Think Better, Score Lower: The Decade Golf Approach Explained (Alex Huang Part 1)

You don’t need to hit better shots…

You need to stop hitting shots that cost you.

In this episode, we’re joined by Alex Huang from Decade Golf — a system built on data and probability that’s used by elite players and caddies on the PGA and LPGA Tours.

But this isn’t about swinging it better…

It’s about thinking better.

Alex breaks down how golfers at every level — especially amateurs — are losing shots through poor decisions, bad expectations, and trying to pull off shots they simply don’t need to.

If you’ve ever walked off a hole thinking “how did I just make double from there?” — this episode will change how you see the game.

💡 What You’ll Learn:

•  Why “easy holes” are ruining your score 
•  The truth about birdie rates (even on Tour) 
•  Why your expectations might be costing you shots 
•  How better decisions can lower your handicap fast 
•  The biggest mistake amateurs make without realising it

🎧 Listen now and start turning bad rounds into better golf.

📺 YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@HowLowCanYouGoPodcast

📸 Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/howlowcanyougopodcast/

💌 Contact → howlowcanyougopodcast@gmail.com

🏨 Big shout out to The Leddie Hotel on Scotland’s Golf Coast.

If you’re enjoying the podcast, leaving a review really helps us grow — and keeps us chasing better golf, faster. ⛳

Transcript

Section A

SPEAKER_04 0:00

And I said, listen, like, what do you think the PGA scoring average is for a hole that's 330 yards? Right. Like, what do you think the birdie rate is? He's like, I bet they make birdie like 55% of the time. And I said, the scoring average on the PGA tour for a hole of that length is 3.83. Okay. So they're making birdie just under 20% of the time. And here you are as a two-handicap calling this a birdie hole, right? You're immediately establishing this like baseline expectation for playing the hole. When in fact, it's like at your skill level, if you can just par this hole and never make a bogey and maybe you sprinkle in a birdie one out of 10 times, you are way ahead of the pace that a one to two handicap should be at. And and like again, going back to that idea of we all have this convoluted, distorted idea of what reasonable is. Yeah. And being able to correct that is such a crucial piece to getting ourselves into the right mindset to proper execution and really performing at our highest level.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Have you ever been standing on a tea box thinking this is a birdie hole? Or this is an easy hole. Or this is a hole where I should be scoring. Well, you might be setting yourself up to fail. Today we're talking to Alex Huang from Decade Golf. But what Alex does is take all the complex data behind how the best players in the world actually score. And he turns it into simple, practical decisions that help you shoot lower scores. He works with elite players and caddies and the PGA and LPGA tours. But the key thing here is this is not about swinging it better. This is about thinking better. Because a lot of amateur golfers aren't losing shots because of their swing. They are losing them through core decisions, bad expectations, trying to pull off shots, they simply don't need to. So today, you're going to learn how to manage your game better. Avoid big numbers, rethink those easy holds, and start lowering your scores without changing your technique. This is Hilo Can You Go. Okay, welcome back everyone once again to the Hilo Can You Go Golf Improvement Podcast. We were recently, you will remember, joined by Scott Fawcett, the founder of Decade, and that has been doing so much good in the golf strategy space. Today we are joined by another key member of Team Decade, Alex Huang. Alex, who describes himself as a washed-up poker player, I believe, uh, but distilling nerdy golf stats for non-nerds. Uh, I think Alex, we as amateur golfers would certainly welcome your insights on what we should be tracking, what we should be thinking about in terms of uh course management, in terms of strategy. So welcome to Halu. Can you go, Alex? And it's really good to have you here.

SPEAKER_04 3:47

Yeah, I really appreciate you guys having me on. I caught the episode with Scott. Um I think you know he he obviously did a great job. And uh I'm just hoping that I can hopefully shed some light to you and the listeners on uh ways to get better at golf, key key ideas, key practice habits, and uh share some of my experience to hopefully get you guys to start start playing better.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Wonderful. And I think as you hopefully have picked up from listening back to any previous episodes for a quick recap of our background is Chris and I, we started this about eight months ago, and we are on a journey as uh amateur club golfers to try and reach our targets. So we thought what better way to hold each other accountable and to start a golf podcast, hang ourselves out to dry. So I'm a mid-handicapper. I would love to get to single figures. So from my perspective, Alex really interested in what you can tell me as a I know you guys work with some of the best of the best, but certainly like what you could tell someone like me to try and manage my way around the course a little bit better, to practice a little bit better, to try and knock those kind of five, six shots off my score longer term. And Chris, I don't know, you want to tell Alex a little bit more about your background.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

I'm a single-figure handicapper, and it's the small margins that I'm at now that the little mistakes that are kind of leaving me just above where I want to be for again to that scratch handicapper, and that like I just need to know the best kind of ways to get around the golf course more effectively, essentially, I'd say. Um I agree, Dave, from watching me play some golf.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

I would agree, but I do want to just quickly before we pass over to you, Alex, again, is uh to share Chris is being quite humble and quite modest there. But you guys from Decade will be pleased to hear that Chris hits a very, very big ball off the T and hits it pretty straight. And we think that he has not fully maximized that. He won a long drive competition at one of my dear friend's charity events uh on Friday in Belfast. And so just filling you in on that, we think Chris could make really big inroads based on that superpower alone.

SPEAKER_04 6:00

Yeah, yeah. I mean, uh, if you can hit the ball off the T in play and long, the game, the game gets pretty easy. To Dave's question, you know, challenge accepted, I just to just to borrow an example, uh, one of my good friends and business partners, he was down in Florida for the winter. So for three months, we just talked via phone calls like this and helped formulate a strategy for his course and everything. And in three months, with no changes in technique, not getting faster, not getting in better shape, just changing his strategy and managing his expectations, he went from a 13 to a five. So um that's what they that's what they need to hear.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

No, you're talking.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

Yeah, nothing technical, nothing mechanical. It was just making sure that he understood sort of what the realistic outcomes were when he is faced with a 10-foot putt, what his goals should be when he's 150 yards out in the fairway. And and making sure that we rein those expectations in so that we don't all of a sudden get that domino effect of when something happens that is relatively good by his skill level, uh, but in his mind is not good enough. Now all of a sudden he's pressing, right? And he's making bad decisions down the road that now pollute or poison his decision making on his next shot. And then as you guys know, that downward spiral quickly blows up into how the heck did I just make a double bogey on this hole with a wedge in the fairway?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 7:24

So so there we go. There's uh there's there's some goals for you.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

We've been down that downward spiral before.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, that's happened to us many times. Yeah, no, I found that before where um where just what you were saying there, with a how did I end up with a double uh with a wedge in my hand, I'd say that can sometimes be my well, I deserve to be on the green and close. And then all of a sudden I've fired at the pin and it's gone through the back, left me short-sighted, and then it all goes wrong. I duff a chip, and then I'm lit literally, like you've just said, I am spiraling. So that's something that yeah, I think we'll um we'll definitely need to dive into more deeper in this conversation.

SPEAKER_04 8:05

Yeah, and even to that point, right, managing expectations, and I'm sure we'll talk about this a bit more. But I had a conversation with a friend yesterday who he's like a one-two index, really good player, really, really focusing on trying to nail down the uh the preparatory, the decision-making side of golf this season. And at our home course, we've got a 330-yard par four dead straight, kind of a two-tiered green, but really a pretty bland hole in the sense of like not much to it to make big numbers. And and what he's telling me, he's like, you know, I've been thinking about this hole, and I I think the strategy I've decided on is when the pin is front or middle, it's a birdie hole. And when the pin is back, it's a par hole. And I said, listen, like, what do you think the PGA scoring average is for a hole that's 330 yards, right? Like, what do you think the birdie rate is? He's like, I bet they make birdie like 55% of the time. And I said, the scoring average on the PGA tour for a hole of that length is 3.83. Okay, so they're making birdie just under 20% of the time. And here you are as a two-handicap calling this a birdie hole, right? You're immediately establishing this like baseline expectation for playing the hole. When in fact, it's like at your skill level, if you can just par this hole and never make a bogey and maybe you sprinkle in a birdie one out of 10 times, you are way ahead of the pace that a one-to-two handicap should be at.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

And and like again, going back to that idea of we all have this convoluted, distorted idea of what reasonable is.

SPEAKER_03 9:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:36

And being able to correct that is such a crucial piece to getting ourselves into the right mindset to proper execution and really performing at our highest level.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

And when you're like saying that, there's a hole that I as soon as you were talking about that, and Dave will know exactly the same hole I'm talking about. On our home course at Murrayfield here in Scotland, um, the fourth hole is like a downhill, and it could, on a good day, it's drivable. And for so long, I've always seen that as that's a birdie hole. That is lit, that is a birdie hole. And then when I make a bogey, like the spiral happens, and then it's like it's a kick-on effect that my round then just like, well, I didn't make a birdie there, I was expecting to make a birdie. Oh, now I've made another bogey. Oh, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna shoot well today. And it's literally like you said, setting yourself up for failure when you don't need to do that, you just need to get a par, get out of there, and if a a birdie trickles in, great, then you're winning, if that makes sense. Yeah. Like I've found have you found that, Dave?

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Yeah, I I'm I'm genuinely like quite amazed. Yeah, I get the point on managing expectations, totally get that. Just what you're saying with a a very short by PGA tour standards, par 4, uh like 300 and whatever you said, 360, something like that. It's it's probably even quite rare that you would even get that on on a PGA tour. But are you you that is that is that for real that that's 3.8 is the average? Like obviously it is in the birdie zone, but that is way higher than I would have expected for PGA tour players at that distance.

SPEAKER_04 11:15

I forget the exact number, but a 280-yard par four scoring average is right around like 3.7. Okay. So so we need to we need to exit this mindset, right? And I and I deal with this with so many of the top players I work with where they get on a par five, right? And then immediately on the T-box they're thinking this is Eagle or Birdie. Okay. And it's like the easiest of par fives may play to like a four, six, four, five average.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 11:40

That is not making a birdie every time. Right. And so I always try to encourage players, especially, you know, players that kind of fit you guys' profile. It's like, I don't want you standing on the fourth hole at your home club thinking this is a birdie hole. I want you standing up there, making an aggressive swing, but ultimately telling yourself, what can I do to make this a never bogey hole? Right? Because if you never make bogey, right? And and sometimes, yeah, you pipe your drive and you've got left yourself the ideal angle and it's just a green light chip shot to try to get it close. And those are the times where you probably will be able to give yourself a very nice quality birdie look. But there are other times where maybe you flare your T-shot a little to the right, and all you think in your head is like, okay, I've got a wedge in my hand, like I'm gonna try to stuff this. And instead, it's like, okay, if I told you where do you need to aim to ensure that this ball is holed out in no more than three shots, your answer might might change slightly differently. Right? And and that may be aiming 20, 25 feet right of the pin, which feels conservative, but you've already kind of put yourself into an unfavorable position. Or maybe on the T-box, your expectation is to have a quality birdie look, but now after this bad swing, now your expectation should be like, okay, par is the worst I'm gonna get here. How do I make that happen? And and I see this so often in like second shots into par fives, right? So a lot of the uh elite players I work with bomb their bomb their T-shot into par five, they get up there and they just send three wood or whatever up by the green, which is great. That's proper strategy. But then once they've taken that aggressive action on the second shot, they almost feel like they're like call it pot committed, right? Or they they're so attached to like now I just need to make birdie that they can have a little flop shot over a bunker to a green running away from them that's super shallow, and they'll try to pull that shot off instead of being like, okay, you got a bit unlucky with where this ended up. Now we need to just sort of ease off the gas a little bit. We need to make sure we don't walk off with anything worse than a five on this hole. And that may look like instead of looking at the flag, we're now going to look 20 feet to the left, a nice safe pitch, and we'll take our chances of trying to make that putting. But if I dump it to 15, 20 feet, you're probably never three-putting. But instead, what happens? Oh, well, now they put on their superhero cape. They're like, let me show you how good I am at hitting this flop shot. They hit this flop shot, maybe they catch a little thin or a little heavy, it dumps in the bunker they're trying to carry, or it just flies over the green. Then they chip it on and they two-putt and make a six or seven, and you blink and you're like, How did you make a double bogey when you had hybrid from the middle of the fairway and after your tee shot? And we've all been there because things just spiral, right? It happens fast, and we're all just these emotional creatures. And so being able to sort of recenter ourselves and stay extremely logical and objective is so crucial because, like, ultimately, when we make these stupid mistakes, those are the ones after the round. How many times have you played those rounds where on the third hole you kind of gave away a couple shots from being dumb? Then you finished the round and you still pieced it together quite well and shot a couple over or like a personal best, and you're just like, oh my God, I can't believe I jammed that eight foot or five feet by and I made that three put. Otherwise, I would be one or two shots better with very little effort. Right. And having that like equanimity or being able to stay extremely centered and stoic, it's easier said than done, don't get me wrong. But it's also just such a crucial piece to what elite players do, right? You're able to kind of look at shots in their own isolated way instead of letting whatever previously happened influence your decision making or cause you to deviate from what the math says that ultimately can come up and really, really bite you.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah. And would you say, and again, I know all of this is easier said than done, and this is one of the biggest challenges in golf, is that players of any level, whether it be me, a kind of mid-handicapper, Chris aloe, single-digit handicapper, or even a pro, we shouldn't really, do you think, be standing on a T-box labelling this whole a birdie hole or uh maybe a solid poole or whatever. We shouldn't just be labelling it with a score at all. We should be trying to just cliche alert, take each shot at a time and you know, hit as good a drive as possible. Or do you think it is okay strategy to have earmarked before you're around, okay, there's my opportunity there, there's another good opportunity there for birdie, or depending on your skill level, maybe for where there's where my good par chances are going to come from?

SPEAKER_04 16:26

Yeah, I mean, opportunity is is totally fine. Right? It's when opportunity now bleeds into expectations that is the problem, right? Because yes, in the normal cadence of a round of golf, if you take a player like Chris, he's probably going to have, call it six on a properly like lengthened golf course for him, he's probably gonna have six to ten situations where it's like a quality opportunity for a birdie, right? And those would be par fives. He's probably going in with wedge or less on most holes. He's gonna have a couple short par fours, and then he's just going to like have a few of putts that probably are the function of shot pattern variance, right? Where maybe he's aiming five yards right at the pin and then just slightly tugs it and the pin happens to be on the side of a shot pattern that he missed on. And those are going to just artificially give him a couple extra close birdie opportunities. But what you can't do is now all of a sudden you feel almost entitled to a birdie when you look at these holes on the scorecard and you're like, oh, 330-yard par four. That's a birdie, right? Because now you've almost created this sense of entitlement of like, I'm owed a birdie on this hole. So if I don't make birdie, now all of a sudden I've somehow failed or I've somehow screwed up. And that's going to leave us into a mode of like desperation or trying to make up lost ground. And that's when like the dangers really surface because now all of a sudden, you know, I I always say with with like decade and how you pick your targets and what I advise for my players, it's all just the mathematical target, right? And I don't care if you're five over or 15 over, like two plus two still equals four. And it's, you know, to borrow an analogy with my background in poker, just because you got it all in with pocket aces pre-flop and you lost, you don't now look back at it and say, like, oh, I should have folded my aces pre-flop, right? You just got your money in good and you got a little unlucky as it relates to variants. And that's just sort of the natural ebbs and flows and cadence of golf as well. That's just a game that's mired with tons and tons of variants and and having the right relationship with variants is such a crucial piece of it. And understanding, like some days I'll have 10, eight-footers. Statistically on tour, you make half of them. Some days you'll go out, you'll make eight of them, some days you'll go out and make two of them, but on average it's going to be about half. And having that acceptance rather than because you missed your previous six, eight-footers, now you're like, oh, I need to make this even more. Right? No, you still need to pick a good line, you still need to hit good speed, and you'll just trust that, like over the long run, as long as you're doing those things right, the law of averages are going to play out.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Yeah. And I've I've got a question for you because I heard you mention like a green light flag. For people that haven't heard of like the green light, yellow light, red light in golf. Could you explain that in how if you get to a shot and you're thinking, I should go for this, could you look step back and maybe take that into account of the green light, yellow light, red light? Could you explain that, please?

SPEAKER_04 19:23

Yeah, so the green, red, yellow is simply a nice way to help, you know, I'm I'm a big believer, kind of what uh Dave read with my intro. My goal is to take golf data. And I like to provide little rules of thumb, little nuggets that players will hopefully be able to, you know, filter out themselves and pick off little pieces that they can now bring to them on the golf course, right? As like an extra tool in their tool belt, so to speak. And this green, yellow, red light system is simply just a nice way to simplify decision making rather than standing over a shot where you've got an 80-yard pitch shot with no hazards between you and the flag, and think like, oh, I should be getting up and down here X percentage of the time or Y percentage of the time. Instead, just telling yourself, like, okay, this is a relatively safe green light shot with minimal downside, right? Like if you're a relatively decent player from 80 yards, I would expect that like your worst shots are probably not going to be, you know, missing your target line by 20 yards to the left or right, or missing your yardage by 20 yards long or short. So generally speaking, like even your below average or average shots are probably going to wind up, let's call it, between 20 to 40 feet on the green. And then your great shots are going to have the opportunity to be like as as close as holding out.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:48

And then you take on, let's say, now that 80 yard shot, we put a bunker in between you. Well, now all of a sudden, if you miss your number by 20 yards, you're now in the bunker. And that's going to drastically harm your scoring average. And so these are this, these are the shots where you just have to be a little bit more cautious, right? They these are the shots where you just need to be a little bit more mindful or a little more thoughtful as far as where you may miss. What are the consequences of this misses, right? How am I going to respond should I miss? And then the red light would be like the real extreme example where maybe 80-yard shot over a water hazard with a false front to an elevated green. And now, like the level of precision required for that type of a shot is so high that you can't just become so tunnel visioned with this idea that I've got a flip wedge in my hand. But now you kind of have to plan for the entirety of outcomes, right? You need to be thinking in the aggregate, which is ultimately what shot patterns and a lot of what we teach is at decade. It is thinking in the collective instead of the singular outcome because that is so important and imperative. Like, like I said, generally speaking, our relationship with variants as human beings is not great, right? We we tend to underestimate how many things and decisions in our lives and stuff really come down to a lot of luck, right? And it could be a Small as the number of traffic lights that you hit when you're on your commute to work, to you know, good and bad bounces on the golf course, to even like, you know, how you're born, what your health is like, what your family situation, and all that stuff. Like these are all elements of luck that are going to play a role in so many bigger picture items, right? And so on the golf course, it's that same way. There are little subtleties in luck that we don't think about. They include, well, today maybe Chris goes out and plays, and every approach shot that he hits, his yardage is exactly a stock number for him. And maybe those are I hit the ball from the exact same spot as him, and those numbers aren't stock numbers for me. Well, naturally, what's going to happen there? Well, Chris is going to be hitting a lot of stock shots that he rehearses often, which is going to increase the predictability of the shot, which is going to decrease the dispersion pattern of the shot, which is going to help boost the proximity of where the shot ends up. Whereas if I'm constantly hitting these little three-quarters off-speed swings from those same yardages because it doesn't quite fit in my gapping, now I'm making all these swings that I don't practice as often. So the predictability level of my shot goes down, which means now my dispersion is probably going to be amplified or bigger, which means the proximity of my shot is going to suffer. And just through that little nuance of probably how firm a spot our T-shot landed in the fairway and how much the ball released out, that probably means Chris is going to naturally shoot two or three shots better than me in our best rounds on those types of days because he landed on good numbers. Right? Or maybe he landed on the correct side of his shot pattern so he's got a better angle at the pin. Or like I said, with iron shots, maybe you're aimed six yards right of the flag, and every time you pull it, the pin is on the left, so your proximity gets closer. And every time you push it, the pin is on the right of your intended target. And I'm the opposite. I'm hitting the exact same shot, but through the natural variance of shot pattern, every time I miss a little left of where I'm intending, the pin is to the right. And every time I've missed the pin to the right or my shot to the right, the pin is to the left. And I'm just left with these 20 to 40 foot putts all day long, right? Puts that I'm just trying to lag up there and two-putt and get out of there. And all day long, Chris maybe didn't hit substantially better iron shots, but he just kind of got his mashup of the shot pattern to the hold location. Now he's left himself 12-footer, 8-footer, six-footer, couple tap-ins. And then he blinks. And because he's got the benefit of getting good gapping and then hitting the right part of a shot pattern, he shoots a very, very easy, effortless 65-66 without really feeling like he played exceptionally well. And then me, maybe I played just as well as him. And my my ceiling on that round may be like one or two under by just taking advantage of some par fives. But I didn't really have any quality birdie looks.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Right.

SPEAKER_04 24:46

Right. And it's again tying into this whole managing expectations piece of it. The pitfall here is in the example I laid out for myself, where I'm constantly hitting like the wrong side of my shot pattern, but still perfectly adequate shots within a normal shot pattern, but I'm just missing slightly left when the hole is right, and vice versa. The pitfall for good and high handicapped players is getting on that 12th hole, you've had 11 holes of being on the wrong side of your shot pattern. You get to that 12th hole, you've got a 15-footer. We tell ourselves, like, this is the best birdie look I've had all day. Right? All of a sudden, all of a sudden, this putt means a little more to us because we haven't had a quality birdie look all day. And we try a little extra hard to get our putt to the hole, and it runs by five feet, and then we miss the comeback room and make it a stupid, stupid three putt. And that pitfall and that trap is such a common one for players because we think back like, oh, I haven't had a quality birdie look all day, even though I'm not playing poorly. And so now all of a sudden we we make this single putt we're facing, we're so much more invested into it, right? For some reason, we feel like we we deserve making this because we've we've not had a good birdie look all day. And then that's when that like waterfall of bad decisions happens, and we know how that spiral spiral occurs.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Yeah. And the spiral can then be ever wider, I guess, the higher the handicap you go down, probably the the kind of the like how catastrophic around can go, could could go crazy uh the higher end of the spectrum. You you go just quickly on the lower end of the spectrum. I'm guessing you guys a decade, you probably see this all the time at the highest level in some of the top like PGA tour events, for example, where you guys would looking at the analysis or looking at the way these guys are playing, you'd be like, that guy in 25th is actually not striking the ball much worse than that guy who's at the top of the field or like in the top five. It's just the way you've described it out is like all of those kind of natural variations that just played out on the day, that's what happened. So I guess my point is you would probably be if that's one of your players who's further back in the field but striking it really well, that would be your message to them is that here, like listen, you're you're actually playing very, very well, and you're not a million miles away from you know knocking on the door of maybe top five or ten or whatever of that tournament.

SPEAKER_04 27:15

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, it's it's so difficult to convey to players of all skill levels, like I would much rather my player step into every shot with a fully committed, zero doubt plan and deal with bad execution than vice versa, right? Because if I mean think about, again, all of the things you can't control in the golf swing in a golf shot. You've got how vulnerable the ball is to any wind, any moisture that gets between the club face and the ball. Like I said, the how much the ball releases off your T-shot impacts your yardage and all of that. All of that is beyond your control. And yet I see players not focus on controlling what they can, which is picking a good target, making sure they've got that. Um, I say you've got like kind of your hard skills of golf and your soft skills. Your hard skills are swing technique, swing speed, fitness, all of that. But the soft skills also come with being able to judge lies, being able to judge wind and its impact on your shot. And like I see so many juniors, club players, they lack so much of those soft skills that it's laughable to think that they're they believe they can elevate their game on the other side just strictly through hard skills, right? And it's like you can I always say you go to a college golf event, you go on the driving range, and you watch these kids warm up, you think you're seeing 50 major winners.

SPEAKER_03 28:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:38

Right? Because they've all got swing speed, they all possess technically gorgeous golf swings, right? They all swing the club like Adam Scott, right? Just picturesque. Then you look at the leaderboard afterwards and you cannot fathom how half of them couldn't break 75. And you're like, with that golf swing, what the hell? Like it's it's unconscionable because we all chase this like perfect textbook golf swing, we're perfect at P6, we've got we're flying the ball 305, whatever. And then you see these kids who have these skills, and then they shoot 78. And you know, somebody else next to them swung it the same way and they beat them by 12. And it all comes down to this decision making, right? It all comes down to staying logical, staying objective, and making sure that like you're controlling what you can, which is simply making sure you understand the influences of wind and how it affects your yardages. Because ultimately we don't see kids practicing off of uneven lies, right? They're on the driving range off a perfectly flat lie in the most, you know, they we hear the term dome golf a lot, but they're they're in a very controlled environment and that's how they're practicing. And then they somehow think that's going to translate to when I'm on the course and the ball is slightly above my feet, well, I know my stock yardage. Well, do you know what your tendency is to miss with the ball above your feet? Do you know what your tendency is yardage-wise? Is it going to fly longer, shorter? How are you going to adjust for that? How are you going to accommodate the variance that happens when the ball is slightly below your feet and you're a right-handed player? Are you shifting your target a little more left because you understand that your tendency is to miss right and short? So now we're going to hopefully take your entire shot pattern and shift it deeper into the green to account for that. Or are you just playing for that perfect outcome? And then now 30% of your shot pattern comes up short, plugged in a bunker, and you need to do well to save bogey. And these little decision points seem so inconsequential, but when you, in the aggregate of 54 holes or 72 holes, it's amazing how many of these little subtleties play play a role into kind of what you're saying, Dave, where the margins aren't that big in golf. And yet you're giving up edge by just making bad decisions. And that's such a crucial piece that players don't work on because at the end of the day, it's not fun to figure out how to calculate wind. It's a lot more fun to go out and hit balls and whatever. It's not fun to work on lag putting. It's a lot more fun to go grab a bag of balls and start striping long irons at flags. And like building that um belief in understanding, okay, your like lag putting sucks. And I need you to go work on that and put your clubs away. And and some programs do that, right? Like there's there's a top five program where the players in practice don't ever get to hit range balls. All their time is spent with wedges and putters because the coach's belief is my players will make time for themselves to work on swing technique. They will not make time for themselves to work on lag putt stations or to work on wedge chipping drills. And so we don't need to take our allotted time together as team and coach to work on that stuff because the players will never let their long game degrade to the level that they wouldn't skip a party or skip a ball game or something to find a way to hit the ball better. Yeah. But they certainly wouldn't make that a priority if it was lag putting.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

That's really interesting. Yeah, no, I and I and I think like, see, Dave was obviously asking about like how on the lower side of it you're seeing in competitions, they're like losing shots um over like the however many like four rounds and stuff like that. See, for someone like Dave, who's a mid-handicapper, where do mid-handicappers lose most of their shots without realizing it in a round, would you say, when you've looked at stats and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Okay, quick one before we carry on. If you're enjoying this episode and you want to support us, why not give us a quick follow on Instagram? That is where we will be putting out the best clips, key takeaways on course action and stuff that you can actually apply to your game. And if Instagram's not your thing, that's okay. Just hit follow wherever you're listening to this so you don't miss the next episode. It would really help us out. Okay, let's get back into it.

SPEAKER_04 33:01

Yeah, that's a great question. So, so really two things, right? One is getting rid of the big numbers. If you took a player like Dave and you just made it that he never made worse than a bogey on a hole, his scoring average, I would guess, would instantly improve several shots. Where he's not taking penalty strokes, he's not um, again, it's that pressing when you're out of position, right? So so a great example is like thinking about when you're short-sighted. Once you're short-sighted, you just kind of have to have this uh this skill of telling yourself like, I'm not in a great spot here, and I'm probably more likely to make a bogey here than I am a par anyway. So again, how can I limit that downside to remove double bogey from play?

SPEAKER_00 33:45

And just on that, Alex, just sorry to jump in really quickly. When we spoke to Scott Fawcett from Decade recently, uh, and we said this, I think, on a subsequent podcast, Chris, is like, I was amazed. He said if he's short-sighted in a greenside bunker, he is saying to himself, and this is a guy who has played on tour and is a very, very good player. You know, he's he's telling himself, just don't make double here. That's at that level, you know, in a greenside bunker, short-sighted, he's telling himself that. So that was an eye-opener for me, you know, on the theme of expectation management that we've talked about a little bit already. Like at my level, you know, as a kind of at my home course, I'm a 14 handicap, you know. What would you say I should be thinking about whenever I'm short-sighted? Like, should I be, I suggest being just get out of the bunker. You know, even double could be a reasonable score here.

SPEAKER_04 34:37

Yeah, listen, like if you're short-sighted, I always tell my players, it's like, if you're short-sighted, you probably screwed up somewhere previously to get yourself here, whether it be a bad swing or bad decision. And now is not the time for you to try to, you know, you kind of have to pay your penance, so to speak, because you're already screwed. Right. And and so now it's just about damage control. And and again, it's like, yeah, would saving par here be great? Sure. But let's just say it's a high difficulty shot and you pull it off one out of 10 times, you flop it up to six feet. Okay, well, congratulations. That one out of ten times, you've now put the ball in a position where you only convert it 60% of the time.

SPEAKER_03 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:19

All the other times you're making bogey or double, or worse. Is that trade-off, that risk benefit really worth it? I don't think so, right? And and so I I do believe there is such a skill that's understudied or underdeveloped in golf. And it's that skill of realizing when you're out of position or when you're in fact in trouble. Right? Because we all have this um, you know, we're all as golfers, perfectionists to some extent, um, better players more than others. And we also just have this superhero complex where we think we can pull off every shot with full certainty with little little doubt that things are gonna go sideways, right? And and having that honest conversation with yourself, like I said, when you're short-sighted and realizing like from a probability standpoint, I maybe get up and down here 5% of the time. So why am I so concerned of trying to like realize that 5% instead of just being like, I'll take my 94 95% spot of making bogey, and that's a net win. Because if I can completely eradicate doubles from play, that is a huge benefit because like I can get that bogey back later by making a 15-foot putt, right? Or hitting one closely by accident. And so to like Dave's question, with the mid-handicaps, I think if he was able to completely eliminate double bogeys from his scorecard, that would have a huge impact, right? And then I think the other one is when he's standing over the shot with the wedge in his hand or a nine iron, getting out of that mindset of like I should be hitting this close.

SPEAKER_03 36:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 36:50

And instead realizing like at his level, if he's able to just hit the green a hundred, I mean, okay, tour average from like 120 to 140 yards is 75% greens in regulation.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

And you're unbelievable. Like that is unbelievable. You'd be thinking that would be in the 90%. Like you would think that's 90-ish percent.

SPEAKER_04 37:10

Yeah, and and you get guys like Dave who stand over with a wedge and they're thinking about hitting it close. And it's like, if you just hit it on the green, that's a massive, massive, massive win. Yeah. And so that's why it's it's like this. Um, and and I think a very difficult skill is making these committed, and this this like spans all skill levels I work with. It is such a difficult skill to make aggressive swings to conservative targets. We've Tiger has said it many, many times that he's aggressive to his conservative spots, and it's so true. I work with a bunch of tour players where one of the first tasks I have them do in practice is anytime you're faced with a shot, like go out and play your normal course. And I I would challenge Chris, Dave too, but Chris primarily for this, anytime go out and play around of golf, every time that you have a nine iron or less on your approach shot, I want you to ignore the pin and hit a committed swing to the center depth, center width of your green. Okay, and see if you can do that because the large majority come back to me and they're like, I realized how much I suck at this because I lasered the pin 120 yards. So I told myself, okay, middle of the green is 130. So I commit to it, stand over it, and then my last thought on my final waggle is well, I could just kind of hit like a little baby cut in there to peel this off to like land a little softer, right? And and like again, if you're able to do like if I told Chris he gets to hit 100% of greens when he's got nine iron or less in his hands, he's a scratch golfer, probably. Probably plus. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Chris, listen to that.

SPEAKER_04 38:51

Because again, if we become so focused with proximity and giving ourselves a quality birdie look when we have these scoring clubs in our hand, it's that same idea of when you're on the T-Box and you're thinking it's a birdie hole. Well, as soon as we get a scoring club in our hand, we're thinking it's a birdie hole, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:06

And a big thing we learned from Scott as well with regard to what you're saying, Alex, a slightly more conservative target, say, you know, classic conservative target would be dead center of the green. You know, what Scott said to us is you can't say I'm aiming for the dead center of the green and hope I push or pull it. You know, you can't do that. But I think that's a really common mistake is someone goes, Yeah, I'm gonna commit to the middle here, but let's hope that I kind of just mishit it a little and hit it right on the pin, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04 39:39

Yeah, and it it's very much centered around that idea again of shot patterns, right? Like if I took Chris, a highly skilled player, and had him hit a hundred wedges at the same target, his balls don't just stack on top of one another, right? He's going to have some distribution of shots a little long left, a little short right. And it's about managing all hundred of those shots. And so if Chris is picking a good target, let's call it three or four yards right of the stick, well, hopefully we've now centered that shot pattern over the flag in a way where the collective outcome is going to yield him the best scoring average. And in some days, some weeks, some months, that's going to be a large density towards the pin side. And then there will be other times when it's away from the pin side. But collectively, if we fully removed or nearly removed bogeys from those outcomes, he is way ahead of the field for someone who's got his handicap.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 40:32

Right. And and again, like we just emphasize under. I always say I want players to think of shots not from point A to point B. I need you to start thinking of shots like point A to zone B, right? And like we're managing this zone as good as we can because accepting that there is this shot pattern and we're not good enough to pick out the singular outcomes is ultimately the name of the game. And and that comes with this, um, it comes with this conversation with yourself of realizing that you're not as good as you think you are. And that that again goes all the way up to the tour level. There's a reason the Scotties, the Nellies, the Ginos, the, you know, those people of the world still have shot patterns. So for us to sit here and pretend that we're going to have a s a sniper rifle in our hand and be able to just pick where our ball ends up is, you know, we're fooling ourselves because when we're looking at the Rory's of the world with driver, and he's still got 65, 70 yard dispersion patterns with his driver. And he's still at a gust on number 13 and able to flare a wedge into the water from 80 yards, right? Like, why do we think that we can't miss the green from 120 yards when we know the numbers bear out that pros are only hitting it three out of four times? And being able to, again, take that type of data and present it in a way where hopefully the listeners can hear it and be like, you're right, that doesn't quite make sense why I think I'm better than them. Right? So now maybe next time they're over a nine iron, instead of thinking like, I want to stuff this, it's I'm gonna pick a target where even my worst swing still ends up on the green.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

And can we credit Decade for that? I think that's almost come into common golf parlance is you're holding a shotgun, not a sniper rifle. Is that that was is that that's that's a big kind of uh mantra at Decade, which I think uh, you know, everyone could really uh learn a lot from uh in terms of dispersion. You know, a couple of things, a couple of questions on that. First one would be like any of us as amateurs, obviously myself mid-handicap, you know, would there be any good exercise that I should do to try and work out what my dispersion pattern is? Because I think going and just blasting nine irons on a range might give me some clue, but you know, being out on the course is quite different. Uh, and likewise being on a track man, don't get me wrong, track man can provide incredible data. But you know, what would your advice be for someone like me, Alex, and Chris, obviously, who will probably no doubt have a tighter dispersion with most clubs in the bag than me. Uh, you know, as as amateurs, what what should we be doing to prepare for our rounds to get better understanding of our dispersion?

SPEAKER_04 43:19

Yeah, so the dispersion, the actual number of the dispersion isn't nearly as important, right? So I I get a question often, it's like, oh, what's what's the dispersion pattern for a shot at 150 yards? Well, that's not really that crucial. It's more of just understanding that like repeatability is king in golf, right? Like if if I'm able to get you to hit a baby cut that wavers between like straight and 15 yards to the right, like I could probably get you on the corn fairy tour. You know, like that is it's it's all about just no matter how far you hit it, just yeah, like repeatability, and obviously you have to have like some baseline skills, but if you're able to To like repeat your shot pattern over and over and over again. That is what makes the Scotties of the world so great. Right? It isn't the nine window drill. Yes, is there is there a skill in knowing how to move the ball right to left, high, low, left to right? Definitely. But when it comes to like actual execution on the golf course, that type of stuff is minimally important. Right. It's instead having ownership of your shot shape so that you're able to now take your shot pattern and apply it onto the green in a correct mathematical way. And so having players practice with, you know, Trackman's great because you can do line tests. We have a line test in the decade app that is a great way to just help measure your good how good your ball control and dis uh directional control is with the golf ball. And you can pair that together with track man, where now you can literally it'll tell you like four yards left, eight yards right, and then plug that data into the line test within the decade app, and it'll give you a score. And that score will give you benchmarks of what what like the all-American level of college golfers look like for their for that exact same test. Right. And and I'm a huge believer, talking about practice, huge, huge believer in coming up with ways to have measurable, quantifiable progress in your practice. Right. So we have simulated putting in the decade app, we have um the line tests, and I'm a big believer because we as humans, we suck at remembering things accurately, right? We have selective memory. How many times have you gone out? If you, for those of you who track stats, you've gone out, finished your round, and you're like, man, I putted like crap. Then you come in, you put your stats in, and you realize you gained two shots putting. Right? And and instead practicing in a way where you kind of get a score so that you're able to sort of establish a baseline for yourself, right? Because ultimately improvement is beating yourself, right? We we can have all these benchmarks and gold standards for whatever, but like if you're not beating constantly improving upon yourself, then like what are we, you know, what are we doing? What are we improving upon? And so by having by having these sorts of practice methods where we're able to give ourselves a score, and then that score can build upon itself that we can look back three months earlier and say, like, oh, my simulated putting score was I'm sorry. No worries. Um my simulated putting score.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

I'm telling you, or he or she are telling you the simulated putting score they have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:28

Um our simulated putting score was 28 last week, and now it's 26, and then my next three are 25, 24. I'm seeing marked improvement in my um in my putting performance.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:42

Right. And that type of stuff is just so crucial because it allows us to have objectivity in getting better at our play.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

I heard you talk about green and regulation and stuff like that on your social media. Uh one of the stats that you talked about on it was I think it was on the LPGA, if you miss a green, your is it your overall score goes to 0. uh plus 0.48. Had you said that like your overall score over the round. Could you go deeper into that? Yeah, because I thought that stat was amazing.

SPEAKER_04 47:30

Yeah, so basically, if you think about it, we know tour scramble rate on the LPGA tour was right around 52% average. Okay. So that means anytime an LPGA player missed the green, they did not get up and down 48% of the time.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Which is crazy.

SPEAKER_04 47:45

So as soon as you miss that shows you the value of hitting a green, right? Because as soon as you miss a green, your scoring average balloons to 0.48. And I think on the PGA tour, it's around 0.44. Now, obviously, these numbers are a little different because they're playing slightly tucked pins. Yeah. But it's more of just emphasizing that value of hitting greens in regulation when you're able to, you know, if you hit a green, that's worth the delta of from a 0.44 over par scoring average to to whatever with maybe birdie. And that's just so, so pivotal and helps to reinforce that idea of making more, hitting more greens and ultimately helping your scoring average.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Yeah. When I was on your Instagram, I seen that and I was like, that is like for myself, just thinking about like I already knew how important greens and regulation are. And the people that we spoke to of um prior have said that as well. But that putting that stat on it really uh just showed me how important it is to hit greens, like which is obviously the McGolf, but no, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

Uh yeah, so it's to give us a little bit of credit, Chris, like in the very first or second episode that we uh put out there uh on this podcast, we did kind of talk about that quite a lot in that greens and regulation apparently is the biggest differentiator and across the board. And that was I think I think Mark Brody's big discovery or big validation uh back in the day was that if you want to improve at golf, then if you improve that number, you're most likely to see that improvement. Just on greens and regulation, Alex, you mentioned like kind of down to sort of nine iron, and so depending on what level of golfer you are, you're gonna hit it further, obviously. I know the Tiger Five, he talked about, I don't know, bogies from 150 uh or less, and that would have been sort of the nine-iron range-ish for him, I think. Uh, would you say that that's a reasonable number for all golfers to be thinking uh, you know, tracking like what I'm like how many, I guess, how many greens am I missing or how many bogies am I making uh when I have a nine iron or less in my hand?

SPEAKER_04 50:03

Yeah, I mean the way it kind of works is once we kind of get in that nine iron zone, we go back into that like scoring mindset. Right? So so once again, it's like if you're playing a par four or a hole where on a par three everybody's hitting in five, six irons into the greens, that's just a hard hole.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 50:21

Right? So so making a bogey there is never going to kill you. It is when you when it's a hole that the entire field's coming in with wedge or flip wedge or nine iron in, the players immediately start telling themselves, like, I deserve a birdie here because this is a birdie hole, right? And so that's kind of why when those types of holes, call it the easy holes, exist, we can probably expect that a reasonable difficult uh reasonable field of strength tournament strength of field tournament, it's going to play slightly under par. So when we make a bogey there, we're losing more than a full shot to the field. And that's why it's so pivotal for us not to be making bogeys on those types of holes.

unknown 51:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:00

If it's a hole that's 480 yard par four and everybody's coming in with a five or six iron, it's probably gonna play over par anyway. So a bogey is never going to kill you. Because you lose seven tenths of a stroke, okay, big deal. You make a 12-foot putt later in the tournament, and now you're square with that.

SPEAKER_03 51:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:14

It's those easy holes, it's those par five bogeys, right? It's a reason why par five bogies are so painful and something we really encourage players to avoid. Because most par fives are going to play slightly under par. So when you make a bogey there, you're once again losing a bogey plus to the field. And ultimately that's what you're trying to avoid because those are such big mistakes that in order to unwind them or undo the damage you've done on those types of holes, it requires a lot, right? You lose 1.2 shots to the field. Well, now you got to make two eight-footers and a four-foot putt to undo that with strokes gained.

SPEAKER_03 51:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:49

But if you make a par there and it's an easy par five that plays to a 4.8, you've really only lost two tenths of a stroke. Play that four times. Play it four times. Someone like Chris is probably upset, feels like he hasn't gotten anything on the field and really gave away shots. So he parred a par five that's playing into a four point eight average four times, lost 0.8 shots to the field, and then guess what? He goes out and he makes, you know, a 15-footer, and now he's dead square with the field from those holes.

SPEAKER_00 52:15

Yeah. It was again to that point, which is why you shouldn't be walking off losing your mind if you've just had a score on a par five that maybe you wouldn't have liked. Um, because you could, as you say, you could make it back uh again uh like later on. I think just to relate to some of what you said, Chris and I, as I mentioned, we were in Belfast at a French charity um golf day last week, uh Malone Golf Club, really fantastic course uh in Belfast. And I think Chris, I actually had a really good driving day. That's not always the case, but I did have a very good driving day. But even then, in very windy conditions, very soft underfoot, as it still is at this time of year in Belfast, the ball's not running out very far. Some long par fours, I still had a full five iron in my hand. As you say, Alex, I need to just be telling myself as a 14 handicap, you know, that's just a hard, hard shot that I've got in front of me. I should not be sitting here thinking, right, I need to expect anything like a par even here. You would would you guys a decade? I know that you've always been big kind of uh promoters of let's get the ball as far down there as possible. In that situation, would you ever encourage anyone like me to lay up? Or would you say, no, take the biggest, uh, the biggest club you you can get from that sort of range?

SPEAKER_04 53:39

Yeah, generally speaking, right, there's always exceptions, but as a nice rule of thumb, you just want to have your shortest approach shot in because it's again just physics and geometry. The shorter the time the ball is in the air, the tighter your dispersion, the tighter your dispersion, the smaller your misses, the smaller your misses, the better your scoring average. So obviously there are instances where you don't want to hit driver because you've got hazards pinching in or whatever. But one of the common, and you'll hear it ad nauseum at Augusta coming up with number three and laying up. It's in a perfect world, yes, laying up to 100 yards seems fine. You get more spin on the ball, you get to, you know, have a scoring club in your hand, blah, blah, blah. But what people often overlook is this idea that when you lay up, you aren't laying up with full certainty that you hit the fairway. Right? You lay up and you still miss shots into the rough, into the bunker at Augusta. So people often, when they give this argument of like, oh, should I lay up on number three at Augusta? Yeah, it it would be great if you could go in with a ton of spin on the shot, but you're ignoring the reality that when you are laying up, there is a portion of your shot pattern that simply isn't in the fairway. And as soon as now you're in the rough and you're giving up 80 yards of approach shot distance, now that's going to drastically harm your scoring average. That it doesn't make sense. Conversely, it's that same idea of sometimes you send driver and you end up in a part of your shot pattern where you've got a bad angle into the green, you've got a bad lie, the ball's above your feet, or some attribute about the shot just doesn't make you comfortable. And again, you need to just get out of this mindset of like, well, I went aggressive off the T, so now this is I need to make Birdie here for it to like be worth anything. And instead just accept it didn't quite work out for me this time. And so what steps can I take to sort of again mitigate the downside? It's that same idea of being short-sighted, right? Like, I just got a bit unlucky. Now I need to sort of like take my medicine and move on and make sure that I didn't do too much to shoot myself in the foot and now I can get out of here and live to fight another day.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

Yes. And moving further back, obviously we've talked a bit about approach play, we've talked a bit about being short-sighted or being around the grains. So on the tea box, Alex, you know, I know the decade approach is, you know, take driver as often as possible, as long as I think what Scott Fawcett has said before is as long as you're dealing with a kind of 60-yard wide window of a fairway or more, right? Is that right? Am I getting that right?

SPEAKER_04 56:23

Yep. 65 yards is sort of the benchmark with the case.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

65 yards is the benchmark. Okay. So what would you recommend to us amateur golfers in terms of really smart target selection of the T? Say if you're going with driver, what is the really, really smart play in terms of target selection? Like what do you need to factor in?

SPEAKER_04 56:48

I think one thing that higher handicapped players don't do well enough is they aren't hyper specific enough with their targets. They see this vast area to land their T-shots and they don't narrow in. I mean, think about like when you're hitting your approach shots, we generally are going to be very um specific of what we're aiming at. But we don't do that off the T, right?

SPEAKER_00 57:10

Yes. It's a bit like, oh, just anywhere done.

SPEAKER_04 57:13

Like anywhere left center of the fairway. And instead, it's like, I want you to find a branch that's kind of crooked or a birdhouse or a water tower in the distance or rake by the bunker. I need you to focus on that hyper-specific target, even though it looks like you have the, you know, the width of the earth to land your T shot. And I think high handicapped players are very poor at that because we are so um, we just assume we have such a large margin for error. And it it allows us to get a little sloppy. You know, obviously that's going to impact our alignment and everything and just kind of have this cascade effect into a poor result. But it's funny how on approach shots I find high handicappers have the ability to be a bit more specific. Right. It's not just center of the green, they'll generally still find something to aim at. But then on t-shots, they get a bit lazy. And as a result, um, I think it it harms them because it's that whole idea of like aim small, miss small.

SPEAKER_00 58:09

Yes. Aim small, miss small. And then I know I keep banging on about Scott Fawcett, but I I love so much of what he says and what you guys at Deck Kid say. But he's like, I think it was Bob Rutella originally, it was the whole kind of aim small, miss small. Was he? Was it Bob Rutella? Uh Scott's kind of more like aim small because you know you're going to miss big. And that's not being overly pessimistic. It's just your driver dispersion is pretty wide across the board.

SPEAKER_04 58:38

Yeah, and and it touches on, you know, one of the first things I always say to the players I work with, even at the tour level, is like step one to playing good golf is relinquishing the sense of control you think you have of the golf ball. Right? We we all think that we have this maximal control of the ball. And once again, it's like we don't. So if you're able to sort of come to terms or be at peace with this idea that like we aren't as good as we think we are, but neither is anyone else. And and that's one of the challenges that a lot of the players I work with have is in their minds, right? Golf is unique in the sense that like you don't get to see the rest of your opponents playing. You're with your threesome or foursome, and that's all you kind of see. So you can get a little bit narrow view of what's actually going on there. And what good players tend to do is they just assume everyone else they're playing with is playing flawlessly. They're not making any mistakes, they're not mishitting any shots, and then they just that leads to them putting more pressure on themselves.

SPEAKER_03 59:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:35

And so one of my favorite things to do is I'll pull up other good players in the field for my players and show, like, hey, this top 10 girl in the world still made three bogeys on par fives and still had like two double bogies, but you made one bad swing on whole four in the first round, and you're telling yourself, like, oh, I need now I all of a sudden like I'm so far behind the eight ball and I need to do something special to keep up. And it's like, no, don't worry, like, we're all human, right? We're allowed to make bad swings, even even the Scotties of the world. We have our off days, we have our bad swings where we hit it, you know, five standard deviations of our normal dispersion.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:14

And having that acceptance, once again, is just so crucial because we play so many mind games with ourselves, and and it often is just led leading us down the path of feeling like we need to be more perfect, feeling like we need to be more exceptional, and then that's just going to cause us to be a little bit more anxious and nervy, and then next thing you know, once again, you like are playing quite well, and then you gave away two or three shots just strictly out of tricking your mind that you had to play perfectly.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:42

Yeah, Chris, I think we might, it's great stuff, but we might need to have a bell ring every time we hear acceptance. The word acceptance used these days is so good though, you know, and like it's great because everyone, all the voices that we respect who we've had on this show and others who we listen to, you know, everyone says acceptance is so key. We are going to end part one with Alex Huang right there. But before we wrap this one up, just think about this. How often are you turning quote unquote easy holds into drop shots because your expectations are wrong? How good are you really with nine iron or less? Be honest, are you actually hitting enough greens to score? Are you trying to hit perfect shots instead of just hitting your stock shot more often? And how many doubles are coming from trying the aggressive shot into the green instead of just keeping it simple? Because if you clean up just a few of those, Alex is basically saying you could knock multiple shots off your handicap without changing your swing. That's how big this stuff is. Join us next time for part two with Alex, and we will go even deeper into exactly what you should be working on if you actually want to lower your scores. We'll talk about why hitting fair ways doesn't matter as much as you think. Simple T-shot strategy can instantly improve your scoring. What you should actually practice if you've only got a couple of hours in the wake. Why most golfers completely waste time on the wrong things. And finally, the one skill Alex says he'd give every golfer if he could.