EP54: Golf Improvement Theory Part 2: SKILL- Train Skill, Shoot Lower Scores

Episode 54 | The Golf Intervention Podcast

In Part 2 of our Golf Improvement Theory series, we break down the real drivers of performance: the three ball flight skills that control every shot you hit. If your practice doesn’t intentionally train these skills, you’re guessing — not improving.

This episode gives you a simple, science-based framework for building measurable skill and transferring it to the course.

🎯 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why “working on your swing” often fails to lower scores
• The difference between swing mechanics and skill development
• The 3 Ball Flight Skills every golfer must train
• How to practice with intention and measurable feedback
• How skill connects directly to scoring and performance under pressure

The 3 Ball Flight Skills Explained

Every golf shot is governed by three variables. Improve these, and your ball flight improves.

1️⃣ Location of the Swing Arc

2️⃣ Face-to-Path Relationship

3️⃣ Speed (Energy Control)

Why This Matters for Scoring

Most golfers practice mechanics.
 Better players train skills.

When you develop:

• Low-point control
• Face-to-path awareness
• Speed mastery

You shrink dispersion patterns, improve consistency, and make smarter strategic decisions.

Skill is what transfers under pressure.

Golf Improvement Theory Framework (Recap)

In this series, we’ve broken improvement into:

1. Strategy (Part 1)
2. Skill (This episode)
3. (Coming next…Swing)

Improvement isn’t random. It’s structured.

If you want lower scores, you must build skill intentionally — not just chase feels.

🎙️ Why You Should Listen

If you’re:

• A competitive player who wants measurable improvement
• A coach looking for a clearer development model
• A golfer tired of inconsistent results
• Someone who practices but doesn’t see it transfer

This episode gives you a framework to train smarter — not just harder.

🔎 Keywords Covered in This Episode

Golf skill development
 Ball flight laws
 Face to path relationship
 Low point control in golf
 Distance control practice
 Golf improvement theory
 How to practice golf effectively
 Golf dispersion patterns
 Train speed control in golf

📬 Support the Show & Get Bonus Material

Subscribe for deeper breakdowns and bonus training insights:
 👉 https://thegolfintervention.substack.com/

If this episode helped clarify your improvement path, share it with a playing partner or fellow coach.

Transcript

Eric 0:03

And welcome back to the Golf Intervention Podcast. It's a great day. I just got home from picking my son up from college in Charlottesville, Virginia. So from spring break, that was fun. And then I immediately sat down and turned my laptop on and it was dead. And now we're recording an episode 20 minutes later after we let it charge. And on tonight's episode, gonna discuss skill. This episode listener could change your life. How you doing Rob

Rob 0:33

We're doing great. How about you?

Eric 0:35

I'm just a little on the edge tonight, so we don't know what direction this show might go, but, you

Rob 0:40

The future is always uncertain, so

Eric 0:43

Future's always uncertain. I'm just excited. We've been starting to get a little busier, with the weather picking up and, you know, had a little unexpected trip I had to make today. So I'm like,

Rob 0:54

I.

Eric 0:54

you ready to go? Mushy brained and ready to go. But today. On part two of our series on golf improvement theory, which part one really fun and I got a lot of interesting comments from people on part one part two we're gonna discuss skill. And I think this may be this little word, this, what is it? Five letters skill, maybe literally most misunderstood not understood slash didn't,, didn't even know it existed. of golf development.

Rob 1:32

Yep.

Eric 1:33

And once you, as the golfer understand skill and separate it from swing, your life will change. I almost guarantee you that. Is that too? That's too heavy. Is it too heavy? Rob,

Rob 1:48

I, I don't think you could possibly be heavy enough, Eric, so I think you, I think you covered it.

Eric 1:51

hyper? Am I hyperbolizing?

Rob 1:54

No.

Eric 1:54

Late, late on a Wednesday? I don't think

Rob 1:57

No.

Eric 1:58

I did some lessons today, which were very much swing lessons,, but a lot of lessons are not swing lessons. Today was swing. There was some stuff that needed to happen

Rob 2:06

Yeah.

Eric 2:07

but a lot of times we're working on skill. So

Rob 2:12

I would say that,

Eric 2:13

that in the, in the golf intervention 1.0, this has been the part that's helped people a lot, like shot dispersion stuff and strategy, huge understanding who the golfer is, level 1, 2, 3, and four, what that means to their, you know, development and scoring and their habits and their strategies and what they need to do to develop huge. an understanding of how to separate swing and skill may be the hugest of

Rob 2:42

yeah.

Eric 2:43

So that is what we're gonna take on tonight, the hugest of all skill. So we have, I think, said this at least a hundred times, but you can never say it enough. And I know we get new listeners every

Rob 2:56

Yeah.

Eric 2:57

kind of fun to watch the, the stats roll through and we like to take this on again because it is so impactful. So when we discuss skill, when I say skill, rob

Rob 3:08

Yep.

Eric 3:09

no matter what it is, whether you're playing basketball, whether you're playing the guitar, whether you're learning who knows what

Rob 3:17

Yeah.

Eric 3:19

So skill is a thing and in golf. How do we, how do we define it? And also, I

Rob 3:24

Yeah.

Eric 3:25

for you as an instructor, like give me a, gimme a sense of the journey as Rob fails, and learning about these things,

Rob 3:35

Right.

Eric 3:35

skill swing. Give us, give us a little sense of what it is and how, and kind of your journey towards understanding.

Rob 3:40

Yeah. So I think whether we. Whether we like it or not. I think every golfer who comes to see us is looking for skill improvement. And whether they know it or not, or whether the coach knows it or not, we're always looking for skill improvement., As a young teacher, I, very much was all about swing. Every single lesson I was looking at what the ball was doing, and then I was making a one-to-one correlation in, okay, if I changed this swing thing, it should change what the ball's doing. Now, that's not entirely incorrect, right? Because there's some minutia to this. That's, that's very important. We have the bias of skills. So if you thought about all three skills, and we're gonna talk about that here in a little bit, but if we said over the course of a year, how are the skills biased, then that would be more of a swing. Type of thing. Right? So I mean, if all you do is, is teach swing, then I got good news for you. You are changing the bias of skill already without knowing it. Right? And so a lot of golfers and coaches, that's why coaches are successful, students are successful and many times have no earthly idea about what we're gonna talk about tonight when it comes to skill, because you are in, you are changing the skills anyway when you influence swing. So I wanna get that outta the way. But it is, it is changing the bias of skills. It is not guaranteeing a specific delivered skill. All right. So a specific A, a singular delivered skill. It is very, very different. All right. And that's really the distinction that we, that we want to make here, is that tonight what we're talking about is how can you make the golf ball do something different on this next swing versus when you're maybe doing swing stuff, what are you maybe, and I say maybe because it is not a, it's not an exact science, alright? It's a hypothesis. We're always working with incomplete information. Right. But when you change swing, you are maybe biasing the skills in the desired way more over like a longer term period of time. Right. So backing up into the definitions of like what are the skills, and we say there are three skills. The first is arc location, the second is face to path, and the third is club at speed. Right? So we used to say Impact Spot, I think like TGI 1.0. I think we said Impact Spot was the first skill. And we had a discussion on this and we actually landed on Arc location because there's a lot of different ways that you can create the same impact spot on the face, right? The bottom of the swing could be in totally different places and create the same impact spot, right? So we decided to kind of cut through the middleman, if you will, and just go straight to arc, location as a skill, right? Arc location is as it as it says, if you could think about the entire swing and the shape of it. There's actually been some really cool research by,, Dr. Jhu Kwan that shows the bottom of the swing arc is darn near planer. Like, so the club head trajectory itself at the bottom of the swing is really close to being on a plane. Quote unquote, if you will. Right? And that plane occurs on an arc, right? A on a, on a tilted angle and where the bottom of that swing arc, right? When it's kind of, we'll say like from about like waist high down, swing to waist high follow through, right? You can just kind of picture the bottom half of your swing circle, right? Where is that swing circle located in space from a height perspective

Eric 7:50

Mm-hmm.

Rob 7:51

as a proximity from you perspective, further away from you, closer to you, right? Those are the big ones. Now, there is also the proximity from the target. We say like behind the ball or ahead of the golf ball, like closer to the target stuff. And that's included in the skill. I go back and forth when I'm working with golfers on whether we need to spend a ton of time on that. Because a lot of time that is more of a swing intervention like. To change where the bottom of the arc is from a, from a behind the ball ahead of the ball perspective that is a little bit more invasive. It, it tends to create a little bit more swing changes, if you will. But I, I still categorize it under skill. I want them to think of it still as a skill. We still train that,, in many of the same ways that we're gonna talk about tonight. Kind of using the variable and differential differential training. So think of it like up, down, closer to you, further from you, closer to the target. Further from the target. Uh, where is the bottom of the arc in space that is gonna have the most influence on the impact spot on the face where the ball is, is touching the club. Right. Again, I go back and forth on the, on the Tor and away from the target element because then you're talking about changes in loft at Impact, potentially a little bit, attack angle at impact, like some of that stuff. But pretty much when you change the height and when you change the proximity of it relative to you closer and further from you, you're really just influencing the, the strike location on the face is really what you're doing with that arc location. So that's the skill one. We call that skill one for a reason. We're gonna get maybe into that. Skill two is gonna be face to path. So just picturing the shaft of the club itself and just spinning the shaft about itself, not changing where the club head is in space, not changing the angle of the shaft, so to speak. It's just spinning and rotating the shaft about itself to change the face orientation relative to the shaft. So we say closed face to path, open face to path. A lot of times I, I'm getting away from saying open and close. I'm just saying, Hey, face left, face right, relative to the shaft. Right? Because it's a little bit more actionable. It's a little bit more, um, meaningful, relative to, what the golfer's experiencing. And then finally, club head speed. Not handle speed, not shaft speed, club head speed at impact, which is a whole rabbit hole. That's if there were a skill, in my opinion, if we're talking about these, we, we said that the arc location, kind of ahead of the ball behind the ball has quite a few swing implications. If there were ever a skill that was mostly tied to the swing itself, it would be clubhead speed. Clubhead speed and swing are very, very much inter interconnected. They're linked., And so more often than not, when you're looking at training clubhead speed, you're going to visually see differences in the size of the swing, right? And, and whereas with the others, you might, you're probably not. You're hopefully, if you're doing this well, if you're doing skill training, well, you're not seeing a huge or really any perceptible difference in the swing when you're working through this. Whereas in club head speed, you're gonna see a, a big difference in the size of the swing as you're kind of going through it. So those are the three skills., And again, like, we're gonna get a lot more into it, but I'll let you kind of take it from here, Eric. That's,, that's kind of the, main, points of emphasis tonight.

Eric 11:27

Yeah. And I think trying to reiterate to the golfer that your swing is not what really controls the ball, right? It's your ability to produce a skill through the lens. I always say skill is produced through the lens of your

Rob 11:47

Yeah.

Eric 11:48

right? And this is why John ROMs swing. Can look very different than Rory McElroy's swing, and they can produce

Rob 11:57

Same shot. Yeah.

Eric 11:59

And so their ability to control the ball, the ability to hit the ball further, the ability to curve it right to left, left to right, high to low. The, the ability to make good contact right repeatedly with swings that look very

Rob 12:13

Yes.

Eric 12:14

Okay? So if I'm someone that has a swing that is idiosyncratic, may be able to produce the skills I need. I may not be able to produce the skills I need. So for instance, today when I had a swing lesson, I said he was, I don't wanna say on the verge of quitting golf, but kind of,, not someone I, I regularly work with, but just like wasn't hitting it very well or very far. It was like, I've lost a lot of speed, I've lost a lot of

Rob 12:44

Hmm.

Eric 12:44

I don't know what's going on. And so his swing had. Yeah, it had stuff that was going, it was very inefficient in the way that he was moving and swinging the club. so we worked on the swing and actually I said, don't worry about the skills right now.

Rob 12:59

Yes.

Eric 13:00

where the ball

Rob 13:01

Uhhuh

Eric 13:02

'cause we are not focused on

Rob 13:04

on the scale. Yep.

Eric 13:05

I'm gonna look at track man and we're gonna try to make the club head go faster, period. We're not trying to hit it. Well, we're not trying to locate the arc. I was just saying we're not trying to hit it good. You know, this is like coach speak, right? We're, we're not trying to locate the arc. We're not trying to really control the face path relationship. We're not trying to hit a beautiful shot. We're trying to make the club head go faster when it hits the ball. Okay? Then if we can do that in a way that we think for you and feels right and feels comfortable, and we can build from there, then we'll learn how to build

Rob 13:39

Yeah.

Eric 13:40

Right? And he was like for it, right? And so that's what we worked on. Some days people come in and their swing is, you know, they can't control the ball. It has nothing to do with their swing. need a little skill training, right? The, we need to control the face a little differently. Or the arc location isn't quite right or usually that. It's usually

Rob 13:59

Right. Yeah.

Eric 14:00

I would say. Okay. So that communication to yourself or with your coach is huge because here's the story, blame shots on swings.

Rob 14:16

yeah.

Eric 14:17

But here's the problem with that. I can make what feels like the output from my body through the club to the ball what feels exactly the same to me, and produce two different

Rob 14:29

Mm-hmm.

Eric 14:30

Why

Rob 14:31

Skill.

Eric 14:32

right? And this is something that really, really, really, really, really smart teachers have been offered a long

Rob 14:39

Yeah. It's nothing new for sure.

Eric 14:41

it's nothing new and but, but it's like. It's track band newish in a way, whether, you

Rob 14:46

Yeah.

Eric 14:47

I remember, I remember somebody that would harp on this video, I can't remember, it was Jordan speech or something. They kept showing this slow motion video of Jordan hitting it off the heel of his club. And it was just like, why did he do that? Why did he do that? Like, it was, he was just baiting people into having this conversation. Like, oh, it was all this stuff. No, he missed, it wasn't, his swing broke down. This is what like, you watch golf on tv. What happened there, Johnny? Well, you know, he, shut down the lower body and flipped it. Like, you know, it's all this crazy swing

Rob 15:19

Yes.

Eric 15:20

just like, oh my gosh, it's nauseating. So the point is even the greatest golfers in the world don't produce the skills every single time.'cause golf is hard. Okay. It's okay to

Rob 15:30

Mm-hmm.

Eric 15:31

but if you can take what Robbie was saying, you can go back and listen to it again. Is we can sort out. we control the club and its interaction with the ball through how we move, which is swing, right? And then we're trying to correlate those together in a

Rob 15:49

Yeah.

Eric 15:49

and that produces our golf shots. And so this is not every swing works, and you can build the skills you want. Absolutely not.'cause some swings cannot produce the skills, right? Like that guy had today. It wasn't gonna happen, wasn't happening. He needed to change things and he knew it, right? So that's why he was

Rob 16:06

Yep.

Eric 16:07

on the verge of like, quote unquote giving it up. So I think that, sorting those out in our mind as golfers, for me as a coach or a teacher, for me as a player, for you as a player, for everyone listening as a player, you have to remember that sometimes our swing is okay and we just need to work on the skill. And sometimes our swing isn't okay and we need to work on our swing, right? It just is what it is. So, today we're gonna talk about skill. Next time we're gonna talk about. Swing, see how fun this

Rob 16:38

Yep.

Eric 16:39

Golf improvement theory strategy to skill to swing, and we said on the last episode, it's probably for most people, the order, of least invasive and most productive.

Rob 16:52

Yeah. Yep, a hundred percent. So,, before we really get into levels 1, 2, 3, and four, there are a few more things that we need to kind of iron out when it comes to skill. the big key here in what to, to really understand is that these skills are always predictions, right? So there's a, what we call about, like a very conscious prediction that you're making. Which is the strategy stuff like, Hey, where am I gonna aim this shot? How far am I gonna try to get this thing to go? What club am I gonna pick? That kind of stuff. But there's also very much the subconscious prediction element of it, right? Whether we're aware of it or not, our brain is making a prediction that says, if I swing the golf club, with the bottom of it, in this location in space, things ought to work out okay for me. I don't care who you are and what level of golfer you are, there's always gonna be a little bit of a separation between where you perceive or where you predict the bottom of the swing is gonna be in space versus where it actually ends up being. And so skill and skill training is really the answer to over a long period of time, how can we train in a way that closes the gap, closes that perception gap between where you believe the bottom of the swing is in space, or is likely to be in space versus. Where it actually ends up being. Right. And this goes for, like I just said, arc location. This goes with face to path, right? The, the opening and closing the face. It's gonna change the start direction and the curve of the shot as well as clubhead speed. All three of these skills are always, always, always predictions that, again, I don't care who you are, you can, they can always be trained independently of swing and you can always improve at them, right? So it is the dominant, immediate feedback that our golfers experience when they're training, when they're on the range, when they're playing golf. The overwhelming, again, dominant, immediate feedback that every golfer receives at impact or as soon as they see the golf ball fly, is skill. And, and a lot of the training that we're gonna. I maybe clue you in on is, was that truly a skill error or was the general swing too different on that particular shot to allow you to be skillful? Right. And I think understanding that is like, it doesn't matter. Like whatever the error is, it was a skill error at the end of it. It was, it's always gonna be attributed to skill. Now, did you make the swing you wanted to make and it just, again, the prediction was just off again, this more stuff we're gonna talk about. All right, so before we get much more into the level 1, 2, 3, and four discussions, there's just a couple key pieces that we need to hash out when it comes to skill because again, this is stuff that being on the lesson T every single day and working through this, I see a lot of pitfalls with this. So understand, again, swing versus skill. And they, they are different. They are different. The overwhelming, dominant, immediate feedback that golfers experience at impact and when they watch the golf ball fly, when they practice and play is skill. And through swing training, you can get better at saying, Hey, was that swing in the ballpark? And. Like the skill was just off, or was that swing just not in the ballpark? Like that's, that's what we're gonna get into in our next episode, and that's what we aspire to get to, is to be able to improve the quality of that feedback. But at the end of the day, if the ball doesn't do what you want it to do, it was a skill issue. All right. All of these skills, so when we talk about arc location, which changes where the ball's being struck on the face, face to path, right? The opening and closing of the face relative to the shaft, which is gonna change the start direction in the curve, as well as the club bed speed. All of these skills in every shot, all three of them are going to occur on a bell curve. All right, so for the golfer, and we're gonna get into level 1, 2, 3 for a golfer here in a second, but every skill outcome, all three of them on every shot is occurring on a bell curve. And if you're familiar with this, you're gonna have. The very, very bottom. 16% of shots are gonna be big misses. So no matter who you are as a golfer relative to your skill level, 16% of all three of those skills over the course of round of golf is gonna be again, outside of your dispersion, right? Well below what your expectation or your hope was for that shot. 68% is gonna be pretty average, like just a little bit of a miss when it comes to each of those three skills, right? You get your bottom 34, then your top 34% of the middle kind of distribution, and then you get your top 16%, right? Which is the best of the best, right? Dead in the middle of the face, face. The path matched up exactly what you wanted for the shot. You were hitting the clubhead speed, exactly what you wanted for that shot. Only 16% of the time is it gonna be exactly what you want. So. Those are the, the, the two key things that, that I, I try to get across to golfers is that they're predictions. You don't exactly know where the bottom of the golf swing is going to be in space. Every golfer, every golfer, regardless of who you are, there's a separation between where you predict the bottom of the swing is gonna be in space and where the bottom of the swing actually ends up being. Where you predict the club face to path is gonna be when at impact versus what the actual face to path is at impact. What you predict the club at speed is gonna be at impact versus what the club speed actually ends up being at impact and skill training. What we're gonna talk about today is answering the question of how do we close that perception gap? How do we get you more, a better predictor of the things that are very, very subconscious predictions. They're feel predictions, they're not conscious, they're not things that you can say in words in terms of how you're doing it, which is the frustrating part of it. But those are really kind of the, the key points like skill is what the club and the ball are doing at impact and the variances between functional and dysfunctional. And we're gonna talk through level 1, 2, 3, 4 are a lot smaller than you think. Because the margins of error are so, so, so tiny you can't possibly attribute accurately typically, that one particular error to a swing thing.

Eric 23:54

No. No, because it, it's the time interval is so small

Rob 23:59

Yes.

Eric 23:59

in which that's happening, right? And so a lot of what we talk about with skill is things that's happening. How do you say it? It's, it's, it's like not consciously

Rob 24:14

Yes. Right.

Eric 24:15

right? no matter what Johnny Miller said about catching the ball on the face and turning it down you when the ball's on the face, I just turned it down a little bit to draw, you know,

Rob 24:25

Yeah,

Eric 24:26

and so yes, your swing stuff is giving you this vein of access basically. And then,, so much depends on things like,, your routine and stand at the right distance from there. Some distance that's controllable from the ball or making adjustments on the, on the environment, you know,

Rob 24:44

yeah.

Eric 24:44

and lie and all these things. And like, there's no question, the better you get at golf, the better you have to be at that prediction.

Rob 24:52

Yes.

Eric 24:52

Right? That's what we're gonna talk about. So I think that you, you were saying a little bit ago about, sometimes you can make a swing and you go, oh, well it was a skill thing'cause it didn't go right or whatever. When I was working on swing with a young lady today who could, not hit a driver. Actually a pretty good player, but just could never hit driver.

Rob 25:11

Yeah.

Eric 25:11

And so we had to work on swing. There was a big, big swing stuff going on there'cause, anyway, the bottom of her arc on her driver changed by 14 and a half inches.

Rob 25:23

gosh. Yep.

Eric 25:27

It went from hitting the ground at the low point, 11 inches after to three and a half inches before impact. You are not gonna hit a good shot doing that on the first swing. have changed it so dramatically your arc location. that the skill is not gonna be produced on the first swing. This is why it's hard to get good at golf.'cause I can stand there in the lesson and go,

Rob 25:55

Great job.

Eric 25:56

awesome. And they, if they understand, which they do,'cause I tell'em this, we're after and what our parameters are, like the other guy was speed for her. It was working on, well, it was working on a lot of stuff. But we were looking at the, we were looking at the path, we were looking at the

Rob 26:12

Yeah.

Eric 26:12

we're looking at the face angle. Like there was a lot of swing stuff going on, we're putting together. But I said, look, you can't change it by a foot, which is outrageously awesome. And it hit a good shot on the first swing. She's like, yeah, cool. Let's do it again. You know,

Rob 26:24

Yeah.

Eric 26:25

the context is understood, the learning context. So coaches have to explain, well, students have to understand and then that's how you train. So if that person's on their range and they're trying to do this themselves with no technology, no understanding,

Rob 26:40

Yep.

Eric 26:41

whiff. They're gonna go, well,

Rob 26:43

Bad swing.

Eric 26:46

You see our point,

Rob 26:47

Yep.

Eric 26:47

this is why this episode matters.

Rob 26:50

Yes.

Eric 26:50

That right there is a description why this episode matters. Then a few swings later, she's trying to do the same stuff and crushes one right off the middle of the face. What'd you do different? Nothing. Well, then why was it better? Because you just got used to it. The skill happened

Rob 27:07

your the, her brain got feedback,

Eric 27:10

Correct. And it, and it, it improved itself, right? this is what we're saying. That is what skill and swing is

Rob 27:21

right?

Eric 27:21

in the learning context. Okay.

Rob 27:23

All right.

Eric 27:24

now this is where it's gonna get I'm actually really interested to hear what you say here.'cause I don't, I don't know what you're gonna say,

Rob 27:32

We haven't talked about this in a while.

Eric 27:33

we haven't talked about it. We're just like, let's record, let's, let's go baby. So let's go. Let's go Skill. Level 1, 2,

Rob 27:41

Yeah.

Eric 27:42

which hopefully you all know what that

Rob 27:45

Yep.

Eric 27:46

um, as a listener. But basically, we're grouping golfers based on their scoring ability, and making some assumptions based on real life

Rob 27:55

Yep,

Eric 27:56

about how they play golf. And now we're gonna discuss their skills

Rob 28:00

yep, yep. So four level one golfers, four entry level, one golfers. Oftentimes it's a swing centered first lesson in a way. So if you think about like of those three skills, I'm of the belief that there are some correlations to skill when we come to like the general freedom and the rhythm that the club is swinging with. So oftentimes with with entry level one golfers, I put a priority on. Swinging the club freely, getting them to understand how the club rotates and has momentum into the golf ball. It's not their job to hit the ball to muscle, the club to the ball. It's their job to swing the club freely somewhere in space, right? So oftentimes we do this even without a golf ball. It's like, Hey, can you, and I'll be queuing them in, in, in a bunch of different ways and, and then we'll settle on kind of what works well for them. But can you get to a point to where the club is rotating and swinging freely around you in a way that's fairly consistent, that you feel like you could do it, efficiently, right? Create enough club head speed to be able to play without hurting your body and without it changing much from shot to shot, right? So you can say really enough club head speed. To get going is where we start with just some very general swing stuff. Nothing really like too complicated, but really once you get to the end of level one, when you're starting to almost kind of have a swing, even though the rhythm many times is still leaves a lot to be desired, it's the arc location with these level one golfers that we're going to highlight the most in, in many cases exclusively. Like not even go into face the path or club at speed, depending on the individual we have in front of us now, not all level one golfers are created equal. Right. So Eric, I think, and maybe in our last episode you were referencing some like pretty athletic, like fast entry level one golfers that actually do make impact. But the face is wildly out of, out of their dispersion. So in those golfers, obviously we're taking a look at each golfer and looking at, hey, what skill is gonna move the needle for them in the desired direction? Right. So it's, it's not a one size fits all, but in the, for the purpose of the podcast, we've talked about big data. Really it is arc location that gets you kind of through the, the entry into kind of like the mid, level one,, phase of improvement, which is going from like complete beginner golfer all the way to shooting. 88 ish on average, right? Is that what you're saying as well?

Eric 30:44

Agreed. I mean, I think face can be a thing. It is pretty general to say that, beginner golfers tend to have the face wide

Rob 30:53

Yeah.

Eric 30:54

Right. And then it's not functional,

Rob 30:55

Yeah, it's almost, I've seen it where it's so open that they, like, they literally can't hit the face. Like no amount of arc location training would get them to hit the face with a, with a, with a, that one. And I'm talking like crazy open-end impact I've seen like laying back. Right. So

Eric 31:13

Yeah.

Rob 31:13

there are those for sure.

Eric 31:14

Yeah. So I would say face. An arc location, not necessarily some path related, just

Rob 31:19

No, yeah. Not path. Yeah.

Eric 31:21

functional and not even that predictable. It could be closed

Rob 31:25

Oh, with face. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric 31:27

open like a fair amount, but they still can make some

Rob 31:30

Yes.

Eric 31:31

their arc is in the right

Rob 31:32

Yeah,

Eric 31:32

and then that gets them around. Right. So like that's

Rob 31:35

yeah.

Eric 31:35

Yeah, I would say that face has to be somewhat functional

Rob 31:38

Yeah. It's,

Eric 31:39

somewhat predictable,

Rob 31:40

it'd be cool to define that, like what's the. Like plus or minus six degrees ish, somewhere in there. I, I don't know,

Eric 31:48

hard to say

Rob 31:49

Yeah,

Eric 31:49

such a

Rob 31:50

yeah,

Eric 31:50

you

Rob 31:50

yeah,

Eric 31:51

The lady today was, she was pretty

Rob 31:54

yeah.

Eric 31:55

And so her face was so open TrackMan when read it so that usually it's about 13 face to path, somewhere

Rob 32:00

Hmm.

Eric 32:01

Have you ever noticed that somewhere in the, in the low teens,

Rob 32:04

Wow. Yeah.

Eric 32:06

and it wasn't reading Most of

Rob 32:08

Wow. That's crazy.

Eric 32:10

But she, she was, she's athletic, so she actually made it work pretty

Rob 32:13

Yeah,

Eric 32:15

But yeah, no, we, we just doubt, doubt an end. But we started with face, right. So that was the, gotta start there most of the time.

Rob 32:23

yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just in the ballpark, right?

Eric 32:27

Yep. And the

Rob 32:28

For sure., And then, so as you get to kind of entry level two,. And we actually covered a lot of the, the metrics that we're referencing here, like in our last episode when we talked about strategy and kind of what stats kind of drive your improvement based off the level you are. So if you haven't listened to that, go back to the prior episode. But, really once you get to the entry level two, I would say like from entry level two all the way, pretty much through level two, it's gonna be an equal dosage of arc, location and face the path for the most part. That's going to drive the, drive the ball, striking improvement kind of where we need to be. With the caveat there being pretty much like in, once you get to the middle of level two, like if we say level two again is like from 88 all the way down to 76, but like once you get to like in the 82 ish, 83 on average range, like that's where clubhead speed. Becomes more of a thing because we need to, to really start to drive our greens and regulation a bit more. So again, like level two is kind of where it's like all three, like really truly like arc location on the beginning of level two is probably a bit more like heavily, you know, important. Middle of level two, right face to path. And then maybe once you get to the end of level two is kinda like face to path and club at speed, right? If you can kind of visualize the progression through there. Not saying arc location is, is any less important, right? Because I mean, how many level, end of level two golfers are just not quite aware enough to know like, wait a minute, you're hitting it just a little out the heel or a little out the toe on average. And I think that can, that can definitely move the needle for them. But for level two, again from 88 all the way down to 76. It's gonna be all three. Early biased, a little bit more arc, location, middle, probably a little bit more faced path, and then towards the end, a bit more club at speed. Would you agree? Yeah.

Eric 34:28

no, totally agree. Totally agree.

Rob 34:30

Yep,

Eric 34:31

Lemme give you a for instance though. If I am a decent athlete, multi-sport, high school player has lots of speed and has a swing, that just is gonna be what it is going into golf

Rob 34:47

yep,

Eric 34:47

Like, Hey, I am slicing my

Rob 34:50

yep.

Eric 34:51

but also I need a new driver. Okay, let's fit you for a driver. he has a regular flex and he swings in a hundred. This is a true story

Rob 34:58

Yeah,

Eric 34:58

this is kinda like

Rob 34:59

it was very specific for it to be, yeah.

Eric 35:01

Yeah. So swings in 112 miles an hour, which is pretty fast by the way. kid, very strong power lifter and is not gonna change his swing'cause he doesn't really ever work on it. So he just plays by feel. Right. It just had been fun on his high school team. And so face to path numbers are path is like four degrees across, nothing crazy. A little bit

Rob 35:26

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eric 35:28

face is like six or

Rob 35:29

Yeah.

Eric 35:30

degrees open. Because the shaft's too weak and his, you know, he just doesn't time it up very well. So all I did was put him in an XFL with an upright triangle and I put an adjustable weight in the draw position, and his face to path number went basically to pretty

Rob 35:49

Yeah.

Eric 35:50

And he went from not playable with the driver to delivering a face to path in a strike location. That was pretty consistent in driving it straight. So what

Rob 36:02

What would you say?

Eric 36:04

was the improvement of the skill there?

Rob 36:08

It was a strategy of club choice.

Eric 36:11

Oh, come on now. That

Rob 36:14

handed him a different club, sir. That is a strategy.

Eric 36:17

that is at a, that

Rob 36:19

You influence skill. You influence skill for sure

Eric 36:24

with equipment,

Rob 36:25

equipment, which is a strategy intervention. I can also influence skill with where I aim. I can also influence skill with my prediction process of where the ball is in space relative to the live, like the slope, like all that stuff. It all, every, all of this influences skill. Nothing doesn't influence skill, but it's like skill in of itself. Is a method of training that is isolating the, the motor pattern, the, the actual like input from your brain that is giving you that result, that outcome.

Eric 37:00

So I thought that would be a good illustration of

Rob 37:02

Yeah.

Eric 37:03

you know, changing something changed for him. It wasn't his swing, wasn't even like some type of skill training. wasn't, it was just a different

Rob 37:12

Right.

Eric 37:13

right?

Rob 37:13

was not skill training. It was a strategy.

Eric 37:16

these are

Rob 37:16

Yeah.

Eric 37:17

that can, these are the things that can influence skill,

Rob 37:22

Yeah,

Eric 37:22

right?

Rob 37:22

for sure.

Eric 37:23

and to your point, just aiming a little right or left sometimes really influences skill. people don't realize that huge, it can have a huge effect,

Rob 37:31

Yep.

Eric 37:32

So these are some of the things that as we get into level two golfers really

Rob 37:37

Yeah.

Eric 37:38

I think as you move, and we've talked about this on previous episodes, the better you are at golf, the more you've paid attention to your equipment,

Rob 37:47

Yeah.

Eric 37:48

No question about it. The more you've paid attention to start line strategy, the more you've paid attention to, you know, working club, face delivery stuff that allows you to move the

Rob 37:59

Mm-hmm.

Eric 37:59

ways. Like, and so as you're progressing through and trying to march down towards scratch golfer, these are the things that really start to play

Rob 38:08

For sure.

Eric 38:09

And so, yeah, I think it's, I think it's just trying to understand all the things that can play into

Rob 38:17

Yeah,

Eric 38:18

right? And if you have. Point being, if you have a club like that's too light or has the wrong loft, or has the wrong lie angle or setting of the way center, a

Rob 38:28

a hundred percent.

Eric 38:29

like loft, you, you literally may never produce the skill.

Rob 38:33

Yeah.

Eric 38:33

you, you, I mean, it might never happen or be a real struggle to happen. you just have to pay attention to these things over time. You know, even Height, T Height's, a thing that matters, like these are the things that all play into this,

Rob 38:46

Yeah,

Eric 38:47

So, the better you get at golf, the more these little details matter.

Rob 38:51

for sure. Yeah.

Eric 38:52

Yeah, no question.

Rob 38:53

And then finally get into level three and, and pretty much once you get to level three, you're not getting here if you aren't really darn proficient at arc, location and face to path, they are still important to train. And, and what we're gonna talk about is there is this many golfers, and you can't see it on the, on the podcast, but on the video, 0.0 golfers, who aren't training all three. But it's like, what are we shining a spotlight on? What are we emphasizing the most as a proportion of all three and kind of the time allocation for level three and level four golfers, it is disproportionately gonna be speed. The speed predictability and the management of speed, especially with wedges. We talk about anywhere from, you know, green side, predicting different lies and how this little five yard pitch might come out and how much clubhead speed I need based off of the lie the ball's sitting in all the way to 130, 40 yards playing around with different winds. Like, Hey, where's the, slope here? Am I, am I landing this on a, on an up slope where the green's way down below me? Or am I landing this thing on a down slope where the green's way above me, like all of this stuff plays into its speed. It's the management of clubhead speed and it's the creation of clubhead speed, especially with driver. Right? And then when we talk about when birdies become more thin, we're trying to track how many birdie putts do you have inside of 20 feet and a round of golf? You can't drive those at the rate that you need. If you're not hitting the driver far enough, just can't do it. You have to be able to get the ball inside of 40 ish yards on par fives and two basically, you need to have inside of six iron quite a bit on your par threes and your par fours. And that's driving the ball far. That's, that's creating a lot of speed. And then also being able to predict and manage speed.

Eric 40:51

Mm-hmm.

Rob 40:52

again, I see plenty of level three golfers on a day in and day out basis where we, we do touch on arc location, we do touch on face to path, but man, when we do skill training, it's, it's gotta be at least, you know, 80% club head speed is, is what I typically see.

Eric 41:10

Yeah. And so the point of that speed isn't just about increasing speed it's about controlling. So if I have to throttle back, especially in the short game, that's, that's another speed or energy,

Rob 41:24

Yeah,

Eric 41:25

right? Like, can I regulate that the right

Rob 41:27

for sure.

Eric 41:28

And yes, there's no question that the better you are at golf, the more you're working

Rob 41:34

Yeah.

Eric 41:34

Those things. There's no question about it. Even just when you're hitting a seven iron from the fairway and you want it to go X distance, I don't want it to go x plus 10 and I don't want it to go X minus 10.

Rob 41:48

Yep.

Eric 41:48

it to go roughly X, right? And hopefully hit it pin high. But I want it to go X. So I don't want one swing to be producing 85 club head speed on a seven iron and the next one producing 81 if I'm trying to predict the same

Rob 42:03

Right.

Eric 42:03

so repeatability of rhythm, like where you said like, I don't know how you phrased it. It was kind of funny. You said rhythm is kind of a mess still or something. You're talking about

Rob 42:13

Leaves. Leaves must to be desired.

Eric 42:15

wait, yeah, it was kinda like leaves. It leaves much to be desired. It's sounded like something outta Harry Potter or something. But yeah, But recreating rhythm so that you predict energy and the strike

Rob 42:26

Yeah.

Eric 42:27

huge, right?

Rob 42:27

Huge.

Eric 42:28

to hit it the same distance.

Rob 42:29

A hundred percent.

Eric 42:31

if you've ever done a TrackMan combine, they can give you some insight'cause you're trying to replicate, they give you a yardage and you're trying to hit the yardage,

Rob 42:38

Yeah. Yeah.

Eric 42:38

And you're trying to hit a pin high, it's better to hit a pin high. And, you know, the reports on those are pretty wild. You know, it shows you the speed of every shot that you hit, club speed, ball speed, all the stuff you wanna

Rob 42:48

Yeah.

Eric 42:49

And I often use that as a way to say, can I produce and reproduce? And reproduce? and, and sometimes we talk a lot about just producing one time, but I, I think producing over and over at times is really important'cause we're controlling that

Rob 43:06

Hmm.

Eric 43:06

right?

Rob 43:06

cool. Yeah,

Eric 43:07

yeah, that's a big deal for me and my good players that I work with them on for

Rob 43:11

it's cool. I'll need to look in, I'll need to look more into that for sure. All right. So you ready to get into the training stuff?

Eric 43:20

Get into the training stuff.

Rob 43:22

all right. So for skill, there are two main ways you can train it, that we're aware of. The first is gonna be differential training, and then the second is gonna be variable training. So differential training is going to be intentional errors, right? Again, you're creating intentional errors on both ends of the margin of error of the spectrum, right? So for this, typically you're gonna start in the same place each time. So you're gonna set up the exactly how you would if you're hitting a, a stock shot on the golf course, right? But you're gonna isolate a skill or an aspect of a skill, right? So if we talk about arc location, maybe we just do the arc height for our golfer, right? So starting from the same place, can you make a swing where the bottom of the swing arc is too high on the first one right? Or higher than functional, right? Which for level one golfers, they could even miss the ball. I don't really like just go right over top of it

Eric 44:24

Yeah. So you're trying to blade it or top

Rob 44:26

or, yeah, exactly. You swing right over top of it, right? On the very next shot, you're gonna attempt to have the bottom of the swing too low. Right. So if you're on mats, you're gonna feel some thump. If you're on grass, you might get a chunk. And what I've had some golfers do is on that one, tee the ball up, right? Start with the club head at the height of the ball, and then have the bottom of the swing go lower than the ball, right? So basically you're pretending that the ball's sitting way up above your feet, or the ball sitting up in high grass, you're just gonna get the bottom of the swing lower than too low, right? And then on the third, and this is key, you're gonna attempt to find somewhere between the two. Not perfect, not a good shot, not quote unquote, correct. Just somewhere between the two. Right? Because as we move forward with this, what we're gonna do is we're gonna shrink what we call the bandwidth shrink the the distance of the first two from center. Right. So level one golfers, really, I don't much, I don't shrink that bandwidth really hardly at all. I was like, Hey, can the first one be just somewhere too high? Second one, be somewhere too low, third one, somewhere between, right? And then you can also do this for the arc proximity relative to you. Can you get the first one too far away from you such that, hey, you could even miss the golf ball on the other side of it, right? To where the club head passes,, on the other side of the golf ball from where you're standing, right? If, if it hits the he, if it hits the ball at the ball's, gonna hit the heel on the second one, can you get the bottom of the swing too close to you such that it hits the toe if the club hits the ball. And then the third one, again, just like somewhere in between, right? For a level two golfer, right? If we start to, to get a little bit more in depth with this, I would want both of those shots to make impact with the surface area of the face, basically, right? So like, hey, I want the, I want the heel to still be on the face, but can be basically just inside heel. It could still be a shank, really. The second one I want to be on the mirror, if you can think about like the mirror of the, of the toe, right? And then somewhere between those two, right? And then once you get to level three, you're like, okay, well the heel is gonna still be a functional shot. The tow ball is still gonna be a functional shot. And then the third, because now the, the bandwidth is so much shorter, just somewhere between the two is likely gonna feel great right off the sweet spot. And I don't care if it's exactly on the sweet spot, but it needs to be imperceptible to them. Like when I ask like, Hey, like. Was that sweet spot, like I want them to say yeah, that felt great. Right? So that's, that's kind of like what that differential training is gonna look like for arc. This, that's just specific to arc location. We do it for clubface, we do it for club head speed for levels 1, 2, 3. And then for golfers are gonna be the same. I want it to feel pretty good, but on the toe pretty good, but on the heel. And then that third between the, between the two. Yep. And then there's variable training as well. Right? So variable training is, can you find the, quote unquote InBetween the one that you prefer, but changing the starting conditions, changing the, changing the setup, essentially like changing where the ball is relative to where you're starting. And so you can think of variable training as essentially playing golf.'cause in, when you're on the golf course, you're trying to deliver the same skill. You're trying to deliver the, the, the ball in the center of the club face. But. You're on a down slope. You're standing on an up slope, right? Ball's below your feet. Ball's above your feet, ball's sitting up in the grass, ball's sitting down in the grass. So the starting conditions change, right? So there's variability, what's why we call it variable training. There's variability in the environment, but you're trying to create the same delivered skill. And this is where like you can throw people, in all sorts of different lies and slopes. And on a mat like I, during the winter especially, I teach off of a mat. I'll just have them set up and then I'll grab the ball and I'll just move it a little bit. I'll move it

Eric 48:41

Hmm.

Rob 48:42

closer to the target, further from the target, closer to where I'm standing away from them, closer to them, put the ball up on a t. And then, and then like again, you can do the same variable training for a club face. Like you would grip it a little bit too open and try to deliver it square, grip it a little too close, try to deliver it square, right? So again, you're trying to create the desired shot. Just in all sorts of different starting places. And then to, to change the challenge point, what you're doing there is you're changing the size of the dispersion. So it's like for level one golfers, they have like a 10 finger dispersion. Like, Hey, how many of these shots can you get inside a tent? It's like five fingers on either side of the target, but I'm gonna change the starting position every single time on you. Right? Whereas level two golfers now you have a tighter window to get it into maybe three, four fingers on either side. And then for level three golfers, you only get three fingers on either side of the target, to be able to get the ball into. But again, you're, you're changing something in terms of how they're having to do it, each time, which, which some golfers much prefer that to the differential training, because they like to have the feeling of the good shots.

Eric 49:55

Mm-hmm.

Rob 49:56

As a coach. However, I actually prefer the differential training more often than not, because an added benefit of the differential training is that you get to experience how they're different, how the toe feels different than the heel, how it sounds different from the heel. It gives you the differential training, gives you the awareness when you're playing golf. So like, hey, you're on the golf course and you're playing and, you mess up on one of the skills. If you've done differential training, you are way more likely to know actually what happened there. Whereas, like, if you aren't doing differential training, if you're not giving yourself those intentional errors and practice on purpose, then there're gonna be some percentage of shots on the golf course where. A skill is outside of your dispersion and you don't know why. And that's, as a coach, that's really what we're trying to get to, is we got to get you to know without a shadow of a doubt, which skill was it that was out of place on that shot. Right. And that's a huge benefit of differential training. The variable kind of, it transfers nicely to the golf course, potentially, maybe a little bit. But for long-term learning, I almost prefer the differential because it does give you that error feedback that gi, that allows you to,, detect a pattern, when it arises on a golf course.

Eric 51:20

Yeah, I think I told this story on here before, but a couple years ago I remember playing in a Pro-Am at the country club, I don't remember the context of it, but the rough was just outrageous the James

Rob 51:33

Yep.

Eric 51:34

can't remember if we kind of came out of a rainy period or if we were leading up, might have been leading up to the Dominion Tournament. I don't remember. But the rough was crazy. The whole front nine, the club face for me was closed on my driver and I'm, I'm hitting it in the left rough all day. And it was like crazy, healthy, thick, deep Bermuda. And I was just not getting it on the greens. I think I shot 40 on the front and I was like, not in a good, you know,

Rob 52:05

Yeah,

Eric 52:05

upset, but I get to the 10th tee and I'm like, okay, I've hit it in the left rough like six times today. Like, what is going on? You

Rob 52:12

yeah.

Eric 52:13

of think about it and like, the irons are good, the driver's not quite good, but, so I'm just going, okay, what do you do to change the club face, Eric? Like, think about this for a second. Right?

Rob 52:23

Yep.

Eric 52:23

And so I saw enough of a pattern, was aware enough in my practice, where I work on things like hitting the ball more left or hitting the ball more, right?'cause I'm, I'm training the club

Rob 52:35

Yep.

Eric 52:36

And so I weakened my left hand grip, which felt terrible. And then I rip it right off the temp tee, straight down the middle and I'm like, oh my gosh. I got it right. And I shot, I think one or two under on the back nine'cause I hit in the fairway,

Rob 52:48

Yeah.

Eric 52:48

And so ended up salvaging the round. But the point is I was hitting it, you know, 20 yards more left than

Rob 52:55

Mm-hmm.

Eric 52:57

on the whole front. Basically on the whole front nine, the driver. And so I had to come up with a way to adjust it on the fly. And to your point, if you never train that,

Rob 53:06

Yeah.

Eric 53:07

how are you gonna have access to it? All you're thinking is, especially if you don't understand skill,'cause then you're gonna think your swing is

Rob 53:13

Mm-hmm.

Eric 53:14

right? I

Rob 53:15

Correct.

Eric 53:15

my swing, right? I gripped it differently in my left hand and then was able to,

Rob 53:21

Yeah,

Eric 53:21

you know, put the ball in the fairway. So point being, this type of training is important and no one no one does this. Like

Rob 53:30

not enough. Yeah, for sure.

Eric 53:32

people do this, right? Not enough people do

Rob 53:35

And to just comment on, on the, on, on that right there. So the key being is that you intentionally have trained getting the golf ball to do different stuff, right? It wasn't like you were just grasping at straws and saying, oh, let me just, I bet my grip is wrong, so let me just like look at Instagram and try to find this new grip that that is gonna solve all my ailments. Like, no, like you have worked on this before and you called upon. A tool in your toolbox to be able to change that one particular skill that was a little bit off?, I would actually, I would tend to think that a grip would be more of a swing intervention technically. So you wouldn't have to, in terms of what we're talking about tonight, that would be a way you could do it. It wouldn't be purely a skill thing because you're not keeping everything else. You're not keeping the swing stuff, quote unquote the same. You are changing grip, which would be like more technically like a swing thing, but the, beauty of that, the beauty of that is it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't, like you've worked on changing the face, so you were able to change the face, like,

Eric 54:52

that's not it. To me, in my feels, there's no input on the swing that's any different.

Rob 54:56

yeah, yeah.

Eric 54:58

hold it differently, which opens the face to me. If I'm hitting a driver, path is generally in to out two degrees with a face just slightly closed with nothing changed to the

Rob 55:10

Mm-hmm.

Eric 55:10

Just, just being able to deliver the face. It was probably coming in four degrees closed, and then all of a sudden it was one or two

Rob 55:16

Yeah,

Eric 55:17

again. So no input from me. It was not me searching in my

Rob 55:21

right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Eric 55:23

how do you deliver the face

Rob 55:25

Yep.

Eric 55:25

Right. And to your point, it was a little more input conscious, whatever, but it still changed

Rob 55:31

Yes, correct. Yep.

Eric 55:33

And in a way that, when I practiced face to path stuff, I change my grip to, if I'm gonna hit a draw, I strengthen my

Rob 55:39

Mm-hmm.

Eric 55:39

If I'm gonna hit a fade, I weaken my grip. That is how I manipulate. And

Rob 55:42

That, yeah.

Eric 55:43

the

Rob 55:44

Yeah.

Eric 55:44

Like, that's just how I do it.

Rob 55:46

That's cool. I.

Eric 55:46

that's part of how IS you know, see it and work

Rob 55:50

That's awesome.

Eric 55:50

for.

Rob 55:51

And what you also did was you didn't just do it after one skill error.

Eric 55:56

No.

Rob 55:57

You did it after like three or four, and it was outside your dispersion. It wasn't like if the ball's inside your dispersion, typically what we say is just like, throw yourself a party. Like, like

Eric 56:10

It's not a

Rob 56:11

it's not a big deal. You could hit every shot within your dispersion a little bit left. And guess what? I don't want you to change a thing.

Eric 56:18

There's no

Rob 56:19

There is no fixing.

Eric 56:20

percent

Rob 56:20

in your dispersion. You accept it, you find it and you let it go. It's only if it's outside your dispersion and there's a pattern. And so again, how do you know what your dispersion is? We have, this video on our substack, so feel free to go check that, check that out. But, if you see me or if you see Eric, we can clue you in on what your dispersion, could likely be. But the point is, again, another way of saying that is like. Hey, within that bell curve, it needs to be like your bottom 16% of shots, three or four-ish in a row, pretty close together before you're making an intentional error. And with a lot of the skill training stuff, what we tell people is just do it. It's literally like working out Hey, just do it and then forget about it. Like you don't need to go thinking about how you're doing it. As soon as when you're doing the skill training, as soon as you start coming up with, oh, my left elbow is doing this differently, and my right hip is doing this differently. So that means that I need to always be doing this with my elbow. Stop. We are not. Looking for a swing fix with this. There's not, we're not looking for a new swing thought. This is literally just perception. It's just feel, it's a very, very slight feel tweak. What I can tell you is that for impact location in particular, and we talk about the arc height, you have about a half an inch on either side of the sweet spot to work with,

Eric 57:49

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hm, it's not much.

Rob 57:54

all right? With face to path, okay? You have about, I'd say six degrees to keep it on the golf course, to keep it in play, right? So as soon as you're six degrees off, pretty much with most all full swings, the ball's outta play. Well, how much is six degrees? It's one second on the clock, right on, on a clock face, it's six degrees is one second. So there is no swing thought guarantee. There is no,, when you're doing this, like, oh, if I just do this, then like, I will always,, deliver this skill. Or I will never experience this other skill that I've exp like, no, it is, it's just something like, it's like brushing your teeth. You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth and you forget about it. And in my opinion, every training session needs to have some of that brushing your teeth element to it. Like, I'm just gonna spend 10 minutes with my, my brain learning where this golf club is and then I'm gonna forget about it, right? And it's going, I promise you, if you stick with it, it will pay massive, massive, massive, massive dividends

Eric 59:08

mr. Fails, we're an hour and 10. We're an hour and 10 in. We did receive some questions, which we're not gonna do tonight. We will answer these questions, so if you have questions for us, like I said on the last show, you can, you can ask on the substack if you follow us there, or you can, email us at the golf intervention@gmail.com or you can DM us on Insta if you like to do that. So don't be afraid to ask the questions. Questions are great. That's why we have the show to answer questions you don't know you need. That's why it's called intervention. That's why we started with that, with that name. So that was fun, Rob., Hopefully people gained a great understanding. Swing and skill are not, they're not inseparable, but if you understand the differences, you can, I think really train and understand and keep yourself on a good track. I feel like so many people. Quote unquote monkey around with their swing, that they just never give themselves time to develop skill. And if you, if you stay the course and you try to work on skill with a swing that you feel like is functional or works well, or that somebody has blessed, like, you know, Eric told me my swing's pretty good. Why can't I hit the ball straight? Well, you just gotta practice some skill stuff, right? And you'll get the skill right, and then you'll, you'll learn to, to produce those shots. So I think that has helped me over the years really tremendously. And again, track man has really, really helped. Really, really helped. So that is our episode for today. If you wanna support the show, you can check us out on Substack. I'll put the link in the show notes. We're so glad that you tune in with us. Hopefully everybody likes this episode and we'll catch you next time with a discussion of. Swing. We'll actually go into some swing stuff next time, which will be super fun. Alright, everybody, have a great week of golf and we will catch you next time on the Golf Intervention Podcast.