No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 897 - Chris Como details his teaching philosophy and lessons from working with Tiger, Xander and Bryson

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Chris Como joins Soly to recap his recent work with Xander Schauffele during his run to two major titles in 2024. We also talk through his work with Bryson and speed training from his home lab during COVID, his experiences as Tiger's swing coach and a ton more. 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 Support Our Partners: Rhoback OneBars fanduel.com/nlu  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club. Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Expect anything different? better than most. Expect anything different. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the no laying up podcast. Sally here got an interview coming shortly with Chris Como, longtime golf instructor. Fascinating dude, fascinating story.

All the guys he's gotten to work was Andrew Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau, Tiger Woods, his theory on the golf swing and how people make changes. We got pretty deep in some stuff, not overly technical, a little technical here at times, but just, you know, how swing changes happen, how that affects play, all kinds of force played stuff, just a very interesting dude to talk to. We're greatly appreciative of his time. Well, of course, give a shout out to our friends at Roback. I'm rocking the crew

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whether you need a quick pickup between meetings or need some fuel to power you through a workout. One bars are the perfect protein bar to get you through your busy day, whether you need a quick pickup between meetings or need some fuel to power you through a workout, one bar's the perfect treat. Find one bars at a retailer near you or amazon.com. Donnie, for the delay, here's Chris Como. How has it evolved over the course of your career on who the first player somebody asks you about is? My instinct right now is to go straight to Xander. How long has that been the case?

Usually what's the first player people want to ask you about? Yeah, it's so it's so interesting. It's kind of I mean, it's gone from Tiger to Bryson to Jason Day to Xander. It's kind of been all over the place. I mean, Tiger's kind of timeless, I guess. I don't know. It's been all over the place for sure. So with someone like Xander, youander, you guys just started working together. You tell me when exactly that was, but do you have-

It's about a year. Okay, do you have a profile on him to, hey, if Xander ever comes calling, here's what I would say. When you are looking at guys that are not current guys you're working with, are you kind of even in your own head, are you saying, if so and so called, I would probably do this with him. I'm so I'm just curious kind of where are you starting from scratch when he places that call? Yeah, I mean, I would say when I when I know someone's showing interest, I start to do

a little dive then I kind of like, I try to be pretty focused on the guys that I coach, I don't like really follow, you know, other guys and what they're doing. It's just like, it's not my business. It's just to me, it's a distraction. So yeah, you know, other guys and what they're doing. It's just like, it's not my business. It's just to me, it's a distraction. So, yeah, I mean, when someone's sort of like showing some interest of maybe working, you know, I start doing kind of my, I guess, due diligence process. Part of it's running stats. So I have a stats guy and I'm like, hey, can you run this person's numbers?

And I start looking at where their game is at, where it's been historically, oftentimes looking at what is like the presence that they've set at having the highest skill in a sort of category, if you will, like what's the best driving year they've had? What is the best iron play year they have putting your, et cetera. I kind of start doing that dive just to get a sense of their game from that kind of like objective stat perspective. And then it becomes, you it becomes looking at some swings to relate to those time frames.

And then when I start really chatting with them, it's like, hey, I'd like to see swings from as far back as you can get, and then really try to understand their history as a golfer. But before that initial reach out on their side, I'm not really looking at other people's games too much. Something that I don't think I've given proper credence to over time has been and kind of just now starting to get a better understanding of the relationship

between the two things is a person's body and a person's golf swing and how they relate to each other. Right. And it gets very obvious now that I've started to learn more about that. But like, I've never really thought of it that way. I remember Jordan Speed saying something five years ago of like, hey, when I was at my best in 2015, I was not, you know, I'm paraphrasing, of course,

I, you know, I was not as flexible as I am now and I could turn as far as I wanted. And that put the club in the perfect slot. When my body changed, all of a sudden turning as far as I wanted, put the club in a different spot and it changed a lot of things in relation to that. So I'm kind of curious with, you know, how much of your background and teaching

is in relation to how your body works, you know, in relation to that, it's like a golf swing, a person's golf swing evolves over the course of their career, maybe many times. And I'm just wondering if you could kind of talk a little bit about the relationship between those two things and how it affects how you teach guys. You know, you have to work within the constraints of what someone's body can do, right? So if someone's got x amount of

range of motion in their shoulder or their hip or whatever, you can't ask them to, you know, move their shoulder into more external rotation than they can do or, you know, turn their hips more than they can do. Or like you're saying with Jordan, almost the opposite, where they have this precedent of when they played really good golf and they had a certain limit of their range of motion and then all of a sudden that increases and someone used that limit as like a reference of, hey, this is the end of my backswing and now all of a sudden the end of your backswing

is way longer and that changes all the other parts of your swing that kind of match that previous body condition. The whole sort of ecosystem gets kind of blown up a bit. And then that's where people can struggle potentially. Right. So yeah, I mean, I think knowing a person's body, where it is currently, where it has been, and it's sometimes that's information that's hard to get, right. Cause people aren't actually keeping the best records of those types of things. And this is where I, when I start working with people, I start to encourage them to keep better records of their golf swing and they don't have to look at it. It can be just as simple as like, you know, making sure you

film it a couple of times a week and have your caddy film it. You don't need to look at it. Just send it to me and I kind of follow the way or there's ways to keep track of range of motions at certain joints, things like that. That that's all part of the information that you're trying to take into account when either you're building a swing or if someone's in a little bit of a funk, how to get them out of it potentially. And then I think to your point, I mean, if you look at golfers

who have had long, long careers, their bodies changed and their swings have changed over time. Like Nicholas's swing doesn't look exactly the same throughout his whole career. Clearly Tiger's doesn't either. Pretty much everybody that's changed subtly. So I think a big part of how professional golfers are able to maintain longevity in the game is their ability. And this isn't always a conscious thing. They just figured it out oftentimes. Can their swing adapt to how their body changes over time, whether it be through age, injury or whatever.

Well, us in the media too can take our shots of nitpicking when guys do make swing changes and it doesn't work out. It's an easy place to be sitting here and say like, oh, Tiger should swing like this, Psoba should swing like this. Ever since he did this, oh, his swing instructor has screwed them all up.

Like that's a problem. But at the same time, like there's a ton of examples of guys that have made swing changes or little small adjustments or started working with somebody and their career has gone from very, very, very good to great, which is what we've seen out of Xander this year, right? He credited you after winning the PGA championship of saying you're a vital, the things you guys have worked on was the reason he was standing up there. And I'm just kind of curious how you've like kind of

filed away don't do's or things where you guys, you've seen guys go wrong and how that affects, how you affect, you know, you are working with somebody who almost can only go one way. When you go and work with Xander, who's already a top five player in the world, it's an even harder level to reach that next one. I'm just kind of curious that whole process.

Ooh, that's a really good question. Yeah, I mean, I think the better the player is, the sort of the more risk you could say, but then even like little like, you know, ticks of improvement can mean a lot in terms of money earned, winning majors, things like that. So it's a really interesting kind of risk profile to like look at, but there's a long way down when you're already like a top 10 player in the world type of thing. You know, I think like, so like even say Tiger,

for example, right? Like in 2000, it's like in my mind, that's the best anybody's ever swung a golf club. Does it make sense to change that swing? I don't know, and we can circle back to that, but that's like a really interesting debate. I don't think it does, but then, you know, you can't just look at an isolation of that swing. I don't know. And we can circle back to that. But that's like a really interesting debate. I don't think it does. But then, you know, you can't just look in isolation of that change. It's like, how does it fit into like all the different things he's done over

his career to get better at the game? Right. So if we ever we can get more into that as we go along. But with Xander and how do I decide what to change? I would say if someone's already got like really great control of the golf ball, the things that I'm trying to stay away from are what their hands are doing through the shot, sort of like what I would call the release pattern. I think that's where people can oftentimes get in danger of really disrupting how they know how to control a golf ball. So if someone's already got a lot of control like Xander did, then it becomes more of a

how do other parts of their swing possibly match their current release pattern better and or are there things that they can do to maybe increase speed without disrupting their release pattern and that's kind of a little bit of what we did with Xander. He did some great work in the gym with his trainer David Sonsberg really put on some strength. We made some swing changes that in my mind would help both with how he transitioned and would match his release patterns through the ball, as well as some, it would also match some body motion stuff that I think in the long run theory should be better for his body. And then again, match that stuff through the ball. So to where certain shots, they really loves hitting, like he likes to be able to

hit a draw, you know, obviously he likes to be able to hit a fade without missing it left. Just in my mind would match again what he was doing through the ball a little bit better to produce those shot shapes that he kind of wanted to see. But yeah, I would stay away from the least pattern on the other side. If someone is really struggling with controlling the ball, then I think it's more invasive and it's oftentimes more risky, but it has sort of more of that potential upside. And if someone needs that upside, then it might be changing what they're doing through the ball with their hands and releasing the club and things like that.

Cause I think that's going to have the highest correlation to their overall shot distribution. So if there was a situation that warranted taking on that risk, it would oftentimes be more in that space, the work that we would do. So is it fair to say with Xander's profile with control, the control of the face that he has, he fit the profile to say like, hey, we can tack on some speed onto this without, there's always downside risk of course,

but without much, you know, is that blinking lights that you were saying like this, this is like, you are primed to improve right here and here's exactly how this is gonna help you strokes gain wise. Yeah, so and there's, you know, depending on sort of the angular dispersion, exactly how this is going to help you strokes gain wise. Yeah. So and there's, you know, depending on sort of the angular dispersion a person hit

shots on, you can start to get more speed for longer and still get a significant gain and strokes gained. So take it to the extremes. If someone was like, had this was like a really wide angular dispersion off the face, as you start getting farther out, like 300 plus yards, you're going to hit too many balls in the rough, too many balls potentially out of bounds. So now all of a sudden from a strokes game perspective, they can only get so much

added speed to where the strokes game upside kind of levels out a little bit. Whereas someone's like dead straight every time, you could in theory hit it 500 yards and you would still get something out of it, right? You would just drive it all the par fours and hit irons off the tee when you couldn't do that or whatever. So the upside of increasing speed somewhat contingent on what a person's dispersion is. Xander has like a pretty tight dispersion, like very tight dispersion. And because of that is like, okay, it does make sense if we can not disrupt that, try to get more speed.

And then, you know, what are the best ways to do that was part of like, you know, what we kind of went into it with as well as, you know, again, it wasn't just a speed thing. It was also there are certain shots that he kind of hit towards the end of last year that he didn't love. There are certain shots that he felt like he wasn't able to hit as just sort of consistently as comfortably as he had at other points in his career that he really liked to hit. And so a lot of it was directed to try to help him with that stuff as well.

I might circle back on speed, but I want to pick up on something you just said there because the longer I've done this, the more I've learned about the golf swing, the more I've learned about what separates the top professional golfers from, you know, the medium professional golfers or the normal mortals. I'm going to just throw a little bit of stuff at you

and you can critique it however you want. But to me, it's not like, all right, Chris Komo comes in and this is what he's now doing with Xander Shafly's golf swing now go, right? Because you could, you know, if all your work is on the range, you could create the perfect range swing. And for whatever reason on Saturday,

that swing might not hold up or like you might have gained a whole bunch of stuff in something, but it is now the miss that comes with this swing that you've worked on is not tolerable. We can't have that right. There's a difference in creating a tournament golfer 72 holes consistent golf swing that they need to like kind of play within the boundaries of and creating say the perfect golf swing. Let's just call

that Tiger 2000 on the range right. There's how much of what you do is kind of judged through going through the tournament trial by fire. I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but to say like, you can work on all of this stuff. It could be technically correct, but if it doesn't hold up and get put into practice over 72 holes in a manageable way, it's not worth going forward on.

Does any of that kind of trigger any thoughts for you? Yeah, absolutely. So like, when you're working with a manageable way, it's not worth going forward on. Does any of that trigger any thoughts for you? Yeah, absolutely. When you're working with a better player, obviously guys might want to hit a little bit farther or whatever, but for the most part, their good shots are good enough to play at the level they're playing at. And oftentimes, it really is look through the lens of what are your misses? You know, what are the misses you currently have? What's the miss that like you hate? Because like there's guys out there that there's certain misses that they hit it like it just it rocks into

the core of them. They're like, I cannot see that it just like it just almost hits them like at an emotional level. So you got to be like really aware of that. You know, I'm trying to take in kind of as much of this information as possible on the front end. You construct a fuzzy rough game plan with stuff, but then as you get more information, you're constantly updating. This is where it becomes this collaboration with the player. The end game goal isn't on the range hitting these perfect, beautiful shots or whatever. Obviously, you want that, but the real goal is under pressure, how do you hit quality

shots and also how do you have quality misses? And I think that does constantly, you know, through sort of a little trial and error, like feedback off information tournaments, the game plan is constantly sort of evolving. So it becomes this living breathing thing. Again, it's a collaboration with the players as much as anything. And you know, it becomes certain things with like, oh man, I have trouble on the left or I have wind on the right or whatever it is I feel like I'm doing x y and z and then you start to like make adjustments based upon that information as you get it. So absolutely like you know for the guys I work with you know out on tour the goal is to win tournaments and you know you win tournaments you know again not by necessarily it's a sort of the the Hogan quote right. It's like you know

the quality of your misses is as much of a defining aspect of your score as your good shots type of thing. And that's where I've used this phrase or this saying, the difference to me in professional golf is like, the best players in the world, let's just throw out random numbers that doesn't matter what they are.

They're gonna hit their median meanish average shot or not terrible shot eight out of 10 times. And an average player is only going to hit it seven out of 10 times. Like the good shot, right? Which is, you know, it just becomes like, how do you possibly do it to on that level of repeat? Like I understand heaters. I understand how guys get hot and go on great tournament runs month long, month and a half long, two months. I don't understand how guys can maintain, like I always point to something like Matt Kuchar. Like I don't understand how you maintain that level of play

for two decades. Like it's remarkable. It's incredible to be able to be that consistent, especially when you don't hit it far like he doesn't, to just be that consistent. And is there a trait you see in the guys that are able to do that? It's like the really thin dividing line

that does not show up unless you're watching as much golf as you probably do. Yeah, I mean, it's so funny, right? Cause it's like, you know, you ask people, what do they want with their golf game? And it's like more consistency. It's like, well, that is like the magic question of golf. That's like, I mean, somewhere in the world right now,

there's an 18 handicapper who got a hole in one and he's still going to be an 18 handicapper because the next shot's like out of bounds, right? So it's like, you know, if you could just do that over and over again, you'd be the best golfer in the world. So it's like that consistency question is like the fundamental aspect of like what separates you know golfers really, right? I mean, obviously like the distance and all that's part of it, but like, you know, there's a lot of mini tour guys out there that if you were to watch them for one shot, they're going to look like Roy

McIlroy. If you're watching for a round of golf, they may look like Scotty Shafla, right? But it's as a sample gets bigger, it's like then the separation, that skill and that consistency really shows itself. And then like you're saying over someone's career, like Matt Kuchar or Nicholas or Tiger or whatever, you really start to see the separation in, you know, that consistency factor, as well as obviously the other things that go into score. That's like the great mystery of like swing stuff. So you're asking like the freaking million dollar question

or billion dollar, whatever it is, right? You're asking the big, big question. Obviously there's like mental, psychological aspects of it. There's sort of their overall process with how they go about the game, how they go about life. I think some of it's in technique, and this is some some of the research that I'm always trying to dive into. It's like, where does consistency come from? Are there things that the best ball strikers in the world, in history have done that's maybe a little bit different, even though maybe just at the very

bottom of the swing through the ball, that from a probabilistic perspective separates their overall ball control from a good player, but that's not a great player. I don't think it's found in the aesthetics of we think of as a perfect swing. It can't be. It's why you get guys like Lee Trevino, Jim Furik, very different looking swings that are one of the best ball strikers had some of the best control over the ball flight out of anybody in the history of the best ball strikers had some of the best control over the ball flight out of anybody in the history of the game.

So I think it's things that are maybe outside of what we consider to be conventionally ideal for swing. Ideal swings can also have it, but I think it's stuff that's different than what's oftentimes talked about. And that's actually one of the things from like, say the research side of it, like really drives me as a coach to try to like figure out.

How did you kind of take me through both your background in biomechanics and how you became, for lack of a better, you correct me on this, but like how you became like the Bryson speed guy, right? And now I'm wondering also in that whole process, like did guys start coming to you for speed after you worked with Bryson on his whole speed thing?

And that might be unfairly labeling you, of course, as to what your work was with Bryson. But I think that is, you know, kind of some of the perception out there. But just kind of take me through that kind of timeline. I mean, that's interesting. So, cause I guess I sometimes don't even have that, like I don't follow too much stuff.

So I don't know what the perception is, but like, you know, so I had been teaching for, you know, 12 or so years before I ended up going to grad school for biomechanics. Part of it for me was I saw all these different opinions in the golf instruction world, which I think are all very good strategies to potentially help someone. But you talk to one coach and it's completely opposite of what someone else was saying, which is fine. But to me, I was craving some sort of like, what are some basic principles that could be applied to like say all the methods that are out there? And had an opportunity to go to do at a local university in Dallas, they had an incredible

biomechanics lab. We started collecting a bunch of data on these golfers, force plate data, 3D data, you know, went down the rabbit hole of doing the coursework for biomechanics and really illuminating, was still teaching in Dallas, had some really good players out there, became friends with Bryson well before I started working with them. Started working with them in 2018-ish, so we worked for quite a while before we did any of the speed stuff. I would actually say my biggest interest in say golf swing research theory is more

on that consistency side of it. That's to me, it's again the sort of the million dollar question that I think is so interesting to look at. And the speed is just kind of like, it only matters if you can preserve that or if you can help someone with that. I sort of differentiate it between clean speed and dirty speed. If you just get speed at any means necessary, it's not transferable and you end up not actually taking the golf course anyway. So with Bryson, we had already been working for a while and he's like, man, I really want to do some more speed stuff or I want to ramp up my speed. I'm like, okay, but we got to be really careful that we don't disrupt sort of this level

of consistency that you've already established. And we did a lot over COVID over the lockdown. I built a lab in my house and we did a lot of training in there. And we measured him on a 3D system as we made the changes. And the idea was, hey, let's leave some breadcrumbs in case we go down this path and it kind of gets a little, you know, messy We can sort of at least have information to increase the likelihood of our ability to back our way out of it back to where you were before And in my mind, it's like let's create speed But we can't do things that mess with again your release pattern because you already hit it like really straight So can't do things that are like trying to create more lag in the downswing or somehow disrupting how you already like square the club face. And that was like the constraints of how we tried to create speed. And it worked out great.

He came out of COVID, was hitting a lot farther, was hitting it very straight for how far he was hitting it. And he had a window there where he was driving it unbelievable. So, and same thing with Xander. I think the reason why there's been some, say success with guys at that level with helping with speed is because I've been the person where it's like, you can do this, but you gotta do it this way. Otherwise the net of it all is gonna be actually negative. And I've been really kind of like,

sort of strict with that. Like putting my foot down is like, you can't mess with this or that. And I think that gives you like, look, these are all 2020 hindsight things. Like there's no guarantee that any of this stuff works out. Like you alluded to before, these are tough, right? There's guys where they've tried to make swing changes and it hasn't worked out. And you know, a really smart coach with great intentions sometimes becomes a skate gopher on it.

And that could have easily happened, right? But I think part of why the chances of the success with these two guys in particular was maybe on the higher side was because it was like, how do you do speed in ways that don't disrupt that through the ball motion? That makes a ton of sense. I mean, that's where all the magic.

I compare that to like, Steven Yeager was on the pod and gave a great example of like how he became one of the longer drivers on tour, which was vastly different than what you're talking about both with Bryson and Xander in terms of their face control. He said he was short and inaccurate, right? So I might as well be long and inaccurate. I'm going to swing hard.

Basically, that was a light bulb moment for me as a golfer. I was like 165 speed and inaccurate. And I was not losing out to people on the golf course because I didn't hit it far enough. But I was like, I might as well hit it farther. And I've been doing speed stuff now for a couple of months now. And I'm seeing results of it. And I think it's actually helped

how I'm releasing the driver and potentially could help me be more accurate. But like that's a completely different path and say like, take, I don't know what a good example of B of someone to say like, you can't just necessarily, you know, somebody that doesn't have that same face control can't say, let's go get in the lab and add speed and this is all gonna work out great.

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I think that's a good point like there's some people who just with the focus of trying to create speed actually improve things So, you know, there's if someone already doesn't have like great face control again from that risk analysis Like it's like you're kind of free-rolling just like go for it, right? It's like it's like there's not really that much risk and in the effort to create speed you might make things more It's like there's not really that much risk and in the effort to create speed, you might make things more efficient or get a better release pattern or whatever it is to where you actually start to get more control of your golf ball while adding speed. So I think like those sort of careful concerns are more relevant when someone's already really

good and has a lot of face control. That's when you want to be sort of mindful of it. But yeah, you know, if someone's already like not not able to control it, I think he hit it perfect. You're better off to be a long and crooked than short and crooked. So you go to add speed with Bryce. You figure out you're gonna go down this route. Take us through what actually is done.

The way I understand it, all you gotta do is lift weights and swing as hard as you can, and that's where speed comes from, right? Take us through the multi-step process that comes from, obviously we saw the weight lifting and the eating and other things that led to it but I have a feeling there's a little bit more that goes into it than just that. Yeah I mean he did he did it all right he worked so hard I mean that's the one thing with Bryson is like he is such a hard worker and you know like he gets something in his mind like I'm going to do this I'm just going to go like you know thousand percent

right so yeah he changed his body worked out a ton you know We made the swing quite a bit longer, but through body motion. So more of just the way he moved his hips, the way he moved his lower body. Again, the way he pushed into the ground, the way he used his lower body was quite a bit different. So we had him on force plates. That changed quite a bit. The way he would stretch his arms against his chest and his shoulders to activate his muscles a little bit different that changed.

So there's quite a few things from a technique side of it that changed. And then it was, as you mentioned, just trying to hit it harder, just getting outside of your comfort zone. So I would say it was, you know, the big things were what he was doing in the gym, some technique side of it. And then, you know, I guess you could call it maybe like the neurological side of it, where he was just trying to like, get his body to move faster. Talk to me about this lab, the origin of the lab kind of, you

know, how you how you ended up finding a house for all this stuff. Tell me about the the famous Chris Como lab. So Okay, so I was at the players championship with Bryson actually. So at the time, I was living part time in New York. And it was like the, so at the time I was living part-time in New York and it was like though like before the players championship is when like all the COVID stuff was starting to happen. So I'm in New York and you know that was kind of like where everything was starting out a bit and I could see that the mindset

people were starting to like panic a bit. So I fly from New York to Jacksonville for the players and it was the week that they canceled the players like on Thursday or something and then I think the NBA. And it was the week that they canceled the players like on Thursday or something. And then I think the NBA also canceled their season that week and it was like, oh my gosh, like what's happening, right? Like, you know, no one had any idea what was gonna happen. So I flew back to Dallas from the players

and I had an apartment there and the golf channel called me and they're like, hey, we gotta stop filming. We don't know what's happening. Cause we were supposed to like film some episodes of a show that I was doing. And I'm like, man, I don't wanna be stuck in an apartment during all this. I gotta figure something out, right?

So I had kind of had this idea incubating my mind for a while of like, oh, it'd be cool to have like my own sort of like lab to collect data on people, maybe do some content out of things like that. And so this is all happening. I'm like, what's the one place that they can't keep you out of would be your own home. So I call a realtor friend of mine up and I was like,

I need to find a house with a really big ceiling. And in my mind, I'm like, I want to be able to shoot a three pointer in it and collect the data on a three pointer. I don't know why I was like so into it. It'd be so cool to see like the 3D of someone shooting a three pointer. So I did all the measurements of how high the ceiling needed to be for a ball to travel

for three point shots and you know, where the line would be and all that. And we saw about, I don't know, 10 plus houses and each house I went into, I was in there for like 45 seconds. I was like, nope, this won't work, nope, this won't work. Didn't care about the bathrooms or anything. No, nothing, it was like, it's a little bit big enough.

And there was one place that we found where I'd be shooting like over the kitchen sink and it would have worked dimensionally, but it was like the ball would have been bouncing around like in the kitchen stuff. And it was like, okay, that was actually the leading candidate. And then I found this one place that it was like, it was actually perfect. And I went to them and I was like, you know, I, cause I thought like, Oh, I can get a good deal on it. It'd be sort of panicking right now with like COVID. So I made an offer and the lady comes back and she's like, you know, we had another offer

already and I called her an hour later and like, you know, exceeded what they're, they're asking for. I was like, I need that place. Cause it was so perfect for her. So she called my bluff. So we went in there and just tore up the living room, put a gear system in there, put a gas force plate in there, put a gas force plate in there, put a basketball hoop up. And it just became this place where we were able to do some training and

he would come in and we would do a lot of training and I had some cool people come through. I had Jamie Ben from the Dallas Stars do a slap shot on the force plates, not Steph, but Seth Curry, his brother came in when he was playing for the Mavs. I played Penny Hardaway, horse, one time in there. So it was fun. It was a great little kind of like, you know, COVID sort of thing for us to do. Line up your first win when you bet this week on Fandl,

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Just teach me about that. Pretend like I know almost nothing, because I almost kind of do almost know nothing about it, but how would you use force plates to help somebody with golf? Well, I think the first part is there's not an ideal sort of like what you should do, per se. Everybody's using the ground.

If you're walking around, you're using the ground. I'm sitting on the chair, and in theory, I'm using the ground. If there's a force plate on this chair, you can see how I'm kind of pushing into it. So it's just a very principal part of where motion comes from is, you know, if I go like this, you know, my body's not moving, but I have a wall, I push away from the wall. So it's it's, you know, Newton's third law of like a reaction force. So the first part is, it's just telling you what you're doing.

You're standing on them. It's taking each foot and saying, how is each foot pushing into the ground? And then from that, again, that force that you're putting in the ground, how it creates a reaction force that moves you through space a certain way. And if you have a golf swing and you want it to be different,

then you want your body to move differently, then the way you're pushing in the ground is going to be different. Now that may not be the key for someone. Some people do much better off just saying, hey move your body this way or that way. So it may not be even relevant for someone to use how they push in the ground as like a learning tool, but it's still happening. Like how the pushing ground like is changing. And I think as a coach, it's good to know that. I feel like I've spent enough time on force plates that I can kind of

sense the overall directionality of things, the overall sense of it without the force plates. I don't feel like I actually need to use force with all the time, but, you know, it shows the direction of pushing the ground, how hard they're pushing the ground. It shows what kind of torques they're creating and how that affects the overall momentum of their body, their whole system, of their body and the club and all that.

And also you could say the angular momentum, just like how things are rotating. And then that's part of, that momentum is part of what gets transferred to the club bed and where club bed speed comes from. So if someone is trading whatever club bed speed and we want them to create more club at speed, pushing the ground, they don't necessarily need to push the ground more, but they might. And they don't necessarily need to push the ground differently, but they might. And it's

just one of those things where it's a way to measure it, to give a little bit more of insight into like what they're currently doing. And then in my mind say like, okay, this is where I think it needs to go. And then how you actually cue an individual to do that may not have anything to do with the ground, but it's information that's running in the background that I think is still somewhat relevant. And for some people, it can be a good learning tool because then it's like, oh, hey, see how, you know,

on the thing, it shows that you're pushing the ground this direction at this point in your swing. Maybe try to make that arrow that we see go more in this way earlier. And in order to do that, you would have to do whatever. And then they do a swing and they look and it's like, okay, a little bit better, maybe more in that direction. And you can use that as like a feedback tool.

So there's so many, but like, who knows, right? That's the art of it. It's like, how do you cue someone to actually change your motion is such a part of like, what's gonna resonate with them, what parts of their body do they connect with more things like that? But in the most simplest form of it all, it's just information that a coach decides whatever they want to decide with

it. Right? So like information in of itself is not like good or bad. It's just like, what do you do with it? And it might be something that's just filed away in the back and, you know, becomes relevant to a coach's strategy way down the road. But they take that information, they put it in their file and who knows when they pull it out. If ever, sometimes you don't. Sometimes it's just like having someone change exactly what they're doing with the ground is not really part of the overall game plan I have with them. I promise I was listening to all that and that you were saying that there's a lot of varieties

here. There is no easy answer this. But I no, no, no, no. So my next question I'm saying I is it safe to say in theory, like you would want to if you're building said a perfect golf swing or a good golf swing, you want to have your your weight and your pressure going down into the ground. And by the time you're making impact, using the grant, you're coming off the ground, not bouncing necessarily, but let's just say in theory, kind of bouncing off the ground as a source of power.

Is that like a fair way to kind of broadly describe what you're looking for out of, you know, creating a solid golf swing? So, you know, when you see people start to fall, like say lower, they're unweighting. They're actually in a sense, creating less force in the ground for a little, we know, whatever split second. And then when they land, like imagine if you jump off something and

land, it like would spike, the force would spike. And then that spiking as they're like decelerating themselves, that's spiking and then they push up, it also creates a spike. Now that spike in that ground reaction force, in and of itself doesn't create more speed. It becomes now, what's the direction of that? And so like, if we were playing say football and I were to like run and hit you in the center of your body, you would just go back straight, right?

Like you'd fly back straight. Now if I were to run and hit you in your shoulder, you would kind of rotate, okay? So I'm putting a force away from say the center of your mass of your body. That creates a rotation in your body. So now if I push the ground in a way that puts a force away from the center of mass of my body, it will actually create like say a rotation in that direction. Now if I can do that in a way that's timed up to where now I can transfer some of that what would be rotation out to the club, that is part of where you would create clubbing speed or more potentially more clubbing speed from. So, you know, do

you see guys who like lower and jump who hit it far? Sure. You know, old school Tiger, Bubba Watson, there's definitely an element of that. Now, where does that lowering, that jumping, what's the contribution of that? These can get, there's rabbit holes we can go down, but there's also people who are really far who don't do that at time. Gary Woodland, ton of clubbed speed, he's not bouncing around, right? So there's guys who still create a lot of clubbed speed who don't have a ton of that bouncing around So I think it's one of those things I think people have maybe overdone the concept of lowering and jumping and that's the way to create club at speed Like it's a way and it's not exactly that in of itself that does it

There's things that if you do that and the timing is right can be somewhat correlated club at speed But there's also other ways to essentially again, build the momentum in your system that eventually you can get to the club head that don't involve a dramatic lowering and kind of jumping. So that makes sense. That does. No, I mean like just in theory, like you, if you are doing this lower and jumping, but it's causing more rotation at the wrong time or the wrong place, you could be losing power. Yeah.

It just doesn't even get to the club at speed, right? And there's other ways to create that rotation in the wrong time or the wrong place, you could be losing power. Yeah, it just doesn't even get to the club head speed, right? And there's other ways to create that rotation in the system that eventually gets to the club head. And it's not even the rotation, you're creating that momentum. You may not even rotate a lot, you're creating it, and then if you get to the club head, your body may not look like it's rotating a ton.

So, but there's other ways to do it, and that's sort of the beauty of it, where I see things out there that are maybe like, oh, do this to create club at speed. And it's like, yeah, you can. But it's missing the exact sort of cause and effect of it. And then along with that, there's other ways to do it. So, I'm always a little careful

when things become kind of like in vogue. And I think that's something for a while that was, that it's like, it's definitely not the only strategy to help someone create clubbing speed. I'm curious on this question and the best golf I ever played in my life. I had just interviewed Brendan Todd and he was talking about how he kind of got over his long iron and fairway wood yips, what was what he was calling it with by lowering his arm tension from like a seven level to a four and I literally took that I was like, oh my god, my arm tension is like a nine right now. And I

took it down to a four and played the best golf in my life for nine months. I've been chasing that feel ever since. Like, I haven't been able to haven't been able to find it ever since. But like, I'm kind of curious, just to ask what what, what tension for somebody with a biomechanical background, what tension does in a golf swing and whether you know, whether you see that in amateur golfers or more, you know, less than the so the professional golfers or more, you know less

So the professional golfers of not having the proper tension and why it felt like the more the looser I got with my arms The farther I hit it the better I hit it Why that would be because it feels like it would be the opposite That's cool. That's interesting. So, okay So I'm gonna I'll start with this is a couple of really great players like very famous top top top golfers when they've showed me their grip pressure and like I've had one where he's like, you know, let me grab your finger. Like it's the club and they were like squeezing the blood out of my finger, like firm from grip pressure. So, and again, there's guys who, you know, hold it like a bird or whatever it is. So there's a big range of what people do in terms

of grip pressure. That's different than say like the rest of their body and their arms as well, though. So there is a separation from that. I do know guys who in general like a lot of tension. So I want to be careful to say this is not like an absolute thing because there are people who have played at the highest level who, you know, I would guess are probably more on that seven side of it. I do think with a lot of golfers, when you reduce your tension, it almost forces you to do better stuff with the club.

So I don't know if it's like the tension in and of itself. It's more of if you don't have that tension, there's not this sort of, you know, some of the trend of like say, shallowing the club and things like that. It's been, I think it's been overdone, but there is a little bit of a physics aspect that if the club falls, and the force of the club that you put can help kind of square the club up passively, it creates some release of the club

in almost like a passive way, you could say. And I think oftentimes when people have less tension, it almost forces them to kind of like stumble onto that. And then something like that, it's like, Oh, wow, this is like so much easier. The club square is easier. There's more kind of like a feeling of whip or speed at the bottom, things like that. So I don't know if it's the less tension in and of itself is that I think oftentimes, especially if people are doing some other stuff, that's not good where they're sort of disrupting that relationship. And they say, okay, I'm going to have like no like no tension or I'm gonna try to swing a club with my left arm

only can be helpful too. The only way they can even hit the ball really is by doing some better stuff so it creates this kind of like pathway that they have to sort of figure it out through and then when they figure it out they're like oh my god this is amazing. They obviously because the only thing that they're fully aware of was the less tension so their mind is the less tension that did it in and of itself. And I would say it's the less tension created the opportunity for them to only be able to hit a golf ball reasonably doing some other stuff that's really good. And it was sort of the combination of all those things that got the results. And then, and then sometimes they lose that. And

that's where they go. Well, you know, I have less tension, but not hitting it is good anymore. So it's like, where'd it go? And they keep trying to go back to the less tension. And their tension might be exactly the same that it was when they were hitting a grade. So it's not the tension in and of itself, but it's also what piggybacks on top of that less tension sort of feeling that created the results they're getting for a window. And then you get down the rabbit hole of like, all right, well, you know, this tension might still be a four, but it doesn't feel like a four anymore because this is now feels normal to me.

And like, that's another element of like swing changes that crazy like, all right, I'm going to focus on taking the club, you know, hedging my wrist earlier and taking more inside. And then like a month later, I might be too far inside if I've only thought about that for an entire month. And that's where like, man, you can twist yourself into pretzel pretty quickly. Oh, it's wild, right? It's why you see like a tour guide

win a tournament, miss the cut. It's like these feelings are subjective. And this is part of where I think, you know, any golfer and then guys on tour can do a better job of like really being able to parse out, you know, this was my subjective feeling, but this is objectively what was happening. And that feeling probably has a shelf life. Hopefully it doesn't, but it might, right?

And if it has a shelf life, that same feeling could produce completely different objective motions. And then now you're not getting the results you got from, you know, that feeling at a previous time. And you have to be aware of that. And that's where you have to say, okay, now I have to go to another feeling, possibly to get the exact same objective motion or a similar objective motion to keep myself in a sweet spot where I perform the best. How do you talk? And I'm curious kind of where tour players end up falling out on this spectrum, but just anytime I get a coach on, I'll always, of course, use this as an opportunity to help me with my own game. But like, I would say I don't have like a great knowledge of the golf swing.

I can't talk to you about like what's going on and I can talk about my misses, but like if you talk real technical to me, you need to do that. Like I'm not great at choreography and I don't understand the golf swing great. So like that's tough combination for like how you would communicate something to help me, right?

Like it would need to be, if I want the club more less across the line, you got to do something with me in the early part or something else to help me do that instead of just saying, don't be across the line is what I'm getting at to say. Do you experience a wide spectrum of that amongst tour players of guys that are like, I'm on this end of the spectrum of, I understand exactly what's going on in the swing and understand exactly what you want me to tweak and all that. I'm sitting here, I'm guessing Tiger ends up on that. And also do you work with guys that don't understand

what makes them great and have to speak a different language to them to get your point across, to get them to kind of have an impact on their game? I'm curious kind of your reaction to that. Yeah, I mean, I think with everybody, you're trying to come up with a language that resonates with you guys. So I don't really ever use like technical jargon,

just like, what is that? Like it's all about how do you communicate with that person? The communication could just be like feels or like a visual or whatever it is. Like to me, it's like, how do you just get them to play good, right? And it's not about having some sort of air quotes

formal knowledge. So yeah, it's all over the map in terms of the language that I'm using with like an individual. You know, Bryson kind of liked some of the more like anatomically correct kind of like language or physics language because that's just his personality. But the reality of it is at the end of the day, he was still a field player or still is a field player. So it's like you can talk about that, but the language that's really resonating with him when he's sitting at golf ball is still very much a field, very

intuitive things like that. We're constantly developing, like with Xander, like it's kind of funny, we have like these terms that have now transitioned to just emojis. So I can send him like three to five emojis, and it's like, he knows what I'm talking about swing wise. So like, if he's like, how'd it look? I'll just be like, maybe a little bit more than, you know, whatever emojis,

and he's like, knows exactly what it is. So, you know, you just develop your own language. Some people resonate better with like visual stuff. Some people resonate better with like, oh, it's got to feel this way or feel this in my body. Or, you know, sometimes it's just like, hey, you know, you need to hit this shot right now because you're doing too much of this type of thing. So you're doing it more through an external cue. It's all on the table, right? All these things are on the table. And what resonates with an individual

is just kind of part of the learnings that I have as a coach with that person. And that changes too over time. Like, you know, what's gonna sort of best connect with them during one window might shift for whatever reason at a different time. Well, I think a lot of people in the golf world probably first heard of you, you know, the people that don't nerd out in detail over this stuff whatever reason at a different time. Well, I think a lot of people in the golf world probably

first heard of you, you know, the people that don't nerd out in detail over this stuff, probably first heard of you when you started working with Tiger Woods, right? And I want to get, can you take us back to the origin of that relationship, remind listeners how long you guys worked together and just kind of, how did you end up coaching, you know, the best player we've seen in this generation?

So I was teaching in Dallas and I had become friends with Nota Begay, you know, I was was starting to build a nice reputation in Dallas, teaching some just better juniors, some guys on the web tour, or I guess it was the web at that time. And then I was going to grad school at night while I was teaching full time. And with that group had published a few papers and some science journals. And Noda thought that was interesting. And we just kind of developed a friendship and he was following my career a bit. And then I started teaching guys out on Torah, was coaching Trevor Lumen and Noda was like,

hey, man, I think you and Tiger would hit it off. So he facilitated a meeting, actually flew out to New York for Noda's charity event, you know, met Tiger for the first time and it's supposed to be like You know real quick kind of like meet meet up. We end up spending probably, you know almost two hours Just talking also and just kind of like really going I had my laptop with a bunch of swings of him over time Etc. We just started really kind of get into it was really fun. What time frame is this? When is this? Yeah, I think it's 2013. Okay. Fall 13 maybe? I think so. That sounds right. It's one big blur these days. And then one of the guys that works with him

reached out to me. He's like, hey, Tiger wants to meet up with you again, come out to Florida. And I flew out to Florida. We spent again a day or whatever together and then a little bit after that, they reached out to me, he's like, hey, he wants to work with you. And from my perspective, it was always like, look, what you did in 2000 is the gold standard. Now your body's not the same, obviously, but if we can get you as close to that,

from again, that sort of release pattern perspective, the overall shape of things, how you work the club, with this body you have now. So with the constraints that we're currently dealing with, in my mind, that would be like the best efforts we could have and give you the best chance of, you know, playing great golf again. And so that was in my mind, the game plan and fricking,

I mean, what an unbelievable experience to sit there with him, look at his swing back then. I mean, I have unbelievable experience to sit there with him, look at his swing back then. I mean, I have so much footage of his swing from kind of every era, junior, college, you know, when he won the Masters in 97, early 2000s, mid 2000s, you know, onward. And to have his inside sort of scoop and perspective of what he felt, what he was thinking, what he was working on. Most unbelievable education a coach could ever have just in and of itself that right.

It was great, you know, and we just did our best job to get him as close as possible. His body was obviously going through like some challenging stuff in that window, which at the time people didn't really know about it. You know, he's such a competitor. He's not like sharing that with media. He's just going out there and fighting. But I think, you know, in hindsight, it became pretty apparent that his body was just not cooperating great, but it was an unbelievable experience. I'm just curious, what's his reaction? He's fighting his body at this point.

What's his frustration level, privately? Do you get the sense that he's feeling it all slip away? Is he really just, you know, feel like he's missing opportunities kind of just take me to his mental state of like this constant battle he's had with his body for, I mean, gosh, it's been like 18 or something specific times he's missed this time because of injury. Just kind of you're, you're with him around that time period. What, what was it like? It was honestly, I would say one of the most remarkable things

I've ever witnessed in my life. For us mere mortals, right? It's like he's got, who knows how much money, all the accolades, the best golfer arguably of all time, all the respect you could ever have in your industry. And he's in pain and his body's not in a great place. He's had a ton of surgeries just in pain. And the way he kind of got up and fought and still works through things, had the whole chipping thing, right? Couldn't chip a ball from like 10

feet off the green, all the green for a minute minute people saw that out loud at like Phoenix and and Tory, you know back in that window and the way he got up and and sort of just did what he could do Like he doesn't know what's gonna be ahead of him But just having that sort of effort almost just out of principle out of the principle of just like not giving up Was like unbelievable to me. I mean, the guy has zero give up in his body. And it was, it was crazy because it was like, I knew that that's sort of the pain and the

struggle he was going through and the way he just kept at it, regardless, um, it was truly remarkable. It's like that in my mind, it was like the most amazing part of his career in a lot of ways. Like obviously he's done all these incredible things, but just from like a very like humanistic human spirit side of it, like I just, it's hard to imagine someone still having that sort of resilience to get up every day given those circumstances and really put forth like their a hundred percent effort and just kind of fight out of it. And then he wins the masters in 2019 and it was like, it was just unbelievable.

Well, it's interesting because I've, you know, ever since the car accident, I've said many times, and you know, seen the last iterations we've seen of him. I'm like, how long do you want to do this? Why do you want to keep doing this? Like, it looks like more pain than is worth. And I don't know if there's a light at the end of the tunnel, but that's all to say like,

hey, I was saying the same things in 2016, 2017. Exactly, exactly. He went one of the Masters. And like, I find that interesting too, in terms of how he has approached the golf swing over the course of his career. You can kind of do the same thing of, why would you ever change off the 2000 swing? We've kind of hinted at that. I want to kind of ask you just about outside of your timeline of working with him, of his

arc of the way he's done things. I mean, he had a certain golf swing as a junior, had a certain golf swing as a 21 year old when he won the Masters by 12 and decided to tear it down and build up to, there was just so many successful iterations of this golf swing that I don't know if he gets credit for, like everyone is quick to say,

why'd you ever stop swinging it? Why'd you ever leave Butch Harmon? Why'd you ever change off this golf swing? Yet it's hard to argue with some of the success he had with Hank Haney and some of the other different time periods of his career where he had bouts of solid health, that he had this success.

Your perspective on this I think is interesting in terms of the many doors that can open over the course of somebody's career, the pursuit of that and how he was able to enjoy success. I'm just curious your perspective on all of that. Yeah, I think, I mean, in my mind, you hit the nail around the head. So I look at it like this.

It's like, okay, all these things can be 20-20 hindsight type of thing, right? So, you know, if you were to say, should Tiger have changed his golf swing in 2000? I would say no, okay? Like that, I think is the best anybody's ever swung it. Just do that, do that for the rest of your career. Who knows how many majors you win? 30 plus, whatever.

But I think that's a very sort of narrow kind of perspective and a 2020 hindsight perspective. Because you got to look at what a person is doing from their sort of decision point, if you will. And you could have said the same thing as a junior. He was the best junior at every step of the way. And if he had changed his swing at say 13 years old, and then didn't become a great collegiate player, that people would be like, why did you change your swing at 13? But he didn't, he got better. And then if he had changed his swing after 97 masters and never won other majors, he'd be like,

why did you change that? But that's not what happened. He ended up in 2001 everything. So I kind of make it analogous to like, say you were to take a great investor, some multi-billionaire, and you were to look at all their investments, you could cherry pick an investment and be like, that was a bad investment. If you had not done that, you'd be worth this much more money, right? But it's like, no, like they had an overall investment strategy and there's a couple that maybe didn't work out, but as a whole, that investment strategy yielded unbelievable results. Tiger had his own sort of, as you will, investment strategy. And look, if you were to take a three-year-old Tiger and say, Hey, this kid's going to win 15 majors, you know, you would book it, right? Because it's just like the odds of that are

so low. So his investment strategy in general yielded an unbelievable career. He was always saying, how do I keep getting better? How do I keep getting better? Every time you try to get better, there's always some risk involved. Overall, it's done great for him. You can cherry pick one investment he made of changing his swing in 2000 and say maybe that wasn't the best one. And I would agree with that. It wasn't. But it's a 2020 hindsight analysis. And if you take the overall strategy, it's like, it's hard to really knock

what he's got when he's done with his career. And tying that all the way back to where we started, like you, it's the relationship between the body and the golf swing is dictated by some of that, right? I don't know exact timeline of the injuries, but the left knee was a 2002-ish that, I'm guessing somewhere on that time period. It was a factor, became a factor where it became known to us that it was a factor.

And that if you have to have a little bit of trust in the guy and the people around him to say like, if he is saying or people around him are saying you can't swing it like this and continue on with the success because of how your body is reacting to that, then a change needs to be made, right? And that's kind of where I've not long held that belief, right? I think I'm more sympathetic to kind of that line of thinking than I was maybe five years ago of just understand as I've aged

and have back problems and understand the effect that's having on my golf swing, it's like, oh, well, that happens. That happens to Justin Thomas as he enters his 30s. That happens to Jordan Speed. That happens to Max Justin Thomas as he enters his 30s. That happens to Jordan Speed. That happens to Max Homa as he enters his 30s of like, your body is just not gonna be the same for 20 years and how your golf swing, you know, your golf swing in some way, shape or form

has to change around that, either subtly or drastically. Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, and you can go back and argue whether the particulars change that they made for whatever or anybody makes for this or that is the correct one. That's like, who knows? These are all, you just don't know, right? These are weird arguments to make because there's just no way to sort of test that hypothesis.

But at the end of the day, it is going to have to change. And like you said, if it happens more organically, it's hard to know that's the better way to go about it or not. But it will change. As your body changes, your swing will change. And he was proactive with stuff for whatever the reasons were at that time that he was. And again, it was part of his effort to just get better and play at a high level for a longer period of time, et cetera.

And it's just such an armchair quarterback thing to be like, that one was like off. So I try to look at it from like that sort of bigger, that kind of macro view of it and really just pay a lot of respect to like his overall kind of approach, which is to always get better and the results that's yielded over whatever amount of years. And it's funny because I actually, if Bryson, I think it's the same way, always trying to get better.

Xander's the same way, always trying to get better. Xander's the same way, always trying to get better. Jason Day, these guys who are the top top golfers, it's like they're always trying to get better. And now it becomes balancing that risk of that effort to get better, with obviously the potential offset that you're hoping for. And these guys who do go down this path of saying, like, look, I'm okay with making some changes

in effort to get better. They're just maybe a little bit more risk tolerant, or they're just, who knows exactly what goes into the wiring of an individual. But this is where, as a coach, I'm hoping that I can be really helpful with, how do we do this, but also be very mindful of mitigating that risk. Well, I think us, especially in the media,

those that aren't experienced in this world can get, I've been guilty of it. And I've started to catch myself now of like, you can trick yourself into the peak of a player's performance. You can trick yourself into thinking that's what they are. Right? Like that is what they're gonna be

for a long period of time. Like we've just giving some examples, like Jason Day's run that he had in 2015, 16, 17, into 18, all of that is different than how the next four or five years went for him, but like that's not to say, Jordan Spieth, same thing, Justin Thomas, kind of same thing. Rory, and depending on how you look at it with major championship performances in general,

I'm curious kind of, I'm not positive what my question is in relation to that, other than to say like, it's not uncommon to see players go on very long stretches of sustained great golf and either a newish generation kind of comes in, you know, some several years later, all the people I wouldn't look this up like the people that are beating Rory in majors now over the last 10 years, weren't the same guys he was beating in 2014, right? It's new guys

coming in. I'm just kind of curious how you've seen like, uh, uh, peaks and arcs of guys career and understanding how difficult it is to, to have prolonged periods of extreme success. Cause I want to ask about Scotty on the back end of that, uh, right now of pausing and being like, Hey, this might not last forever. It feels like it will right now, but history would tell us it does not last forever. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's, it's, I mean, a guy like Rory's time, he's played at a high, high level for a long time, right? I mean, just maybe not the best example there because he has been more sustained success for the 15 years really. Yeah. And then, you know, and I'm not saying this is wrong, but are like, you know, golfers at that level, they're so defined by the majors, which I think is kind of cool actually. So, you know, it's obviously I'm sure he's very disappointed that he hasn't won another one in a bit, but he's played really well, right? So I wouldn't even consider his performance to necessarily be a down take, just hasn't

quite won a major. But yeah, you do see these crazy ebbs and flows. You know, again, I think I do think like a person say golf swing, the whole ecosystem of golf swing, it's like all these things you've talked about. It's a little bit of like, you know, their body and how that changes their technique and all these things that it's so easy for things to get a little bit off. And these guys are so good and the edges are so small that a little bit off can mean, you know, a fairly significant drop in their relative performance. It doesn't take, you know, many, you know,

whatever percentage of a stroke per round decrease to fall pretty far down on the money list or world ranking. I think it's just, it's such a hard game to be really good at for a long stretch. But unlike other sports where there's clearly this like window of time from like a, just an athletic perspective, like in other sports is like, you gotta jump high enough, you gotta be fast enough, yada, yada, yada, there's more risk of like acute injury from like being tackled weird or whatever, that I think in other sports we have in our mind

of like, this is the window. So there's a little bit more grace with a player if they're outside that window, they're not performing as well. Whereas golf, there's at least a couple of precedences of people being able to perform for like a long window, that we know that's possible. And I think that sticks in our mind. And then we see someone who maybe doesn't do that. And it's just, again, I think it's such a sensitive ecosystem, like high level golf, that you're more often than not going to see that somehow disturbed in a way that

decreases the performance enough to where they're not a top player because of all those variables. golf that you're more often than not going to see that somehow disturbed in a way that decreases the performance enough to where they're not a top player because of all those variables. You know, again, I think over time, I'm hoping this is part of like on my side of it, that we can get better at helping a person stay in their sweet spot longer. You know, as a coach, it's like one, how do you help them get to that level where they're performing at the level they want to, you know, hopefully getting better. But then as much as anything, like how do you stay in there more often? How do you stay in that window for a higher percentage of the time for a longer window

of your career? I think is where I can hopefully add value to the guys that I work with. And I think we're just getting better at that as coaches. Again, it's like you're playing against the field. So I think that's where if you take an individual and then you say, okay, you know, the people who come through that are playing well, I think it's just a probability thing where you get either younger guys or different guys or whatever who happen to stumble upon a sweet spot for themselves and then go on a heater. And then that's kind of what we see as the current top players. And then that just kind of has its own sort of like movement,

again, just for more of a probabilistic thing. I want to talk a little bit about Scottie Scheffler, not a guy you work with, at least as far as I know. I know he works for Randy Smith, but I didn't know if he worked with him in any capacity. But he is, I mean, the year he's had, depending on how you want to look at it and how I tend to look at it is the best we've seen since Tiger. That's not the comparison to Tiger that people think it is when we say that. But like, I don as the best we've seen since Tiger. That's not the comparison to Tiger that people think it is when we say that, but like, I don't know if we've seen that sustained, you know, nine month run,

like we saw this past year. What can you look at when you see Scottie and Glean? And what do you see that's just like, this is what he is separating? Going back, you mentioned something earlier that I found interesting of just like, so much of the game being decided by the probability of at the bottom of the swing of your club being on the right path and for all that face

angle I'm paraphrasing that of course but like he sure seems to be the one that's the best at doing that consistently right and I'm just kind of curious what you can take away from what you see from him and maybe using some of your teachings or help other players with. I mean it's like I mean I mean, it's just, it's the best ball striking we've seen since Tiger, right? I mean, it's right at that level, you know, and I mean, Tiger in his peak,

no Tiger had more speed maybe like in 2000, but you know, maybe Scottie has more control of his irons. You know, it's weird trying to do like a good statistical analysis on comparing them, but it's right there. He's obviously done great work with his putting with Phil Kenyon and has made a nice uptick with that. His short game is unbelievable.

So yeah, he's playing the best golf we've seen since Tiger, full speed Tiger type of thing. I look at Scottie and I go, I mean, this is like, if an alien spaceship landed on Earth and it's like, okay, I want to study that to reverse engineer how it does like these crazy things. Like if I could get him on force plates and 3D and just be like, this is just for the sake of science, that would be like amazing, right? Because it's like, there's just magic in what he does.

From my perspective, I think he does a lot of things that I think are like so good with like great ball strikers. So he fits sort of like my worldview or like my lens of like looking at golf swings in terms of things that I think are really like important and good to do. His coach Randy Smith, I think is just like one of the all time best coaches, I consider him like a really good friend. I love talking to Randy. You know, it's it's amazing how some of these old school guys just like air code old school

guys just they figure out so much like really great stuff that even in this kind of era where we're using technologies, it's like, oh, that's essentially what like Randy or Butch was saying type of thing or Jim McClain or whoever. I don't know. I look at Scotty and what he's doing and I'm just like in awe. And for me, I use him as like a point

to like just do study in my own research on. I know I'm running out of time, but I want to run this quote by you. I was talking with Scotty last June at a video shoot we were doing, and I was asking him about the desperation wrap around finish that we see in some of his swings. Where does that come from? He explains, yeah, when my blah, blah, blah gets behind, or when I can feel the right miss coming on, that's me saving it. Then I was like, yeah, when my blah, blah, blah gets behind, or when I can feel the right miss coming on, that's me saving it. And then I was like, Okay,

that makes sense. And like, he took it, like the next step and said something along the lines. And of course, I'm paraphrasing, but like it immediately at this exact point, I think I went on the show that next Sunday night, and I was like, I'm buying up more Scotty stock, because of what he said next. He said, I everything I do in my training in my practice against paraphrasing is a is preparing my body to react in competitive situations. Right, like he just was not talking technical swing stuff,

it was like I need to know if he could feel when something's off here and I want to prepare, be able to prepare my body to react to that on the way down to make up for flaws that have gone on. Again, that's like paraphrasing interpretation of that. It was like, man, I just don't hear a lot of guys talk like that. And that was like, we had no wonder you're dominating all the competitions. That seems like the exact mindset you should have about a way to approach a competitive situation. I'm wondering kind of what your reaction is hearing that something like that.

Yeah. I mean, I think Tiger had a bit of this mindset, right? Which was just like, how do you sort of prepare as best for when things go wrong or the unknown? It's not just trying to play like perfect golf, but how do you deal with those situations where things are just off? This is where someone like Scottie's short game or Tiger's short game or Jason Day, Xander, et cetera.

It's like, if things are off and around, they can keep themselves in the round Scottie short game or tiger short game or Jason Day, Xander, et cetera. It's like, if things are often around, they can keep himself in the round through their short game and give themselves the opportunity to figure stuff out. Which seems unfair by the way. That will continue. Yeah, I know. Right. It's like, but then on the other side of that, Scottie can get whatever, what he feels out of position or whatever exactly that is and save a shot

and it's still really good. Now if someone's saving a shot is now you know not good in the rough or maybe the hit balls out of bounds or whatever it's like you can try to do that preparation all you want but it may not work as well. So this is where I do think oftentimes we see a guy like Scotty and the things he says and people try to like either copy that or someone from the outside looking and be like, oh to another player, you just need to do that. And it's like lots of people would be like, I would love to do that. I would love to be able to save my shots and air quotes save my shots and still have them end up there. But that's not where they end up when I feel like I'm out of whack or out of position or whatever it is, and I'm saving a shot.

So it's, you know, I don't know if luxury is the right way to say it, but like, it's something where the results and with him doing that are great. And if someone were to try to do the exact same thing, they may be getting totally different results. And then it becomes, well, okay, what are you gonna do now to try to get to like the level you wanna get to?

And that's where a different strategy might be appropriate for that person. And it wasn't the saving of the shots that kind of dumbfounded me as much as it was like, his swing doesn't get off. Maybe you could count to two tournaments this past year where it's like, oh, his swing wasn't there. And like, I don't know if you can say that

about anybody else. It was just the mindset of like, basically he feels like an athlete showing up ready to be athletic on the golf course and move the ball around like a chess piece more than he cares about the technical aspects of his swing, which is like that part got me of like, well, again, to your point, you're blessed maybe with some things that I I'm not going to go out and play world class golf just with that mindset. But he does

have some blessings in that. But that was just like, man, you know, talking to other guys about what's going on with their swing, what they're struggling with and all that, it just, again, maybe has the luxury of not having to worry about the technical stuff right now. And maybe it might not always be that way, but that was just the light bulb going off for me moment. Like, whoa, this guy's, he's different.

I think, yeah. And I think that's, to me, it's like that's where everybody strives to be, where you can be more connected to the target, be more athletic, not thinking about technical stuff, and have your ball go where you want to go. At the end of the day, if you could take a junior golfer and they never had a technical thought in their mind throughout their whole career and they hit the ball awesome, that's

an ideal scenario. You don't need someone messing with your golf swing if that's what you do. I think some of these, you know, when people do have that intervention of like someone, you know, doing stuff with their golf swing, whatever, it's only makes sense. It doesn't make sense to say I'm going for a perfect, whatever, that's sort of silly.

It's just like, if the results aren't where they need it to be and they've tried some of these things that are be more athletic, be more connected to the target, whatever, and they just feel like they're handcuffed, then maybe you need to explore something that's a little bit more intervening with it all. But again, for a guy like Scotty, it's like, dude, if you can just be athletic and the ball's doing what it's doing, just freaking do that for the rest of your life. Don't look back. Don't look back.

Don't look back. Well, Chris, this was absolutely fascinating, man. This stuff is just like, it's the core of the game, you know, of trying to solve it and kind of going down these rabbit holes. I could keep you for 10 hours if we had the time for it. But really appreciate you coming on. We will hopefully do it again sometime.

But appreciate your time and you sharing some stories. And congrats on all of your success as well. It's been great to follow. So thanks for your time. Thanks. Thanks for having me. This is fun. Cheers Be the right club today Better than most. Expect anything different? For FanDuel, it must be 21 and older in President-Select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 and older in President DC gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit IndieGamblingHelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in

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