce that a lot of people have tried to make it out to be. But I do think that doing something kind of physical before the round, including some of these activations and these other things, is super, super helpful. But once again, going and stretching and twirling a club and all that stuff, I don't think that there's really going to be um, I don't really think there's going to be a lot of of gains from that. I just don't think that's the way it kind of works. So, you know, we've talked a lot about what's it like, you know, the tour players versus the amateurs, how do we coach them? How do we teach them? You know, one of the big things too is generally speaking, you know, the ultimate, the ultimate benefit of being a tour player is that you don't pay for equipment. And as a matter of fact, not only do you not pay for equipment, but generally most of the companies want you to play their equipment. There's only so many tour players in the world. Uh, a lot of the club companies see value in having their club in your hands because that's how they sell products. A lot of people, you know, buy what the pros play, whether that's right, wrong, or indifferent, a story for another time. But the big thing that is a benefit of that is that when you're a tour player, you have been fit. And when I say fit, I don't mean retail fitting. I mean these are great fitters that are out on the PGA, LPGA, live tours. These guys know exactly what's going on. They understand exactly what these tour players need, and they're able to get it into their hands. And whether that's, you know, the loft of the head, the length of the shaft, the type of shaft, um, whatever, but they're also building at a high level. So the builds are correct, the swing weights are correct, you know, the grip sizes are correct, all these things that a lot of us overlook are perfect. And that is a huge, huge, huge factor when it comes to coaching, because as a person who coaches both tour players and general pop and amps, what I tend to see the most in golf lessons is golf clubs that just don't fit. Um I hate to say it, but golf clubs, you know, generally are sold based off if the person hits them farther. And in an effort to make them go farther, we can only really do two things. We can make them more strong lofted, and we can make them longer. And a lot of the length that the irons have gotten these days are just absurd. And I truly believe that most of the off-the-rack golf clubs are far too long for most of the golfers using them. And you're like, well, okay, it's too long, but what's that matter? Well, it matters quite a bit, actually, because when we get the club sitting on the ground and the toes way up in the air, another way that I could say that is the toe is closed or the face is closed. So, you know, for the guy that's battling a left miss that can't get the club properly sold on the ground, you know, maybe that's part of it. And a lot of people, you know, generally think that because they're tall, they need longer golf clubs, but people tend to forget that we are proportional and you can line up, you know, 10 people of varying heights and have them stand side by side by side. And what you're gonna notice is most people's wrists kind of hang at the same place because once again, we're proportional. And the golf club companies have done it done a good job of trying to figure out where that kind of threshold is. But what they've done recently over the past 20 years is they've started lengthening these things, just like they've lengthened the driver to try to create more speed. Because, as I said, most golf clubs that are sold that were fit are fit on some kind of launch monitor device, and generally speed sells. So, you know, getting the right club in the hands of the player is really helpful, and it makes my job as a coach much, much easier. But so many people are out there with golf clubs that don't fit, they tend to be too long, um, they tend to not be the correct swing weight, they feel heavy, they feel light, they're inconsistent throughout the bag, and it just generally creates a lot of issues. You know, I was listening to another podcast, forgive me, I can't give the person credit that deserves this, but I thought they said something really smart, which maybe I've taken for granted. But, you know, based off your club delivery, there is a shaft profile that's going to work better for that than others. And once you figure out what that profile is, we want to get that same profile throughout the bag. Now, that doesn't mean that you know we have to play the same shaft in every single club, but every shaft has a profile. And once we figure out what that profile is that works best for you, we want to find that same profile in the driver, the fairway woods, the hybrid, the irons, the wedges, the whole, maybe not the wedges. We maybe want something slightly different. But we generally, with our full swing clubs, want to find a profile that's going to work well for us. And generally, you know, a lot of people go swing a club a few times, waggle it a few times. Oh, this is pretty good. Well, Scotty plays this one, so it's good enough for me. And away we go, and they're just in this equipment that's never going to work. So I think it's important that, you know, we recognize that a lot of people, I think, would actually do better with a proper fitting. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a lot of good fitting out there, especially at the retail level, because it's very vanity fitting. It's, hey, we know you're going to spend money. We're just here to make you feel good about it. So we'll sell you whatever you want. But I think if you work with a good fitter who understands club delivery, who understands these profiles of these shafts, and can more importantly get them fit to you to where you can sold them properly on the ground, I think that's going to do a lot of good for a lot of people. So we kind of have gone through it, you know, the differences with these tour players uh versus AMS and General Pop and the differences in coaching them. But the final thing I want to say is that, you know, working at a facility and owning measured golf here in Ann Arbor. Um, I have a lot of clients who come in. You know, my days teaching, there's a lot of back-to-back. And a lot of people will come in and they'll go, Hey, you know, I saw so-and-so doing this thing. It's the same thing you have me doing. Like, what gives? We don't have the same golf swing, we don't look the same. And, you know, I share some stuff every now and then of me working with some players, maybe tour players or whatever on social media. And people are like, Wait, I saw, you know, that guy doing the same thing you got me doing. Like, what gives? And the joy of coaching, uh, and where I hope coaching goes in the future when it comes to golf or any other sport for that matter, is that the beauty of this, and the reason that we're able to coach both tour players and amateurs alike is because everybody at the end of the day is a human being. And what I try to do as a golf coach is not teach golf swings, but actually teach human motion. And I think that's an important distinction because every human being has the same pieces and parts. Yes, they might be slightly different sizes, yes, they might have slightly different ranges of motion, but we all have to satisfy being a human being first, and that's really, really important. We're all humans and we all have to adhere to how or the physiology of how human beings move while creating emotion on planet Earth, and that's really it. So if we understand, you know, that we're all humans, we understand that we all have to do certain things throughout the golf swing. Um, and if you're fortunate enough to understand the myofascial system and the six meridians that that works off of, it gets much easier to understand the golf swing. And then if you're fortunate enough to be fit into golf clubs that are going to work for you, this all gets much, much easier. But we have to deal with the human being first. The human being moves the golf club. That doesn't mean that when we move the golf club, the golf club doesn't have forces that are going to act on us. But at the end of the day, the body is the engine of the golf swing. So for a lot of us who are worried about the golf club throughout the golf swing, that is really a big differentiator between, you know, teaching pros and teaching amateurs, is that for me, a lot of the times, I'm not going to mess with golf swings a whole lot with the PGA tour players or LPGA tour players because they know how to swing a golf club. They're very capable of that. But what they struggle with is the miss, and they need the miss to stop so that they can make the money and keep their card and feed their families. And the miss generally isn't because they all of a sudden decided to swing their hands and arms and club differently. It's generally because there's a motor pattern issue, which goes back to being a human being. So for me, I've always felt that if we take care of the human being, if we treat the needs and the physiology of the human being first, that's going to set people up for success long term and allow for consistency to happen. It's going to not only help with consistency, it's also going to help with longevity. And at the end of the day, everybody is looking for those two things is they want to be more consistent and they want to be able to play golf the rest of their life. So that's really the the thing that brings it all together, um, even though there are all these differences that we talked about. So I hope I've done a halfway decent job of kind of walking through, you know, the differences between coaching both. But at the end of the day, golf is played by human beings, at least for now. And as long as it's played by human beings, we'll always have to understand that everybody should share the same swing philosophy, which is only nine words. It's easy to remember, but it's a human being making emotion on planet Earth. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any of our future episodes. Be on the lookout for the awesome video feature featuring Mr. Pernice on our YouTube channel coming out this weekend. I think you guys are really going to enjoy that. If you're there and check that out, please be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel as well. That does a world of good for us. Feel free to leave your comments. We always welcome those. We try to respond to them as quickly as possible. Uh, so if you have some questions, if you have some comments, let us know there. We always try to get back. And if you're interested in working with me, that's great. You can find me on the web uh at measuredgolf.com. You can find us on Instagram either at measuredgolf or follow my personal one at the forceplate guy and reach out to me. Let me know you're interested in some coaching, and we'll get you taken care of. So thanks again for tuning into this podcast. And until next time, keep grinding.

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Michael Dutro, PGA

Host