From OU Walk-On To Mo Norman Protege: Todd Graves On Consistency, Club Fitting, And Power

We walk through Todd Graves’ journey with Mo Norman, from discovering the single plane swing to modeling its biomechanics for reliable impact. We share ball-striking stories, fitting truths, distance myths, and why setting up to impact simplifies everything and calms pressure.

• Todd’s path from OU walk-on to Asian Tour and coach
• Discovering Mo Norman and the single plane model
• Aligning setup to impact for fewer moving parts
• Biomechanics and data-driven checkpoints
• Reverse-engineering club fitting to your motion
• Weight, counterbalance, and strike control
• Distance myths and 80 percent speed principle
• Mo’s exhibitions, course craft, and mindset
• Fireside chats, mentorship, and legacy projects
• Book, podcast, and documentary details

“my website is gravesgolf.com… pick up a copy of The Intelligent Golf Swing at theintelligentgolfswing.com… my podcast, the Feeling of Greatness Podcast… go to the feelingofgreatness.com”

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome again to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. My name is Jesse Perryman, and I am your host, along with our co-host Justin Tang, uh Singaporean from the Hidden Castle Golf Club there in Singapore. If you're ever down there, feel free to go see him. You're not going to regret or waste any of your time because I consider Justin to be one of the great coaching minds on the planet. And he happens to be my friend and fellow co-host. And together we are bringing you this week a man by the name of Todd Graves. I first came across Todd on YouTube because I am a huge Moore Norman fan. And Todd uh was the very fortunate and blessed recipient of spending some pretty quality time with Mo during Mo's last few years uh on Earth and uh got an incredible amount of knowledge from Mo and has taken Mo's ideology and principles and uh gone ahead and modernized it and brought it to the game as we know it today. And and uh Todd is it's called Graves Golf, uh Gravesgolf.com, and he also is available for in-person lessons. But uh uh I'll give you the quick short and the long of the conversation. We talk about Mo, we talk a plane, uh the zero plane shift for the golfing machine folks, uh, which uh is translated to the one plane swing, which Mo did and which uh Todd teaches. And uh we go into Todd's background and and uh and what he's come up with. And it it's a it's a really great, deep, uh inspiring, and fruitful conversation from the perspective of when you learn from somebody who has achieved the level of mastery, um you're you're you're a good chunk of the way there to achieving mastery on your own. And I believe that Todd has done that. So sit back, relax, listen. Any comments, questions, my information, uh Justin's information will always undoubtedly be in the show notes. And we want to thank Mizuno Golf, we want to thank Tailor Made Golf, we want to thank Srixon, Cleveland Strixon for their incredible equipment and also Amble Clothing Company. Amble on, folks, and cheers and have a great week. Todd Graves, ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome once again to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. My name is Jesse Perryman. I am your host, along with Justin Tang of Hidden Castle Golf Club. Did I say that right, Justin? That's good. And our guest today is none other than uh somebody that we respect. Uh we we've been uh watching him from afar. His name is Todd Graves, Graves Golf. Um, this is uh most likely gonna be one of two episodes with Todd because uh anybody who is listening knows that he is a Mo Norman protege. And we hold here at the Flag Hunters Golf Cop podcast, and I'm sure with a lot of you, the listener, hold uh Mo in extremely high esteem. And uh we want to keep his memory and the things that he left behind alive and well now and going into the future. So thank you, Todd, for coming on. This is an honor, pal.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Well, I appreciate you guys, and I appreciate you taking the time to let me talk about Mo. And I'm just certain certainly passionate about that, and I I love talking about it and love sharing the stories about him with everybody. Thanks for your time, Todd.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

For the benefit of our listeners who may not have heard of you or more, could you share with us how you got into the game of golf?

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Yeah, you know, um golf is one of those sports, you know, I grew up in a family that we didn't have a lot of money, but we lived next to a golf course. So when my parents needed something to do with me growing up, they would just drop me at the golf course, and uh the golf course became my babysitter, which I think golf is the greatest babysitter of any if for kids of anything you can do because it takes so much time and dedication to be good at it that I became addicted to just hitting golf balls and playing golf every day. So I did that as a kid from the time I was 11 years old till you know that so I started actually being able to go to golf courses and work at golf courses and and become employed. And and I just played golf as a kid my entire life. I got heavily involved in the game. I became a really good player, uh, played probably really good in high school, and then, you know, had some had some college scholarship opportunities, didn't take advantage of those because I wanted to go to a division one school and then and then uh went to Oklahoma State University, got the bug again at Oklahoma State, won it, won an intermiral tournament there. Um, I said, well, let me go try to play at Oklahoma State. Well, that team, I mean, there were some amazing players at Oklahoma State at the time, Scott Verplank, Bob Tway, all those guys were at Oklahoma State. So I ended up going to Norman, Oklahoma, because one of the my mentors, my prototype, my one of my good friends that really mentored me in golf had played golf at OU. And he was working at a club there. So I started working for him in the back room. And one day um I was working there. I was, I was a, but I would have been a sophomore in college, but I I was not on the team at the time. But Todd Hamilton came out um with another player from the Oklahoma team, and they teed off on the ninth, on the 10th hole. And I asked the pro, can I get out of this back room and go play with these guys? And uh he goes, Yeah, it's slow, go play with Todd. So I went and played the back nine, with I really didn't know who Todd Hamilton was. He's just a player on the team. I ended up playing really well with those guys. And after I walked off the 18th hole, he Todd turned to me and he goes, You know, you're obviously a good player. What are you doing down here? And I said, Well, I couldn't get on the team at Oklahoma State. And now I'm down here, I don't know. And he goes, Do you want to try to get on OU's golf team? I said, How do I do that? And he goes, I'll have the assistant coach call you. So the assistant coach named Jim Begwin called me and said, Hey, there's a walk-on tournament we're going to put together. Do you want to play? I said, Absolutely. So I win the walk-on tournament. I make a 10-footer, six-round tournament. I make a 10-footer on the last hole to win by a shot. And as I walk off the green, Jim Begwin puts his arm around me and he says, Thank God you made that putt. I said, Why? And he goes, Because we did this whole walk-on thing for you. You're the only walk-on ever to get on Oklahoma's team. We put this whole tournament together for you to try to get have a reason to put you on the team. Thank God you made the putt. Because if I missed that put, they had to put somebody else on the team. So anyway, that's how I got on OU's team. I was the first walk-on. Um yeah, and so that's kind of where my career kind of launched uh as a player, and I played there for a couple of years. I got injured my senior year, and then um the coach said, the head coach said, why don't you come coach with me for the next year and a half? So I ended up coaching the national championship team in 1989, and then I coached for another year, and then I went on the Asian tour in 1991. I got my first first stint as a professional golfer playing on the Asian tour. That's kind of a short history of where I I got to in my career.

Discovering Mo Norman And The Single Plane

SPEAKER_02 7:40

And how do you first connect with uh Moore? Yeah, what what what what is it about his swing, his philosophy that meet you one of the teachers?

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, no, it's it's that's that's that's interesting because I I um when I got back from Asia, like I played with you know I played with VJ, I played with David Toms, I mean so uh obviously Todd Hamilton.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

These guys were almost what's that? You play with this chap by the name of Clay Devers. Yes, I know Clay, yeah. Yep, amazing. Yeah, yeah. He he the long time since I've heard his name. The the reason I brought him up was that his setup kind of reminds me of Mo's setup.

Modeling Mo: Biomechanics And Metrics

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Clay, yeah, because I did play with Clay. Matter of fact, I played with him in I think the is he from Kansas? Where's he from? Kansas. Kansas. He's from Kansas because I played with him in Wichita at in a tournament. Yeah, uh, yeah, so that's how I met Clay. Oh, yeah. I actually knew Clay pretty well for a while. I played a lot of golf with Clay. Um, good player, by the way. He won the tournament that I played with him. He was a good player. Um but yeah, so when I got back from the Asian tour, I just wanted to be better. I w I wanted to be a better ball striker. I got I got beat by a lot of guys who were just better than me. You know, Dennis Paulson, these guys were just amazing, to me, really good golfers. I was so much of a rookie when I played there. And so I started, I said, I was one of my good friends with was Billy Casper's uh was Billy Casper's son, Bob Casper. You might you might know Bob. And um Bob said, Todd, you gotta you know you gotta find a good coach that can really work with you and work on your swing. So I started working with at the time the best instructors, you know, the the Hank Haney's, the Tom Antons, the Mac O'Grady's, the David Ledbetters. I was working with whoever I thought could maybe help. I was trying to find the right coach, and I ended up with Hank Haney in Dallas, Texas. And I moved down to Dallas. That's where my sponsors lived as well, and um started working with Hank Haney. And I really appreciate Hank's view on the golf swing. You know, it was very swing plane oriented. Ben Hogan was kind of the model, but I got worse. I I wasn't getting better. I found, I found that there was, you know, I'm I'm a pretty analytical guy, and and there was a lot of things I just didn't understand. How could one day it it changed so much? And how can instruction be so random? And how can how can uh um Mark Omer look like this and and then you teach him? And how can how can uh Curtis Strange who you're teaching right now look like that? They don't look the same. And you know, I was and then he was working with Trip Keeney, and I saw Tiger Woods came through there, and ever and he's working with all these guys, but they all have different swings. And I'm like, okay, what what's the model here? So I was pretty confused. I I hadn't hadn't improved much in about two and a half, three years. And a friend of mine named Matthew Lane, who was on my college team, Matthew, you might have heard of Matthew before. Matthew, incredibly good player, won the New Zealand Open in 1998. He's from New Zealand. And um, Matthew was playing on a Canadian tour and he came, came home when he's coming back to the United States. He I was living in Dallas and he came in, he goes, he goes, I got a tape you need to look at, a video tape, and it was of Mo Norman. And I maybe like you guys, I had heard of Mo before, but I didn't know if he was a real person. I mean, it was kind of like this mystical character that was supposed to be incredibly good at hitting a golf ball that everybody kind of heard about, but no one knew if he was real or not, because he never got out of Canada much or never really, he was pretty reclusive. But anyway, I watched this video and I see Mo on the on the thing, and I look at his swing and I see this single plane swing. And the entire time I was working with Hank Haney, we were focused on swing plane, but it was not like what I saw with Mo, because Mo would start and return to the exact same plane, which just looked so much easier. It just the single plane swing just looked like he, this guy figured it out. So from that videotape, I started practicing what I saw on that tape. I just would just go hit balls and look. I mean, I was out of money at the time. I was working, I was bartending trying to make money so I could practice during the day and bartend at night to make some money. And um, I started getting better. I started immediately improving my ability to consistently hit a golf ball. And so then about a I did that for a year. And then a year later, I had the opportunity to go meet Mo in person at in Chicago. So when I met Mo at a clinic, he did a clinic, and I and I could sit there and explain this clinic. I'll be happy to describe it to you. But the sound of the golf ball, I mean, you guys have heard good ball strikers hit a golf ball. The sound was so good of the ball, the, the, the, the flight, the window he was hitting the golf ball in, the consistency, the shot patterns, I mean, this how straight he was hitting it, the consistent. I was just amazed by it, just like Matthew said, he you hear you called him, he was a freak of nature how good he hits the golf ball. And um, so I walked up to Mo after the clinic and I said, Um, can I you mind if I grab your eight iron and hit a few shots? And so I grabbed his club and hit a few shots, and he looked at me and goes, It's me without a belly. He looked, he thought, he thought it was, he thought I would done a good job mimicking his swing. And we kind of connected there. And for the next, you know, next few years and up to 10 years, I spent 10 years spending time with him, but it took me about two years to really kind of figure out what he was doing in his swing. He kind of mentored me and just kind of showed me everything he was doing. So I would, I would fly to Canada or go to Orlando or Titusville where he was staying, and I just spent as much time as I could just learning as much as I could from him.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

And during this period, did you change the setup of your equipment? Because obviously more used clubs that were set up in a very different fashion from what was the norm back then and even now. Very heavy clubs, yeah. And a very flat setup.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah, I have I have a set here of his clubs right here in my office. I um I actually let people hit him when they come to the academy. Um, I altered him somewhat. You know, I was working with a company called Natural Golf back in that day, and Natural Golf had their own equipment. Now, I wouldn't say their equipment was very good. I mean, as a matter of fact, it was not very good. I played the entire Canadian tour with really inadequate golf equipment. I mean, the stuff, the center of gravities were so high on the equipment I couldn't get a lot of the long, longer clubs off the ground very well. Um, but yes, I mean I did alter my equipment, and you're right. The the things that that people get mis maybe misconception about Mose equipment is that it is flatter. The line goes are flatter. They're not more upright. You would think they'd be more upright. They're actually not. Um now I say that, but you but I recommend people get fitted. We we should talk about club fitting at some point, but I recommend people get fitted to the swing they're using. And so if you're gonna use a single point swing, you know, you're gonna be a different size than I am. And if a guy's six foot two, he's I'm five foot nine. So it's it's a much different fitting for him. So his clubs may not be as flat as mine, but they're gonna be custom fit to his single point swing. I think golf equipment should be reverse engineered to your golf swing as opposed to dynamically fit to your swing. Does that make sense? I think you should get reverse engineered into your fitting. So, in other words, what happens so much, and I've seen it so often in club fitting, is people um will go in there with a bad swing and go fit me to clubs. Well, that's really not gonna do you uh a lot of favors if you're fitting a bad swing to equipment. So, what we you should be aspiring to is like what swing are we doing? What's your swing here? What's a perfect setup? What swing are you trying to do accomplish here, which in my case is the single plane swing. Let's fit your clubs to fit a perfect single plane swing, and then your end your clubs are engineered for a good golf swing. That's the way I think it should be done. And that's my opinion about fitting.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

I definitely agree.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Yeah, go ahead, Justin.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Well, um, yeah, I mean, fit, yeah. I mean, Todd, you said it best, Justin. You and I have talked about this a lot, uh, in regards to fit your golf clubs how you want to hit it. And you know, that's gonna that's gonna cause the student some some responsibility, and you have to get clear with what your intentions are.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

You know, if you go to John Q Fitter and go, hey, fit me to these clubs, and I'm you know, a 15 handicapper and I'm steep and over the top and I'm top heavy, he's gonna go, Well, I'm gonna make you everything that I can do, not for you not to slice it. Yeah, so it's gonna be more upright, and it's gonna exacerbate even getting steeper, and then the uh and then the rabbit hole perpetuates.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

I I had that exact experience recently. Uh actually a member from Monumentary Peninsula came out to see me here at the Academy in Edmund, and he came, he was just in town and he called me, he said, Hey, I know about you. Can I come out for some instruction? I said, Sure, you know, come out. And his equipment was so upright. I mean, we're talking probably six degrees up on from standard instead of ping irons. I I couldn't get, I could not get him. Now, there's I could talk biomechanics all day long when it comes to golf swing mechanics. I could not mechanically get his body into position to put his arms into a spatial relationship with a golf ball without that club, without with that piece of equipment. And so I'm like, look, I'd love to help your swing, but with those clubs, there's not a lot I can do because they're requiring you to stand so close and vertical to that golf ball that for me to get you on a plane that I think that I mean, he's my size, so I I know I pretty much knew how he should be fit. Um so I went and grabbed one of my clubs, I'm like, let's hit my club. And then you know, he's like, wow, this is so different. I'm like, you know, you end up you end up going down that rabbit hole of yes, you're gonna need clubs that fit you, and you need to fit them to the swing that you're you're swinging, you know.

Club Fitting Philosophy For One Plane

SPEAKER_02 17:18

So can you talk a little bit about the impact of weight on a golfer's swing? Of width?

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Weight, weight, um, like body weight or a club heavyweight.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

The weight of the the golf club overall and the swing weight.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Yeah, yeah, so that's that's a good point. It's interesting. I wouldn't c consider myself an expert on this, so I can just tell you my experience of of equipment and the weight of equipment. Um do you remember when the featherlight stuff was out there? Do you remember all that stuff? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

That did well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Yeah, well, and it failed. And the thing is, and so like most clubs here, I they're their E2 swing weight. Um I didn't measure total weight, but they're certainly very heavy. I had Dr. Gil Morgan the other day come out and we were hitting balls together, and I'm like, hey, I want you to hit most clubs. So I grabbed Dr. Gil and we went out and hit balls, and he loved most clubs because he loved the weight of them. So as you get into the heavier range, I think here's what happens, and I just from personal experience, I mean, your swing speeds are going to slow down because you obviously can't move the club as fast. But I could certainly feel the club better because I in space, I knew where the club is in my swing. So I definitely had a better feeling for where the club was during the swing. And it it slowed my, I want to say it slowed my swing down, but it, I mean, not necessarily swing speed wise, but my body had to stabilize itself differently to swing that weight of equipment. I hit it better with heavy equipment. Now I don't hit it farther with heavy equipment. Matter of fact, I would even say I probably hit a little shorter, but these are the old lofts in these irons, so it's hard to tell, but I definitely hit it better with heavier equipment. And that's because my swing's more under control. I'm not overswinging, I'm not over spinning the golf ball, you know, that kind of thing. So I'm actually having Callaway work with me in the next this next spring when their new equipment comes out to build building a weighted set very similar to Mo's set here, just to try it out. It may not may or may not work. But and then I'll tell you what though, there's something to this, again, I'm not an expert. There's something to counter counterbalancing a club. So one thing you see with Mo is obviously the heavy head, a very stiff shaft, but he would also put his hands down about an inch and a half, two inches on the grip. And he had these long, heavy grips, and it counterweighted the club. So the actual swinging weight of the club when he's hitting it was not E2, it was probably in the D4, D5 range. But the counterbalance, there's really something to counterbalance. And so when I hit these clubs and I put my hands down about two inches, there is a totally different feel of a golf club. There's something to that as well. Again, I'm I'm no expert and I probably should experiment a lot more with that, but um, but there's something to that.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Yeah, that's a good point. Does a golfer need to change their equipment in order to learn the single plane swing?

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Sometimes. Sometimes, like this, that that student that came here with those clubs that that I literally could not get him even near a single plane because of his equipment. So in his case, absolutely. Now, the average golf club out there probably isn't that severe. It's probably one or two degrees upright or even standard. Maybe not. I mean, it depends on his size. I mean, I've but I'll tell you what, um the like you said before, the the I on average I see the club as being slightly flatter than a standard set that somebody would have. So generally I would flatten the clubs for most people, but um but we do, you know, we have a whole custom fitting process. There's probably a one or two degree adjustment usually for people as far as flattening the club a little bit, but not always. It just depends. It just it really depends on how well that club fits them to begin with. Um I'll tell you the biggest challenge is set makeup, what's in people's bags, because people have a lot of three woods that they don't have the swing speed to hit, you know, that kind of thing. So I think there's something to be said for not only having the the equipment fit well, which it needs to, but also having the right set makeup. I mean, an eight-degree driver in somebody's bag that because Bryson hits it, you know, that kind of thing. Um, I think there's something to be said for just getting the right the right lofts of clubs in people's hands.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

Also when you were learning the the more Norman pattern, what were the biggest misconceptions you had? That's a good question. Um

Do You Need New Clubs For Single Plane

SPEAKER_01 22:01

You know, as I went through the process, because it took me about two years to kind of so what I really did with Mo is my perspective on Mo because I know I I understood the golf swing pretty well from all the time I had spent with these great instructors, was that everything Mo is doing, he was doing for a a reason, and the reason was very simple for consistency. So everything I saw in Mo Norman's golf swing, I I equated it to he's doing that to become to be more consistent because of the way his brain was wired. His brain wasn't his, I mean, Mo always said, I did it my way, I did it my way. Well, what for? Because I wanted to be the best ball striker that's ever lived. What for? Because I want to be able to hit the ball and shoot low scores. Okay, well, everything he's doing is so he can become consistent at hitting a golf ball. And so I took that perspective and I said, So behind that, behind that curtain of consistency, there must be biomechanics because biomechanics, he must be the reason he looks different at address and the reason he's positioning himself differently is because everything he's doing is built to become more consistent. Why does he place the club behind the ball sometimes up to a foot? Well, simplifies the backswing, eliminates movement, right? Puts his right shoulder onto the plane, gets he could take the club directly onto the plane without having that first foot and a half movement of the golf club. So everything he did was built to get the club on plane and to impact. And so that's the way, that's the perspective I took on his swing. So I started looking at all the biomechanics behind it. Then I actually built software that you could measure the metrics of a golf swing. For example, how much rotation I did I divided the swing into six positions, and I said, how much, what metric is your body in at each one of these positions? So I could model it, and then I could teach other people that model. And then I would stand behind, I would just look at data and not look at the golfer, and I could get him to swing exactly like Mo Norman just by looking at data. And so what you learn very quickly is the misconception is to answer your question is um it was so much easier than I thought it was. I made it much harder than I needed to at the beginning because of the way my brain was wired. I thought you had to have all this rotation and back to the target, you know, and use the ground forces, all this stuff that really doesn't really have any relevancy because there's no definition to it all. But once I once I went through the modeling process, the things that I the left hand grip, the most hand position, people would say that his right hand grip is strong, it's not really strong. It's just because of the tilt of his body puts the arm into a position that makes the hand in a position that looks strong from a conventional perspective, but it's not in a strong position. It's in a non-rotational position. So there's things like that that that as I develop more of an understanding of Mo swing, as I did more measuring of Mo swing, learning the metrics, the exact, exactly what he was doing, it simplified it a lot for me. So there's a lot of things. My biggest problem with Mo Swing was my left-hand grip was too strong. And I I would go play tournaments and hook the golf ball. My club face would get shut and I would hook the golf ball. And it was all because of my left-hand grip. And so Mo finally, one time I was playing golf with him on the golf course, and I got up in a par three and I hooked his shot with a six iron way left to the green. And Mo was so disappointed. I've never seen anybody more disappointed in a golf shot in my life. And as we're walking down that fairway, Mo looked at me and he goes, You got to straighten it out. You got to straighten it out. And he he just would not talk to me for like three holes because he was so upset that I hooked the ball that badly. So I think it was just things like that that I had to work through. Um, but you know, at the end of the day, when I teach people, the golf swing is very simple. I know it's gonna sound crazy to people. It is such a simple thing to do if you know what you're doing, but it's so complicated if you put yourself in positions that make it difficult. And I've seen as an instructor, as a coach, and a person that hits the ball really well and with Moe's swing. Um once you put yourself, once you take your free example, your right hand and put it too far on top of the club, you got a rotation you're dealing with, period. Right? So now you got a rotation to leave. Well, what are you rotating? The club face. Well, what does the ball react to mostly? The angle of the club face. So if those little things that you do in a golf swing can create havoc in a golf swing, and it doesn't take it once you learn to do it correctly, it just gets simple. If you don't do it correctly, it can be very, very complicated.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

A lot of golfers have this misconception that Moore Norman wasn't a long hitter, and by extension, they think that the single clean golf swing is not capable of producing a powerful golf swing. Can you put that to rest?

Myths About Distance And Swing Speed

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Yeah, I mean, well, I'll give you some data. I mean, I started I I've matter of fact, well, I'll tell you what my experience with Mo was. And Mo, when I met Mo, he was 64 years old. Now, this was 1994. I played the first round with him at Greenleaf. I don't even know if Greenleaf's still open down in down in Florida. And Mo was hitting the golf ball at age 64 with the equipment back then. I mean, is very much different than the equipment is today. The golf balls, I mean, the old tideless blotta tour blotta golf ball, right? And he was hitting at about 260 yards. Now, let's talk data on what that really means. Now, he's remember, he's 64 years old. The average champions tour player today at age 50, I think the average swing speed on a championship tour is 106 miles per hour, or somewhere around about 106, maybe a little plus or minus one one mile an hour. Um, John Daly in 19, was it 91 when he led the tour driving distance? Do you know what his you know what his distance was? And in I think at 88, 89 he led it, because that's when I put was playing on the tour in 91, was 289. That was his average driving distance. That was the longest guy on tours hitting at 289. So let's put this in perspective. John Daly's hitting at 289, he's the longest. Mo Norman at 64 is hitting at 260 at 64. So there's just there's nothing that would say he hits it short at all, and there's nothing mechanically that would say he hit it short. But equipment back then, look at the guys that played on the tour back when Mo was on tour. It it wasn't the average, I think the average driving distance on tour was around 260, wasn't it? Back back in, it was less than that. It was like in the 250s, um, back when Gil Morgan was out there in the 70s and 80s, right? So I had a conversation. Do you guys know who Tom Jones is? Tom Jones played on the tour, played at Oklahoma State. He's the director of golf um at our club at National here. And Tom and I had this conversation about distance of the golf ball. And you guys can relate to this. When I played golf on the tour, and and I'm in, and definitely the guys before me, because I I played on the tour in the 90s, 90 to about 2001, um the ball is so bad. That that wound golf ball was so bad and inconsistent. The goal was to get it going in the direction you wanted to go. The harder you hit it, the more it spun. And so we could the goal is to control the ball. So we we were building golf swings to hit it straight. I mean, would you agree with that? And Tom and I talked about this. It's like, I mean, this thing, I mean, I hit a ball, I hit one of those, I had some of those tour blottas the other day, and I went out and hit them with my driver, and uh, my spin rates were like 4,500 with a spin rate. And then I hit I hit the the new ball and it was like 2200. So they they spin twice as much. So just think about that. These balls are spinning everywhere. So I don't think you can even make, I don't even think it's worth even trying to think about was Mo Norman long or short, because it was a different time of equipment and the goals were differently, were different. Today, I'm gonna tell you about today, in my opinion. The ball flies so straight, it's hard to curve a golf ball today compared to back when you're playing those tour blottas, that you can swing hard as you want and it still doesn't seem to curve very much. You know, I mean, I swing as hard as I want. My cat play the ball and straight. I hit off dead off the toe and it went dead straight. What the heck's going on? So today's equipment with the ball and the club allows you to swing much harder at the golf ball and not get the negative result that you would get 20, 30 years ago. And I think that that is why people tend to equate Mo to this, but you look at Mo's swing design and the way it's set up, it's gonna get the club consistently to impact more than any golf swing that's you know, I call it Mo's discovery because I don't think it's a method. It's a he discovered the way to do that. And to kind of end this con uh conclude this conversation about distance, there's a kid I teach named Roberto Labrija. Roberto is now on the Asian tour, but he won a tournament on the Latin American tour. Roberto came to me with lots of swing speed. He swing his ball speeds are over 195. So he he he's six foot three, has long arms, he generates speed. When I started teaching him the single plane swing, I I said, I've got to slow you down because I want to control the spin rates of this golf ball. So I actually I actually controlled a swing better, slowed him down because he literally, when he hit the ball offline, it was so far offline he couldn't find it on the golf course. He finally gets it dialed in, gets his spin rates down, and starts hitting it farther with a because I think I actually still slowed him down, but he's hitting it farther because he's hitting it more consistently with the correct spin of the golf ball. So I think people make way too much out of this swing speed thing. No one no one plays good golf more than 80% of their speed. That's the way you play the game at 80%. You might want an extra gear in there to maybe take advantage of a hole like a Bryson, take advantage of the holes, but at the end of the day, the average golfer out there needs to be more concerned about hitting it solid in the club face, getting the most out of their swing, and not trying to overswing. I I just see it happening in so much I see these kids overswinging at the golf ball. It it I mean, this probably drives me, it's probably a pet peeve of mine. It drives me nuts.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

Talk a little bit about more unique setup from the way the trail forearm is aligned with the shaft to the white pants and the club pit being one foot behind the bar inside the arc.

Setup Secrets: Aligning To Impact

SPEAKER_01 32:44

When I when I teach the golf swing, I think one of the biggest mistakes taught in golf is teaching the grip first. Because when you orient the hands on the golf club, it's the connection you have with your hands, obviously, wrists, forearms are all connected in their rotation. So when you put the hands on the golf club without really knowing how the body is supposed to be positioned, you're creating a relationship to the club face that before you've even got your you have your body in position. When I teach the address position, I you know, when when we're modeling Mo swing, I orient the body first. So I put the body into a tilt. Well, what tilts am I putting the body in? The same tilt you're gonna have at impact. So I'm putting you into the impact tilt, and then I'm putting the arms in front of the body, aligning the club, the lead arm with the club. Why? Because that's where it's gonna be at impact. And then I'm gonna bring the trail arm in from that lead arm inflection, tilted position. The back of the hand is to the target of the lead hand, and the trail hand ends up being slightly rotated, what Mo called sunny side up with the trail arm, which then lines up with the club shaft, which we call the single plane. Why do we want that lined up? Because again, that's where it's going to be at impact. So if you look at this mechanically, I am setting you up, Mo set up, in the most biomechanically efficient way to take the club back and get it back to impact. So that's why you see all those things. Even putting the club a foot behind the golf ball, put the right shoulder, since it's tilted, into the turn so the shoulder can move up and down on plane and not have to rotate as well. So every element of that single plane address is to make the backswing and downcing more efficient to get to impact. The and so taking this one step further, what I discovered about Mo's swing was a lot of what Bryson has done a really good job, you know, since he's been out there on the tour. Bryson brought to this this to people's attention, which is what Mo really discovered was that the body had your body, everybody's body has range of motion limitations. You can only rotate your arm so much. And if you put your body in certain positions, it creates limitations of end ranges. So, for example, if I take the lead arm and I put my body into a tilt and I put my arm in front of my body, I can make its end range so the only place that hand can go at impact is square the face of the target. I can position you that way. So, what Mo figured out in his address position was he was preparing his body in all of its end ranges to take the club back and return it to impact. And so it's really pure biomechanics. It looks different, but you know, there's guys that were similar to Mo. I mean, Steve Stricker setup is very similar. And there's been a lot of guys that have come and gone on the tour that kind of get on this hands a little higher single plane. I've even seen Sergio, you know, kind of hands a little high. So the the there it's there. I mean, you're starting to see people, obviously Bryson, but it's really biomechanics. And everything you see in Mo Norman swing is really this this is look at Mo's swing as he is he is in he has discovered how to engineer the body into a position that makes it the most efficient way rotationally, a way to produce po power and speed and leverage on the golf club and get to the moment of impact in the least amount of effort, rotation possible. And that's that's really what all that is in the setup.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

What are some some uh incredible exhibitions of ball striking you've seen Mo do in person?

Mo’s Ball-Striking Exhibitions

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yeah, I mean that was gonna there was nothing more fun than going to Orange Orange County National with Mo. You guys ever been to Orange County National down there in Orlando? Orange County National is it's a it's a mile circle driving range. Mo loved it because it was this massive driving range. We could go to the backside of it where no one was there and we hit golf balls. And there's nothing more fun than taking a 300 300 golf balls in a bucket, putting them on the ground, and just going, go, let's watch, and just watch Mo hit golf balls. And I think, you know, the very first time I saw him hit golf balls, my memory is the sound of the ball. Because when a ball is struck that well, you you just know the sound of it. Good, when good ball strikers, I mean, I've heard it with Tiger, I've heard it with a lot of good players, but when good players strike the ball that that well, it just has the sound to it. And so that was my first real memory of going, wow, there's this is this is really something here. The first three shots I saw him hit with a 50, you know, a 50-yard shot hit the actual target. So he just and he turned it. It's so simple. It's so simple. Look, look, so simple. And then and then he would grab another club, seven iron, and it he'd just be on the same line, perfectly straight, same trajectory. And and on the end of the range, there was a pole. It was a it was a metal pole, it was about 250 yards out, about a four-inch metal pole, and it was hitting drivers. And it was the conditions were crappy. I mean, it was a little windy, it was it was dusty, and he did it drive. And about every fourth one, it would go bing off the pole. And I'm sitting here going, he is hitting that pole from 250 like one of like 30% of the time. It's just a bullet, you know, and and that was impressive. And then when I would play golf with him, I I think the most impressive thing about playing golf with him was that he just never, there wasn't much of a pre-shot routine. It was just automatic, and he would just nail it down the middle of the fairway, no practice swings, just stead up, wham, right down the middle of the fairway. I was playing with him one time, and and there was this par five, and Mo hits it right down the middle. And I hit it, I hit my drive solid, but I hit it to the right, and it catches the very end of this end of this pond on the right side of the fairway. And Mo looks at me and goes, good as a good shot. Water got in the way. And I'm like, you know, that's that's kind of true because I hit it really good. Wasn't quite as straight as Mo's, but I hit it really good. And Mo was like, always look, always look at the good side, always look at the good side, it's always the good side, you know, always look at the bright side. So Mo is always like that, very positive. One time I was playing with uh the um David Owen, who used to write for golf digest, and David hits a drive and he he thins it down the middle of the fairway, but it goes right down the middle of the fairway, about 230 yards, and Moe's like, as good as a good shot, as good as a good shot, keeps walking on. So Mo is a blast to play golf with, and um, I just never saw him miss it. I I know that sounds crazy. I just never saw him miss a golf ball. It's just so simple the way he'd hit it. Um I it was this one par through he played one day, it was wind was in our face. It was only like 160 yards, wasn't very far. Of course, me, you know, I'm up there, I grab my seven iron, I'm gonna try to hit this thing hard into the wind and get it back to the flag, and I balloon it up in the air and it lands short of the green. I see Mo walk out there, hits this, like makes this nice little swing, ball like goes right through the wind, one hops about 10 feet from the hole, six iron, just hits a little soft six iron into the wind. Never swing hard, never swing hard, never swing hard, you know, as he walks off the T-Box. I played with him at Augusta, uh, and we we played together at Augusta in 1997, the year Tiger won. And we were we hit it on 13. We both drive it down the fairway, right by each other down the fairway. And then I go, Mo, and we were like 230 yards. We didn't hit her drive way down there, and I go, Mo, we got to go for the green. You got to go for it. Don't lay it up. So Mo hits it in the creek and I hit it in Race Creek. So, so we go walking down there to take a drop, and I hear Mo hit a shot, and I look up and the ball goes about four feet from the hole, and he's back there about 100 yards. Well, of course, I drop down there next to Race Creek and I hit my wedge and I spin it off the green back into Race Creek. And as Mo's walking behind me, he says, never drop there, never drop there, and he just keeps walking. So, so he he was just a he just was a smart guy, you know. I mean, he is he just knew the game so well and he knew the shots to hit and he never overswung the golf club. I never saw him overswing. He was always under control, he cared so much about the flight of the ball, you know, the hitting the pure flight of the golf ball, because that's where he had control of it. That's what was so impressive.

SPEAKER_02 41:25

You know, you mentioned a lot of about his demeanor and his the mastery of his swing. Did did Mo ever talk to you about mental gain, whether he felt under pressure during tournaments? I suppose. With that kind of swing and the repeatable ball flight that it produced. You really never in a position to feel pressure. If that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

I I think you know, you most pressure, most pressure came from his insecurities. He I think I think he felt immensely comfortable with a golf club in his hand playing golf. I think that's where he didn't feel pressure because he had supreme confidence in his abilities. That's what he had practiced for. I think that's what he lived for because that's the only that was his identity was built around hitting a golf ball. So that's where he felt the most comfortable. Where I saw Mo Mo mostly under pressure was when I would take him out to dinner with my buddies. That's where he was uncomfortable. He was uncomfortable at the gas station when I'd take him over and try to fill his car up with gas, and he'd have to get out of the car and people would recognize him. I mean, he felt uncomfortable any place other than when he had a golf club in his hand. So so I think that it was just the way he was wired. Um he definitely understood the longest walk in golf, because he used to say this to me the longest walk in golf was from the practice T to the first T. Um, I think we all experienced that because I think we all get nervous get going to the first hole and teeing it up and in competition. But, you know, I never saw Mo nervous on the golf course. Matter of fact, he just when I played as many rounds as I played with him, he was actually in his element. That was where his element was. We played this one time in Titusville at the course Royal Oak, where the Canadians are on the golf course area. The course is not there anymore. And I had played this golf course 30, 40 times with Mo, but this day we go to play and he hits a shot down the right side of the in the into the right rough. And I'd never seen him really miss fairways out there, and he hits it down the right rough. And I see him get out there and knocks it on the green. Next hole, hits it in the left rough, knocks it on the green. So about four holes into it, I turned to him and I said, Why are you missing fairways? He goes, I found all those shortcuts. I guess he had gone out the golf course and he had tracked where the shortest shot into the green was, and he was hitting it into these little spots in the rough where he could hit short shots into all the green. So I don't know. It was just magical sometimes to see what the heck was going on in this guy's head, you know? So Incredible.

SPEAKER_02 44:01

Grossly misunderstood person. Yeah. Incredible.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

I'll tell you uh on a personal note, as we wrap this up, Todd, um, you know, the uh the one of the most influential things that I had ever seen or heard in my life was Moe's uh fireside chats with Jack Kirkendall. And that really is the basis of of why we started this podcast was because of those chats. Uh anybody who uh wants the whole picture, they're on YouTube. Yeah. And I would encourage anybody to go and just type in fireside chats with Mo Norman. Yeah. He says it all.

Mindset, Pressure, And Course Craft

SPEAKER_01 44:46

Yeah. Well, that was the Mo. That was the Mo that you got to know if you were, you know, behind closed doors. You got to know that side of Mo. And you know, it was hard. Getting close to Mo wasn't easy, but once you're kind of in his inner circle, he would share that stuff with you. And that that was a big art, you know. I'll tell you a quick story that one day I went down to see Mo and practice with him because I used to drive over to Titusville and just spend the afternoons with him. And I get there and he won't talk to me. And I said, What's going on, Mo? You know, I I might have been late. He hated he Mo would wear two watches. And so we one day we see him and we said, Mo, why are you wearing two watches? And he goes, Well, in case one breaks, and we said, Well, Mo, if one breaks and keeps going and the other one keeps going, how would you know which one is broken? I said, Did you know that airplanes have altimeters and there's three? And there's three in case one breaks, they have two to look at. Well, the next day I see Mo, he's got three watches on. So but when I see Mo, he he had he had this affinity for time. And so if I was like 12 seconds late, he'd be mad at me for the day. Like he wouldn't talk to me for the first hour or so. So I guess I was late one day and I go over to see him and he won't talk to me. And finally he says something to me. He says, Um, you go see Paul Berthley, we'll talk turkey. Do you guys do you guys know who Paul Berthley is? Yep. So I'm like, okay, I gotta go see Paul. So, because Mo won't talk to me. So I go, I go at the time Paul Berthley was still alive. He was 83 years old and he lived in Pinehurst. So I got in my car that next week and I drove up. I set up an appointment to meet Paul Berthley in Pinehurst. And I spent the entire day with Paul Berthley at his house learning all the stuff that him and Mo had talked about. And it was great, right? Like, and I and we'll do it, we'll tell, I'll tell you the whole Paul Berthley story. It'll take me time. I'll in the next podcast, I'll tell you about Paul Berthley. But anyway, so I spend this day with Paul, and then I come back to see Mo the next, you know, in the next week. And I said, Mo, I went and saw Paul and I talked to Mo and him about everything. He goes, Okay then. And that's it. He didn't say one more word to me about it at all. All I wanted me was to meet Paul and know where his brain was. And I learned a lot about Mo's head from what Paul and I had talked about while I was there. But yeah, that was a I'll tell you the Paul Berthley story at some point. It was great. It's a great story.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

This has been a great conversation, boys. Uh Todd, how can people find you?

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Yeah, um, my website is gravesgolf.com. That's that's a great place to start. And we got a lot of information there. Obviously, I just finished a book called The Intelligent Golf Swing. If you go to the Intelligent Golf Swing.com, you can pick up a copy of the book. I've dedicated it to Mo Norman. He's on the cover of the book. It goes through basically my understanding of Mo's swing. I actually put this stuff into AI and had AI help me develop and translate everything Mo had taught me with it with AI's help into a book called The Intelligent Golf Swing. That's a great place for people to kind of check it out. And then, of course, my podcast, the Feeling of Greatness Podcast. And just so you know, if you guys want to check it out, go to the fillingofgratness.com. I'm working on a documentary about Mo. I've been doing this for quite a few years. We're getting ready to try to get that finished this next year. So we should have a documentary about Mo coming out as well. I'm working with Barry Morrow, who did the movie Rain Man on that. Awesome. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much again for your time. Talking. Hey, I appreciate you guys.

SPEAKER_02 48:08

Thank you so much for having me to the next edition.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Yeah, and I'll see you guys. I'll see you guys out there in uh in Pebble when I get back out there.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

That's right.