The Measured Golf Podcast

Stop Chasing Perfect, Start Learning Golf

• Michael Dutro, PGA • Season 6 • Episode 15

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Ready to stop renting swing changes and finally own your game? We dig into why so many golfers stall out despite new gear and endless tips, and we map a clearer path forward: study your miss patterns, track real data, and train skills that hold up on real lies with real pressure. The goal isn’t perfect positions; it’s predictable outcomes.

We pull back the curtain on golf’s hype cycle and why “buying a game” rarely works. Then we get specific: where to place force in the swing, why stability beats late speed, and how neutral-ish path and face-to-path relationships build a shot shape you can trust. You’ll learn why consistent apex and land angle across the bag matters more than peak seven-iron distance, how to practice variability instead of comfort, and why the best players embrace uncomfortable reps because that’s where the nervous system rewires.

This conversation also tackles the human side of improvement: accountability, useful stats, and the mindset to ride golf’s highs and lows without spiraling. We share practical ways to use tools like Arccos and launch monitors to reveal true carry distances, side tendencies, and gapping issues—sometimes even hidden loft problems. With objective feedback, coaching shifts from entertainment to performance, and your practice starts solving real problems instead of feeding your ego.

If you’re serious about getting better, measure more, guess less, and commit to the unglamorous work that makes your pattern predictable. Subscribe for more measured takes, share this with a playing partner who’s ready to improve, and leave a review to tell us what you’ll track this season. Want help building your offseason plan? Reach out at measuredgolf.com—we’re here to coach the change that lasts.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Measured Golf Podcast, where you, the listeners, sit down and join me, Michael, as we discuss all things golf. And as you probably have already noticed, if you're watching on our YouTube channel, it's a little different background. Uh, working from home, doing this podcast, haven't done this before. And interestingly enough, this is where my wife tends to sit when she does therapy. Uh, and maybe that's fitting for today's episode because I think I'm going to put on the therapy hat a little bit today and talk about one of those things that most golfers fail to understand, which is how do they get better? How do they learn? And what is getting in their way? And I think that this is a long overdue conversation with the golfing public because so many of us are putting ourselves into positions where, quite honestly, we're just never going to get better. We want to, we wish to. Uh, we tell all of our friends and our golfing buddies that we're going to this winter, but very few of us actually show up in the spring in any better shape than we left it in the fall. So we're going to dive into a little bit to why that happens, what has to happen for changes to occur and kind of get into the pitfalls of the industry. Now, we're going to get into that a little bit deeper and a little heavier here in a few minutes, but you know, the biggest problem that golfers tend to have when it comes to development and getting better is really not the golfer's fault, to be perfectly honest. Generally, it tends to be the industry's fault. And people are going to say that I am being negative, or people are going to comment that I just have a bone to pick. And that couldn't be farther from the truth. But generally, what we learned in Jerry McGuire was show me the money. And that's how the golf industry views you, the golfer. Show me the money. And golfers are generally told that they can buy a golf game. And here in a month or so, we're going to get all the new golf equipment that starts coming out for 2026. And when you know it, it's going to go 15 yards farther and it's going to go straighter and it's got 10K forgiveness and it's got all these bells and whistles. But I can tell you that the legal limit for that club face is still 1.50. So I don't know how it's going to go farther unless it just aerodynamically can be swung, you know, five, six miles an hour faster, which it can't. And people are going to go out there and gobble it up and talk about how much better it is. And they're going to go hit it on a sim. They're going to go hit it at the driving range. It's going to work better than their previous driver that they have some scar tissue with. And then they're going to go out there and think that they've made their game better by buying the latest driver, the latest irons, going to get some fresh grooves on the wedges, going to find a zero torque putter. And from there, they're going to think everything is right as rain. But at the end of the day, as we all know, or at least the people who have played this game long enough know, it tends to be the Indian and not the arrow. And very few golfers that are new since COVID have learned that yet, which is why we see that the club cells are through the roof and everybody's convinced they can buy a game. So, you know, not only does the, you know, and I don't want it to sound like the club industry uh is the only one with these practices, but golf instruction, by and large, has has turned into this. And it's funny because I teach a lot of people, uh, both in person and online. And a lot of people seem to think I live under a rock and don't have my own Instagram feed and my own YouTube channels to kind of look at. And I see more more than likely what you see. And there's a million coaches out there, there's never been more, offering to solve all of your problems with this one thing. If you just learn this one move, if you just learn how to shallow it and transition, if you just learn how to take advantage of the ground forces, you'll you'll be a new golfer overnight. And it doesn't work like that. Um, it doesn't, because one thing that a lot of new golfers or golfers who are trying to get better fail to realize is that a perfect technique is not achievable. There isn't one. And even if you had a quote unquote perfect technique, what you would find is that golf is a highly variable game. And even if you have the perfect swing and can't read lies and don't understand the ball flight that's going to be produced by said lies, it's generally not going to work out every time, which is why you don't see people going out there and shooting 55 for 18 holes. That hasn't been done because, quite honestly, you cannot ball strike a golf course to death. And ball striking and golf skill are not the same thing. There's a multitude of skills that are needed to play golf at a high level. So I think a lot of people are out there trying to find the perfect swing and trying to avoid having a miss. And that's just not the way it works, and that's not the way the brain learns either. So I think it's kind of important that we have this conversation because, you know, so many people are constantly sold in the golf industry because there's so much money. And I've been on record as saying this, but I don't think that we've created any new golfers since COVID. And people beat me up for that one. But it's true. And here's why I say that. Some clubs to sell that make the game easier for people. Literally, golf was the only thing that we could do outside during COVID. The other thing that people were doing during COVID was they were drinking in record numbers. And if you don't believe me, look at Anheuser-Busch's stock during COVID. People were drinking like crazy. They didn't go to work. They were all working from home. And people were pouring a stiff one starting at about 11 a.m. So the thing is, is people very quickly got tired of being around their family all the time, got tired of being stuck inside. And the only thing that you could do outside, believe it or not, was play golf. So people that were drinking decided they wanted a change of scenery and headed out to the golf courses. So when I say we haven't created any new golfers since COVID, what I'm really saying is we've packed the T-sheets full of tailgators because that's what we've done. And now we have this whole new generation of golfer who didn't grow up in the game the traditional way that most of us did that played before COVID. They grew up in the YouTube era to where they're being sold and they are now buying golf clubs and getting into the golf industry, and they're being sold. And the problem is that these people haven't learned the lessons of the people before COVID. And more importantly, they're probably not interested because so many of these new, let's call it, you know, tailgating golfers, they don't actually care about the game of golf. If you don't believe me, go look at how many bunkers get raked these days. Look at how many ball marks get fixed. They want to show up, they want to pimp out their golf cart, they want to have big boom boxes, and they want to hit bombs and drink transfusions. That's what they're into. And oh, by the way, if if somebody will tell them that they can gain 15 yards, they're all in because at the end of the day, their main motivation for the most part is to hit the long ball off the T that's longer than their buddies, so they have bragging rights and then can assault the cart girl with a bunch of derogatory stuff. And that's kind of the game of golf right now. And I'm sure in the comment section I'm gonna hear about how I have a very negative viewpoint, but that's how I see the game of golf. And I'm the old man now. You can see the gray in the beard. I like to walk. I like to, you know, play, you know, I play blades still because I don't really buy into this hollow-headed game improvement style irons being right for everybody. Um, you know, I fix three to five ball marks for green, sometimes more. I can't walk by a bunker that isn't raked and not rake it. But golf has a very almost religious like feel for me, and it generates that kind of emotion from me. So I'm kind of definitely on the way out. This isn't where golf is right now. If we go and hung out on the first teeth of public golf facility, we're gonna see way more people that are there to hit bombs and drink transfusions than we are people carrying their bag, keeping a scorecard, and being honest. So I understand that that is where the average golfer is these days. And a lot of these average golfers that are out there these days have been born from COVID and the desire to get outside, which is great. It's just unfortunate that the industry that is golf wasn't more prepared for this boom and wasn't there to greet them and teach them about the history of golf and the game of golf and the honor code of golf and the etiquette. Instead, we deferred to people on YouTube to do that job for us, even though, as PGA of America members, we should have been there to try to grow the game, quote unquote, which is what we say we do, even though the only time the game has grown has been for reasons outside of the PGA of America. So getting back to why people aren't getting better is because we deferred to YouTube and we deferred to, you know, the industry to take care of these people, what we're seeing is that, you know, they're being sold to because there's money. And I know I said that we haven't created any new golfers since COVID, but in reality, the T-sheets have never been more full. There's never been more people participating in the game. I've never seen so many young athletes come to me that are choosing to play golf versus football, basketball, baseball. It's it's crazy. I never thought we would get to this point, but that is where we are right now in the game of golf. So we have to do a better job helping people learn how to learn and how to get better. And if we look at this whole learning situation and improving their golf game, they believe, because they've been sold, that they can buy a golf game. And I believe that what they really have to learn how to do is kind of what a lot of us had to do. And you've got to put in time. And that's something that this current generation really doesn't do well with. They don't do well with putting in time, they don't want to do things they're not good at. They don't want to invest their money and time and resources into something that doesn't give them that immediate dopamine hit. And that's where golf really struggles and always has struggled because it's one of those things to where you truly are kind of held accountable. And if there's anything I've learned teaching golf over the past 15, 20 years, it's people hate to be held accountable. And one of the big things that I think we're going to kind of talk about in terms of helping people get better at golf and what needs to happen for people to get better at golf is accountability is key. And, you know, I've done a podcast talking about how chasing scratch can really hurt your game. And one of the things I said on that podcast was how handicaps tend to be one of two things. They tend to be way overinflated, and the person's using it to sandbag. Yep, Strickler would love hearing that. Or two, people tend to have a handicap that is much too low, and it's a vanity handicap. Okay, so when we start thinking about how these handicaps kind of play out and why people aren't getting better, it's really imperative that a golfer understands not only their strengths, but their weaknesses. And when you try to talk to a golfer about their weakness, they hate it. They don't want to have that conversation. They don't want to admit to the fact that they have a miss and they try to chase this ideal or this perfection or this perfect swing that quite honestly doesn't exist. And when we look at how human beings learn, we are not good at memorizing things and trying to recreate things in terms of a motor pattern. We actually are much better at recognizing error and then building patterns around that. So the thing that kind of drives me a little bit crazy as a golf instructor is that so many of these quote-unquote golf coaches that exist online and in person are only looking at the good shots that their clients and golfers hit in front of them and taking all the credit for those and going, that's the one, that's the one, that's the one. But in reality, when we coach golf, we have to help people identify and recognize the error. Because if we don't understand what the error is in terms of swing mechanics or whatever else it may be, we can't understand how to build a pattern that helps either alleviate that or build a strategy that allows us to account for that. So if you're a golfer and you're trying to get better at golf and you know that you hit a perfect seven-iron, 170 yards at 100 feet of trajectory, and you know, you know your spin rates, you know, all these things, that's great. Like that's really good to know. But what's the myth? And when I ask young people or new golfers that question, they're like, I don't know. And it's like, well, yeah, you do. You just tend to tune it out. And when golfers at the driving range or at the sim or wherever they practice or are hitting balls, and I own a I own an indoor facility and have since 2020, when I hear a bad one, I immediately see that golfer looking down at the ground or grabbing another ball or whatever else they may be doing, but they're not studying that mess. They're not understanding how that mess happens. They just immediately try to hit another good one and think that that's how they're going to solve that problem. But when they get out onto the golf course, what we tend to see is that because they don't have the recognition of the error, when it happens on the golf course, they just kind of fall apart. And they tend to start, you know, trying to make a change and trying to find the good ones again, kind of like they do in their practice. But as we all know, if you've played any golf before, when you start trying to fix the error on the golf course, that is typically when things go wrong. But once again, from a human being perspective, we're not good at perfect and we're not good at mimicking perfect and trying to create perfect. We're very good at error recognition and kind of trying to build patterns around that error recognition. So, with that being said, so many people don't like to be held accountable and don't like to understand where their miss is coming from. So, you know, there's a lot of people, I've seen this a million times, that think a draw is better than a fade. Okay, fine. If you have a motor pattern that produces more of a draw pattern style swing, yeah, a draw probably is better for you than trying to hit a fade. However, there has to be a reasonable amount of draw. So if we were to be in a sim or if we were outside with some kind of launch monitor technology and we're hitting these draws, what people fail to realize is that we have to be able to draw the ball off of a flat lie with a kind of neutral pattern. And what a lot of people do is they don't pay attention to these patterns whatsoever. And as long as the outcome matches kind of their desired target, they don't really care. But I see a lot of people who come in and they're like, oh, I hit draws. And I'm like, okay, let's see a few of them. And they hit a couple draws, and let's say they hit three shots, one of them is pretty good and doesn't overdraw the line. And just so people know, if you have a target line, kind of a straight line from the golf ball to the target, if the ball crosses that target line right to left, if you're trying to hit a draw, if that ball lands left of the line, that is a hook. Okay. A draw starts right of the line and stays right of the line, that's a draw. Okay. A hook crosses the line. But let's say the first ball draws, they're like, see, that's the one. And then the next two miss the line left, and those would be considered a hook. Well, they're like, see, like I can do it sometimes, but it kind of curves a little too much from time to time. And I just don't, you know, I we we just got to get it to draw the perfect amount every time. Like, if we can do that, you know, I'm gonna be a happy golfer. Well, the problem is, and I'm not saying every time, but let's just say in this case, is that they have a club path that is end to out or to the right by five or six degrees. I see it all the time. And they're like, see, I've got a draw pattern. I swing it into out, I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to do. And the thing is, is that five or six degrees, even though, you know, on a scale of 100, that's a small number, on the scale of a golf swing, that's a lot of in-to-out movement in terms of a club pass. So when we have this five, six degree club pass into out, you're only going to be able to hit a draw. And the thing is, is that if you put the face, the club face or the face angle at zero degrees, your face-to-path relationship is now negative five or negative six degrees. And that axis of the golf ball is going to be shifted very left. And it is going to take a perfect swing, a perfect strike to get that face to where it's a little more open because we know that the golf ball starts based off where the face is orientated. And we're going to have to actually have the face a bit open at impact every time to not hit the hook. And that might be something you can train and do fairly consistently in a simulator at the driving range off a flat lie. And it might work some. But the minute that we go out onto the golf course, two things are going to happen. We're going to get different lies and we're going to have pressure. Okay. So for that person who has an end-to-out club path of five or six degrees, when the ball gets above their feet, they're not going to be able to start it far enough right to get it to not hook. And when I remember, a hook is missing left of that line. I'm not saying, you know, 60 yard hooks in the sky or anything like that, but they're not going to be able to get that ball to do anything other than be left of that target line when that ball goes above their feet. Because when the ball is sitting on the ground above your feet, it already has the axis shifted left. And because it has the axis. Axis shifted left and you're going to shift the axis more left with the face to path relationship, it's just going to do nothing but want to go left. And then when we get the ball on the ground below your feet, now all of a sudden it's going to be very hard to execute that shot because typically what we should see with ball below our feet is the ball should be straight to fade some. Now, if you have an end-to-out path and the ball is below your feet, say hello to the heel of your golf club. It's going to be very difficult for you to not do that off of that line. So, yes, in a practice environment, we can kind of repetitively train this pattern of five, six degrees to the right. But even though every now and then I'm going to get this perfect kind of quote unquote push draw, which is just a draw, even though I'm every now and then going to get one of those and be pleased with it, I'm not understanding the error that can come from that pattern. And the error from that pattern is we're going to get a lot of shots that miss to the left. And if you know anything about the current golf ball and the current way clubs are designed, a left miss is no good because it lowers the spin rate, the ball tends to lose trajectory, it hits the ground hard, and it tends to find a lot more trouble on the left than it does when we kind of hit it high and soft and maybe miss it a little bit to the right. So a lot of people aren't recognizing that error. A big reason that people aren't recognizing their errors is that golfers tend to be dopamine addicts and they want perfect. They want the ball to do what they want it to do. They want to have a sense of control. I would say that golf is really one of the first, you know, video games, if you will, to where people can, you know, no matter what the walk of life is, no matter what they're kind of have going on, you know, they might be, you know, a worker bee and they got a boss that's mean to them. But, you know, if they go and play golf with their boss and they have a better skill set than their boss, they can beat them. So a lot of people chase perfection through golf. And it's not different than the motivations behind video games. It's not different behind the motivations of a lot of things. But generally, people are trying to live a different life through the games and through the, you know, activities that they participate in outside of their work life. And golfers love to chase perfection. And when we're on their pursuit of perfection, we tend to stare a little bit more at the good ones and we try to avoid and forget the bad ones. So when we kind of think about this recognition of the error, a lot of people tend to not dig very deep when it comes to their practice routine. And people tend to comfort or people tend to practice comfortability. And when you think about people who are going to the driving range or going to the sim, you know, you don't see a lot of four irons getting hit. You don't. As a matter of fact, I mean, there's not a lot of reason these days to have a four iron in the bag, unless you're one of the best players in the world, but you're not seeing a lot of the problem clubs being used in a practice session. Typically, people show up and do what they do well, which is why they tend to hit a lot of wedges. And oh, I'm practicing my wedges. No, you're practicing what you can hit up in the air and more or less at your target. And then they hit a lot of drivers because guess what? The driver has really been turned into one of the easiest clubs, if not the easiest club to hit these days. And if you don't believe me, like go back and find a persimmon driver or go find a title as 975D and see how many people would want to hit that at the driving range. Because I remember when that driver was out, and you saw not nearly as many people at the driving range practicing with those clubs because they were incredibly difficult to hit. But now we got into the era of 10K, which is a metric metric for MOI and forgiveness. And we basically got this big watermelon on a stick, and now people are just trying to swing it as fast as they can because if you can't find the face of that thing, God help you. So everybody is kind of practicing this comfortability and building their ego and kind of lulling themselves into this sense of you know achievement. And when they get out to the golf course, once again, because they haven't recognized the error and dealt with the error, what we tend to see is that a lot of golfers really, really struggle when it comes to this. So long story short, I think a lot of people would do better by instead of having, you know, concern for, you know, are they the best golfer ever? Are they doing everything perfect? Are they, you know, following the trend lines? And do they get their handicap low enough? I think if people would stop focusing on those things, we would see that they got a lot better. One thing that really kind of hurts them in a way is that the feedback loop tends to just be what they see and what they feel. And it's very subjective. Okay. It's not very objective. So going back to my earlier point about feedback and giving ourselves the ability to kind of dig in and understand how we're delivering the club is super, super important. But the one thing that we're not great at doing as human beings is kind of modeling these swings and positions and chasing them. So when we think about a golf swing, typically, I think a lot of golfers think that a golf swing can just be the golf swing. And they don't realize that the body is a part of this equation. So when it comes to getting better at golf, one of the biggest problems that I see for a lot of people is that they are not addressing the body. And whether you train the body, whether you're aware of the body, it is a big part of the equation when it comes to the swing. The swing doesn't just happen. The body has to move the club, the club acts on the body, and then I have to try to figure out a way to use forces and torques from the ground to get the body into the position I needed delivery. That's kind of the way this all goes together. So the big thing that I've noticed is that typically, whether people want to recognize this or not, you can you can train the body, you can not train the body, but it is a part of the story. And where I think so many golfers are kind of getting left behind is that they just kind of go out there and try to create positions versus understanding the timing, the magnitude, and the implication of where they create force in their golf swing. And one of the biggest things that tends to happen is that most golfers chase speed well before they chase stability. And the minute a golfer can kind of hit the ball on the ground, which is an achievement, by the way, it tends to be the first step in golf is learning how to hit the ball. If you've never taught a beginner or you don't remember being a beginner yourself, uh, hitting the ball takes a little bit of time, at least hitting it every time. So that takes a bit of time. And then all of a sudden, we can do that. And generally, the second step to becoming a golfer and having a better golf swing is solving for the slice. Because most golfers in the beginning tend to be very steep andor over the top. Now, when we are over the top and kind of slicing the golf ball, generally speaking, we don't make a ton of speed. And when we don't make a ton of speed, it tends to be because we're not moving in sequence or the correct sequence that the human anatomy needs to move in to be efficient and transfer energy from the ground through the body, through the arms, and eventually through the club and to the ball. So when golfers are newish and they're slicing the golf ball and everybody's out driving them, they pretty quickly start chasing more club head speed. And a lot of people put the speed in the wrong place in their golf swing. So I'll give ahead and kind of let you know where it goes. But if you think of the golf swing as being a circle around the body, it isn't, but if you think of it that way, the first quarter of the swing during the take back or moving the lead arm to parallel in the backswing, not club shaft, but lead arm, that is the moment to add the speed, the initial force. That is where we have to put the speed in the golf swing. However, because of the way that a lot of people go chasing speed and speed being measured at the ball, typically golfers are kind of going a lot slow in the backswing because a lot of golf industry professionals, I'm doing air quotes if you can't see me, a lot of golf industry professionals are trying to get people to ramp up the speed and transition because it's going to measure at the bottom. And a lot of these speed training apparatuses are kind of incentivizing people to do that as well. So all of a sudden, we're putting the force, which is what we use to create speed, we're putting the force into the wrong segment or phase of the golf swing. And now all of a sudden, delivery is going to be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to make consistent and to have stability within the club phase. So so many people kind of quickly start chasing speed, which really gets in the way of the skill development. Because the thing that golfers tend to forget is yes, having some extra speed with the driver may be nice, but we also are going to have to hit a lot of different clubs. We're only going to be driving the golf ball at most 14 times a round. What are we going to do with all those other shots? And that's where people don't realize that, hey, there's no requirement on hitting your seven-iron X amount of yards. You can take the six iron, you can take the five iron, and you can get it to go that distance. And you don't have to make this very effortful golf swing when it comes to the irons. So once again, it's understanding that golf is very variable. And yes, it's fun to go to the driving range and to chase that dopamine hit and get the seven iron to go crazy fast and make us feel like, oh man, look how far I hit it. This is so good. But once again, when we don't have the force applied to the correct part of the golf swing, what's the error? What's the mess? And this kind of goes into a bit of a broader conversation with people just not being able to manage ego and thinking that club speed is the great separator of golfers. And it isn't. I mean, skill is a a I'm sorry, speed is a skill for sure. And generally a better timed, better sequenced golf swing has the capability to create more speed. And that definitely is a skill. But there's a lot of skills that are required when it comes to a golf swing. And I think a lot of us just typically don't own a lot of that. So long story short, with the idea of, you know, chasing speed versus chasing a better sequence golf swing, you know, I think if you think about this, a lot of golfers really struggle to, you know, hit all the clubs in their bag well. And one thing that I think we could kind of think about in terms of skill development is we want to see with full swings, all the clubs kind of apex at the same height. So if you're one of those people who is a relatively new golfer, or you're a golfer who's been playing for a while and wants to get better, what we want to see is that your longest iron, let's say you're five iron, we want to see it apex at about the same trajectory as your nine iron in your pitching wedge. So generally a good rule of thumb to create a good land angle that has stopping power is we want to see the golf ball kind of at roughly, you know, 90 to 100 feet in the air. So getting a golf ball 90 to 100 feet in the air is going to be very, very important across the bag because not only do we want our pitching wedge and our nine-iron, which has a lot of loft on the face, so it's easy to get in the air to have stopping power when it hits the ground. But we also want to see our five iron when we have to hit that have some stopping power too. Now, there's going to be people who argue, well, if I hit my driver farther, I don't have to hit five irons in. Well, you're still going to play par threes to where you have to hit a five iron every now and then. And if we're only hitting bullets that don't have any stopping power, well, then it's going to be very difficult to make par on par threes unless we have a good short game. So I think a lot of people, once again, are not recognizing that, hey, yeah, maybe, maybe I hit my nine-iron and my pitching wedge pretty good and they go up in the air. But then when I get my five iron or my six iron out or my seven iron even, I kind of hit bullets. Well, once again, what's the error? That would be a delivery issue and de lofting issue. And hey, maybe I should address this and see if I can't get it a little bit more up in the air. So when it comes to this recognition, I think the big thing that people don't really do very well is they're not very open. And, you know, we've kind of talked mostly about golfers kind of on their own journey, but from a coaching and teaching perspective, the number one thing that makes teaching and coaching golf very difficult is you need the student to be open. And a lot of people who play golf, you know, are like me and very addicted to it and kind of degenerates when it comes to golf. And we read a lot. And like I said earlier, I have an Instagram feed, a YouTube channel. You know, I'm constantly being inundated with, hey, you need to do this in your golf swing. Hey, you need to do that in your golf swing. Well, the the computer, you know, the screen that's telling me this has never seen my golf swing. It's never seen how I deliver the club. So it's kind of like getting advice, right? And the advice is coming from a complete stranger who's never seen you hit a golf ball. So I think where we've got to do a better job in terms of our skill development and getting better at golf is to stop drinking the Kool-Aid and to stop taking advice from strangers. And we've got to either find a way to create more objective feedback in our own game, or two, you got to work with somebody who you believe is going to be able to help you. And one of the biggest things that I've noticed, especially since COVID, is due to the fact that there are so many more quote-unquote golf coaches that exist online via Skillist and via all these other platforms, a lot of golf or a lot of golfers are kind of looking for a coach that's the cheapest. And I understand why. It's because, you know, they've spent all their money on Greens fees, which have gone up, you know, considerably since COVID, and golf equipment. It's not cheap. But then when it comes to actually trying to get better, they want the free info or the cheap info. So I think a lot of people go to YouTube for, you know, golf swing help because it's free by and large. I think a lot of people go to these online platforms by and large because they're cheap. But most things that are cheap aren't always good. And most things that are good aren't always cheap. And that's where I think a lot of golfers really struggle. And I know one of the biggest issues that I've had coaching golf uh in the past few years is I teach a lot of the body before I teach the swing. And the reason for that is, like I said earlier, the body is a big part of this. So, you know, if we get somebody moving better, generally the club delivery gets a lot better as well because we're getting the forces and the torques to happen in the right place. We're getting the sequencing put together a little bit better, and generally they hit the ball better. But for a lot of people, they get frustrated because when they come and work with me and I'm there to provide the feedback, whether it be objectively through the data or subjectively via what I'm telling them. Well, what tends to happen is they can kind of rent this thing a little bit and start seeing better ball flight. They start seeing that the mist turns into something else and straightens out a bit and is less detrimental. And they start seeing the good ones better. You know, maybe it's higher, maybe it goes farther, maybe it curves the way they actually prefer it to curve, whatever the case may be. But then when they leave, they're not doing the supplemental work to actually own it. And, you know, I'm kind of reminded not that long ago, uh, I was out coaching golf uh on the road, and I worked with a player, and when they showed up, they had a ball flight that just wasn't very strong. Kind of launched too high, spun too much, faded a little too much. Um, and you know, when I kind of looked at what they were doing, it was pretty evident to me that they were doing everything in their power to not miss it to the left. You know, they lined up open, made sure the face got open, which is what created kind of this soft, kind of floaty ball flight. And we were able to improve the motion, right? And we were able to get the forces and the torques and pressures to happen in the right place a little more. And when you know it, we had to adjust their target line because, like I said, they were aimed so far to the left. We actually had to get them more squared up to their target, and then they were actually starting to hit these really nice drops. Really nice. Okay. And there was another coach there watching me do this. And even the coach commented after the coaching experience and after the client had left, he was like, Man, that looked a lot better. I can't believe how much better that guy hit the ball. And I was really excited about it. Um, thought that, you know, this guy was kind of on his path and on his way. And less than a week later, I'm getting messages that, you know, it's not working and we're not happy with it. And this kind of goes into the story of we have to continuously work at these things. And a lot of people think that because they've made the change happen a couple of times at the driving range, that forevermore it will happen and they'll never have the problems again. But if you're somebody who's been lining up open and doing a lot of these things for a long time, it's going to take time to A, adjust your target line and B, rehearse that new move enough to where your nervous system starts kind of using it instead of the one that we've been granting. And that's where I think a lot of golfers, especially the higher handicappers, the new golfers, uh, and the people who are kind of new to skill development, don't do enough of the supplemental work. And if you are choosing who to work with, and you know, they're very good at telling you what to do in the moment, but not providing supplemental work to train and to do in between the coaching sessions, generally it's going to be a rent-to-owned program, and you're eventually going to have that thing get repo'd on you because it takes a lot of skill development time, a lot of practice time, and a lot of drill time to make these changes, because typically our brain is not that complicated. And when we think about how this all kind of goes together, if you put people and you look at people's motion through 3D force plates or through 3D motion capture, what you're going to see is that whether it be a pitching wedge, a seven-iron, a fairway wood, a driver, typically the motion is very similar and they're trying to make the swing work for the skill that they're trying to do. So, with that being said, when your brain tells your body to do golf swing, it acts like a jukebox in a lot of ways. And it goes and finds the album called Golf Swing and it plays it. And that is our old pattern. That's our old movement. And if we want to put a new album into the jukebox, then we have to start learning how to reinforce these things through drills and through specific kind of practice habits that are going to reinforce the things we're trying to change without being too detrimental. So the practice and the skill development and the drills we're doing has to kind of match long term with what we're trying to do with the new motor pattern. And a lot of golfers just don't do enough of this kind of work. And I've said it before on a podcast with the tour players, men and women that I work with, if I give them drills and supplemental work to do, they will do it and do it and do it some more because they understand how to learn and how to get better. And most importantly, there's a reason to change. They need to make more money. This is what they play for. This is how they feed their families. So there's a lot more skin in the game, and they are more willing to do that kind of work. But when you kind of go to the driving range, you don't see a public driving range, I should say, you don't see a lot of training aids. You don't see a lot of alignment sticks. You don't see a lot of rehearsal swings. You see a lot of raking. And what I mean by raking is somebody hits a ball, rakes one over, hits another ball, rakes one over, hits another one, and only look up when they feel like they caught it pretty good and are aghast when they don't hit one very well. But once again, we're not recognizing the error, we're not getting the objective feedback. And generally, we're just practicing comfortability. And that is the great killer of skill development is staying comfortable. And one thing that people have that if you're listening to this and you've worked with me, you're probably going to really identify with this. One of my biggest tasks, and unfortunately, one of the things I have to take advantage of as a coach is I need golfers, when they come to work with me, to be open, to be willing to hear new things, try new things, and be willing to accept good or bad outcomes. I need that openness. But once I get the openness from people, I then, once I kind of do what I need to do with them, I then have to start kind of shaking that tree a little bit. And I have to get them uncomfortable. Because if we are going to just stay comfortable, our brain is going to keep pulling the album labeled golf. And it's going to be very hard to make a change when we're comfortable. However, when we can create some uncomfortability and create some new feels and some new things kind of going on in the golf swing in terms of delivery, now all of a sudden, and this happens a lot, I'll have somebody hit one and they're like, oh man, that's so left. And it's dead straight. Or oh man, that's so right. It's dead straight. And they look kind of puzzled and they're like, oh, how did that work? Well, they made a new pattern, they made a new motion, they put the forces towards pressures, maybe in some place different in the golf swing, which felt funny, right? The alarm bells went off in the head. But it actually worked. And this is the thing is they did something that really feels uncomfortable because they maybe haven't done this before, and we see a different outcome. Now all of a sudden the brain turns on because, hey, whoa, I found pretty good. And I thought it was left because it felt like I hit it so hard, but it went straight. And that kind of like tricks the nervous system a little bit. And it's like, what was that? But because we see that the outcome was good, we get that dopamine hit in our brain. And now our brain's like, oh, well, maybe he likes that or she likes that. Oh, we we need to try to do that again, right? And then we kind of keep working through this uncomfortability of finding better. And the more we reinforce that with the dopamine in the brain, the quicker the body learns that. Okay. So super easy way, but kind of also difficult at the same time of recognizing how to get better. If you're taking golf lessons and you constantly feel like you're doing what you always do, generally speaking, you're practicing positions. And we're not making an improvement to the motor pattern and the sequencing and the club delivery. We're just kind of timing it up, which is where a lot of golfers get lured into thinking they've gotten better. And as a time, and it's a story as old as time. Somebody goes to the driving range, flat lie every time. And, you know, like I said, eventually they figure out how to time this thing up. Now, they think they're changing positions and they think they're doing all this, but the same motor pattern is occurring. They just get better at syncing it up with timing and then getting the ball to land on the target. That's not really making a change. That's just kind of rehearsal. But the minute they go out onto the golf course and a lie starts changing and there's some pressure and some things like this, all of a sudden they can't sync it up and time it up as well. And now they've got the same mess that they've always had. So getting people to be open and then taking people who are open and willing to make change and getting them kind of uncomfortable is really what I try to do with people because that's how we learn best as golfers, and that's how we make change. The other thing that I think is super helpful is that we have to be way more objective than being subjective. And the biggest thing that drives me crazy, and I still, I mean, I understand it, but I kind of don't at the same time, is there's never been more ways to track your golf game than there are today. And I'm not talking about a handicap, and I'm not talking about fairways and greens and pots. Some of those numbers are helpful, but generally they don't tell much of the story. But there's amazing devices. There's more coming to market all the time. And, you know, some of these devices, like Arcos is a great example. You can literally put these Arcos sensors on your club. They're not inhibitive in any way. Uh, if you don't like the sensor, they make grips that have it built in. Uh, if you don't like this, there's some apps you can use and you can just track it without any kind of sensor. But you can actually get very detailed data about your golf game. And people think, oh, well, how many faraways I hit, and how many that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how many of your misses are left, how many of your misses are right, how many of your misses are short, long, how many of your misses are this, that, or the other. And it starts giving us an accurate depiction of, hey, this is how far this club carries, this is how this club misses. This is we start building this huge data set for how your golf game goes together. And now all of a sudden, we're developing the information we need so that when we do go practice, we're able to start building a plan for, hey, I need to practice this. Or more importantly, I had this happen, you know, last year, but I had a player who tracks this kind of information. And we identified that two of their clubs weren't going the right distance, uh, not because of a miss hit, not because of anything they were doing, but we literally found that two of their golf clubs just weren't the correct lots that they were supposed to be, and they had two massive gaps in their golf bag. One was because they just at the top end of their bag needed to move uh more to a hybrid fairway wood situation from their long iron. But the other one was because their eight iron was the same loft as their nine iron. And they were convinced that something was, you know, terribly wrong and they were messing up and because they hit a lot of eight irons because of the golf course they play. And the eight iron was always coming up short on them. And through the data, instead of going, oh, well, I just got to learn how to hit my eight iron farther, we put it on a loft-line machine and found out that it had the same loft as the nine-iron. So the things that we can learn about our golf games through data is huge. Uh, and we can use this data in a very meaningful and impactful way, but you can't get these things given away. Like Arcos, every time I look, they've got free sensors and free sensors. Now, granted, I also understand the business is to sell subscriptions. So they give the razor away so that they can sell you the blades. I understand that concept very well. But at the same time, like golfers don't want to track this. Um, and they want to feel misguided and they want to feel like they're cursed and they want to feel like, you know, all these things. But at the end of the day, by tracking this information, if you're serious about getting better at golf, this is really the only way to figure out where the strengths and where the weaknesses lie. And if we once again do a better job of recognizing the error, now we can start developing a plan when we practice to work on these errors instead of just going and practicing comfortability. So a big thing for me is I teach inside. My facility's indoor. Uh, when I travel on the road, sometimes I teach outside. I love to. Um, but with the current configuration of how my business is set up, I'm teaching inside. And, you know, one of the things that the old school kind of teachers and coaches bang on me for is they're like, oh, you're never on the golf course and you just teach a golf swing, which is kind of true. I kind of do. But when I have this data, and with a lot of my better players, I require it, but when I have this data, I'm able to look at how they're actually playing the game outside where we play golf. And by having this data as their coach, I'm able to help them identify like, hey, these are the issues that are kind of going on on the golf course, these are the areas that are kind of being problematic for us, and these are the things that we need to address in this coaching session. And now we're actually able, once again, to add some objective data and get the player the help they need versus having them come in and just do what they do well for an hour and he's signing off on it and going, oh, look at how much better things are. Because if we're not looking for that error and not adjusting the golf swing to try to desensitize that error a bit or to minimize that error a bit, we're always going to have issues. But at the end of the day, chasing perfect, chasing the idea that we don't have these issues, it's just not true because no matter how well you play or no matter how low of a score you shoot on the golf course, you're always going to kind of feel a bit like, hey, you know, I left a couple out there. And that's that's golf. That's that chasing of perfection. Because we're not going to go out there and hit, you know, 55 perfect shots and call it a deck. That's just not really the way it works. That's not what humans are good at. And it's honestly not even how humans are really developed. And the the thing that I would say is that if you remember the game Candy Crush, um, like the first like 10 levels are crazy easy, right? Like, I think you know, a two-year-old could figure out the first 10 levels of Candy Crush. It's pretty simple, but it doesn't really give us much uh in terms of achievement. And golf is very, very hard. And a two-year-old certainly couldn't play the first 10 holes of a golf course. So it's very difficult and it really stresses us in a way to where when we do well, it really creates a big sense of achievement. And that's where I think golf is very addictive, is that it's so hard that when we do well, we get this rush of endorphins and dopamine, and it makes us feel like the king of the mountain. And that's why you see golfers, you know, really get excited when they do well. But from a neurological perspective, the higher the high, the lower the low. And that's where I think we all kind of chase perfection and chase this big endorphin rush, is that we want to get that all the time. It's why people become, you know, alcoholics and addicts and things like that, because they chase that dragon and that good feeling. But we have to remember that golf is a skill acquisition, skill development style game that's very variable. And we're not going to do perfect every time. We're not going to get that rush from endorphins every single time we chip and pitch the golf ball because we're not always going to chip and pitch it into the hole. Um, but when we don't do well, that tends to really upset us because the low is offsetting the high and it makes us feel bad. It really kind of beats on us a little bit. And we get a lot of the cortisol. And then, you know, if that remains unchecked, then what ends up happening is we wind up depressed. And if you've played bad golf, which we all have, because like I said, golf's a very hard game. There's nothing that makes you feel any better. You know, if you're somebody who doesn't regulate well, I've struggled with this in the past myself, but you get out there and, you know, it just seems like you can't do anything right and you don't play very well. I mean, you're in an unhappy mood on the car ride home. You're in an unhappy mood the rest of the day. You know, the wife can't make you feel any better, the dogs can't make you feel any better. Like you're just miserable. And that's where we've overflooded the system with the negative and the cortisol. And just like any bad breakup, any bad thing that's happened in your life, we want to move past it. We want to forget it. But I'm begging you as a golfer to recognize that this is a game. Okay, there's going to be highs and lows. Uh, and we don't want to run away and forget the bad. We need to be aware of the bad so that we can develop a plan that when we go and practice to get better at this game, we can recognize the error and develop a plan to kind of work on that. And I think if you are somebody seeking to get better at golf, I think, you know, there are a there's great YouTube content. There is. There's really good golf coaches that put out a ton of free stuff on YouTube. There is great stuff, you know, that coaches that you can find in your local area can provide you. But we need to be vetting this and we need to figure out, you know, is this coach pushing me? Is this coach just taking credit for the good ones and blaming me for the bad ones? Are they providing any objective data? Are they, you know, trying to push me farther than I think that I can go? And that's where I think people really get sold when it comes to golf instruction, is that generally I'm always told how their previous golf coach is such a great guy or girl, but they didn't help them. And it's like, well, people are also lonely right now. Like that's that's a big problem in this country, is people are so alone, even though we have all these tools that are supposed to connect us more. People are lonely. And I think a lot of people, when they seek golf out, it's a game, which is great. It is a game, but at the same time, they're seeking companionship and camaraderie. And when you go take a golf lesson, I think a lot of people go for entertainment value. And the one thing that I pride myself on is being a performance coach. I live and work in a performative environment, and I'm here to help you play better golf, not entertain you. It doesn't mean the two things can't happen, but at the same time, I think what's more entertaining than having a golf pro with a few jokes and being polite is having a golf pro that can show up, be professional, and help you play better golf. And that's not a sales trick. That's that's objective. And that's why I measure as much as I do. And that's why I like the stats, because I'm the first one to tell my clients, like, when things aren't going well, reach out. I don't want to just hear about the good. Like, that's great, and that should happen because we're doing the things we should be doing. But I need to know when things aren't going well so that we can recognize the error and adjust our plan accordingly, because as we make change, the error is probably going to change as well. And we need to recognize that in the moment and adjust our plan. So, yeah, you know, like I said, I'm sitting in my wife's therapy chair today, and uh this felt very therapeutic. Um, but I think just so many people are struggling with getting better at golf. And, you know, it's like anything. Golf is at this like high water mark in terms of the people participating, whether they're golfers or not, is a subject for another time. But we to grow the game have to help this influx of golfers do more than hit bombs and drink transfusions. Um, we need to help them, you know, develop the skills necessary to try to shoot some lower scores if that's what they're motivated by. At the very least, you know, the one thing I work on my juniors with is golf can be very tough. Like I said, we don't hit a lot of perfect shots. You know, there's a lot of mistakes that happen. But you also can take pride in fixing ball marks and raking bunkers and keeping up with the group in front of you and all these things. And those are wins as well. So, you know, not everybody is motivated by score. Most of the people that I work with are. Um, so that's kind of the thing they're chasing. But, you know, being a better golfer isn't just how you play, but it's how you take care of the golf course and how you are with the people you play with. So I think there's a lot that we could do to help people kind of pursue and chase those things that are going to make them feel better about the game of golf. And yes, you know, I love new clubs. Um, I just got a new set of mirrors that I love, the baby blades, incredible, awesome. I've wanted them my whole life. You know, there's there's not many rug. That are as good as when a boxing new club shows up. So yeah, you know, that stuff is good too. But it's not the answer. It's not the only answer anyway. So if you're serious about getting better at golf, you know, maybe, you know, be a little bit more objective with your own game before you go seeking information is what I would say. Um, you know, Arcos and some other apps that exist out there for stat tracking are very valuable. You know, if if that's something that you can't do right now because you're like us and it's the middle of winter, you know, maybe go rent some sim time on a sim that provides more data and isn't so entertainment-based. A lot of the sim facilities are entertainment-based and they don't really provide a lot of club data. But, you know, maybe go find somewhere that has a track man and do a session and, you know, hit your wedges, hit your irons, hit your woods, your driver, and kind of look at what that pattern looks like. And it doesn't need to be complicated, but at least understand like what the club path looks like and, you know, what kind of shot shape is that going to provide? And is that the shape you want it to provide? And, you know, is the club path between negative two and positive two? That's pretty neutral. It's a good place to live. Okay. If it's like five, six, seven, eight, you know, maybe we need to start kind of working on that. And you can kind of start getting yourself moving in a path that is going to help you. But I think so many people don't take the time to recognize their personal error or the pattern that they're making with their golf swing. And when they don't recognize these things, they don't know where to turn to or where to start. And that's when people kind of go down the YouTube hole, the Instagram hole. It all sounds good. You know, there's somebody that's nice, that's doing a good job presenting the information. And it all sounds reasonable and like it's going to help you. But I've seen more often than not that, yes, it might be good information, but it's not the right information for you. So by having a better understanding, having more objective data about your own game, that's going to allow you to kind of sort through the information and allow you to get the help that you need to play better golf instead of just going out and buying more equipment that isn't going to help solve the pattern problem because there isn't a single golf club that you can buy that's going to change your motor pattern. There isn't. So, you know, could you get fit for something that works with your pattern? Of course. But being predictable and having a pattern that is repeatable is going to be much more beneficial than trying to find the one golf club that works for your pattern. So, anywho, we did the therapy. We uh we've talked about, you know, skill development, skill acquisition, recognizing the error. And this is the way forward. Uh simply chasing perfection, you know, that's that's a tough way to go. And tends to make people a most psychotic on the golf course just constantly chasing that dragon. So, you know, I've I've always said, you know, people tend to behave the worst on the golf course. Um, and the reason is is it's it's addict behavior, right? When an addict or an alcoholic can't get that drink or can't get that drug, uh, they tend to behave very poorly as well. Well, it's people on the golf course are chasing the same kind of high. And when they can't get it and they feel like they've been duped or they feel like they can't do it, you know, they tend to behave poorly as well. And the last thing I want is to people to go out there and not enjoy, you know, a great afternoon on the golf course with their buddies because they're so lost in their own thoughts and and pessimism. So, anywho, if you're serious about getting better at golf, get yourself some more objective data and try to find somebody that can help you because very few people, even with objective data, are going to be able to significantly help themselves because it's very hard to make ourselves uncomfortable. We tend to reinforce what we think we know and what we think we're good at. So get you some help. Um, stop buying golf clubs. I mean, don't you can buy golf clubs, just don't buy them all the time. Um, you know, and and learn how to use the ones you have because a lot of the equipment, if not all the equipment now is pretty good. Um, so the idea that, you know, they're making these leaps and bounds every year, they're not, you know, they're not even incentivized to, even if they could. The last thing that any of these companies want to do is sell you the last driver you're ever going to need, because then they're gonna go broke. They need to keep selling golf equipment, which is why the hype machine keeps going. It's why they're putting all this free product into these influencers' hands, because they know those influencers are getting to you via Instagram and YouTube and all that stuff. That's why they do it. That's why you see all these people having the latest and greatest equipment, and then they're telling you what the marketing team told them to tell you, which is going to incentivize you to go out and buy that equipment. But that's probably not the best path forward. So enough banging on um the industry, um, enough lecturing people on why they're not getting better. But I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you take something away from it. I hope you get better this offseason. Like that's my real goal. And if you're serious about getting better and you don't know where to turn, uh, you're more than welcome to reach out to us. You can find us on YouTube by searching Measured Golf. You can find this podcast anywhere you download your favorite podcast by searching the Measured Golf Podcast. Um, if you really are, hey, I want to dive in, I want Mike to help me with his golf game, you're more than welcome to reach out to us via one of those channels and let me know that you're looking for some help and we can help put together a plan this off season. And that way when you get out there in the spring, things are better. And if you're trying to reach out to me, the easiest way to do that is you can go to our website at measuredgolf.com and you can submit an email directly to the website that I will get. So I really hope you enjoyed this. Uh, thank you once again for listening. And if you haven't already, please be sure to subscribe to this podcast. That really helps us out a lot. Same with the YouTube. Uh, please subscribe as well. But thanks again for listening. And until next time, keep grinding.

Head Shot

Michael Dutro, PGA

Host