The Measured Golf Podcast
With so many amazing things happening in the Measured Golf Community, we have decided to start a podcast to discuss all of the amazing things that we are seeing have a positive impact on our athletes. Whether it be Ground Reaction Forces, Golf Biomechanics, or strategies for making the most out of your limited practice time, we hope that this podcast becomes a resource for you to finally become the player you know you can be!
Video of the podcast can be found by visiting our Measured Golf YouTube page.
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To learn more, or to visit the Measured Golf facility in person, please, find us on the web at measuredgolf.com.
The Measured Golf Podcast
Why Chasing Golf Improvement Alone Fails And How To Fix It
Think your swing is one good tip away from greatness? We dig into why that chase feels good in the bay and falls apart on the course, then lay out a cleaner way to build durable skills. Michael breaks down the traps DIY golfers face—treating symptoms instead of causes, relying on timing rather than sequencing, and trusting slick marketing over objective data—and shows how small fundamentals create big change.
We start with the real baseline: a neutral club path target between −2 and +2 degrees, what it reveals about your pattern, and how path, face, and angle of attack should relate. From there, we look at the hidden levers that tour players monitor daily but amateurs skip: alignment discipline, grip that stays neutral throughout a round, and posture that stacks the body to create torque without back pain. You’ll learn why standing too far inflates an into‑out path, how moving closer can neutralize it, and why “found it” timing at the range won’t hold for four hours under shifting lies, wind, and stress.
We also separate old wisdom from today’s realities. Pre‑2000 balls and tiny heads rewarded control; modern urethane balls and 460cc drivers reward power with control. That context matters when you lift cues from legends. For those navigating the content firehose, we share practical guardrails: use TrackMan University for vetted education, build sessions with one priority, track trends not hero swings, and vet coaches by results, objectivity, and understanding of anatomy and physics. If lessons burned you before, use our framework to hold coach and player accountable with clear baselines and measurable change.
Ready to trade guesswork for growth? Listen now, subscribe for more grounded golf coaching, and share this with a range buddy who’s one tip away from another rabbit hole. Then tell us: what’s the one habit you’ll change at your next practice?
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 it's that time of year, it's about a week before Christmas. Measured Golf, our facility here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, couldn't be busier with everybody trying to come in out of the snow, get some work in on their golf game. And it's it's definitely going on. And I've been hearing about this for a while. But what we're going to talk about today is the do-it-yourself golfer and how that works, how that doesn't work, and what are some of the pitfalls that really come with trying to make your golf game better on your own. And I know we've done some episodes talking about why speed training doesn't work for everybody, why golf lessons don't work for everybody. And because so many of these things that are supposed to help us play better golf and get faster and hit the ball straighter and all those things don't work. A lot of people just decide they're going to do it on their own. But there's also a lot of new golfers that are in the golf space who joined us around COVID or slightly after. And generally speaking, a lot of these golfers have turned into do-it-yourself golfers because during COVID, when we couldn't interact with one another, a lot of us turned to the internet for not only entertainment, but for how to do projects around the house or how to entertain ourselves when we couldn't go outside or things like that. And so many people have been conditioned into this quasi-expert position to where people feel like if they watch a video or two, that they can all of a sudden be able to do something the same as somebody who's an expert. And I think that's kind of a good way of thinking. I love when people have a growth mindset and feel like they can roll up their sleeves and figure something out on their own. But it's also a dangerous proposition depending on how complicated the thing may be. So if we think about the golf swing, the problem tends to be that it is pretty complicated. And a lot of people who are in this DIY kind of fix-it themselves kind of mentality, what they fail to realize is that by and large, most golfers who come in for a golf lesson don't really know what their issue is. And that's very concerning because if you don't know what the root issue is, then how are you possibly going to help yourself? And generally, what I see with a lot of these DIY golfers is that they are grasping at straws and they are definitely working on symptoms and not the root causes of what holds them back from playing better golf. So what we're going to talk about a little bit is some ways to where being a DIY golfer can be really helpful and really kind of set the stage so that when you do go ask for help and work with an expert, that you can be more prepared. But we're also going to talk about a lot of the ways that being a DIY golfer really just doesn't cut the mustard and comes up very short. So one of the biggest reasons, other than COVID, that I think DIY golfers is really taken off is kind of there's a lot of reason too. There's never been more technology, there's never been more apps, there's never been more systems out there that you can sign up for that are going to help you play better golf. And I feel like a lot of the people in the golf industry who are teaching have really turned into great salespeople. And maybe they are a good golf coach, maybe not. That's up for you to decide. But at the end of the day, they're very good at selling golfers on the idea that if they sign up, they will play better golf. And I think that's very disingenuous because once again, that person doesn't know what your core issues are. If you are a very good golfer and you're struggling with a very specific miss, then yeah, maybe they can help you with that and help you understand that miss and help you kind of figure out a solution for that not to happen. But if you have a more complicated issue and maybe you don't move well and your movement patterns are kind of not where they should be, that's going to take a little bit of time to sort out. And that is something that DIY golfers are definitely short on, which is time. They want whatever they do to work instantaneously, and that is a very dangerous proposition because as much as technology has gotten better, as much as the equipment's gotten better, as much as our information base has gotten better, golf still takes time to learn and to get good at. They tend to be pretty convinced that if they can perfect their golf swing and make the technique better, that they will shoot lower scores. But there's more to golf than just hitting the ball and making a full swing, whether it be with the driver or an iron. We have wedge play, we have around the greens, we have bunkers, we have putting. There's a lot of things that we kind of have to be good at to be a high-level golfer. And for a lot of people, they're not addressing the putting, they're not addressing the chipping and pitching, they're not addressing the bunker play. They're simply trying to hit the ball straighter and farther, and they're going to a driving range or a simulator where you have a lot of different uh, I'm sorry, you have a lot of opportunities to try to do one right. And when they do one right, they're like, see, I know what I'm doing. But the reality is that when we go play golf, it's not about what we can do once, it's about what we can do across the board. And that's why it takes 72 strokes normally to make up par. We're going to have to hit 72 shots fairly well to be able to shoot level par. So it's not really about what you can do once, it's about what you're doing. And one of the biggest things that I see is that the do-it-yourself golfer tends to really focus on the good ones and tends to look past the bad ones. And we need to understand our miss. That's really, really important because our miss is also coming out of the same swing that our good one comes out of. And so many golfers think that when they hit one well, they make a different swing than when they don't hit one well. But it's the same movement pattern, it's more than likely the same swing. It's just there's an element of timing that a lot of people don't address within their golf swing that allows them to hit one straight and on target. And a lot of golfers are predicated, or I should say their golf swings are predicated on them being able to time it up. So when golfers go to the driving range or to the simulator and quote unquote find it, what they generally are doing is finding their timing that allows them to be able to pull off this golf shot they're trying to hit. Now, the problem is when they go out to the golf course, golf takes time. You know, generally speaking, there's roughly four hours allotted for a round of golf. So within that four hours, there's a lot of time. And being able to manage that timing is going to be difficult because from a physiological standpoint, we're changing over the course of those four hours. Mentally, we're changing a lot over those four hours. And being able to keep that timing going is going to be very difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible. There's definitely people who go out there with less than perfect golf swings, less than perfect ground reaction forces, and hit nice shots and play really well. Now, they get excited when they do that and go to the golf course the next day expecting the same thing. And now it's like they've never played golf before. And it's because they've lost that timing. And finding your timing on the golf course can be very difficult, if not impossible, because of the stress that happens when we play golf. So we don't want to be reliant on timing and have our whole swing and our whole methodology based off of finding good timing. We want to have a golf swing that is well sequenced and repeatable. Because if we're moving the body correctly and sequencing it the way that it's supposed to move, now all of a sudden we have some real fundamentals to fall back on versus trying to search for this timing. And sequencing is becoming a very hot topic in golf, probably because of how many force plates are now in the marketplace. And we're now able to look at the kinetic sequence and see how that kind of goes together. And I think for a lot of golfers, they don't look at that stuff because they're a do-it-yourself golfer. And generally they go to a simulator, they go to an outdoor facility, maybe there's a launch monitor, and they're kind of doing what we've been doing for a long time, looking through cameras and looking at positions and numbers and going, oh, well, this is the club delivery, this is the club, this, the club that. But there's more to a golf swing than the golf club moving through time and space. And we have to factor the body into this. And that's where I think things really struggle the most with a do-it-yourself golfer who's trying to help themselves because the golf swing is occurring within one second. And our ability to feel things in one second is pretty tough to do. Not only that, but when we're feeling everything, and maybe we're, you know, validating what we think we feel with a launch monitor or with some video, but generally speaking, this is very subjective and it's not objective. And that's where I think a lot of do-it-yourself golfers fall into the biggest trap is that they can't diagnose what's going on that's causing these problems and these miss hits to occur. And then they don't understand their miss on top of that, which makes it even worse. So when it comes to this do-it-yourself type golfer, I think the biggest thing that really gets in their way is that when we go looking on the internet for answers, which is where most of these people are getting their answers from, everything sounds pretty good. Like I said, I think golf professionals have gotten way better at marketing and selling what they provide. But everything sounds pretty good, and it sounds like it may fit you. And this is the biggest problem that doctors face as well to where everybody gets on WebMD, everybody sees the commercials and hears kind of the things at the end. You're like, oh my God, that that's me. But in reality, we all have our own individual issues within the golf swing. And a lot of people look down on the simple answer. And I think Brooks Kepka said it best, right? For him, it's about the PGA, the posture grip, and the alignment. And the funny thing to me is that coaching golf in a professional capacity, as long as I have, you know, you'll show somebody that their grip needs a little bit of work. And like, okay, okay, I got it, I got it. And then, like, three swings later, they're right back to their old grip. And people don't realize that making change takes time. That's really important. Once again, it comes back to time. Getting something to stick and to last and to be second nature doesn't happen overnight. This is not like riding a bicycle to where once we ride the bike, we kind of know how to ride the bike. What people forget about learning how to ride a bike is how many times they fell off before they actually figured out how to do it. And that's what golf is. It's a lot of falling off and a lot of failure. And then hopefully we learn from that failure in a meaningful way. And that leads to growth and change. But so many of us, as do-it-yourself golfers, don't really give ourselves enough time and we're constantly on to the next thing that sounds good, the next thing that sounds good, the next thing that sounds good. I also think that a lot of these do-it-yourself golfers really struggle with kind of sticking with something long enough for a change to occur. Because anytime they are searching for information on the internet, there's tons of it. And because there's tons of it, they can kind of bounce around and they more or less, in my opinion, bounce around until they find something that more or less agrees with what they think it is, and then they're like, oh, see, there it is, and they run with that. The problem is, is one, that may not be their issue, and two, they haven't even given the last thing they tried enough time to work. A lot of times, and I've seen this and I've experienced this and went through this myself, but you think you're working on something and you're hitting it pretty well, and like you're like, okay, yeah, this works. This works really good. And then you miss one, or you miss two, or you miss three, and then you're like, oh, this doesn't work anymore, it's broken. Well, how did it work all the times before only to somehow break midstream? That doesn't make any sense. So I think for a lot of people that are trying to get better at golf, they A don't stick with anything long enough to make the change, and two, don't give it enough time to really sink in. And I see so many golfers that go to the drive range or go to the simulators, and you ask them what they're working on, and they're working on five, six things at a time. And that's going to be really hard to cram into that one second that we talked about. So I think where the do-it-yourself golfer could have a lot more benefit for themselves is by having a plan when they go into a session and then putting that plan on a timeline. So, what I mean by this is you know, launch monitors are pretty easy to find, pretty easy to get on. And I think the big thing that kind of gets overlooked, once again, the low-hanging fruit, is looking at club path and seeing what that club path looks like. And is that club path variable or is it very consistent? So, generally speaking, I think what would be kind of a good kind of situation to find yourself in is if you have a club path somewhere between negative two and positive two. Another way I could say that is you're swinging the club path somewhere between two degrees out to in and two degrees in to out. So we want to kind of have a fairly neutral club path. Now, with a two-degree club path either way, we can still get the ball to fall left, we can still get the ball to fall right. I'm not saying that you're going to hit every shot straight. That isn't the goal of this. But having that baseline is super important because if you can go somewhere and find that your club path is outside of that range or stuck on one side of that range, now you start having some clues as to what needs to change in your golf swing. So there's people that I've taught and teach that, you know, one swing, especially if they're newer golfers, right? Uh one swing might be negative five, and the next swing might be positive three, and then the next swing might be negative six. So they're kind of all over the place, and they don't really have any kind of sense or understanding of which direction the club is swinging on any given swing. Now, for them, obviously, they're gonna really struggle with ball flight and hitting the middle of the face and doing all those things we need to do to be high-level golfers. But then there's also people who are very, very consistent. And there's people who are maybe five degrees out to end or to the left, uh, or there's people who are five degrees in to out and to the right. And generally you tend to see your better players with a more end-to-out club path. I don't think that the end-to-out club path is what makes them better, but from a traditional teaching perspective, most of us have been taught that end-to-out is better than out to end. I do not personally agree with that. I'm not saying that I think one is better than the other, but I think it does need to match our movement pattern and how we shift our pressure from trail side to lead side. I think that's what's important when it comes to understanding which path is better for you. But without getting too far into the weeds on that, I think we need to understand that if our club path is five degrees one way or the other, and that's all we can do, and we can't make it change, we've kind of overdeveloped our pattern one way or the other, and now we're very fixed in what we can do in terms of our ball flight and getting the ball to fly towards the target. So, generally speaking, people who are stuck one way or the other tend to hit shapes that are very consistent. So, if you somebody that has a club path that's five degrees into out, you guessed it, you probably hit a lot of draws, and a lot of those draws probably tend to overdraw, which means that they cross the target line, which makes them a hook. Just like a lot of people who are five degrees left or out to end, those people tend to hit a lot of fades and sometimes hit fades that cross the line, which is now a slice. So we don't want to be fixed into one ball flight because now all of a sudden, when we get different lives on the golf course, it's very difficult to adjust and to get the ball to land on target. It tends to really create a lot of problems. But there's a low awareness of this out there in the community. So when I talk to golfers and I have new golfers come in for a lesson here at Measured Golf, when I ask them what their club path normally is, I don't get a lot of answers. I get a lot of, well, I'm not sure. And if we don't know which direction we're generally swinging the club, that's going to be very difficult for us to kind of own our golf swing and start figuring out what we need to do to get better. I think it's really important that we kind of get this figured out and understand this. Now, interestingly enough, when we kind of start looking at some more numbers, if we're using numbers to try to improve ourselves, we get into hey, do these numbers make sense relative to one another? So generally, if you have that club path that's five degrees end out, theoretically, we should see a more shallow angle of attack into the ball. Just like if we have the club working more out to end, okay, and swinging to the left, we should see a steeper angle of attack, meaning more down. So when we kind of start looking at some of these numbers, do they make sense relative to one another? Or am I doing some pretty wild compensations at the golf ball that are creating these mismatches with these numbers? So I think it's really important that we start kind of with a baseline, something pretty simple, like which direction do we generally swing the golf club? If we don't swing the golf club in a general direction, then I think it's best that we try to figure out how to do that within the range that I talked about earlier between negative two and positive two, and then we can kind of start building from there. But so often I see people that come in and they have that club path that's a little erratic. And now because the path is a little bit erratic, the face is a little bit erratic. And once again, that's going to require perfect timing to pull off on the golf course, which is going to be very difficult to do for reasons I mentioned earlier. So I think that for the do-it-yourself golfer, building some awareness and then building a plan around something a little simpler is always going to be the best path forward. I also think that one of the big things that do-it-yourself golfers run into is bad information. And, you know, the old adage is true. What is good isn't always cheap, and what is cheap is not always good. And when we think about where we're pulling this information from, by and large, a lot of these do-it-yourself golfers are pulling this information from the internet. And now the problem is isn't so much that they're pulling the information off the internet. The internet can be a great source of information, but we need to be fact checking and vetting this information. And so many people aren't doing that. Or they are falling victim to the name dropping culture that exists online, to where people show a video of a very high level player, maybe it's Tiger Woods. Uh, maybe it's Rory McElroy, maybe it's you know Scotty Scheffler, and they have a video of that player, and they're like, Well, look, he does this and he does that. Well, the eyes tend to see what they want to see, and the biggest problem I have with people using tour players' videos to make their argument is that they weren't there in the moment when that video was shot, more than likely. Likely they've just ripped it off of the internet itself. I highly doubt that they were there with the player in a working capacity. And why that's important is because they don't understand if the player even hit that one any good. It could have been somebody who filmed Scotty Scheffler at a tournament and he hit a bad one. And just that's the video he had, so that's the one he posted online. But not only do we not know if that shot worked out or not, but we don't know the intent behind the shot. We don't know if the player was trying to lower the ball flight, trying to raise the ball flight, trying to work it right to left, trying to work it left to right. We don't know that. So when you see these people with these tour player videos talking about, oh, look at them doing this and look at them doing that. Well, we don't understand why they were trying to do that thing, nor do we know if they're doing that thing because cameras tend to be misleading and don't really tell us the full story. And once again, I can look at a video and point to certain things and kind of look over here. Well, this is happening over here. We don't even know if we're looking at the same like core things that really lead to the good play that that player creates. So I think it's really important that we're looking at the information and kind of treating it with a or kind of drinking it or whatever the expression is with a grain of salt. Because I think by and large, it's interpretive at best and it's very subjective. It isn't objective, which is what we really want to try to find is good objective data that has, you know, real data provided with it, and that data has been reviewed by a group of peers that are professionals and experts in that thing. And there are kind of non-negotiables that exist about the golf swing these days. There's a lot of us that agree on certain things that need to happen within the golf swing. There's a lot of things we don't agree about as well, but there are these tried and true kinds of things, and I see a lot of people coming in with very extreme things that maybe are true, maybe are not, but they're definitely going to be something that isn't going to work long term for them. But because they tried it and it worked for them once, they're convinced that's the thing. Now, will it work every time? Who knows? But the chances are very low that it will work out for them and lead to consistent play, that they need to be a high-level player. The other thing that I tend to see a lot of is with the name dropping, a lot of older players being referenced. And this is probably my pet peeve when people come in and start talking about players from a different generation. And a different generation for me means that it's players from pre-2000. And the reason that's so important is because, as I've said on a previous podcast, the ball substantially changed in 2000. And a lot of our new golfers don't understand that. They think that you know Ben Hogan and Sam Sneed and Jack Nicholas were playing with the same ball and the same type of clubs that we're playing with now, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. The heads were way smaller, the ball was made of balotta or was a wound golf ball, it wanted to spin a whole lot, and golf pre-2000 was very much a game of control and trying to keep the golf ball in front of you because, like I said, the wound slash belotta golf ball only wanted to spin and go all over the place, so it became a game of control. The interesting thing as well is that the theoretical limit ball speed for the Balato Wound golf ball was about 170 miles an hour. Now, I'm not saying 170 miles an hour isn't fast, it certainly is, but the new theoretical limit for the Eurythane golf ball that we all currently play is about 230 miles an hour. So the game has turned into a game of power, which is why we have way more athletic people playing golf these days than we used to. Now, before the comment section fills up about how I'm talking smack about the old players, pre-2000, I think we had way better golfers than what we have today. I truly believe that. It was really a game of control and precision pre-2000 due to the golf ball. Now, since 2000, it's become a game of power, and we have athletes playing golf. Now, I'm not saying that these guys that are now playing don't have control over the golf ball. They certainly do at the top level, but they also hit the ball a lot farther because the equipment allows for them to hit the ball a lot farther. Not only are we playing with a Euryth golf ball that doesn't want to spin, but we've got big 460cc watermelons on a stick that are very easy and forgiving to hit, which thus makes it easier to swing the club faster with reassurance that we're going to hit it somewhere on the face and the ball is going to go forward. So I think it's really important that people understand that when Mr. Hogan and Mr. Sneed and all these great players from the previous generation are talking about the golf swing, they are not trying to solve the same equation that we are now trying to solve within our golf games due to the technological and equipment changes that have occurred. So a lot of people like to come in and quote Mo Norman. And Mo Norman was a swing that only worked for Mo Norman. It hasn't been proven to be like this perfect golf swing, but a lot of people see it. It's associated with something called natural golf. And people are like, oh, yeah, I can just swing it how I want to swing it, and it'll all work out. That sounds great and premise, but in reality, people are not moving the way they need to move with a good sequence, and they're not really getting better at golf. Yes, they might hit one every now and then pretty good, but that's not what golf is about. Golf is about what we can do over 18 holes, over four hours of time, and we have to be very variable because we're going to have a lot of different lives. So I think you know, a big problem that people have is where their information comes from, how dated that information is, and if that information information is even relevant or correct, because there's a lot of bad stuff on the internet. I've gotten to a point to where I can barely look at my Instagram feed because it's full of golf coaches, and I see bad advice all the time. And a lot of that bad advice is the same bad advice that's been kind of trickling through the industry since the beginning of golf coaching. And that's kind of how it works, by and large. Uh, you know, a lot of monkey see, monkey do, a lot of, well, my go, my coach said this to me, so I'm gonna say it to you. And and that's just kind of what it's been. But there hasn't been a lot of fact-checking, there hasn't been a lot of vetting of this information. And generally speaking, a lot of golfers really tend to pay the price for bad information. And the only thing that the golf industry, or at least the teaching industry, has done a good job of, is not helping golfers get better at golf by and large. The reason that a lot of do-it-yourself golfers exist, as I already said, is because the golf coaching isn't really much better. It's not helping them either. So they might as well save some money and try to do it themselves versus going to somebody who can't help them. But that's where I think you can have some valuable things within the do-it-yourself golfer community. And I think if you're using good information and you're being objective, I think you can teach yourself some good stuff. I really do. Um, I think the right kind of people definitely could go out there and equip themselves with some good information, use a little bit of technology in their lesson, or you know, when they're working on their golf game, and I think they could actually get better. But, you know, a lot of people don't want to put in the work. I think a lot of the do-it-yourself golfers are trying to take a shortcut and trying to think, you know, I can learn this on a weekend, or I can be pretty good within a year, or I can get to a scratch golfer even though I'm a 20 right now. And the next like those are just unreasonable goals, right? Like that's just bad goal setting from the jump. But some of the things that I think would be good is, you know, if you do have access to a facility, a simulator or a driving range that has trackman. The thing that's amazing is you can do the track man education, the same one I did to become a master. Uh, you can do it for free. You can go to trackmanununiversity.com, you can sign up, you can do the education for free. Now, you can't take the test and you can't uh you know call yourself level one, level two, or a master, uh, but you can like get the same information and learn. Now, whether you have a track man or not at your disposal, this information is still good. Uh, and the reason I say it's good is because by learning what each one of these numbers means and by learning some of the ranges we want to fall in between, it starts kind of helping put some dots in your head about, hey, the golf swing kind of has to do this or it kind of has to do that, or the ball flight, right? We always get ball flight, whether you're inside or outside, we get to see what the golf ball is doing. If we understand some of these track man uh numbers and some of these data tiles, well, then we can start kind of reverse engineering from the ball flight a little bit about what's happening. And I think that that by and large gets kind of missed and not looked at. So by going to Trackman University, we know that information's good, we know that information has been vetted, and now we can start kind of making sure that we're working with some good information. Now, I'm not saying that there isn't good information on YouTube, I'm not saying there's not good information on Instagram or TikTok or wherever you get it from, but we at least now know where this is coming from, and it's coming from a vetted place. So I think that's a step that people could do that would be really, really helpful. I also think that some of the apps are really getting better. So the thing I don't love is I don't love people who download, you know, apps to where they have to kind of figure out what's good and what's bad. I don't like people who download the apps and look at the averages and go, oh, I got to be in all these averages. But what I do think is good is there's some apps to where, you know, AI kind of assists and grades out your swing and kind of says, hey, this is the area that needs to improve. Well, that's not necessarily the best way, but it is a way. And maybe you can kind of figure out by using that app how to actually work on that one part of your swing and get that a little bit better and see if you can get that fit within your overall motion, which might help you play a better golf. So there are ways to go about this do-it-yourself golfer mentality that can potentially work out well for you. But by and large, I think most people are simply trying to find an easier way. And I don't think it's that people are necessarily being lazy. I just think that's what they're being sold. And so many people that are taking golf lessons or trying to work on their golf game are constantly being sold to. We're told that the newest driver is going to be better than last year's driver. It's not. We're told that this swing tip is going to lower your handicap by 10 strokes. It's not. Because where do the 10 strokes fall? You know, that's what people often don't realize is yeah, you might have some traumatic experiences where you hit it out of bounds or you hit it in the water with your approach shot, but generally most people are losing a lot of their strokes around and on the greens. And most people think that their chipping, pitching, and putting is just fine because they don't have these big traumatic incidents that happen where they hit one out of bounds or they hit one in the water, which we definitely notice and we definitely feel, and it's embarrassing on the golf course, which makes us feel bad. So most golfers are out there just simply trying way too hard to address things that aren't going to be meaningful to their score. And that's where I think really the do-it-yourself golfer would just be way better off finding somebody they can work with who's an expert and allowing that person to help them through the process, which it is, it's a process of getting better at golf. I pride myself on being a very good golf coach. But with that being said, I can't fix everybody's problems in one session. And I had a lesson earlier this week. Guy comes in, is really not a very good golfer. And when I say is really not a very good golfer, he's a new golfer. And it's the first time I've ever seen somebody, or I shouldn't say it's the first time, but I haven't seen it in a long time. To where when you look at their pressure moving throughout their golf swing, their pressure actually, instead of moving right and then back to the left as a right-handed player, their pressure actually moved left and then to the right. So they're literally moving backwards from how they should be moving. And this person thinks that they're on the precipice of figuring this all out. And he wanted to talk about his transition, he wanted to talk about his delivery, he wanted to talk about all these different things. And at the end of the day, we literally are moving our body backwards with what we need to happen to have a well-sequenced golf swing. Now, all these things are kind of going on. There's a million things. Where do you start? And it was funny because going back to posture, grip, and alignment, the first two things, the only two things that we did in his lesson were we fixed his grip, which was not good at all. Uh, I mean, honestly, one of the worst grips I've seen in a while. And we fixed his posture because he was standing a mile away from the golf ball and had a club path that was way too far end to out. Well, the farther I stand away from the golf ball, the more the club's gonna work in during the backswing, and the more it's gonna have to work out to the golf ball, which is what's creating that end-to-out club path. So, you know, I don't think I'm gonna see this client again, but at the end of the day, as a professional golf coach, not an online golf coach, but as a professional golf coach, I have to fix the things that are going to allow us to continue to get better moving forward. And if you have a really bad grip and you have your right hand completely underneath the golf club and you have no extension in your trail wrist, golf is gonna be really difficult and require a lot of compensations. Just like standing a long or a ways away from the golf ball too far, that's gonna really create a lot of club delivery and club path issues that aren't gonna be easily overcome. So, as much as I would like to address those things that he wanted to address, at the end of the day, as an expert in what I do, I have to do the right thing for that person and address the low-hanging fruit. And that's where having the expertise is really helpful in understanding the root cause of why certain things are happening the way they happen. And that's where I think the do-it-yourself golfer really struggles the most because, like I said, we all think it's this, that, or the other. And in reality, it tends to boil down to posture grip and alignment. If you ever have the opportunity to go out and watch tour players uh practice when they're at the driving range, you're gonna see a lot of alignment aids. Okay. When I watch amateurs practice, I see no alignments, okay? None. And it's like, well, like I know you're trying to hit it on your target, but are you even lined up on your target? And if you're not lined up on your target, well, then what compensations are you having to make to get the ball to land on target? And when we don't understand that, it's going to be very difficult to create a scenario to where we can become consistent. And that's where golfers struggle the most, right? Is this idea of alignment. So, you know, alignment's key. You see tons of alignment. You know, I see a different alignment thing every single year on tour. Uh, there's constantly companies coming out with new things that are supposed to make it easier and this, that, and the other. But it is so rare when you see a tour player out hitting balls and they don't at least have an alignment stick down pointed at their target. Super critical, super important, one of those low-hanging things that a lot of people don't want to waste their time on because, well, that can't be it. That's too simple. But alignment is a big thing. So if you do have access to a track man, if you do have access to any kind of launch monitor whatsoever, and you're going to go out there and kind of look at your club path, before you look at your club path, maybe put down an alignment stick and make sure that you're aligned up to the target you're trying to hit it at. Because if you're not doing that, then the club path might be excessive because we've got the body aimed in the wrong place. So super helpful, super easy. But I think when we look at aim, that's really one of the low-hanging fruit items that tends to get overlooked the most. And one thing that I can tell you is that aim is something that we are always working on with our tour players. It doesn't matter whether they're players that work with us or players that work with other coaches, aim is always something that they're working on when they practice. So if you think of Scotty Scheffler, number one player in the world, doing pretty good these days, one of the big things that he always is talking about, one of the things they show him working on all the time, and one of the things he gets blasted for the most is his form grip that he uses to make sure his grip is perfect. Now, a form grip is kind of a formed grip that kind of makes your fingers go in certain places, and it's kind of like looked at like the worst thing ever. And you'll see amateurs, if you try to give them one of those, like, oh, I don't need that, I don't need that. Like that's that's for somebody that doesn't know what they're doing. Scotty Scheffler is using one every single time he hits golf balls. And I I think he's been doing this for I know he's been doing this for years, and he understands the importance of a grip. Now, the thing is, is that a lot of amateurs, a lot of DIYers think that once they put their grip on there correctly once, that it stays that way. But one thing that I've observed throughout my career coaching is that the grip tends to change throughout the round of golf. And we need to really be managing and paying attention to that grip throughout the round of golf. Because if we're kind of hitting some shots, let's say we get some holes to where all the wind is left or right, well, it kind of only makes sense that the grip gets a little bit stronger to kind of try to fight the ball from overfading. So I think that that makes sense to me. If we get different lies, that influences the grip a little bit. The face orientation is going to be affected by that, and we've got to do a decent job managing that grip. And I don't see a lot of people who are actively managing their grip. It's almost an afterthought. You know, this feels normal, this is what I'm doing. And it changes and it gets varied. And I think one thing that a lot of golfers would benefit from, especially the do it yourself crowd, is getting a form grip and making sure that their grip is making sense and getting into a place to where it's neutral so that we can deliver the golf club in a consistent manner. If we have a really strong grip and we tend to get the face wanting to close. Well, guess what? That's probably going to be more of a rightward club path. If we get a really weak grip, you don't see that as often as a strong grip, but if we get a really weak grip, then we tend to have somebody who is, you know, a little more left with their path traditionally. So I think it's important that we get the hands on the golf club correctly, but it's not something I see a lot of people devoting any time or energy to. The last one, you know, we've talked about it already, but posture. Posture is huge. If you're somebody who's out there and you're checking this club path and you're like, hey, I want to see if this works, if you go out there and your club path isn't between that negative two and positive two benchmark that we talked about, there's a really simple way to change your club path. If you feel like your club path is too into out or too to the right, move closer to the golf ball at setup. I promise you that path will straighten up. Same thing for my friends that tend to be way to the left. Scoot a little away from it, and I promise you that will help neutral out that path a little bit. Posture is huge. I see so many things online with people talking about all these advanced things in the golf swing, and the posture is just absolutely terrible. We have to be able to stack the body in a meaningful way to where we get the abdomen over top of the pelvis and the pelvis over top of the feet. We have to be able to do that. Now, when you look at most golfers, they've got their butt way behind their heels, which is what's locking out their lower lumbar, and why they can't create any twist or torque. And I could do a whole podcast episode about twist and torque, and everybody's struggling to do that. But generally, a lot of people can't create enough twist and torque in their golf swing because they don't do a good job with their posture. It's not a me thing, it's an anatomy thing. If I start pushing the butt backwards behind my heels, I start increasing that bend in your lower back where your lower lumbar is. And the more I increase that bend in my lower lumbar, the more I start locking out the facet joints in the lower lumbar. And now I can't create any twist to save my life. So if you're somebody who plays golf and winds up with a sore back after hitting balls at the driving range, or if you're somebody who gets a sore back after playing golf, we need to get that butt more over top of the feet. We need to get the knees more over the toes, and we need to learn how to get the abdomen to stay on top of the pelvis versus falling in front of the pelvis, which creates a lot of that arch in the back. So we've got to learn how to set the body up in a meaningful way to where we're able to create torque and not stress out our lower lumbar, because that tends to be where a lot of golfers struggle the most and they really don't understand how much that affects their golf swing and their ability to create torque within the golf swing. So, you know, once again, a lot of this stuff, when you look online, it kind of gets glanced over, maybe it's not fully understood. But by and large, most of the stuff online is trying to sell you somebody's thing. And the reason that everybody's trying to sell in golf is because there's money in golf. Since COVID, we've had a massive influx of golfers, and because of that massive influx in golfers, it means there's more money, and people are out there trying to take advantage of that. And I've I can't, I wish I had some numbers. I don't have them, but I would love to see like how many golf channels there were on YouTube pre-COVID versus now. Because I guarantee you that number has really expanded, and there's so many people now that with COVID, with work from home, you know, this this kind of society of having a side hustle, there's a ton of people who aren't malicious, but think that golf and being a golf coach can be their side hustle. And like I said, if I were you and I was taking advice, you know, I'm not saying that you have to be a good player to be a good coach. I don't think that's true, but I would start there. Can this person even play golf? Or better yet, does this person make a golf swing that they teach? Does it work for them? Okay, cool. Well, what's their background? Do they understand the human anatomy? Do they understand physiology? Do they understand the physics of the golf swing? There's a lot of pieces and parts there that we have to understand as golf coaches. It's not just as simple as, oh, well, I shoot a video of it, and yeah, this doesn't look right, and you're not average. Trying to teach people to average is the worst way to try to help them. And this is one of my biggest kind of sticking points with the do-it-yourself golfers, is that, like I said earlier, there's a million apps, there's a million things that you can use that kind of analyze your golf swing, and they give you these tour averages. Okay. And they're like, oh yeah. And the do-it-yourself golfers, like, oh, I got to fall in these averages. They're an average for a reason, but nobody plays with their average. That's why it's an average. And by trying to get into all these averages, it's going to be very detrimental to somebody who doesn't look like a tour player or doesn't move like a tour player. And most people don't look and move like tour players because most people don't have access to the same physios and strength coaches and all these things that tour players do to perform and move at a very high level. So once again, trying to get everything to average for tour numbers is not a realistic way to get better at golf. As a matter of fact, if you go out and look at a bunch of tour players and measure them, most of them aren't falling within those average numbers. It's an average over a large data set. It's not what an individual is doing swing to swing. And not only that, but they're going to be making compensations based off what the shot requires of them. So they're not just hitting a stock shot every single time and trying to make the same swing every single time, like most of your amateurs and do-it-yourself golfers are trying to do. So we have to kind of start thinking a little deeper about how we're going to go about making a change if we're going to be a do-it-yourself golfer. My advice for the do-it-yourself golfers who are listening to this is stop trying to be an expert in something you're not an expert in and seek help. When I have taxes come due, I don't do my own taxes because I'm not an expert in taxes. I am an expert in the golf swing. Now, that doesn't transition to taxes. Okay. I don't do my own surgeries. I'm not an expert in that. I don't have the credentials. And I wish that we had more credentials in golf and that people actually had to be certified to coach it, but that's not where we're at these days. And like I said, there's a lot of people out there who are pretending to be golf coaches who have zero business coaching golf. So if I were you and you're a do-it-yourself golfer, I get it. Sometimes golf lessons don't work, and that's unfortunate. But do your homework. Look at their track record. Who have they worked with? Are those players any good? If they haven't worked with anybody any good, maybe stay away because they're probably not that great of a golf coach. But if you find somebody local in your area, or maybe even have to drive a little bit, and they've helped develop people and gotten them to play high school golf and from high school golf to college golf, or maybe they've really been fortunate and worked with some tour players, like those are the kinds of people you want to find. Even if you can't find that, find somebody who has some technology and can be objective with what they're telling you and prove it to you. And the other thing that I would say is that if you are a do-it-yourself golfer and you're going to go seek professional help, I would go into the session and be prepared. Hey, these are the things I think I want to work on today. What do you think? Well, maybe they say something different. Okay, great. Let's get a baseline off these numbers, what you're saying that we need to change. What's that look like? And then at the end of this, let's compare and see if we made any change. Because those numbers should be changing if that's what the coach is trying to change. But I think by and large, it's a two-way street. I think the coach is accountable to the player, and I think the player is accountable to the coach. But we need to be doing a little more homework and being a little more selective with who we're going to trust our golf swing to. And then you, as the golfer, are 100% in the right to say, hey, I want to compare this at the end and see what changes we made, if any. Because if they're not making a change, if they're not helping you do the things you need to do to play better golf, that's probably not the right golf coach for you. And you shouldn't have to pay for that because that's not what you asked for. You asked for specific help, they gave you specific guidance, and it should show up and start kind of working. Now, it doesn't mean you're going to hit every shot perfect. It doesn't mean you're going to hit every shot straight. But at the end of the day, we should start seeing some change come about that is at least showing us that we're on the path to improvement. So long story short, do your homework. Um, nobody has the one trick, including me. I don't want to make it sound like I'm the only one. I don't. Nobody has the one silver bullet that's going to work for everybody. And, you know, we're dealing with human beings. It's it's fairly complicated. So when you're picking that golf coach, I would definitely say try to find somebody who has a good understanding of the physiology and the physics of the golf swing, and hopefully uses some kind of tech to be objective and kind of understands how this all goes together because that's always going to put you in the best position possible. So I hope this helps. I hope this makes sense. Uh, I know a lot of people are out there trying to figure it out. I'm sure people are listening to this podcast trying to help themselves. Um, but my advice is always gonna be to find a professional golf coach that has a track record of helping people and lean in and realize that it's probably not gonna happen in a single session. It's gonna take time and be prepared for that and you know, build a plan for that. But go on the journey with them. It's it's not always, you know, the easiest thing to make a change. If if anything, it tends to be kind of hard to make a change. It doesn't mean you have to get worse, it doesn't mean you should be, you know, significantly hitting the ball worse when you leave the lesson. Hopefully you're hitting it a little bit better. But once again, if you're working on those things, that low-hanging fruit, this should start getting better. And at very least, the miss is getting better. So I hope you enjoyed this. Uh, if you have feedback for us, you know, you're more than welcome to reach out to us. Uh, we post this on our YouTube channel, which you can find by searching Measured Golf on YouTube. Uh, the comments are always open. You're welcome to leave your feedback there. Um, make sure you download and subscribe to this podcast. That is super helpful to us. Uh, we really appreciate when you guys do that. And then if you want to follow along, if you want to reach out, if you want to engage with us, you can find us on Instagram at measuredgolf, or you can find myself on Instagram at the Forceplate Guy. If you can't remember any of that, you can always go to our website at measuredgolf.com. You can send me an email, you can find the social links, you can find everything there. But measuredgolf.com is kind of the place where we have everything easy to find, easy to search, and another way for you to be able to reach out to us directly if that's what you're interested in. Lastly, if you are a do-it-yourself golfer and I have made a case for you to seek professional help and you've decided that you trust me and want me to be the one to help you, I do online coaching for those of you that aren't local to the Ann Arbor area. Uh, I had a lot of success with the online coaching. I've really come to enjoy it, even though I was against it for the longest of times. But if you're interested in doing some online coaching with me, you can find out more information about that at measuredgolf.com. And then you can send me an email through the website saying that that's something that you're interested in, and I will get back to you. So once again, thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for listening. I believe that this will be the last podcast for and before Christmas. So I hope everybody has a wonderful and Merry Christmas, uh, and potentially a happy new year, depending on whether we get a podcast up in between the two. So thanks again, Merry Christmas, and as always, keep grinding.
