No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1113: Listener Questions with Dr. Sasho MacKenzie

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

A few weeks ago Soly put a call out on the Refuge for a list of listener questions for Dr. Sasho MacKenzie. We got some fantastic responses and what was planned as an add-on to a Sunday pod became more than enough material for a standalone episode. From his research on putting to the Stack wedge program and advice on improving during the cold weather months, we cover a ton of ground and hope you enjoy the chat. Join us in our support of the Evans Scholars Foundation: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nolayingup.com/esf⁠ Support our Sponsors: Titleist Lagoon Whoop If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Nest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nolayingup.com/join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sali here.

Got a fun winter episode for you here. Dr. Sasha McKenzie was a great guest. The science of putting podcast that we did last fall was a massive hit. One of our top downloads, actually, of Q4. So here's what I did. I pinged him and I said, all right, we'd love to, you know, kind of ask you some winter training questions, some frequently asked questions. I pulled a bunch of people on our, on the refuge, some of our nest members.

What would you want to ask Dr. Sasha McKenzie? And I worked a bunch of those questions into it on drills that can be doing, you know, a bunch of different things of how you can get better in the winter, how some technology factors in and the science of a lot of different things in golf. This was originally planned to be about a 20 to 30 minute hit that we were going to tack onto a Sunday pod about halfway through recording this with him. said, this is a full episode. We're going to keep going. And I'm sorry to take up more of your time than I originally

asked for, but there's just too much good stuff going on here. We ended up getting into a lot of different things that I was not expecting to get into. But there's just a really, really, really interesting guy, a great source of knowledge. And I hope he can continue to have him back regularly on the podcast because he's got a lot, a lot of things to say about the game of golf. And I've learned something every single time I talk to him. So as mentioned, we're going to talk a little bit about how to get better at the game of golf, some things that might help you in there on the equipment.

front one of those things is going to be the golf ball tour players say this all the time it all starts with the golf ball that's the one piece of equipment you use on every shot tideless gives golfers several ways to find the right ball model including their launch monitor based golf ball fitting app it's a very efficient and accurate way to determine your golf ball model in just a few swings you can do indoor or outdoor with a certified fitter we also cannot overstate the importance of club fitting if you're investing in new equipment you want to get it right there's so much to dial in head models hazel settings weight positions, lie angles, shaft weight, flex, length, wedge grinds, club gaping, descent angles. It's not just, it's just very unrealistic to try to go on that alone and get results.

Again, some of the things I've learned in fitting, I take with me and, and I would never try to reapply. I always want to get refit into clubs when we are getting, you know, new equipment because, you know, you can learn a little bit about it, but I have no idea how to apply this. I have no idea to get my descent angle proper between my five iron and six iron and figuring out where I should be transitioning in a combo set. that stuff, leave it up to a fitter. Go get fit. Check out the fitting locator at tidalus.com to find one without any further delay. Here is our discussion with Sasha McKenzie. All right, a bunch of great

questions to get to. First one, I'm going to ask you. I'm very curious where your mind goes on this. What is the biggest myth you hear from either good players, not good players, that the data simply doesn't support. I think we're, you know, we've made our way past drive for show, put for dough in some capacities, but what do you still hear out there that you just as soon as you hear it say, oh, that's wrong. Something that, you know, I think it seems super intuitive, but the data doesn't support. Maybe even I kind of initially thought there's probably something here is something called rate of closure.

A lot of people would call it face stability. You know, so if someone says, oh, a better player has a really stable face and they'll show, you know, a video of the club head going through impact and like, look, this face is really stable. So I would define face stability using the concept of rate of closure. That's how fast the face angle is changing through impact. You know, say a foot before the ball and the foot after the ball. In general, the idea, the concept is, hey, let's keep it as square for as long as possible.

You know, I think Mo Norman was a golfer. Yeah, I was like three feet behind and, you know. But I've collected a lot of data in my lab. let's do a correlation between how fast a face is closing and dispersion or handicap. Ping is always doing club testing and they know how good the players are. They also track what the ball is doing and they can compare it to rate of closure. They've got, I don't know, close to 100 tour players in their database. And the correlation is extremely low to non-existent.

So you might have a really low rate of closure player like a Victor Hovland. Compare him to someone like. a Matt Fitzpatrick, two players that I work closely with, Matt tends to have a higher rate of closure. They both can have extreme control over the face in terms of what they wanted to do. To me, that would be the number one thing that people believe in, and that goes with putting as well. So, you know, I think Tiger famously had a lot of face closing through impact. Very good putter. I've had people in my lab who have zero.

They could be a good putter or a terrible putter. So that's kind of a non-intuitive one. Happy to expand on that or, you know. Well, just a branch off that. I remember reading or hearing somewhere about Tiger specifically. Like he hit, it was described as he hit little poles with his putts, even in his prime when he was putting really well. And this is maybe a little bit backwards too.

But like I feel like sometimes I put my best when I have something imperfect like that going on, but it's predictable, right? Do you do the best putters have a, what we would maybe consider a flaw in the fact that it's not perfectly neutral, but they use that to their advantage? Like, is it easier to kind of make an error in one direction in a consistent form? I wouldn't say it's easier, but I think you calibrate to that error. You know, so if let's say you've got a bias in your aim, you know, I think Brad Faxon is a good example of this, of kind of a famous example, where, you know, you say, hey, where do you think your putter's in? well, let's say it's a straight put. Oh, I mean right at the hole.

If you think that and when you hit the ball, you know, the face squares up and it closes two degrees relative to where you were at set up, but you do it every time. Who cares? Especially if you believe at address that you're, you know, pointed at the hole. So in that case, you're like, oh, he's, you know, he's pulling putts. There are very few elite putters that are, you know, zero aim bias, you know. but they have a consistent, you know, in the case you said, consistently pull the pot. The problem with that is that if you do drift, then it's tougher to get back to odd numbers.

You know, you know, like so with my own kids, I think it's just, it's something you calibrate to. There's not something inherent in your body that you're like, oh, no, I need to set up this way. So my preference for young kids, I wouldn't change anybody if they're already a good putter. but while you're learning it, sure helps if everything's zeroed out, you know. So if your toe line is square to where you want to go, if the face is square to where you want to go, and then if you drift away from that, well, we just know we're trying to get you back to zero. We're trying to get you back to a place where your feet are four degrees open and your face is two degrees closed. It's set up.

And that's the place you put best from that makes setting up a little station really challenging. What does forward press do in putting? Is that a good thing, typically a good thing? That is a phenomenal question. And there's a lot of intricacies to it. There's a little bit of, hey, it's nice to have continuous motion before you start something a little, a little hitch. But that doesn't explain all of it because you would see some people reverse press, or you would see some people lift their hands,

but the forward press is by far the most common move. It's also interesting if you notice what lab golfers tend to do with their grip. Lab putters tend to have the press grip, that slanted grip, familiar with that, Sully. It's effectively doing what a forward press does. Because they keep the center mass of the putter pretty much in line with the shafts, zero torque, they bend their grip so that now that puts the center of mass behind where the forces are actually being applied to the grip. You tend to be more, the best theory hypothesis I can give is you tend to be more repeatable

if you are pulling something. Like I may have said this before, if you're pushing a bellhop cart down the hallway and I'm pulling it, I'm winning if I pull it. So if during the forward stroke and a pot, if the center mass is trailing and it gets things start to go wonky, then there's some self-correction there. Things are going to try to line up with the direction I'm pulling. If I'm pushing it, so if I did a reverse press, and now I'm pushing that center of mass in the stroke, now as the center of mass gets misaligned, it's going to get more misaligned, right? It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I think I need to implement a little forward press.

and now you're kind of setting yourself up throughout the stroke to be pulling that center of mass. Great question. I think I need to implement a little bit more forward press on the showries right now. We got a bunch of great questions from Nest members. I'm going to start this one with T Gates. He said, as a big putter nerd, I'm really interested in what you could reveal about that study

that as I've experimented with some putters with a lot of offset. Does a putter with offset or onset have more effect on aim bias or the actual stroke path and release? definitely aim bias, but that aim bias persists all the way to impact. So if you have a putter that's offset, that's going to change your alignment, but you deliver that alignment so that that face angle persists. And it even can wash out some very important putter features that would influence the stroke. So you might have a toe hang putter that's tending to lead.

the face open, but you might be able to wash that out with changing the offset of the putter. So even if you have putters that have, you know, different moment of inertia, is different things going on that you should, that should influence the stroke. That that aim bias is a tough one to get over due to the offset. The offset doesn't do very much at all to what you're doing with stroke. And I've actually seen in my lab when I would do the three different offsets with putters, people change their setup. So it's not just like at the hands. you know people actually set up to the ball their heads in a different position their body's in a different position relative to the ball it's pretty wild it wasn't i've always struggled with toe hang

putters and i couldn't tell you why till i again i can't really read your papers i don't i don't speak that language but i i got conclusion wise i read it the in terms of like you're more likely to leave the face open on a toe hang putter maybe that's obvious to a lot of people but i'm not that technologically savvy i'm like oh my gosh i miss three footers right all the time with with the when i had a tow-hang putter. It is not obvious. And before I did that study, the vast majority of putter companies were selling the idea that a towing putter would actually result in a pole.

And one of the interesting things is, since we brought it up earlier, I wouldn't have mentioned it. If not, the rate of closure is higher with a tow-hang putter. So that center mass of the putters off the shaft out towards the toe, when you start the forward stroke, it actually results in a lag. face kind of swings open more in transition. And then as you get near the ball, it's like racing to catch up. So the rate of closure is higher with the toe hang putter. So it's closing faster, but never quite gets there. It's more that seems like less margin for error there. Because I could

miss them both ways too with the toe, you know, if you're trying to, oh, I'm fear and missing it right. Like, you know, you shut that face a little easier. Right. You know, for, for me, what it comes down to, it's very individualistic. Some people really like that feel. They need that. They kinesthetic sense of where the face is that the toe hang putter provides. If you have a face balance zero torque, you can't get a sense of where the putter is. Yeah. Where is the face pointing right now? Now, there's lots of golfers who I don't want to know.

I would like to set up. I don't want to feel anything. I want to just add some speed to this putter and know that the face angle is going to be where the face angle is. I don't want the feel of that. Joe Bu, 415 said, has putter technology evolved to the point where? where it statistically makes no sense to use a traditional blade over a mallet? Absolutely not.

In fact, if you just used a putting robot, you would say blades are better, especially like an answer style blade where you've got perimeter weighting. Believe it or not, you can get moments of inertia. So that's like resistance to twisting, similar levels between a blade and a mallet. And if you do match them, the blade is going to do a much better job keeping the ball starting online if you do hit it off center. I've done this in my lab.

There's Carlson published a paper in 2006, clearly showing this is the one that I often cite in terms of, you know, where you hit in the face, it doesn't really matter that much. The perimeter weighted blade performed much better than the mallet in directional error. So no, definitely not. And especially when you consider individual characteristics, the Blabel perform better. In fact, you know, I've had lots of conversations with a club designer, golf science researcher, Eric Kenrickson about, you know, well, so what is it with the mallets? You know, if there's no real benefit from the impact physics, why be drawn to it? And for some people, mallets help help the delivery of the club head. that's the conclusion we come to.

So most people think, oh, this giant head, great, I could hit it off the toe or the heel. Things are going to be better. No, that's not the case. Some people set up better with a mallet. Some people, it matches their stroke better. But definitely blades aren't going anywhere. You also ask, are custom putter shafts pure marketing upsell? Or do you see a tangible difference in the stats with custom putter shafts?

Yeah, I, you know, I don't like to do anything to harm the industry, but I've seen nothing. I'm probably the only person in the world that's measured the influence of things like putter shaft stiffness on face deflection. So in my lab, I measured, you know, if you get a really stiff putter shaft versus a flexible putter shaft, what's happening to the dynamics, you know? I mean, you'd have to squint really hard to even come up with a theory for me why that would matter. I've never seen anything.

Does it, because like I've used putter shafts that, you know, have claimed to use some kind of technology in it. And it, maybe that played a good mental trick on my mind, but it, my stroke felt that, you know, can, can the, can the, can the shaft really affect your actual stroke? And I know you've kind of, part of the heads up putting discussion we had was that the stroke isn't as a nearly as important as, as the face angle at impact, of course. But, um, but, I think, I think people can confuse the two things too. Stroke and face awareness at impact can kind of be the same thing in some people's minds. You're not talking about the direction of the stroke, but you're just, how do we get the club face?

You know, can technology help me get the club face to where I want it at impact is kind of my wordy, mouthy question there. Yeah, there's definitely nothing in my opinion that you can systematically do to help everybody with a putter shaft. So you go, let's go super duper stiff. You know, I compare everything under the sun, super stiff compared to flexible. There's nothing there. Now, you might, it might feel better to you, right? And that might have to do maybe more with impact vibrations, right?

And then you project that over the rest of the stroke, but you hit it. You're like, wow, that sounds great. It feels great. Hey, you're probably going to put better with it. That's probably where I would put my money if there was ever a distance. If you come into the lab solid and I was like, wow, you put better with this putter with this particular shaft, that's where I would go. you know, I did run once, this is if you have 39 seconds.

There was a fascinating study that I did run comparing shaft stiffness. And we had built two identical putters, one of the super stiff shaft, one at a flexible shaft, and different lie angle. So they were customized to the individual that they came in, right, in terms of length and everything. But hey, I found that this one particular stiff shaft was making more putts. and so okay why we measure everything were people delivering it with better putter head speed were people delivering it with less face angle variation more like why are the why are more statistics and more putts going in and it came down to most people if they were hitting this

11 foot putt that I was testing were not hitting at the optimal speed they were hitting general putts too slow the average person that came in here was kind of trying to dye it in the hole Okay. And therefore, if anything affected the ball speed at the hole to, to an extent that it slowed the ball down, less putts went in. So if you're dyeing everything in, I gave you a putter that tended to have the ball going slower at the hole, you make less putts. Even though when you're trying to do a putter test, when you think these two heads, everything is identical both these putters except the shaft, there was a 0.75 difference in, loft. And it's, it's, I could only figure that after the fact, I had to like set up with lasers. I was like, what's going on? Balls are launching at the same speed. There's a little more back spin and the

ball's going slower at the hole. So it's just launching it a little bit higher. And then because everybody was on the edge of the optimal speed, they were putting too slow. Less putts went in had nothing to do with shaft stiffness. The putter had a bit too much lot. So it also, it also goes to the fact that if you're trying to answer these questions that are really kind of fine line, very small knobs, it does require some very detailed and precise experimental setups with lots of data. That's, yeah, for those, if you can't tell, for those of listening, these aren't gut feels he's given you. He's, this is all, all of his, his opinions on things are, are based on a lot of very measured stuff,

but, um, kind of transitioning kind of a little bit from this into like, how can, how can people get better with this information? There was a question from T.F. Palace. He said on your last pod, you talked about face angle being critical in putting, grinding in the home office this winter. What are the most effective ways to assess, train, and improve the consistency of a square face angle with the putter? How do people actually get better at squaring up the putter? Yeah. I would say a lot of that is, you know, if you look at the super elite level, it's genetic, even though it doesn't seem like something like fast twitch fibers and, you know, it's like darts. You know, it's like, wow, anybody can throw a dart.

You know, the board's right there. But if you, you know, throw it triple 20s is not easy. You can practice that there. So a lot of it is inherent ability, but you can certainly practice it. And, you know, what would you do practice? I think there was, you know, something you could do at home. Is that what the question was? Or what could you do if you're grinding?

So I'm a big fan of, uh, have. Having a setup that can give you very clear feedback. So I like if you've got a baseboard with some thumb tacks or maybe a couple extra balls, you go away three feet. And if you can have the ball hit the baseboard bounce back without being deflected away. So you know, you could either set up a couple of attacks, a couple extra golf balls. Can you hit it between those golf balls and have it bounce back? The biggest influence about whether that ball started on the line, especially over three feet, is your face angle.

So then you get some instant feedback. You don't need to think about where would it have ended up if you got it between those balls. And then that also allows you to not worry so much about speed. Because I think with face angle, a lot of people get in their own way. They're doing, they're offending the putter, you know, during the stroke. You see, you see things, you know, hand manipulations, some twitches. The stroke doesn't look very smooth. you know, so if you can learn to, you know, have a nice smooth stroke and launch a ball off a baseball

between a couple of objects, that's probably pretty good. I mean, you can use a gate as well, do you want? As we've advised before, you would not play a round of golf with clubs that don't fit you. So why would you be sleeping on a pillow that does not fit you? You can take Lagoon's two-minute quiz to discover the pillow that's perfect for your sleep position and body type. When your pillow is right, you fall asleep fast. you stay asleep longer, you wake up pain free.

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if you have a 10-foot put, eight-foot put, whatever it might be, like, you can still, like combining what you said and working back, taking that drill and taking that into, to when you go to that put, it's a lot easier for your mind to process. I can hit this mark that's eight inches in front of my ball, like pretty easily, right? I can hit that part. Yeah. Getting into that little hole can be kind of hard. You can start thinking about all the things that can go wrong.

But hey, my path to getting it in the hole is if I hit that thing, I can do that. And then you kind of leave the rest up to, did I get the speed right? Did I get the read right perfectly? We'll find out. But just let me control hitting this spot, which again isn't easy for everyone. but if you're drilling that over the course of a winner and you take that thought out to a golf course, I think you can hit more putts online. They're not going to all go in, but you can hit more putts online. Yeah, you know, I love that. So that is an excellent philosophy. I think that people

getting, people getting their own way mentally is probably more of the issue with starting it online than anything else. And, you know, that's one of the most common things amongst the really good putters is they're very good at accepting the result. They realize, you know, that there's a high probability doesn't go in just based on their green reading errors, regularities in the green, and they're okay to walk away saying I hit a good put. And no problem. That's a super skill to have. This is, I'll admittedly a bad question and it comes from me because I didn't, I don't sure how to ask this one, but the question, I'll, I'll work back from it. But it's just basically like, where does consistency come from, right? Because I've played with a lot of golfers around the

Jacksonville area that have incredible talent and they have no status anywhere. Like, I've seen them hit all the shots, but they do not do it consistently enough. And if you ask me, like, what's the difference in, I'm going to say Russell Henley versus some of the guys I play with? And I would say in raw skills, it's not very different. But Russell does it so unbelievably consistently. And I don't think the answer to this question is like just bang a bunch of balls and practice a ton, right? I think there is something kind of inherent in this, but like where, you know, and I'm not trying to determine this at the pro level, but every, every golfer listening to this wants to be more consistent.

And I would say usually that answer is not just going to come from just a bunch of extra practice. I mean, targeted practice is probably going to help that. But where and how does consistency actually come from a scientific standpoint? Yeah, I think that in this case, it's probably mostly mental. And the examples you were given, you know, I think that it's, that's what I see. time and time again is the the they can hit the shot but they can't hit it over and over again something happens within their state of mind that that gets in the way and we're targeting trying to get at the essence of what you're asking you know um there's there's a little bit

of strategy and reading everything that's going on in the course but i don't think that's what you're getting at you're talking about you're in the middle of the fair way you got 150 yards I see lots of, you know, corned fairy players, mini tour players that can go through a practice session in my lab or if I set up a little combine, all their numbers look fantastic. But then there's a bigger difference between what they're doing in the lab and what they're doing on the course. And there are a lot of players who, to be honest, are more impressive at ball striking in my lab than some of the tour players, but can't get it done on the course. And I see it both in terms of, you know, I think the mental breakdown can be also resulting in bad decisions, bad club choices. I can give one example of, you know, it's very clear to me. Someone comes in my lab and they should be hitting their nine iron 175 yards.

It's a nice full aggressive swing. They've got, you know, 123 miles per hour ball speed. We get out in the course. Hey, this is a nine iron. You know, we've got a pin over a bunker. It's very accessible for them, how high they launch it. I go, I think I'll just, you know, cut a little aid in there. I'm like, where that's not, now you're coming down to my level, you know, I wish I could,

you know, so that's an example of something that, you know, uh, uh, Rory wouldn't do. Like Rory's not, uh, you know, at Augusta number 15, he's not thinking, gee, I have to hit an amazing seven iron. I should probably try to do this with my five. No, he, his superpower comes out and he's like, I can sling a seven iron two. 230 yards in the air around this tree. You know, and that's a separating factor. Interestingly, I would say that a lot of, I know, I wish I would have watched this and I

apologize. I know Rory commented on his shot on 13, his third shot into the green. To me, that was an example of what happens more often with, that separates out the people who can consistently do it. You know, that would be an example of the negative, right? Rory, you'd say, okay, if you gave him, dropped a bucket of balls for that shot, he would hit, you know,

they'd be launching at 25 degrees, checking into the slope and trickling back down. You'd have a look at a birdie and guaranteed par. Something happened in his state of mind and that execution. I think I just read the headline. He was thinking about a wedge shot at the U.S. open or something, right? It was on a little bit of an upslope, he said, which would tend to make the ball go a little left with wedge,

and he thought it was thinking about the wedge. I think he said that he was thinking about that wedge. After he hit it, he was thinking about the mistake he made at the U.S. Open said, oh, no, I've done it again. But it clearly had like, he was thinking defensively from the T was also something he commented on of, I forget the name of the podcast. It's a soccer podcast he was on. But he took three wood off the T and played it as a three-shotter. Like he was consciously working. Because, like, I'm curious there too because you're especially on the scientific end.

And I've, you know, we've covered on this podcast, I've familiar. with Lynn and Pia, Lynn Nelson and Pia. Oh, yeah. They, be a player was the book that I got through to me, which was just like right brain. All your good golf is going to come from your right brain. It's not going to be thinking of all the technical shots. So like, what, I guess what can you tell us, you know,

you're more on the scientific end though about like what you're, what the mental like defects that some of these players have, uh, that is filtering down. How does that actually affect what your body is executing on the golf course? massively. And I still consider this science, you know, and this is probably where most of my effort, haven't published anything.

But, you know, I'm about golf performance. So you start to go, okay, this is the exact conversation we're having. You see what actually matters when you're trying to get over that final hump. It is science, you know, and it's about trying to translate some of the more artistic things that Pia and Lynn are talking about. What is it about the think box version? versus the play box, you know. When I read that, I heard system one, system two,

if you're familiar with thinking fast and slow. And that is science. There's a, I think we know it's there. And then the next step is doing the experiments to figure out how do you improve it, right? Just like, you know, you do science to figure out how to improve speed, you know, okay, yeah. And it was a jumble of a lot of stuff, you know, for a long time.

But if you do the systematic experiments and you can figure out, it is much tougher with the mental game because the variables aren't as quantifiable. Right. You know, the only person who really knows if they've, and I'll use the word choke, is the athlete. You know, so someone gets up there, like if you look at, you know, since we're talking about the masters, what comes to my mind is when Tiger won last and, you know, I don't know, it was like four of the top 10 players in the world.

I'll hit it in the water and 12. You know, you're like, but my thought went to which of those. players choked, you know, and only they knew. Did, did they feel something happen in their swing where they, you know, self-sabotage or were they like flushed it and the wind just got them? Right. You know, and maybe they could look back in hide and say, maybe they choked in terms of strategy, which is still choking. You know, like there's, you, you've made an error could be in your swing and your decision making based on a poor mental state. It's a bit of two parts. It's, It's one can, you know, I want to go down a rabbit hole here,

Sully, but I think it's important to delineate this with the mental side of it. There's two different things you can work on. You can work on your ability to feel confident and better and not have that influence your physiology. That's very real. And that's a great state we can put ourselves in where you get over the shot, even though it's a pressure situation. And it's all relative to people. I know you haven't played in the U.S. Open.

But I also know you've played in some situations that you're going to be. create very intense pressure on your game. Can you create a can you work on and train so that when you get into that situation, you actually feel confident the same way you feel confident when you're having a chipping contest with your buddies for a round of beers and you're like, yeah, I know I'm going to execute this, right? But then there's also separately, I'm, I'm nervous now, right? I maybe did my best to not feel nervous, but can you execute a swing when your heart rate is at 140, when your body feels discombobulated, when you're like, there's no way I can square this face, can you still execute? So there's two sides of it that can both be trained and science is the

answer to getting there. It's just, it's tougher because the variables are a little more obscure. You're tougher to measure. There's not like, oh, your mental confidence in that situation was 19.4. Right. I can measure your face angle. I can't measure that. This podcast is also brought to you by our friends at Woop. We all know the new Woop is here. That's Woop 5.0. Tons of new features, including a 14-day battery life. Wear it daily.

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You know, I can do all the right mental things and go out to the golf course, having, you know, not touch the club in like 12 days as we're sitting here. And it doesn't mean it's going to go great, right? But I think there is something, too, like when you've got the technical stuff down, whatever that might be on your own swing, you got it down, and then you're able to get into a mental mindset of how you get the most out of that is where I've seen the biggest effects, right? But then sometimes, you know, you can't, you're trying to drag yourself out of it.

And you're like, well, fundamentally right now, I'm just not where I need to be. My body's not where I need to be. I can't, this magic mental good thinking isn't going to pull me straight up out of that is kind of the conclusion I've reached on that stuff. And so it's not a massive knob in the grand scheme of, golfing skill. You know, I think Bernard Longer nailed it. He's like, if someone asked him a question once about the mental side of thing, and it's like, you could take the, any tour player, right, anybody who's got enough skill at golf, I don't care how mentally strong a beginner is, you know, David Goggins,

you know, just pick a name. If he goes out to play, he's, you know, he's not beating me at golf. Like the guy's probably a little bit more mental talk for some Buddhist monk. It's like, yeah, I don't care how good you are. You're not beating me at golf. But, once the skill levels get close, once you see all these flushers on the range, you know, good luck walking down the range at a tour of it and thinking,

you know, so these guys is going to win. In fact, you know, this is a, you know, some praise to Matt Coutcher, but he,

you know, yeah, he hits the ball pretty good, but you're like, how is this guy going to make, always comes to mind for that. The example, I always use,

how does he keep beating people still doing it? Like, how does he keep beating people, man? It's, he almost sticks out the most as not being one of the, the flushers on the, exactly. Yeah. I'm keeping you longer than I said I would, but I cut it.

I'm very curious your answer on this one. Pthor, Pithor, I don't know how to say his name from the nest, but he says, knowing what you know about the golf swing and gaining speed, how would you effectively roll back the distance of tour pros? I'm very curious here. Yeah. Okay. Well, we've, you know, someone could, someone could convince me that there's not a

problem, right? I'm okay with that. That, hey, let's, you know, in a certain level, you know, St. Anders was obsolete from how it was supposed to be played for, you know, maybe the last 80, 90 years. And I still have really enjoyed watching. When Tiger won, it was obsolete. I still really enjoyed watching that tournament. I would get concerned, this is one thought that I'll finish really quickly. I would get concerned to people, everybody was shooting 50.

And now, now the course has become so easy that we can't differentiate between the good players and the bad players and it just comes down to kind of a toss of the dice. You know, it's just way too easy. We're not there yet, but that's fine. I understand. Let's say we do want to preserve some courses or we do want to say that people aren't hitting the golf ball for, you know, let's roll that back a little bit. Let's prevent that.

One little caveat that I'll add in before I get to my answer is that most of the solutions, people think, okay, I want to get back to shot chafing. You know, I like watching that player hit the one iron into the wind and, you know, curve it around the corner and and so do I. I think that's really important. Slowing down the ball will actually, I believe, remove that, unfortunately. You know, if you want to see shot shaping, you'd go for, you know, a really hot ball. And then so, okay, here's the problem that the USG and the RNA have run into is that they've made some some false assumptions. I do not believe slowing down the ball the amount they've chosen will have

any great effect. They look at the variables that are going into it. They look at clubhead speed, kind of slowly increasing, and they're like, you know what? That is the limiting factor. So probably we'll get to like 120, 125 clubhead speed. That's the capabilities of what golfers are doing. And then let's base our knowledge around that. The belief, whether they've come to that realization, is that that's the limiting factor. For those they're listening, that the change the testing parameters specifically to how you're describing it. It was, I forget what, 120 or so.

Now it's moving up to 125 or so. And the ball can't exceed a certain distance at that speed. So they change the club head speed. Now just the ball's not allowed to go as far, go farther than a certain distance. So I don't have the numbers right in front of me. Just now we're testing it at a higher speed. Yes. That's right.

The fundamental flaw there is that they believe that that's getting to the limit of the capability of what people are doing. And then they, well, that's what's limiting right now the distance. No. 125 isn't fast in terms of elite sport, right? You know, there's people out there who can swing a driver at 165 miles an hour at 466 inches. That's a big, you know, that's a big difference. We can compare to other sports. you know, you wouldn't find anybody playing pickup ball if you're going to play a men's league baseball

that's throwing a 98 mile an hour fastball, right? There's no one around doing that, right? But there are plenty of guys you go out and play with who aren't in the tour or, you know, just a scratch handicap who are swinging at 125. So what they need to realize is what's currently limiting, why isn't clubhead speed at 130? Why is the average right now at 116, 117? It's because of course setups and players are getting better at optimizing strokes game. You can look at holes. There's more variability in average club speed off the T.

If you go from hole to hole, like if you look at the shot link data and you go, well, gee, why is the average club at speed off this T 140 miles an hour and off this T 122 miles per hour? It's mostly course setup trying to optimize strokes. gain. So if you, if you take, let's pick 18 at TPC, okay, TPC sawgrass, they're going to play the players, and you go, okay, why are certain people choosing, like Xander, Schofley's choosing to hit, you know, a hybrid where Brian Harmon's hitting a driver, right? There's a certain spot where they can land it based on the dispersion where they're going to optimize strokes game. If you slow the ball down, then Xander Schofley is still going to hit his, instead of hitting a hybrid, he's going to just driver to that spot. That's where he's going to maximize his strokes gain.

Brian Harmon can't do that with his driver, so he's not going to be at the player's championship. So I think you will see, if you slow the ball down, that little bit that they're slowing it down, you will see a lot of players overnight instantly jack up their club head speed to start getting the ball to go back to that, that distance. You know, Tony Finn now is out there thinking it around 120 miles an hour.

You can swing at 135. That would be, it would be phenomenal for him if the ball was slowed down. And then you've got like there's, you know, dozens of Michael Brennan's just hoping to get that little bit more of an edge where he's like, please slow the ball down, you know. So, you know, this means that I can hit driver everywhere now.

And so I think if you do decide, you know, that the ball's going too far, there's still, you'd have to slow it down to crazy amount. You'd have to move the test to 135. It's very conceivable for me to think that there are 200 elite golfers out there who can swing the driver at 130 plus. And what we don't want to do is slow the ball down to a point where now we're just self-selecting for guys who can who can absolutely rip the cover off it. If you slowed the ball down to a squash ball and you went out and played a 450 yard par four, people would be, you know, with the same width of fairways, then you'd see guys swing at 1.40 to get the ball down there. So I would like more exploration into course setups in ways that don't impact the way the hole is supposed to be played.

As an example, the next time you're playing golf, you'll see the odd hole that has like a, you know, 20 foot maple, maybe 10 yards off the T-box, right? If you're going out this way, just over here, there's a 20-foot maple tree, maybe it's a pine tree. It's not even in view. But if you're the player who's like, you know, number six at Bay Hill, that Bryson drove the greenwayway maybe.

Yeah. Part five, but yeah, cut the corner. Yeah, had 80 yards in. Right. If you're like, I don't like that. Okay. well, if you put that 20 foot in maple, it's not even in the view of the camera,

the players aren't seeing it, but if Bryson goes, I'm going this way and there's a maple tree there, well, now he's not going to be able to do it. And I think then, if he does want to do it, put it in such a position

that he has to shape it around it. Like, I'm all for that. Keep some risk there, yeah. Keep some risk in it. You know, I think I would love to have seen like the U.S. Open do like a, you know,

a really, ingenious mowing of the rough. You know, they're out there with 900. I played Oakmont a week after the U.S. Open. And if you're hitting it, if you got 250 yards in on a par four, you don't need to be in knee-high rough. Let's make it a little more thinking. Let's have it.

So if you decide to hit a four-arm off the T, right, and you spray it, let's make the rough like Augusta. If you've got two, 50 in a par four. Yeah. Let's give you some light rough to hit out of. Right. And then, you know, as you get further down the fairway, let's have the rough increase in height. Maybe it pinches in at certain locations. You can do do things, I think, you know, British open courses do a great job of putting really penal bunkers in spots. And not random. You know, not like, oh, the ball's going to roll into it. But if you put the bunkers in spots where, okay, if you want to hit it 350 yards, you better be very accurate in order to take advantage of this. And I'm all fine. If someone can hit the ball dead straight, have complete control of their ball, and you can hit at 350, good for you.

Go out there and shoot 54. That would be amazing to me. But I think I would go about it through course design, or I just wish they would have done an actual test. Yeah. Let's like my biggest problem with the USGA and the RNA is that they don't really have any skin in the game, but they impose these rules. To me, it's completely wild.

And if you push, I hope they still stay part of the game. I think what we've got in golf is really unique. But if you push too hard, then I think we could end up in a situation where there's 10 different sets of rules and they become irrelevant. You know, other than the, you know, a couple of amateur events and the, the open championships, what else, you know, I could see the, you know, who knows, who knows, what's going to happen with live, but Liv could just make up their own rules. If the PGA tour thinks that the rules are going to give them a product that's not as entertaining,

the PGA tour will say, no, we're going to go with our own set of rules. NCAA am amazed they haven't already gone with their own set of rules. And then all of a sudden, what, like, what is the USGA in the irony? Nobody voted. Yeah, I. Right. Can you imagine if there was some organization, for it. I usually pick some random things like bicycles, right? So I make bicycles and I've got a bicycle

event and there's all this industry, you know, and we're all trying to make money. And then there's this third party. Hey, we make the rules for designing bicycles and we're going to say that tires can't be this big. Oh, okay. I got this had this really awesome selling bicycle. I had this league that was using this bicycle and everyone was having so much fun. Is it safer? No, it's going to do safety we just don't like it or we don't think bikes should go this fast oh you know but you no impact on you you have to use this ball oh do you make the ball you you have the ability to provide us this ball that you're saying no no you guys go figure out how to make it somebody will make it for you but we're saying you can't use all these other balls but you hear the rules like

it is it is a wild situation in a capital capitalistic society to think that that can even happen It is. Oh, gosh, it's a very interesting answer because, I don't depend on how much time you have. Like, I disagree so strongly with a lot of what you said there. Okay. But I would just say to the, but I don't want to get lost in the course setup thing, but I would say that to now, like that's, we've had 25 years now of doing what, what you were asking for. And it hasn't been effectively done. Like, there's nothing stopping the proper course setup. Like, that's not regulation, right?

And that's really hard to apply at a lot of different levels. And, you know, we're focusing mostly on the pro game here, but it's possible to apply. You can't just plant a tree for an NCAA tournament. That's complicated there. But at no point in what you answered there, did you mention the clubhead or the, what now seems to be the viewed as the God-given right

to hit the ball far no matter what. And that, to me, is the crux of the problem. Like how far it actually goes when you, crush one is a problem, but not the biggest part of the problem. My biggest part is, remember watching, this shot in particular stuck out, Zanders Shoffley at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, 14th hole or something like that, hit a T-ball that he probably towed, one-hand finish. It started right, it drew in the middle of airway, went 342 yards.

That right there is the problem, right? Now, Bryson's T-shot, I'm fine with no tree there. try this shot, but my goodness brother, you better hit the center of the club face and you better hit it well. And if you hit it poorly, if you have a smaller club face, like everything you just described, and again, I don't necessarily think we have to go back to persimmon woods. But everything you just described would be pretty irrelevant with a persimmon driver, because it would be a different test of your driving skill. Today, can players optimize the current golf ball with a persimmon driver in a shaft and all kinds of things to hit it better than guys did in the,

in the 80s, sure, I definitely can. But to me, there doesn't seem to be, for somebody that teaches like part of the reason I went down the speed path, part of the reason we are speaking now, our relationship started because I was like, these clubheads are designed to swing fast. And it's not that risky to swing it fast. And I am buying into the strokes gained of get me farther down there. And if I miss a couple more fairways, this is going to add up to better scores for me. I'm shrinking the scale of the game. Whereas your, your program, might be the benefits of it would might be somebody that's maybe that's maybe you don't want to the benefits of your program might be smaller if the act of hitting the golf ball square and

hitting it far and straight is is different right it's kind of um that's that's my the crux of where i've i stand on the issue right yeah um well then i would have like that's fine i if that's the, at least you have some more defined objectives, I think, than the RNA in the US, the USGA do. Then I would make sure I'd run a study to make sure that what we're trying to accomplish is going to be accomplished because I don't think slowing the ball down by that amount is going to have the impact. And there's a lot of disruption.

All you'd have to do is, you know, get some of those balls. And you could probably find some existing balls that are conforming. I know they're out there. And say, okay, we're going to go. to a corn, fairy tour event, send the, you know,

the guys, a whole bunch of balls, you know, are set up an event, actually do an experiment and say, you guys have a week to practice with these balls,

and let's go see what they do. And I bet you'd find out that, oh, that extra, you know, yards they're losing, they just get back by swinging harder and it would still,

with the current club heads, that's my point, right? Like, you haven't, we haven't solved a problem. Like, the,

the, I never thought of it from what you said earlier. of the longest drivers aren't even using that skill to the fullest of their ability because they are compressed at certain times and they don't need the full power of their driver on a lot of holes. Whereas you change the scale where the ball goes, then they can take advantage of the full power of that driver more often. It's some I hadn't fully thought of, almost creating, making the problem worse with a ton of disruption is where I'm kind of like on this current rollback, I'm like, I just don't think we're solving the right problem here. Yeah, I think you'd have to make the test at 140. You know, you'd have to go to a really slowball.

So are you, you okay for bifurcating the rules? Or are you more like, let's have one set of rules? You're kind of, yeah, I could see it going either way. I am, so this is a tricky answer that I'm fine with changing it for everyone, but I also understand the public perception against that. Like, I'm not willing to fight that. I think it could change for everyone and not create as much of a problem. problem is people think it probably would. I'm not willing, like 85% of people would probably

disagree with that. And I'm not willing to fight people on that. And it's hard to change people's mind on that. So the more simple answer for me to make everybody happy would be bifurcation, which is not like, which creates its whole other set of problems where does bifurcation start. That's where I end up back at. Let's just change it for everyone. Right. Now, it's what I described earlier about the driver going far and no matter where you hit it, that is way more of a professional golf problem than 10 handicapper problem, right? Like I don't feel nearly as strongly about that as I do at the 10 handicap level. So I think that the damage that has been done over 25ish years of longer, what's going to happen when the ball goes farther? People are going to play farther back

T's right. And I think it, that's just, I don't have the data to support that, but I would guess people play longer golf courses now than they did 30 years ago. They play from longer T's. So, yeah, well, the, I think the data would say on the tour. On the tour, yes, but I think even, you know, people's brains are, like, if I, if I went out and played a persimmin would, I would want to move up a set of teeth, like from what I currently play at, you know what I mean? I think people slowly have moved, like, all right, I hit it.

I can hit it 250. I don't need to play a 5,500 yard course. I want to play the white teas. And getting people back into the mindset of like, we can shrink this golf course and the scale at which we play is where I'm like, dude, that's a really hard fight. That's just not the way the human brain really works. I think the game would be better off for it, but I don't think that it's going to be easy to put the toothpaste back in the tube

on that particular issue. Yeah, yeah. You know, I've got, I would agree with you. I look at the course that I play that is very short. There's a bunker that's, you know, you need to hit a 220 to carry it up to the end. I bet you 80% of the golfers of my club can't carry it. You know, we've got another back set of teas. No one.

you know, I think the course is 6,300 and maybe 6,700 from the back. Those back T's at 6,700, haven't seen a T stuck in them since the last time we hosted the, you know, like our equivalent state amateur, you know, 30 years ago or something. And the, I mean, I result go to bifurcations, probably the answer. I'm not thrilled with it. But if, if folks decide that, yeah, the, the, the tour is hitting it, you know, know, or lead players are going too far. That's probably the way to go.

I look at the rise of pickleball as a reason for not making the sport more challenging, even if it's a little bit. You know, so why is tennis tanking relative to pickleball? Tennis is tough to play, you know. So to me, I think, you know, it's like, is it going to be that much tougher if we slid on the ball? No, but it's a knob that I'd rather not turn, you know, for. I can't make, if I can interrupt you there, I can't make my case make economic sense at a grand scale.

But that's the hard part is like, I can't be like, if you do this, you're going to make more money pro golf. That's where I butt up against. That's where, you know, I don't go to the players and I don't hear a bunch of people being like, man, then ball just goes too far. This is boring. It's just not how 80 plus percent of people view the game. And I get that. But if you look at the rules of golf and you look at the USGA description of golf being a variety, you know, it's supposed to be a variety of test of skills.

I'm paraphrasing that. And that's what they're using as their explanation for that things have gotten out of balance with the driver through that lens. Things should obviously change. It's just, again, we're in this new world that like undoing it is really unappealing to a lot of people. And I get that. I think, you know, for me, the biggest issue is let's study it. Let's run the experiments. And I think you could do it in a way that would actually increase exposure and increase, you know, interest.

if you actually said, okay, we're going to have a tournament where we're going to use this new ball. We're going to give players a new ball that conforms and, you know, it doesn't have to, not everybody has to have the exact same ball.

That would be an interesting tournament because golf's all about customization. You don't tell everybody you all have to play this exact driver. That's very much not in the spirit of the game. But you have to play a ball that's conforming. Here's a list of balls or here's some ball options. I think I would definitely watch that tournament, you know, if you give everybody a few dozen golf balls to go and try.

But to me, it's such a big change not to properly experiment and vet out, you know. Which could have been avoided if this was studied and vetted out back in the 90s when some of this, when all this stuff, when the big technology changes happen, both with the two-piece golf ball and the titanium 460cc drivers. Like that, to your point, that wasn't done effectively in that time, so in time frame, because that would have shown, oh my gosh, we are going to be limiting the golf courses we can go to. Scores are going to go down.

You know, we're going to have to link to a lot of golf course that we do want to go to. The footprint of the game is going to get blah, blah, blah. It's going to be, you know, I think it would have shown that. Now, we were just in that world, and undoing that is, is damaging, I think. So I think if we're going your route, then what I'm hearing you say is let's not necessarily slow down, the ball or slow down the club, but let's make it more penal so that Xander can't hit that shot, you know, because it is going to be very challenging, you know, I don't know if you've seen the super duper mini driver that they have the player out there hitting. It's like, I don't know,

it looks like smaller than a golf ball. Yes. The European tour did the video on that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's not quite what I'm arguing for, but it's in the spirit. Right. It's in the spirit of where it's like, hey, that takes some challenge to hit. Yeah, I would just like to see some studies, some research into. Is that let's make sure what we're implementing is going to have the desired outcome? Because I think the inversion happened when it became, wow, that's the safest thing for me to do here is hit driver and hit it past all, at minimum hit it past all this trouble because even if I miss hit it,

I'm not going to hit it less than 285 was when, like you, there was probably some myths in some of the previous. thinking, but the previous thinking would have been like, I need three wood here to make sure I, you know, keep it between this and I don't want to risk getting into this. And now it's like, I don't want to risk being short enough to be in that. Let's just hit it past everything. But it's incredibly complicated. I do that was, I should have known that was going to take a while to work through. I was, I was just very, I guess, yeah, even to your point, I don't, I don't know if going to taking the test all the up to 140 doesn't make.

things worse also. I think it will make, it'll solve the problem of, of, of, of, you know, that courses won't be overpowered, but it, it's not going to have the, the desired effect of more shot shaping. You're just going to, then all you'll see out there are Michael Brennan's and everybody who's embracing DeCambos, you know, that can swing it at 140, right? I think the shot shaking, shaking thing is, is a little bit of a fairy tale of people wanting for that, you know, because that was the three-piece ball, I think, that we're picturing, and it spun a lot more,

and part of the artistry was taking spin off that ball. And, like, that's not coming back with, with this, as you mentioned, this rule change. And I don't think that's a real, it's just, yeah. It was the perfect mix of, of what could be accomplished in terms of ball speed end core setup. But, but we can't get back there, you know, if you could speed up a ball, and have the courses be super long, then you would see tons of shot shaping. You know, like if if guys didn't have to swing super hard to hit the ball 350, but they had to fit it around a dog leg, then you'd see some more, you know, some more shot. It's, you know, but we're not getting back there.

Last thing I'll say on this for the per, for the standard golfer is I would say, look, when I go and play golf, I am in charge of what challenge I want to take on on this day. I can go play the forward T's. I can play the back T's, right? I, if I play the forward T's and it is 180 for me to cover the fairway bunker and I hit it over it, I get zero satisfaction out of that, right? Like, I didn't set up a challenge for me to overcome there. Like, that's nothing. If I put, if I go play the back T's and like that is going to, it would take one of the best drives of the year for me to cover a certain bunker. I got to navigate my way around it. Like that is what I've chosen to take on as a challenge, right?

And I think you can do that with a hickory club if you want to. The little bit of hickory golf I've played, I'm like, oh, there's a bunker at 150. I better hit this great. And then your mind is just in a totally different spot. Like, yeah, I'm not like hunting for birdies now, but I'm still embracing the challenge that's in front of me. And for the majority of people, golf is hard enough. And I get that.

That's a hurdle to clear. But like, that's where I think distance is relative. It's relative to your ability to hit it far as is only matters compared to like people you're competing with. Like the number you actually hit it isn't that important. Like hitting it 30 past your buddy is great. But if that goes 300 or 270, it doesn't really matter what that actual number is. If it did, we play every event in Colorado professionally. If it mattered, they would play everyone in Colorado or Coppalua so it could go 400 yards. And we've, I think we've just seen it doesn't matter how far that number actually goes. But my regular foursome is the three guys that I tend to play with who lullered me.

had speeds in the mid-90s now, they've, they have more fun when they move up a set of T-boxes. Yeah. There is no question. I can see that they're in there, they have no fun hitting and hitting three woods into par fours. And if the winds in your face, they can't get to a par four. Yeah. That's not fun. Yeah. All right, back to some questions we got here. This is a stack-related question here. Dead Man asked this and also at, at Chris Solomon might be asking this question too. What is your advice? for someone who has been stacking a while and has either plateaued or is only seeing minimal or incremental gains?

Yeah. So you will continue to see incremental gains probably over the course of five years of stacking. And that's fine. But, you know, there's an there's an asymptope, right, where you might only gain, if you train your butt off and do all the perfect stack things in year five, gaining one mile per hour would be awesome. the bigger reality is you'll probably go four months without training, maybe six months, maybe you miss a year.

I'm just going to set this up first, Sally. So you've got two curves throughout your lifetime. It goes up first from the age of like zero, starts peaking mid-20s pretty flat, and then when you hit 30, it's going down. It hurts. Yeah, it does hurt. And there are two curves. There's the one where if you did nothing your entire life, no training, no golfing,

whatever. This is like the minimum. And then there's if Sully trained optimally for speed his whole life, he would be at this upper curve. And it's somewhere between, depending on your time of life, between 15 and 30 miles per hour, but you know, difference. And all we're doing with stacking is bouncing, you know, between those two curves. Okay. So if you, if you picked it up in your 30s and maybe you already, you know, trained a bunch of its most sports, that bottom curves already shifted

it up a little bit. But after about five years, we're probably going to be like a steady training. Okay, there's not much to gain there. But keep training because it's not like you hit that curve, that top curve and stay there. Right. You start to drop back down. So I have lots of folks, you know, we've got 70,000 users who are now in their mid to late 70s. That's when the curve gets real steep down.

And they're like, I haven't, you know, I had, you know, grass saw good gains the first gained six miles per hour, Evan gained anything. And I'm like, then you are winning. You are winning because if you, you know, you would have lost three miles per hour last year if you didn't train. So that's the reality. Now, if you are in your 30s or 40s and, you know, there's a lot of potential there, then you have to go to mechanical changes.

So if you've been stacking steady for a year, two years, three years, and you're swinging at 100 miles an hour, you're 35. odds are you've got more in the tank. You know, like I look at you, Sally, and I think, you know, yeah, you could probably cruise at 125. I don't know where you're at right now. But I see some, there's some major,

you know, not major, some very low-hanging fruit in your swing mechanically, right? Like I mentioned your, it's a very common one. If that lead heel doesn't plan until halfway down, that's just very poor sequencing. That's fine. It's three or four miles per hour. but you need those large-scale mechanical change to see big jumps.

So probably all is not lost. Tick-a-per-per-through-the-learning library. Maybe a nice qualified PGA instructor can give you a hand or spend 72 hours on YouTube going down rabbit holes and ruining your game. No, just kidding. But no, there's we got lots of resources that can help. And I don't mind, you can email in info at the stack system if you're a stacker. and I tend to help out 99% of the people that email in somewhere or another.

There is, I got a fair amount of questions. I didn't get the exact tie this back to Ness members here that ask this. But in different veins, questions about injuries related to the stack, right? And how I think if my testimonial wellness has been when I was stacking the most and the most consistently was the best my achy, horrible back has felt. That was how I felt along the same vein. My back wasn't feeling great earlier this week. And I've been trying to power through some of these things, went out and stacked,

made it halfway through and tweaked my back, right? So what is your, I'm sure you get this a lot in terms of questions about injury-related stuff as it relates to the speed training in particular. What's your reaction to that? My reaction is it's warm up is super important. So there's, that's a, some people have run out. I've got, we got hand pain or this or that. I can go in and see if they've done certified my warm up.

So 90% of the very small number of people that message in haven't done certify my warmup. And we can tell them the data that they're gradually warming up throughout the workout. That is like, that's a terrible idea, right? We're doing max effort stuff. You need to be sweating. You need to be warmed up. Any sprinter would know or anybody doing it. If you're like, oh, I'm just going to go out.

If you took, you know, a whole bunch of people said, let's sprint across the parking lot. You would see people going down with hamstring injuries all over the place. So if you don't warm up, you're asking for trouble. The other thought is, but 30 to 40% of people playing golf are going to get injured this year. If you play golf, you're likely to get injured. And stacking is at a much, much lower percentage. So even if we look at all that, it's just a very small percentage of the folks. So if you are doing the stack warm up, which is awesome, that's probably why your back felt the best.

Yes. If every, if you did that 15 minute warm up every day, you would feel great. I mean, you know, it would go a long round of golf now too. Like that's my, you get that. I could read the, you know, I could say your words back to you, especially for people with tight lower backs. I know you're talking right to me on that line.

I will default to, I will play better golf. My clubbeds people will be higher. If I do that warm up and only hit two golf balls on the range, just to feel the vibrations in my hands or make sure I'm not chunking it, then if I do, you know, what I used to do would be, I'll start it with my sand wedge, you know, my lob wedge hit a few and then, oh, yeah, I'm feeling good. But even by the time, you know, if I did that for like 50 minutes, by the time I got to my driver, I'm like, ah, still don't feel as good as I do when I do the stack warm up.

So those are the big things. You have to, you have to realize that was it the stacking if you did happen to get injured? Was it your lack of warm up? Was there a lot of other things going on in golf? You know, I work with, you know, probably in the last three years, maybe 100 tour players, right? And I know 20 of them that I've got injured and one of them was maybe peripherally related to the stack. The other 19 were gym injuries, overused from hitting balls, absolutely nothing to do with the stack. So at the tour level, you know, I could, I don't want to list specific people, but not like one of them was like, well, maybe the stack.

Maybe. The other 19 were like, it was definitely not the stack. So it's like, okay. and I know that's going on with with regular folks as well. But luckily the injury rates are so low that it's fine. But it is a max effort. You have to be warmed up.

You have to be ready to do it. And I think you would have told me if you were here when I did this on Thursday. Like, is your back hurting? Like, yeah, maybe don't go swing the club as hard as you can right now. And the problem is I've had times where I'm like, ah, I just, if I get going, then it feels better. And sure enough, yeah,

down for the count for a couple of days. Yeah, that would be the time to get down and do some, more, it's okay to do some of the exercises twice, you know, if my back's tight, okay, I got to do some of the leg swings, some of the, and it's okay to do supplemental stuff, like with the stack warmth, we don't have you on the ground, but we both know if you've got a balky back that there's probably some great back exercises you do when you're actually on the ground on a, on a map. This question was from ML Galizio.

He says, do you have any recommendations for training aids or drills for a player to use at home to see if they are properly using the ground the right way? and speed training? No. No, it's even, I would say, 95% of the people that are using force plates now and actually have the data are probably not maybe using it to see if you're using it correctly. The odds that you'd be able to do that in your own are pretty low. But, you know, I would say that if you are finishing on your back foot, so you make a golf swing

and you're on your back foot, that's probably a good, indication that you didn't use the ground correctly. Under very rare circumstances, if you're able to look at the video where you did get all the way to your lead side, but you push so hard off your lead side, you end up kind of on your back foot like some of the long drive guys, then okay, maybe you did. But for the average person out there stacking, if you're on your back foot after you finished your swing, then you probably weren't using the ground very effectively. I'm a big fan of if you're really good to using the ground, you should get some airtime

under your lead foot through impact. So we're trying to make a max effort swing and you film yourself, you should see that lead foot kind of hop up and back a little bit. That's a good indication. So if you had some indication of where your foot is on a line or next to a mat or something, and when you're holding your finish,

you've realized that lead foot's jumped, jump back a little bit. Take a look at some Matt Fitzpatrick swings recently. He's been doing a great job of that. Yeah. I really did. I mean, I took almost a year off of stacking just for life reasons.

And I started like just a few sessions back into it. I wasn't necessarily hidden it that much farther. My golf game snapped into place really darn quickly. I mean, just getting those muscles working again. So all right, I told you, I teased you that we were going to do this like 20 to 30 minutes and we have

gone almost 70. So I am going to let you go on this Sunday. And I believe we've justified enough to just break out its own episode. But really appreciate your time and insights as always. every time I talk to you, I realize we could go down 85 different rabbit holes, and I definitely hope to do it again. So appreciate your time. Awesome. Thanks, Sally.