Jim Waldron: The 3 Types of Golfer — Which One Are You?

He threw his clubs into a lake, quit golf for 11 years — then came back to become one of golf’s most fascinating coaches.

What can we learn from a man who walked away from golf for 11 years?

Jim Waldron joins How Low Can You Go for a fascinating conversation about how golfers actually learn and improve — and why so many of us may be going about it the wrong way.

We get into the three types of golfer, why golfers get stuck, changing your swing, tempo, balance, practice and much more.

And this is only Part 1.

Part 2 — including Jim’s fascinating take on the yips — drops next week.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 1:48

I shot 67 in a two-day junior event when I was 15 years old. Had a huge lead, and I blew up and shot 82 on the second day. And there was a lake next to the 18th green, and I was so pissed. I threw the entire bag of clubs in the lake and walked away from golf. And I didn't touch a club for 11 years.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Welcome back to Harlow Can You Go, the golf improvement podcast where Chris, a low single-figure golfer, is trying to get to scratch. And I'm Dave, trying to get from the mid-teens down to single figures. This week we are joined by one of the most thought-provoking coaches in the world of golf, Jim Waldron. He's helped golfers transform the way they learn and improve by focusing on something many coaches overlook. The connection between the mind and the body and how we actually learn and develop skills. His approach has helped golfers move away from ineffective practice habits and towards a much more natural way of improving. And what makes Jim's approach so interesting is it challenges a lot of what us golfers have always been told about improvement. And in this conversation, there were several moments where Chris and I genuinely looked at each other and were like, hold on a second, have we been approaching this whole thing the wrong way all along? So if you're serious about getting better at golf like Chris and I and understanding how you actually learn and go about that, I think you're gonna love this one. And before we get into today's episode, we wanted to share something really exciting that Chris and I are building behind the scenes, our first ever Hilo Can You Go live golf improvement experience in Scotland this autumn. But we'll tell you more about that later. Let's get stuck in. This is Jim Waldron. This is Hilo Can You Go. Hilo Can You Go. Okay, welcome everyone once again to Hilo Can You Go, the golf improvement podcast, Born in Scotland, the show where we talk to some of the leading minds in golf improvement. And this week we make no exception. I think anyone who's been following us for a while will remember when Carl Morris was on our show and he said, anyone who says that golf is all in the mind is wrong. Anyone who says golf is all about the swing is wrong. And that if you can find a coach who can help you access your skills, that coach will be very valuable indeed. So that has led us to asking Jim Waldron to join us today. Jim, welcome to How Look Can You Go. Balance Point Golf, all about mind-body connection and how we can hopefully marry these two, these two entities, these two big facets of golf improvement. And hopefully Chris and I can get some pearls of wisdom from you and learn how to how to get better at golf next time we go out there.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

Well, thanks for having me on, you guys. I'm looking forward to the conversation. This will be fun, I think. Well indeed. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

I think you're a little bit familiar with some of our background based on some of our previous podcasts, Jim. But you know, Chris and I, two club golfers at different levels. Chris is a low single-digit golfer, knocking on the door of scratch. Shot his lowest round ever last week. Wow. Congratulations. 67. Well done for that, Chris. And then I'm a mid-handicapper, and I would really love to get to single figures. Um, I think something that we found our listeners are kind of locking into is Chris and I have shared a lot of our vulnerabilities along this short journey. Um, none uh other than whenever both of us kind of had meltdowns and and ended up quitting golf. Like I have openly admitted that I cried after a round of golf and jumped in a pool and then didn't touch a golf club for six or seven years after that. And then Chris, I think, sort of left the game after having a bit of a bit of a breakdown in Oklahoma when he was he was nearly at the end of the state.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Knocking on the door of golf. Yeah, knocking on the door of trying to get into the varsity team. Well, I was in the varsity team, but my golf just wasn't it was good, it was good enough for uh a low handicapper, but just not to get into the team. So I as well cried on the 18th hole to my coach, and that just made me think, no, this is not worth it anymore for six years as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah, I can relate. Yeah. Yes. Well, and that that was that was what I was gonna ask you about, Jim, because I think I heard you say recently that you've had some similar experience, and that kind of led you in a you know, in a way to where you eventually got to as a coach, where you were a really good, you were a good gut player as a as a teenager and you were playing in some event.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

Yeah, I was one of the top junior players in Chicago growing up in the in the I grew up in I was born in 1951, started playing in 61.

unknown 7:13

Right.

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Got pretty good pretty fast. I broke 80 by the end of my first summer, and I broke 70 by the end of my second summer. But I think it's because my dad was a decent player. He got down to about an 11 handicap. He was actually plus three or four at putting, really good at putting, but but his his passion in life was golf. In fact, I think if he had done his life over again, he would have been a probably a teaching or a club pro. But his but his him and all his male buddies were just really into golf. So I grew up in around the game, and then I started caddying at a private club, which was literally two blocks from my house, in the middle of an urban sort of middle-class neighborhood north side of Chicago. There was this hundred-acre small private club called Edgewater Golf Club, where incidentally the Chicago Mafia were members there. I used to I used to caddy for some of the mob guys, which is sort of like uh I've got some stories from that experience that would seem like it was uh I was describing scenes from a Martin Scorsese, like you know, something like that. But uh uh and my and my uh first mentor in the game was uh the former number one player in the world, a guy named Charles Evans. He won he won all the top tournaments. You know, and like Bobby Jones, who succeeded him about a decade later, uh he stayed amateur, he never turned pro. Um anyhow, so I was I was I found it relatively easy to be pretty good at it pretty quick. So I thought, oh, I'm just gonna be really good and go out on tour, become famous, become a multimillionaire athlete as a tour pro. Um, but I had a really terrible mental gain, uh, mainly because I had uh poor anger management. And so if I hit a bad shot, I would get really pissed and like, you know, slam my club into the ground. I shot 67 in a two-day junior event when I was 15 years old, had a huge lead, and I blew up and shot 82 on the second day, and there was a lake next to the 18th green, and I was so pissed, I threw the entire bag of clubs in the lake and walked away from golf. And I didn't touch a club for 11 years. 11 years.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Yeah. Crazy. Like, did you have any regrets looking back now? Because, you know, that was just one bad round, and obviously you had a real natural talent for the game.

SPEAKER_03 9:31

Uh I don't regret quitting for 11 years because I I really immersed myself in at that time there was a term you don't hear about it much anymore, but back in the in the 70s, there was a almost like a renaissance culturally of cutting edge uh research, uh not just research, but application um on what's what's then called the human potential movement. So it was sort of like cutting-edge psychotherapy, spiritual uh spiritual practice, a lot of Buddhism, uh Asian martial arts, uh traditional society, shamanism influences, psychedelics, uh cutting edge psychotherapy, let like the great Milton Dr. Milton Erickson, who created a new type of therapy called hypnotherapy, which is partially based on how hypnosis works. Uh Fritz Pearls, who founded Gestalt therapy, also very effective. And then uh NLP, neurolinguistic programming, which uh Carl Carl has also been certified in that form of psychotherapy, Carl Morris, our our colleague. So I immersed myself in that and learned a lot about how to basically uh understand how the mind works and how to attain uh a fairly high level of psychological health and psychological functioning. So when I came back to golf after watching the masters, I think it was in 197 April of '77, I got the bug from watching the masters. And then as soon as I went up to the uh Children Park uh uh golf course to the driving range up up in the hills of Berkeley, uh I took I found an old five-iron from the lost and found barrel, and I could hit the ball just as well as I had 11 years prior. It was like riding a bike.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

And I thought can I just say I hit you?

SPEAKER_03 11:15

Yeah. For some reason it was just it was like so easy. I thought, oh, this my body remembers how to do this. And I thought, oh, I'm gonna redo my original plan, although I realized at the time at that time I knew enough about how the mind worked to I deeply understood I did not have the physical talent to compete and and win and be successful as a tour pro. But I I had a strong belief that I could do really well as a teaching pro, which is eventually what happened. Um so I dedicated myself for the next 15 or so years to uh really researching all parts of the game. I spent a lot of time looking at uh at video, at stop action photos, talking to top teachers, talking to tour pros, reading I think I must have read over a hundred books on golf in that 15-year period. And then I started teaching part-time when I was 42 years old, just to friends and and family and acquaintances. And I got such good results, I thought, well, I might as well just you know do this for a full time for a living. So at age 45 and n little around night around age 45, 1995, I I opened my golf schools um in January of 1995 on the Big Island of Hawaii at Waikaloa Beach Course. Wow. And I've been teaching every winter since then in Hawaii, and then I teach in Portland uh in the summer months. Summer.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Jim.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Like Did you find when you like went back to playing golf, did you find that like say if you hit a bad shot because you learned so much about like your mind, did you still have a bit of that anger in you? Or did you you didn't no, not at all.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

No, I finally learned how to deal with my anger.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Anger is an interesting thing. It's mostly based on taking yourself too seriously, taking taking taking s suffering or stress too personally. And if I had done enough personal growth at that point where I mean, I still get pissed occasionally if someone cuts me off in traffic or something. That pisses me off. But don't we all? But in general, I don't have that massive issue with anger that I did when I was a teenager. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Yeah. I found that um when we've some of the people that we spoke to have said that you're almost saying when I hit a bad shot, I have this kind of like, oh, I'm a low single thing uh figure handicapper. They can't see me like this, and there's almost like this pride, your pride gets in the way of like your golf. And I think I've found that a lot of the times, even when I've said to myself, it doesn't matter, they're focusing more on their own golf than they are yours, but you still have that kind of like thing running in the back of your head, standing over a putt, like, oh, if I miss this, they're gonna think I'm a bad player. Um where where does that like if you could go into like where does that come from more so like in the brain where you're standing there all the time thinking someone's thinking bad thoughts at you?

SPEAKER_03 14:02

Yeah, th well from an evolutionary point of view and a neurobiological point of view, we have uh we're hardwired by evolution since we we we're primates, and primates live in in in tribes, basically, groups, and we need our fellow primates to survive. So there's a primitive survival mechanism that hardwires every everybody, including golfers, to to have be overly reliant on peer approval. But from a psychological health standpoint, it's it can be it's a it's a sort of a two-sided coin, right? There's a or if you can say it's a double-edged sword, there's a good side to it in the sense that we we can have healthy, uh close you know, family and and uh uh friendship type relationships. But the flip side of that is if our self-esteem is on the line, we're constantly seeking the approval of others, we're neurotic by definition, right? So psychological health, I believe, is strongly depends on having an incredibly strong belief in your innate self-worth. So super high self-esteem, also known as a strong healthy ego. Yeah, when you when you can attain that level of self-respect and unconditional love for yourself, you don't have that that strong need for approval from others, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Yeah. And is that is that kind of what you went through? Because you were saying you went on this kind of quest really to understand as much as you could about consciousness, about the mind, about you know, I guess how we as humans respond to to whatever, to how how we behave so emotionally, you know, what's going on in our heads, all of the above. But you did that you did that away from golf. Yep. But then whenever you eventually came back, and that that wasn't with the intention of I'm going to apply this to my golf game. That was just because it was something that you really were fascinated by, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Completely. I was fascinated by it. Just I just found it really, even from a very I started getting into consciousness at age five. I'll tell you a funny story about it in a minute. But back to your point. No, I when I quit, I had no intention of ever coming back. And I still think today, if I just haven't hadn't happened to turn on the Masters that April of 1977, maybe I still would have never taken up the game again. There was something about it. I mean, I think I think my wife was watching TV and she just happened to change the channel, and all of a sudden the masters is on. I'm walking by and I see it and I go, Oh my god, that looks like the 13th hole at Augusta. Oh, yeah, it is the 13th hole.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

And I think so many people fell in love with the game of golf having had experiences of watching Augusta on the TV. Like I know, I remember us sitting down around the TV as a family with either maybe the Masters or else the British Open on, and that was like that really helps you develop a real love. And you know, you can you can really experience the the romance of the game through those events.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Yeah, I mean when I saw that and I got the bug, like I said, I literally when it was over, at that time I didn't have a car, I had a little little tiny little motorcycle. I used to drive around the Bay Area, and I drove my motorcycle up to there's a there's a public golf course up in the Berkeley Hills above the camp above above the Berkeley uh University of California campus called Tilden Park. And I I can still remember that first with that old, you know, half-dilapidated five iron that somebody left behind in the lost and found barrel. I hit it about 195 with about a five-yard draw. It's really solid. My very first swing, I thought, and it was like someone shot heroin into my brain. It was like unbelievable. What a great aesthetic experience to picture. Because I'm thinking because I did picture it. I thought, well, I wanted to go here and curve, you know, and draw five yards at the flag. And then I actually produced it and I thought, oh my God, this is the greatest thing a human being can do. I kept feeling so in love with it.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

We agree. We agree with you.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

I thought, oh well, now I'm really hooked. I mean, like there's no and I instantly bought a new set of clubs and got back into the game. It was it was pretty amazing. And that's still why I play. I play for the of the three personality types of identifying which we can talk about. Uh I'm a shot maker. Um and there's there's three types. So shot makers, people shot makers play for the joy, for bliss of picturing a shot in your mind's eye, and then actually pulling it off in reality.

SPEAKER_04 18:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:29

Which is similar to what if you've ever listened to people like uh Pablo Picasso talk about what goes through his mind when he's got a blank canvas in front of him and then he starts applying paint to the canvas. It's kind of like that. There's a creative aspect, deeply creative aspect that's extremely satisfying when you can picture a golf shot in your head and then pull it off. You know, that's a sh that's a shot maker. Then there's competitors. Some some people play golf just because they love to win or shoot a low score. And then the third personality are learners. Some people play golf. I get a lot of people like this as students. They love to work with the teacher, they love to take lessons, they love to learn new information, have the light bulb moments of deep insight. And that's why those guys are gals play. But yeah. What do you think? What are you guys? So, Chris, what are you of those three? You had to pick one.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Um, I I would probably say I'm if it's all right if I could say that I'm a shot maker and I love to learn as well. Obviously, we've got the podcast and we're learning from all these great minds. I'd say um, as a kid growing up and playing, like we were always doing all these different kinds of shots, like dropping the like the right foot back, trying to swing it like a hook round a tree. And I say, like you're saying, that Pablo Picasso kind of painting a picture, and when it does pay off, there is that kind of like dopamine hit that I feel when you hit that shot. Um, and I've actually found in later kind of like when I gave up golf and then I came back into it, I found like the learning style of it has helped me not just in golf but as a human being on that type of level, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Um because I found that it's just helped me be a better kind of like more structured person because golf is so hard and it really teaches you who you are as a person. Um so I'd say that's the I'd pick the two. Um the competitive side, I am a competitive person, but I've found as a like I'm kind of pulling back a little bit from the competitiveness against other people. I'm competitive like within myself, like I really want to be better and like compete against myself, but going against other people has just kind of like left me in a way. Um what would you say, Dave?

SPEAKER_03 20:49

You're kind of by the way, if I can interrupt for one quick second, I'll everybody has all three, and you can you but you when you study your your own, but you go into your heart, so to speak, and ask yourself why do I play, you can or you can rank them in order of importance. So for me, it's shop maker number one, learner number two, competitor number three. Yeah. To me, I never really saw golf as competition. I think partly because and I've talked about this in other podcasts, I grew up in a very rough neighborhood with bullies, and I learned how to do street fighting at a high level of skill early on. So when someone talks about, oh, I you know, I had this match play event, and it was me and them, and we were we were tied with one. I'm thinking, no, no, you're not you're not really competing against another person the way it is when you're in a effing street fight. That's competition. There's something.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

And the streets of sh the streets of Chicago were using.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

To me, I never got to me, I always felt like I was playing the golf course, not the other person. Even in match I mean, a match play, it's more it is more like competition compared to metal play, but but I always felt like I was playing my own inherent tendencies to screw things up. I was playing myself first, and then I was playing the golf course second, and then the field in a metal play event was third, or my opponent in a match play would be third. Um yeah, but anyway, it's it's all everybody has all three. So yeah. So Dave, what do you think? How do you rank them for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Um Well, interesting now that you've said everybody has all three, because what I was about to say is that I think at the moment I'm probably the learner. Uh-huh. And and to be honest, Chris, like I am somebody who like I binge on golf podcasts. I've read copious amounts of golf books. Like, I I you're a learner for sure, then. I I'm all over that. Like I'm I'm genuinely fascinated by that. Almost, I think, to a fault. Like I think you can even if it's really good information, you can overindulge in really good golf information. Um, so I think that's definitely who I am. But then what I was going to say is, but I would really like to be a shop maker and I'd really like to be a competitor, probably in that order.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

Okay. All right. Well, you know, to me it's important to know this. When I work with a new student, this is one of the very first things we talk about. Because I've I need to find out which of those three is the dominant golfing purpose. Because that's good, because I have to edit out. I've got this much information, say, on what I can work, what my knowledge of the game. And if I'm working with someone, say, in a private three-day school, like three, eight-hour days in a row, just being a student, I can only show them this much, like a little tiny amount. But I have to gear that toward what which of those three dominant golfing personality types they are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

And then would you go down that like path of say if I said like I'm the shop maker, like how would you go down the path of like if I said, yeah, just love like shop making, how would you go down that path with me?

SPEAKER_03 23:36

That's a really great question. And it my response is always then that I always frame it like this. So to make because I want to make sure what really matters to them. Here's the here's the here's the sort of thought experiment I could. Suppose it's you and Tiger Woods in a in a two-person best ball, and you get to have and and and you play two days in a row and you shoot 65 both days. And the way you shoot 65 on Monday is it's Tiger's long game, your short game, and your putting on Monday. And then on Tuesday, it's your long game and Tiger's short game and putting. So it's the same result both days, no, no change. Which would be more, which would you prefer? And if you're a shot maker, you're typically going to say, What when I I want to be able to have, you know, in other words, if if if it's the same outcome in terms of score, which is going to be the most meaningful way to shoot a lower score? Uh, and if you pick, if you pick the long game, then you're a shot maker. Meaning you you really care about the quality of the shot. And by the way, it's not that it's not that shot making doesn't apply to some extent to short game and putting. It does. But it's a different it's a different level of intensity. When you're talking about shot making, you're mainly talking your full swing, so say pitching wedge through driver. It means hitting a lot of fairways, not just hitting fairways, but hitting it long off the T with the driver, and then hitting your second shot on the green fairly close to the pin. So you have a good birdie look. That's what shot makers play for, for the aesthetic enjoyment of controlling the ball T to green. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

See, that's interesting because I was thinking that shot making was those kind of delicate chips and the bumps. Because I play a lot of like Lynx golf, and so does Dave. And it's those kind of bump and runs, the kind of like little chip shots where you have to just get it to a certain point and it rolls out. In my head, that's where I was thinking, but it's good to hear that maybe it's the well, not maybe, it's the opposite way around.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's the long game. We're talking about T de Green, the long game. Again, that not that there isn't a create a creative and enjoyable aspect of short game, there is as well. But this a lot of this comes down to how much score matters. And so I'll often say to someone if I think they're a shot maker after I after I do that thought experiment and they tell me that they are a shot maker, I'll then I'll say, well, how how important is it to you to for you to see a significant drop in your average scores, say over the next three months? And if they're truly a shot maker, they'll say, not that great. I don't really care that much in the next 90 days to see any or very little score improvement. But I want I want the quality of the strike to sound louder. I want the sound of compression, that kind of low frequency sound when you compress the back third of the ball. I want the sound of compression. I want to see the ball take off on the proper trajectory. I want it to curve if I'm going to cut it or draw it. I want to make sure make sure it's curving the right amount. They're playing for that aesthetic enjoyment of controlling a difficult shot over a long a fairly long distance.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Yeah. See, the more you're talking, Jim, the more I'm like, I'm more trying to get my score lower in those three months.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think now based on what you're saying now, Jim, I I feel like to Chris' point, I kind of want to reorder these. So I think I'm gonna move competitor higher up in this in terms of its importance because I and to reference our good friend who we keep talking about all the time, Carl Morris, is I think we've kind of fallen in love with the idea of good enough in golf. I love that concept. You know, we we we like hitting a lot of shots that are good enough. They're not great shots, but they're good enough. And you know, I actually now am starting to really, really relish those because I know that that's keeping my scores lower rather than hitting a few great strikes that felt amazing, but then hitting uh quite a few catastrophes and suddenly I've got a couple of triple boogies on my card. You know, that that's that's what is costing me the most, I would say. Okay, before we get back to Jim, we wanted to let you in on something we're really, really excited about. One of the biggest privileges of doing this podcast is we get to spend time with some of the best coaches and most interesting minds in golf. Every conversation leaves Chris and I think, imagine spending a couple of days learning from people like this. So that's exactly what we're hoping to create. We're exploring the idea of launching How Low Can You Go Live Experience this autumn. A premium two-day golf improvement experience in Scotland, combining world-class coaching, great golf, and the chance to spend time with Chris and I and other golfers who are every bit as obsessed with improving as we are. We're still putting the finishing touches together and finalizing details, but spaces will be limited. If this sounds like something you'd love to be a part of, we would really like to hear from you. Just click the link in the show notes and join the priority list. There is absolutely no commitment. It simply helps us understand demand and means you'll be among the first to hear when we announce more details. If you're serious about improving your golf, we genuinely think you're gonna love what we're building. Okay, let's get back to Jim Waldron.

SPEAKER_03 29:15

Well, let's talk about that because look, let's assume that you're both accurate, that what matters really between the aesthetics of hitting a good shot in the long game versus shooting a lower score is well I even frame it, I'll say I'll say to someone, I know how to help you hit, I know how to help you shoot lower scores right away or for within say a month. Uh and there's various ways to do that. And it which ways we would decide on would depend basically on what your current skill level is, your current handicap. But there is some general knowledge. Are you guys familiar with the book and movie Moneyball, the Brad Pitt movie?

SPEAKER_04 29:51

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:52

So that's called sports metrics. It's a kind of a new field. There's three guys here in the States who are who actually work with tour pros, most famous being Mark Brody, who wrote a book about 10 years ago. I think it's called Every Shot Counts or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

Yes, subsidy.

SPEAKER_03 30:05

They're all agreeing what we know what predicts a lower score. If you're good enough skill physical skill-wise to break 100, so from someone who can shoot 99 is their average score, up to and including a tour pro, we know what the number one skill is to shoot a lower than average score for the day. Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

unknown 30:24

No.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

Greens and regulations. So total ball striking.

SPEAKER_04 30:27

Oh no. I'm way up.

SPEAKER_03 30:29

Yeah, they're back to the long game, right? So total ball striking basically is a combination of two skills. It's it's being really good with the driver, hitting a fairly high number of fairways. So on a typical golf course with 14 par fours and par fives, if you were really good with the driver, you'd be hitting it uh, you know, 11-ish or more fairways. Because if you can hit the fairway, obviously your chance of hitting it on the green, especially close enough for a true birdie look, goes way up. But also, even more important than accuracy on that aspect of it is hitting the ball further. If you could, if I can get a student to very quickly add, say, 20 yards of carry to their driver and maybe five yards of rollout. So they're so they're hitting it 25 yards further total distance. That means they're going to be hitting eight iron into the green instead of six iron, like they are currently. If you're hitting eight iron into the green instead of six iron, your odds of having it on the green number one go way up, and your odds of having a decent birdie look also go way up. So that's part of the part of the total ball striking. The other part is how good you are at your your second shot on a par four or even on a par five, or at worst, how good you are in your third shot on a long par five, and how good you are on par threes off the T. So basically how good you are at your iron game is the other part of that. Now, this is what the the and I don't doubt these guys are accurate. This this is what intuitively, to me, at least I've known this my whole life. Most people I respect in the industry know this as well. The problem with it though is what does it mean? It means you have to have a really highly functional golf swing to be good at that metric of long off the tee and real relatively accurate and really good at hitting greens with your iron game. So it gets us back to square one. Well, the problem is if you're like most amateur golfers, to be blunt, your swing sucks. It's not good. It's not good enough to be good at the stat, right? Which means it is unless you're willing to go through a long period of a year or more of working closely with a teacher and fixing it and making the swing closer to how a Turpro swings the club, which by the way, is fundamentally easier to do than what mid to high handicaps are doing. Yeah? Yeah. That makes sense. So the mid to high handicap both swing has unnecessary moving body parts that are not contributing to a successful impact.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Lots of compensations that they've learned in some weird way over time. But if somebody was like to swing like a Tur pro, that that movement is actually, I think what you're saying is that movement that the TurPro is making is actually an easier movement to learn.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

The only thing they do that's hard to do is they spin their bodies. Their pivot RPM speed is insanely fast compared to what most people can do. And they can do it and stay in balance. And that the number one most important swing fundamental, I believe, and and Hogan agrees with me, is to s is to stay in balance, to have rock solid balance. So to spin as fast as they do to generate club ed speed and stay in balance, and to have proper release timing, you know, not too early on the release, not too late. That takes really much more uh high level of skill than the average golfer will ever have, right? But you don't but you don't have to swing, you don't have to turn your body as fast as a tour pro. Especially if you're playing the right set of T's for your for your how far you hit it and your age, right? If you're playing the right set of T's, the golf course should not be insanely long. You should still be able to hit a lot, a lot of greens of regulation, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

And that brings us what you were talking about perfectly onto so when we were golfing with uh Mark Himmelman just there, he had a look at our swings and basically made some slight adjustments. Okay. And one of the the adjustments that he made for myself was that he felt that my my club face was too closed, and then on impact, I was like, I play a draw, but it was just going left and you were hitting a pull hook instead of a big hook. Yeah, exactly. So he said that he wanted me to obviously just open like reset the hands, but he also said that he wants me to kind of adopt a Tommy Fleetwood sawed-off swing. Um so for me in just like in the middle of the season, would you say maybe park that till the end of the season? Or if I came in to you as a student and said, like, listen, I'm wanting to try and make this change swing, like how would you approach me as I came in? Yeah, I get that question a lot.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Yeah, mid-season, like mid-season, like we're sort of we're we're on the fly here, you know?

SPEAKER_03 35:04

Oh, this is so interesting because this I love these questions, by the way. This is what's going through the mind of a really good teacher. Uh, and I have conversations with people who I respect in the industry all the time. So I know kind of how they think, and obviously I know how I think. And what a good teacher is always trying to do based on input from the student is to figure out what's this guy or gal really capable of doing in terms of improving their golf skills in both the physical side and the mental side. And in general, for most people, there are exceptions, the physical skill side is far more difficult to be good at relatively quickly compared to the mental side. I mean, for the amount of money, not not for the amount of time and energy invested in the mental side versus the physical side, you're gonna see a far greater uh likelihood of significantly lower scores if you don't do anything on the physical skill side and work on the mental side. If your physical skills are good enough to shoot around 95 or better, that for me, but my my belief is you should always if someone wants to get really good at shooting lower scores as fast as possible, and their physical skills are good enough to shoot roughly 95 or better, to me it's a no-brainer. The mental side's the quickest.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Okay. That will be me then. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah, that's let's do that.

SPEAKER_03 36:23

Sign me up for that, Tim. Okay. The slowest, the one that takes the slowest amount of time to get significant return on your investment, our movement pattern changes. Once the swing starts, it's difficult to change movement patterns. Even for top athletes, top tour pros I work with, they find it difficult, right?

unknown 36:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:42

So I would say rec I would recommend don't do any movement pattern training in mid-season. Save that for the off-season.

unknown 36:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Okay. Yeah, because you've seen people like Ricky Fowler don't made a swing change and that just he kind of fell away and then came back and stuff like that. But yeah, the mental side.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

But there are there are physical, there are aspects of the golf swing that don't involve movement patterns, which we could talk about. By the way, this is Hogan's stuff. He separated the physical skills of golf, which primarily the long game, the golf swing, into two categories, which you call dynamics versus mechanics. Dynamics is stuff you can do relatively easily and fairly quickly at normal speed, with or without a ball. And mechanics, our movement pattern training, that in Hogan's belief, and I I share that belief, though that stuff, the difficult stuff, should only be done with a few exceptions, uh away from a golf ball at slow motion speed in front, mainly doing mirror work. Yeah. And and and preferably off-season.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Is that what you're saying as well, Jim?

SPEAKER_03 37:45

Correct. Preferably off-season. Yeah. So for example, if I work with a mid-handicapper, I have a hierarchy of fundamental skills that I believe are important. Uh I somewhat tweak this a little bit depending on what their current skill, are they high handicap, a mid-handicap, a low handicap, or a plus handicap. So there there is some tweaking it, but in general, they're they're universal or near universal hierarchy, which is, again, a lot of it based on Hogan. And the first one is what's called baseline balance. When I when I first work with a new student, and I have an inkling that we're probably gonna, the person's probably gonna want to improve some aspect of that total ball striking stat, like we talked about a few minutes ago, then the first thing I check is are they in balance at setup? And almost close to 100% of people are not in balance at setup. For those listening, there's about a 95% chance you're setting up off balance at setup toward your toes. It's that common. Right? Okay. And then I watch them swing and I look and see are they are they is their balance getting worse once the motion starts? And then can they finish like a statue, like like Rory does, with no body wobble? And very few amateurs meet up meet those criteria. Most people are massively off balance and don't even realize it. Yeah. Does that make sense? And then the second thing is baseline tempo, which means most people uh take too long to finish the swing. So from start to finish, if you're reasonably fit and healthy, and you're age, say, 70 or younger, uh, between say age 12 and 70, the the slowest you should be from start to finish is 1.5 seconds. And if you're if you're strong and you're male and you're in that sort of like 15 years old to maybe 50 year old range, you're pro you're probably gonna be more like one and a quarter seconds from start to finish. But what do what what are most mid to high handicap amateurs? They're in they're in the one and three quarter second range or even slower. So I'm always trying to get people to pivot faster, to spin their body faster. Yeah. Because if you're too slow, all all kinds of bad things happen downstream because of the too slow a tempo. Like bad movement patterns happen because of the too slow a tempo. Not to mention, you know, slow club bed speed, no distance, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Yeah. And just on that quickly, is I think so many of us, maybe not you, Chris, maybe you were lucky, but I think so many of us were raised on this swing easy, swing slow, you know, and that might have contributed to what you're talking about there.

SPEAKER_03 40:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:24

Yeah. About 10% of my amateurs, if they're mid to high handicappers, are too quick. They're just too fast. And by the way, just for those listening, I'm not talking about clubhead speed or arm and hand speed. I'm talking about the speed of your pivot. If you took the hands and arms and club away, how fast are you doing that from start to finish? And most people are too slow with their pivot, but often mid to high handicaps are too fast with their arm. Their arm speed, their arm speed's too fast, and their pivot speed is too slow. They they generally go together for the mid to high handicaps. So I'm always trying to get people to slow down their arm speed and speed up their pivot speed. So they're more synchronized, right?

SPEAKER_04 41:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

And on the dynamic side of things, what you were talking about, what Hogan said, which I'm hopeful that the tip that I was given by Mark Immelman, I feel Chris, that maybe falls into this more kind of dynamic uh bucket, if you like, because what he was getting me to do, Jim, was he could see that I was kind of and and other instructors have shown me this before, is that I was kind of swaying towards the target and kind of lunging a little bit and and dipping and losing balance. You're talking about the backswit or the forward swing? Forward swing. So in in my downswing, I kind of I kind of lunged towards the the target a bit. Well, towards the exactly lateral sway, right? Um and what he was getting me to do, he was just just telling me, get your feet together and just swing that club, let's feel that club release, feel that club release. And then I was stepping in, he was just like, go really narrow stance and just step in and and and uh and hold your finish. And yeah, like we were seeing some good results there, Chris. And that to me, Jim, I feel like that mid-season is something that I could implement. That I don't think I need to go away to an off-season and hit thousands of balls every day with my feet together.

SPEAKER_03 42:17

No, no, that's that's dynamic. That has to do with with basically balance. That's a balance, it's it's obviously it's a movement pattern to an extent, but it's it's mostly on the balanced side of the equation. What I would do if if I were with you, Dave, I've been doing this forever, but um this is called the the opposing forces principle. A lot of the way Asian martial arts, ballet dancing, modern dance, uh gymnastics, and a few other sports are taught is based on a principle called the principle of opposing forces. Have you ever heard of that before?

SPEAKER_01 42:48

I've heard of it, but I don't know what it means.

SPEAKER_03 42:51

Okay. It was big, it was a big aspect of Bruce Lee's understanding of how to how to learn and teach uh and execute kung fu. But your flaw, which we're see- I see a lot of it. In fact, it's it's if your handicap is right around 12 or higher, there's a pretty good chance you have it. Um it's gotten to be a pet peeve of mine in the last couple of years because Scotty Sheffro actually does that flaw in his call switch. But he does it a little bit, just to, you know, like this way just before impact, uh, like one to two inches, maybe. It's one reason he hits down, kind of he's kind of steep coming into impact, takes a big divot. Um, I mean, I would never change it if if if he came to me for lessons. I'd be I'd be insane to change it, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Best player in the world.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

Yeah, but mid-to-high handicaps are doing it too much. And you know, uh the way I was taught as a kid to do to solve this issue, which is a big one, which is you guys know, we have, if you don't count the putter, we have 13 different tools that we play the game. Think of any other sport with third there are 13 different size tennis rackets or 13 different baseball bats or you know, or 13 different sizes of race cars, you differ with different different motors, different speeds. So that this is partly why golf is different. So we have basically we got several different categories of different low points angles, angles of attack, right? Yeah. Which are driver's a category by itself, then you got fairway woods, long irons, hybrids, then you got mid irons and short irons, and then you got wedges. So we got we got four different categories, which require different angles of attack and low point, therefore different types of divot. So there's a dirt divot, which would be the wedges and the short irons, you got a scuff divot, which would be your long irons and hybrids, you got a brush divot, which is your three-wood, and you got no divot because you should be hitting up very slightly on a driver with the ball and a T. So one of the principles that which I grew up with, and I still teach this, is it's far easier to adjust for those four different low points, angles of attacks at setup by learning four different types of setups to fit one each of those four categories than try to somehow manufacture sliding your chest just the right amount. This is we're talking about a movement pattern that takes place in like a 50th of a second right before impact. Why would you why would you do that? That's crazy, right? So the way I teach it is you you position your sternum at setup where you want it to be, more or less at impact. So with a driver, I'm gonna have a little more weight over here, 10% more weight on my right foot. I'm gonna be tilting 15 degrees to the right because that's where my sternum has to be at impact with the driver. When I'm hitting a distance wedge, like a like a like a full or three quarter or a half gap wedge, sand wedge, lob wedge, my weight's 10% left, and I've got my sternum where it needs to be for the low point to be three inches in front of the ball and a quarter inch into the dirt. So you say you you create your you create the low point angle of attack by adjusting your setup, right? Back to the opposing forces thing. So what I would do is Dave, I would I would get you to go to the halfway down position, which is here, right? And I would stand to this to I would stand to your right next to you on your uh target side of your body and I would grab onto the shaft just below the grip with one hand and I would say in slow motion go go to impact. So you would start to go to impact, and I'd have my other hand pressing on your sternum this way, I would push your sternum this way and pull your hands and the golf club toward the target simultaneously, like this. And I would say, feel like your sternum stays back while your hands and club head go toward the target. So there's a force going into the club head pulling you along with the club head in the direction of the target, like this. That's why people sway. You have to learn to resist that. You can't go with the energy of the club head post-impact. You have to stay back with your upper body like this.

SPEAKER_01 46:53

And that resistance creates more force, I presume.

SPEAKER_03 46:58

It well creates more force going into the club bed, but mainly it allows you to stay centered and imbalance so you can spin your body and have the release happen properly. Yeah?

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Yes, and for those listening, like you know, it's maybe difficult to picture what Jim's doing. So we do have videos of this and we will release shorts of this. But Chris, that what Jim just showed us there, I think looks very like the position I was getting into whenever Mark was showing me this drill. With my because my sternum felt like it was way more centered, if you like, Jim, right? Correct. That's right. And it was kind of really turning through, but not in a kind of lungy, kind of spinny way. If that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 47:47

The spine stays absolutely stationary in 3D space while your body rotates around it. That's what's that's what should be happening, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

And I absolutely love these different concepts of the different types of divots that you should hit with each club. I want my son to learn this. I because I I'm a firm believer, I don't know if I'm sure you probably will agree with this, James. So many people are bad at golf because they've been given the wrong concepts from 100% from the outset. And so I'm determined with my son who's 12 and he's really getting into golf. Like, I'm trying to make sure he's around people like the really good pros at our club, yeah, to make sure that he is taught the right concepts. And I feel like this concept of like here's the what did you say, four different types of divot that you should have.

SPEAKER_03 48:36

So we could go in more in depth if you want. I could give you more precise information if you'd like, which is I think is fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

I think it's brilliant, Jim. And we would love to if you have anything, like any links to any of this stuff that you've got that we could share in the show notes. I I think that would be really useful for everyone to take away as well.

SPEAKER_03 48:54

Yeah, I I have obviously I have a book I I've written 25 years ago on the golf swing. Um, we don't have any pictures of it. We have we have a verbal description, but I'll give you that now, which is the type of divots are the low point should be on six iron through lob wedge, any of those, so so you any of those shots. I'm not talking about chipping, but I'm talking about full shots or or three-quarters to full full full back swing, normal tempo, so power sort of power swing tempo. Those clubs are designed to take a divot about a quarter inch deep into the dirt. And the divot, if it's if it's a normal moisture content fair week, driving ranges are different because driving ranges they generally use more sand than the soil tends to be sandier. So on a driving range, the divot won't be as long or as deep. But on the golf horse, the divot's gonna be around six to eight inches long, and the low point's gonna be three to four inches, again, the the midpoint of the divot, right? And that low point should be about a quarter inch, no, no, no deeper than a quarter inch and no less than a quarter inch for ideal contact for those clubs, right? And then your your long iron hybrid furrower woods, the divot's gonna be three inches long, half the size, and you're gonna you're either gonna expose the roots, the brown roots will be exposed, or you might even expose the dirt but not take any dirt. That's called a scuff divot. By the way, the previous category called a dirt divot. There's a sound along with it. So when you do a dirt divot, it sounds like this. It sounds like like uh clack thud. So clack is the ball first contact, thud is the is the quarter inch into the dirt. A scuff divot sounds like clack, ch like striking a match, like ch sound, right? And the low point's an inch and a half, so the divot's three inches long, and the low point's an inch and a half, again, the center of the divot, and again, the bottom of the low point's gonna be at the root, or maybe you'll take 100% of the root but not take any dirt. So that's your long irons hybrids, everything uh, and your five wood, seven wood, nine wood. The three wood is an animal all to itself. The three wood, the low point should be directly underneath the ball for ideal flight, right? It's kind of hard to produce it. It's the hardest club in the bag to hit for sure. In the modern era, since we don't have one and two irons anymore, is a well-struck three wood. So the low point's directly underneath the ball, and you know, only about a quarter inch or less below the top of the of the grass. So it's a you're making a very level blow, or very, very slightly downward at the most with a three-wheel. So we call that a brush divot, and that sounds like like clack, sound like a brush sound.

unknown 51:39

Right?

SPEAKER_03 51:40

And of course, with a driver, if you want to kind of get sort of a medium high launch, like in that 12 to 14 degree launch, 2,500 uh RPMs of back spin, you know the low point should be an inch or two behind the ball.

SPEAKER_04 51:52

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_03 51:55

Yeah. Again, we can we can present all of that by simply positioning our body weight at a certain point at setup with a proper amount of tilting our torso to the right. We never tilt left in golf if you're riding a golfer. So there's either no like on a like on a gap sand and lob wedge, we would have no tilt to the right.

unknown 52:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:13

On six, seven, eight, nine, iron cutching wedge, we'd have five degrees of tilt.

unknown 52:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:17

On a hybrid long iron furrowed, we'd have 10 degrees of of tilt. Our weight would be 50-50. Yeah?

unknown 52:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:23

So the combination of the side tilt and the weight distribution, obviously the ball position as well, that's how you attain the proper low point angle. You don't do it mid-swing. It's all happening too fast mid-swing to control it.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Yes. Yes. That is so interesting. And like I said earlier, if you do have anything, you know, on your site or anything, Jim, that can demonstrate that. I like personally from my perspective, I would I want to go and try all of this out straight away. Because I think so many of us hear things like, oh, take a divot with your irons. And okay, as you just said, you know, that that's that's something, of course, we should probably do. But this different type, you know, I think so many of us, myself included, would just stand there with all different all irons, maybe wedges included, and just be like, okay, divot, any divot, let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 53:15

No, no, you have to have a clear, like you said, the mental concepts create body movement patterns. So you have to get your to have the proper body movement patterns to create the proper low point angle attack, it starts with the proper picture, the proper mental picture in your mind. And not just in your intellectual mind. That helps a little. You have to have it in your unconscious, your so-called creative, unconscious, or intuitive mind. That's where the mental pictures really matter, you know?

SPEAKER_01 53:39

And and do you do you find, sorry, Chris, I'll I just uh I'm getting quite excited about some of this. I'll pass over to you in just a second. Yeah, no worries. Do you find the way you talked about at the start, which I love, and I think most coaches should do this, is that you kind of profile students in a way, you try and get an understanding of what type of student they are.

SPEAKER_03 53:59

It's like an FBI serial killer profile buffer.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

But I think that's so key because everybody's got their own way of approaching things. Anyway, do you find that maybe you will get a student who is quite an is it the word auditory if they learn by listening if or producing sounds? So somebody quite musical, like myself, I I'm I I'm musical, right? And whenever you start giving me those sounds, and I'm thinking, right, I could try and produce those sounds with this instrument, that might click with me. But then you might get someone else who you just said is quite visual, who if you just say this kind of thing is what you want, or else you might have somebody who's who's very verbal. So if what I love what you said as well, where you're a dirt, as soon as you started saying wedges, dirt divot, I got it. I was like, I get that. As soon as you said that's a brush divot with the other, with those longer irons, is that what you said? Um I I got that as well. So but I guess my point is do you get different profile of students who will tap into those different means, those different channels of the room?

SPEAKER_03 55:00

That's a common belief fact. Um back in in the 90s when I took my NLP training, that was considered to be almost like sacrosancing. But there's been some fairly recent research in modern neuroscience that's kind of uh proven it's mostly a myth, meaning, yes, you're definitely born. You're you're we'll probably eventually we'll probably find a gene on the on the human genome that is geared toward which of those three primary sensory channels are you do you have an inherent neurological bias toward? That's probably true to an extent, but it it's the idea that it's such a strong bias that that that's the only way or that's the primary way you can learn, I think is a myth. So for example, it's much more about what is the essential nature, like what is the content that you're trying to learn. Uh so for example, if you're taking a math class, math by its very nature is visual. If you're taking a music class, that's by its very nature, it's auditory. If you're taking a sports class, that's by very nature kinesthetic. So the idea that you're taking a class in, say, gymnastics, and because you're you have a this bias toward visual learning that you're only going to be able to learn your best by being in visual, that's pretty much been proven to be a myth. Yeah? Right, okay. Okay. And I don't I tell my students, I go, look, the first thing you have to understand is this, you're, you're trying, you're hiring me to help you learn a better movement pattern or series of movement patterns in the golf swing, right? That by its very nature is a kinesthetic, primarily a kinesthetic endeavor. It doesn't mean there isn't an auditory component to it and a visual component. There is in the early stages, i.e., standing in front of a mirror, looking at yourself and knowing what it should look like with your body in club positions at sec at six different segments of the swing. That's obviously visual, right?

SPEAKER_04 56:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

But if you're if you're all as we I think we all know, if you're trying to picture what your body looks like at a point in the swing that takes place in a 50th of a second, all I can say is if you want to get the yips, do that. In other words, we have to perform sports from a kinesthetic mindset, not a visual mindset, not an auditory mindset by its very nature. And if we have to take a class in in math or in engineering, we're gonna be in visual or visual mindset. If we're taking a music class, we're gonna be in auditory mindset. It's kind of like that, actually.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

One of those guests who makes you stop. Rethink how you approach golf improvement. Maybe rethink how you approach life in general. So many ideas that challenge traditional thinking around practice and learning and getting better golf. That's exactly why we love doing this podcast, bringing you conversations with people who make us see the game differently. So huge thank you to Jim for joining us. We'll be back with part two very soon where we will dive even deeper into some of these ideas. Don't forget if you're interested in joining our first ever How Low Can You Go live golf improvement experience in Scotland this autumn, just head to the link in the show notes and join our priority list. We would love to have you be part of building this with us, but spaces for this founder event are going to be really limited. Thank you all again for listening, and we will see you next time on How Low Can You Go.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

How low can you go?