WHOOP Podcast - PGA Tour winner and NCAA champion Dylan Frittelli discusses how WHOOP has helped him succeed in golf

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Dylan Frittelli is one of the top golfers in the world and is coming off a strong rookie season on the PGA Tour in 2019. He joins Will Ahmed to share his story, what drives him, and how he uses WHOOP as part of his scientific and methodical approach to training. Dylan discusses being a 6-sport star in South Africa and his lifelong dream to play sports professionally (3:17), coming to America and being a 3-time Academic All-American at Texas (8:19), teaming up with Jordan Spieth in college and winning a national championship (9:00), how he knew Spieth was destined for success (11:12), how there's little to separate the best golfers in the world (12:04), watching Tiger Woods growing up and now competing against him (14:00), developing mental skills to succeed on the course (18:38), how golf is a humbling game (24:17), tips he's learned to optimize traveling (26:37), what his workouts look like (31:14), winning his first PGA Tour event (32:14), why he doesn't look at the leaderboard (33:44), how WHOOP has helped him improve his life and career (36:10), prioritizing short-term goals over long-term goals (44:15), and why he went 5 weeks without picking up a club when the PGA shut down (49:15). Plus, Will answers your questions in this week's mailbag (52:17). Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome to the Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of Whoop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. It feels like an incredibly important time to be worrying about your performance. And if you are interested in improving your performance, you can turn to Whoop, where we build hardware, software, and analytics that's designed to better understand the human body. You can check out our earlier podcasts on COVID-19, including the research that we're doing with Cleveland Clinic and C-Q-U around whoop data and what that looks like before, during, and after COVID-19. For those of you not on whoop, you can use the code Will Ahmed, that's W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D, to get 15% off a W-W-P membership. This week's guest is a fitting one since golf is back. That's right.

We heard from the PGA tour. Tournaments are coming back in June. Golf courses across the United States appear to be opening right now. And so our guest this week is pro golfer Dylan for Telly. Dylan is a young rising star on the PGA tour. He earned his tour card last year and turned in a really good first PGA season. He was one of the first whoop wearers to win a PGA tour event. This is actually the 2019 John Deere classic winner.

And I think the first pro golfer I actually saw wearing a whoop strap on course, which is kind of amazing now seeing that we're on, I don't know, 20 or 25 of the top 30 players in the world. So Dylan was an early adopter. And it was awesome to see him win the John Deere. And we really talk about his career in great depth. And I think Dylan's a very thoughtful guy. You can tell that he's trying to do every little thing he can to optimize his body and his life and how things like travel affect his body.

We talk about his training methods, how that's made him a better golfer. You know, the methodical and scientific way he even thinks about the mental side of the game. He's got a spreadsheet that's tracking every hour he's spent training for the last three years. We go into his whoop data. So really, really insightful, insightful guy. I think you're going to like Dylan a lot. And without further ado, here is Mr. Fertelli. Dylan, welcome to the WOOP podcast.

Cool. Thanks for having me, Will. It's great to get to do this finally. I've been a big fan of yours for the past couple of years because you were one of the first Woop members in PGA golf. who won a tournament. And I remember our mutual friend, one of my best friends,

Zach Remsen, sends me a photo of you standing on 18 with a big trophy in your hand wearing the whoops strap. So it was very cool to see us all of a sudden enter into golf. I didn't anticipate that all of a sudden would be working with so many professional golfers.

But it was great to have you on it early. Let's go back for a second. You're from South Africa. Did you always know you wanted to be a professional golfer? yeah i mean early on it wasn't really golf i caught my fancy it was cricket and field hockey and a few other sports that i was interested in tennis was another one but i knew professional sport was was my thing for sure it was going to be one of those avenues and i always my dad was a good athlete my mom was a good athlete and i was surrounded by tons of people that did things well on the

sporting spectrum so that was always my goal and i always looked up to athletes on tv and i always wanted to make a living out of it no matter what sport it would be in so it sounds like you were pretty good at other sports too yeah i played i guess i played four uh four sports at my state level or province as we call it in south africa so i actually played baseball which is kind of a weird one for a south african so that was one of them soccer was another sport i was really good at and then obviously golf was one and field hockey was probably my main focus from the age of 10 to 15 but yeah all those four were pretty much avenues I could have gone into the professional spectrum. Now, baseball is a weirder one I've heard because apparently that can screw up your golf swing.

I grew up playing a ton of sports. I didn't grow up playing baseball, though, so I don't really have any personal experience with that. Do you buy that? Like, I've heard from MLB players that they won't play golf in season or something because they're afraid it's going to screw up their swing. Yeah, I don't know from like a macro view. Like the swing seems pretty, pretty similar to me, similar hip movement. Obviously, baseball players are somewhat swinging on a level playing more so than down like a golf swing.

But it's probably just more the mental side. Those guys are probably just freaked out by little things. I mean, you've seen all their little idiosyncrasies when they go up to bat. So something gets in their head and then all of a sudden they're worried about something. And I guess golf is similar to them in some degree. But whatever works for them, if they feel that, they should probably not do it. Let's say you had the opportunity on like a Monday of a tournament week to go do like a home run derby type thing at a cool in a cool ballpark in the U.S. Would you do it or would you? Oh, hell, yeah.

So you don't think. I would do it on a tournament day if I really could, but I'm not really phased by stuff like that. If it's a major, maybe I'll lay back and rest a bit because I'm scared of tweaking something, but I'm not worried about it messing with my technique. And what brought you to the U.S.? I got a athletic scholarship to the University of Texas, so came over here to play golf and study at the same time, and it was a step that I wanted to take. It was either turn pro at 18 in South Africa or come over here and study. In South Africa, the academic scene is a little too stringent on the academic side. Golfers tend to forget about a golf and study too

hard, so I saw that and figured the U.S. kind of balances it out pretty well. So that was my idea of starting here. I guess around that time frame, so 16. 16, 17, 18, had you chosen golf or were you still playing a bunch of sports? So I stopped, we have five years of high school in South Africa. So my third year, I tried to focus solely on golf. And the headmaster at my local high school actually said, sorry, I want to let you just play golf because you're playing first team hockey and cricket already. So I actually left that school, St. Albans College and ended up doing a private homeschooling

type setup and actually saved the whole year of high school. So I came to Texas a year early. And from that point on, when I left that high school, it was just golf. Just golf and training and studying and trying to get everything done as quickly as I could to get to the States. First impressions of Texas? I loved it. So I actually took a visit to Dallas when I was like 13 or 14 and then took an unofficial visit when I was 17 to Austin. And I just love the States.

I started coming here. I was five years old the first time I went to Disney World in Orlando. So I kind of have these amazing memories as a kid just going to. I mean, everyone loves Disney when they're young. So I related that to sort of America and being somewhere that I want to be in the future because it's so much fun and such an awesome lifestyle. So I had these amazing ideas of setting up a life here. And lucky that's all come to fruition now.

What was the experience like for you as a college golfer? It was awesome. It was really a fun time. I'd go back and do another four years tomorrow if I could somehow. NCAA would give me some more eligibility. I think a lot of college athletes might take you up on. that yeah do a fifth fifth year sport and something else i don't know no i really enjoyed it i'm pretty uh analytical and focus so it was the the perfect thing for me put a bunch of things on

my plate from academics to physical side to golf and then basically i had to figure it out and mesh it together and find the best best way to excel at each of those and i feel like i did that having been a i guess it was an academic all-american a three-time all-american on the golf side so I really maxed out every avenue or every possibility that I had. So good for you. So, you know, you were also doing a good job as a student, it sounds like. Yeah.

I finished with, I think it was like a 3.35 in geography. So it wasn't anything that intense. I wanted to do engineering or business, something more academically intensive, but I just figured I had to try and balance it a little bit, a little bit better. I saw some other athletes get bogged down by engineering and business

and didn't have enough time for this. sport. So I shied away from something like that. And you ultimately did three years before going pro? Yeah, actually, well, I graduated. I did four years. So I got my degree from Texas and didn't waste one class. Everything counted for my final countdown. And yeah, I worked out perfectly. My final semester was four classes, two online and gave me a bunch of time for golf. And you were teammates with Jordan Speath, right? Yeah. So that senior year was the freshman year for Jordan. and he ended up winning a national championship that year. And obviously, Spieth turned pro thereafter.

So he turned pro at a similar, similar time. But it was a great year having him on the team and learning from him and training with him and him and I pushing each other, basically that whole year. Were you two guys clearly the best two guys on the team? Or were there other guys who could hang with you? And you guys just made that bigger leap when it came to going pro? Yeah, it's an interesting question because in all our media sort of exercise, that's, Spieth and I both said how we pushed each other.

And I think that caused a bit of a void to the next group of guys, which in turn pulled them closer to us and it forced them to, I mean, our stroke averages were probably a whole shot ahead of the next best guys. So forced those guys to step their game up and not only to push each other like Spith and I, but it pushed all those other teammates for sure. So you went pro then, it sounds like around age 22, 21. Do I have that right? Yeah, that's correct.

And Jordan's going pro, it sounds like 1920. Yeah. So you were a couple years ahead of him, but you guys were going pro at the same time. Yeah, exactly. He had come through the juniors, having won two U.S. juniors. He was a highly accomplished player. So I think everyone knew he wasn't going to go four years of college. But I'd done the four years.

I got my degree. That was always a big thing for me. My mother's a teacher back in South Africa. So I wanted to get something behind me in case golf didn't work out and kind of say thanks to her. get a degree for her, I guess. I wonder, like, you know, in some sports, basketball was the first example that came to mind. In some sports, it's so obvious when one player has, like, a gap in talent. You know, like, even, I don't know much about basketball other than being a casual fan,

but you watch highlights of LeBron James at age, like, 18 versus other 18-year-olds, and there's a massive gap, just, you know, it's like the alien test. If aliens came down and watched the game, would they be able to tell who? who was the best player. Yeah. And in golf, I wonder if that is as obvious. And so I'm going to ask you it this way. Like, was it obvious to you that Jordan then over the next, I don't know what it would

have been like four or five years, like he wins, what is it, four majors or something? Three majors in that first four or five years. So everyone asked me that question. And I always say you can't predict the timing of it, but I always knew he would win multiple PJ Tour events, just looking at the standard of his play and knowing his mental makeup, he would win PJ Trevent and likely win majors, but you never would predict three majors before the age of 25. That would be crazy. Only Tiger's done that. I don't think Rory's even done that. So yeah, it's been amazing to watch his career progress. Yeah, it does seem like it's a little

harder in golf, in part because the mental side's maybe more intangible. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. That was the one thing I could pick up with Spieth was the mental side. He's super strong, super competitive. But in golf, they're obviously really, really small margins. So it's tough to say one guy is better than the next. Tiger, through his career, has done amazing things in making that difference really big. But the difference from the 10th best golf in the world to the 100th best golf in the world is, I'm guessing, 0.25 in a stroke average. So less than a quarter of a shot over a year. Isn't that amazing? So it's so hard to quantify which player is better and how much better.

So that's the tricky part in golf figuring out where everyone fits in. Yeah, it was just with Rory McElroy, and he literally said exactly that, but he said it was the difference between the number one and the number 100, and I believe he's number one today. So it's pretty telling that even the number one player believes that right now, that that gap is so tiny. It's something that can obviously drive you and spur you on, but it's also sort of demoralizing in the same sense when you drop a shot here or there

and you just, oh, you've got to get it. get over it and somehow refocus and stay within the moment. So you're 29 years old now, right? Yes. So I'm 30 years old. And so what's interesting about that is we both grew up watching Tiger Woods. And like for me at least as a, I don't know, a 14 year old or 15 year old who didn't aspire to be a professional athlete, but who was into sports. Like I found him so inspiring.

and the fact that you watched him probably at the same time I did at the same age and then went on to compete against him I find it's so interesting and so fascinating just talk about that for a little bit like did Tiger have that effect on you at all or not yeah for sure I was always I mean I grew up watching the South African guys Ernie Al's and the Tief Horsen and they were competing they were top 10 in the world for probably a 15 year period and Ernie was normally on the receiving end of Tiger's success So it was tough for me to sort of support Tiger or want him to do well because he was always beating Ernie.

But no, I was inspiring to see what he did and how he set the standard. I know I just remember as a 15, 16 year old, my mom being a physical education teacher, like I said, okay, let's get you stronger, let's get you in the gym. And I always thought, yeah, Tiger set the standard for something like that. And that's probably something I wouldn't have ventured on if it weren't for Tiger. He's definitely changed that aspect of the golfing world. but then having come through the college system and got into the pros,

now all of a sudden I'm in the same arena as I'm and I have to compete against them. It's kind of a weird, weird feeling. I remember the first time I met him at the Honda Classic in Florida, and it was just like, this is totally surreal. I bet, yeah. 18th hole was playing in front of me and he just introduced himself to me and teed off on the final hole of the tournament. I was just like, wow, that was me meeting Tiger.

Cool. And I ended up beating him by one shot that week. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. It was a crazy, crazy scenario and something that I've definitely got in the memory banks now. I guess as an athlete, you have to compartmentalize that pretty quickly and get over it, right? It's hard to look up to someone and want to beat them at the same time, or you tell me. Yeah, it's tricky.

I mean, I think golf is pretty famous for that sort of camaraderie and friendship and stuff built into a competitive environment. So, I mean, I've got a few friends on tour, but I tend to stray away from the social. of friendly, happy, easy-go-lucky, like, oh, he's my buddy, but I'm trying to beat him. I'm more like, I'm going to do my thing, you do your thing, and we'll see how that shakes down. But, yeah, it's just, it's inspiring more than anything, just to be in a similar situation or the same league as someone like that and go, wow, I'm actually like competing with this guy.

I must be doing something, right? And let's keep doing that. And it inspires you to keep working, I guess. Yeah, you're clearly doing a lot right, man. That's awesome. So I want to try to compare two different periods. of time from your mindset of being as good a golfer as you can. Let's start with you in college and then let's talk about you today. Or, you know, pick a time frame roughly. You know, you're a senior

in college or you're a junior. You just win this national championship. So obviously you're playing at a huge level. Talk about what, what did it mean to you to be training to be a serious golfer at that point in time? The daily routine, you know, things like that. So I figured out, going to my junior year, my best friend, Travis Smith, actually brought to my attention. I finished like 15th in a college event. I was like, oh, that was all right. And he was like, till 15th, like, that's no good.

You're doing for tell you. I was like, oh, you're right. And I figured out that junior year, I was spending too much time on the academic side. So that was sort of a watershed moment for me. I was spending a lot of time in the classroom and studying and not really practicing enough. So that senior year was a huge switch for me.

So I doubled down more hours, more focused hours, more time in the gym. And it was basically class eight to 12. and then out at the golf course, one o'clock till sundown. That's pretty much five days a week. And then on the weekends, we would typically play Saturday and Sunday. So workouts three days a week, sort of 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. And it was just eat, sleep, drink, college experience. Like, I didn't really do much socializing.

It was all of that my senior year and just trying to get myself set up to a sponsor or something. Because I don't know, I would go back to South Africa. Like, if I didn't get a sponsor, if I couldn't play a professional tour somewhere, I was back to live with my parents in South Africa. so that was the main motivating factor and I guess a watershed moment and something that has kind of altered my career I guess or altered my early career I'll say it sounds like fitness was always part of the equation and were you doing a lot of weightlifting then cardio what was the gym for you so yeah coming from south Africa I had a basically a physiotherapist and somewhat of a trainer training me

but it wasn't any weight program it was just sort of mobility and a little bit of core strength and maintaining some stuff and then I got to college and I was Strength and conditioning coach was also the swim and track coach, and he worked with multiple Olympic medalists, and I finally got the courage to ask him for some extra help because he had to dumb down a lot of the stuff for the team. And eventually when I reached down, he was like, oh, yeah, sure, I'll help you. Let's do some weight training. Let's expand that. And that kind of opened my eyes into like, wow, I can gain so much more from these workouts than just doing these basic golf workouts. And that sort of spurred my interest into the physical side. And he helped

me a lot. And then, obviously, when I left Texas, I had to find a new path, found the guy in South Africa, and then started working with him. And then eventually, once I got back to the States here, I've now graduated to a point where I'm doing a lot of Olympic lifts and a lot of power, strength, strength, power training, and using that during tournament weeks as well. So that's something that's a huge part of mine, my curriculum right now. And back then, did you do anything on the mental side? So, yeah, my junior, no, my sophomore year, I started seeing a guy called Jay Brunza, Dr. Jay Brunza, and Jay's been part of my team now for, what is that, 11 years now, 10, 11 years, he's an integral part and someone I really get along well with. He's famous for

working with, you mentioned Tiger Woods. He's worked with Tiger for a long time, but he's the nicest guy ever, an ex-Navy psychologist, like a psychologist, yeah, so he's got a lot of cool stories, and I just love spending time with him. And what does that work look like? we do a lot of sort of people understand as guided meditation so it's mainly a tape that jay will record talking you through a meditation and running you down into different scenarios so one may be relaxing you taking into a happy place and calming you down and i've had times and i've said to mj i feel too relaxed and i'm not really getting sort of any energy or or any like powerful feelings said okay let's do that so we did another one where he amps you up and

gets you more excited so it's just about getting you to whatever place you're trying to get to usually it's calming people down in the moment. So when you're stressed or when you're in contention, that's the main focus point. But then it's also personally just chatting to him, how's life going, what's happening, how can you help me figure out the best way forward? And will you do that guided meditation on a daily basis?

Will you do it more before a tournament and then not daring? Will you do it on the morning of tournaments? The goal for me is to try and do at least three days of the week. So they vary from five minutes to 15 minutes usually. So it's pretty easy to be three a week or four a week. But the funny thing is I always find a correlation between doing those and my performance. And I'll often go two weeks or three weeks without doing it. And my uncle in New Zealand will call me and say,

Dill, you listen to the tapes. And I'll be like, it's been two weeks. You're actually right about that. So those are the things you've got to keep your finger on the pulse and constantly do or else the mental side is a tricky one to figure out. But that's one thing I know helps me. Now, if you see a strong correlation, why not consider doing it every day? It's literally a habit thing. I just need to form a habit around doing it.

So now that I've been at home during this COVID virus, I actually worked with my train of four days a week, the last three, four weeks. And on my drive over there, I thought, let me play it in the car while I'm driving to the jump because it's 15-minute drive. That's a perfect little structured time that I can do this. And I've been good at it. But now when I move into a sort of golf training environment where I'm maybe not having. I don't have that much structure. It gets more difficult to, like, stay on it. So it sounds like it's also a meditation that you don't have to do with your eyes close

if you can do it while you're driving. Yeah, so it's best to do it sort of lying down in a relaxed state, but you can also get, you can do it while swinging and hitting balls as well. So it's going to sort of be in the subliminal part of your mind, but you can do it actively or sort of passively, and it still has a similar effect according to my psychologist. And will you notice that it helps your, sleep or anything else like that does it have any other um i haven't really tracked it on on sleep terms

but it definitely gives me a much better emotional awareness and it just makes me way more centered and grounded and focused and less stressed in general yeah i i feel like it's so important for golf i can only imagine like how intense it is on those final holes or even just the final round where you know you're in contention. Can you feel it physiologically, like the difference of being in contention versus not? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, my trainer, Nick Catterall mentioned it to me last year. He said, Dill, we're talking about load and training load. And he just said, Dill, the difference between like a major week and just a regular PJTor event is huge. And I was like, what do you mean? I'm doing the same amount of work. I'm still playing golf. He said, just think about it. Like,

everything's on. You're stressed. Everything's heightened. And it's constantly that way. So every bit of work you're doing is amplified over that time. And I was like, okay, you're right. And actually at the open last year after I won the John Deere, I was like, you're right, this week has been way more stringent, way more stressful than any other week. Because your expectations all of a sudden going into the open were higher and people were saying, hey, here's Dylan, he could be winning this thing?

Yeah, there's that point. But then there's also just everything that goes into it. Like normally you just drive up to the golf course, you hop out your car and you go in the clubhouse. The open, you have to park across the road, go over a little catwalk, get into the golf course, then you've got 100 people asking for an autograph, then you get the door, the security guy stressed that he asked you for, and all of a sudden you're doing 30 new things just to get to the locker room, which again compounds over day to day

to week. And before you know, you're burnt out on it's Tuesday afternoon. I love that you just described that because it's also a whoop phenomenon that I've learned from a bunch of professional athletes where they talk about the thing about these big events isn't just that the event is big, it's like the fan and media atmosphere actually can be quite draining. Like there's a lot of work that you don't realize is going into it, right? Yeah, it's, I mean, you think of a production, you think of someone performing in front of 12 people like, oh, okay, we'll get a couple amps and a couple speakers. But then you think, we got 100,000 people, how are we going to do this? It's just a totally different production, totally different scale.

And that's the way I kind of describe a regular PJ tour event compared to a major compared to whatever else you want to compare it to. So let's talk now today about some of your habits, some of your behaviors, your training. How would you say those have shifted from 22-year-old Dylan? Oh, it's crazy. I came out of college thinking, okay, here we go. I'm a great goal from top 10 in the world amateur rankings, and I'm going to crush this. I know what I'm doing.

I've got all this time to play golf now, and this is going to be easy. And a year and a half later, I was like in a huge slump. I was still doing all right, top 500, 600 in the world and then figured out, okay, there's a whole lot more than just practicing and playing golf. So I had to structure everything way better to stay up on the technical side in the golf game. I had to structure the, as you mentioned, the mental work and then the physical stuff too and then the travel. That was the other thing. I was playing on the European Challenge to where we're going from Kazakhstan to the UK, then back to Ukraine to Italy and then catching a train from Italy to Austria. And it was just like, wow, this is a crazy lifestyle.

I'm not sure I can handle this without structuring it properly and finding ways to minimize the fatigue and just do everything I can to give myself that performance edge amongst these other guys. It's such a good point, the travel side of it, right? Like, that's one thing I think people really underestimate about golf as a sport is just how intensely grueling your travel schedule is. Yeah, I mean, you look at Formula One and those guys are changing continents every week. put to that's crazy but we're doing it and then having to set up shop like there was a crazy trip from morocco to china on the european tour we used to do you leave morocco at midnight on sunday you get to china sort of Tuesday afternoon 3 p.m. 4 p.m. and then you have to play Thursday morning and be ready like your eight nine time zone is different and you just you get on

with it because everyone else that's there has had to go through the same thing but that's where finding those small little things that can save you whether it's melatonin whether it's not sleeping on the flight, whether it's not eating or eating. It's those little things that I've tried to develop and find new ways and sort of mix and mash and be a mad scientist and find those edges. It does feel like that's just one basic advantage that the older you are as a professional athlete you have is that you've got just more time to figure out what is that perfect recipe for you. Yeah, exactly. And you say that for you. That's the key point. It's it's different for everybody. I mean, I can sit here and tell you all the things I know and I think

this is best and that may not work for you. It's different for each individual. What's something that you found uniquely helps you when it comes to travel or to sleep? So the best thing for me is actually not eating on the flight and not eating during traveling. I somehow got into it. In Europe, I got into it and then I signed up with a doctor here, Dr. Kevin Spouse and he mentioned Bill. There's actually a biological thing to that. It's just the sort of timing of meal times is a crucial indicator in your body knowing when to sleep. So if you go on that breakfast, lunch, dinner cycle, your body thinks sleep is coming next. So you wipe that out for, if you're traveling for 20 hours, you wipe out all those meals. Yeah, it may affect you

little physically, but you get your destination and you start that clock again. So your next meal time, whether it's lunch or dinner, you go back into that meal time structure and it speeds up your sort of, what do they call a jet lag. It gets rid of the jet lag way quicker. I completely agree with you. And I do the same thing. Like I won't eat on planes now. And the other thing that's happening on planes is that you're at altitude and your body as a result is shutting down all your non-bodily functions. One of what just like metabolic function and digestion and all that. It's like and so eating has this like profoundly lethargic effect on your body because your body isn't actually operating at its normal levels to metabolize that food. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I could, yeah, I could see that. When you land in a city, so you talked about going from, I think, Morocco to China, like what are some things that you'll try to do to quickly get on the time zone or acclimated? So I tried doing workouts, like a small workout as soon as I got there or that evening just to kind of jolt the body, but that didn't work for me. Typically, it's just unpack everything, make sure my hotel room or my house is in, like, perfect shape because then my mind is calm. I don't have to sleep overnight and worry, oh, I need to unpack in the morning.

and then usually it's just staying hydrated so drinking a lot and then getting back onto that that meal plan staying consistent and trying to stick to that sleep schedule i always try to force myself 10 o'clock in bed asleep and then wake up sort of later in the morning and just sit that precedent right from the get go i like that a lot and have you found anything like about the day of the week that you get there so you know tournament is thursday to sunday right almost always so does it make a difference for you if you're getting there on Monday versus, say, Wednesday? Are you pretty much always there on Monday? Ideally, you want to get there.

I would say for me, any time change is going to take me, the max time change will take me sort of three days. So Sunday night would be ideal. But if we're playing a tournament the week before, we don't have that ability to get there any sooner. So some guys, like for the Masters, they get there sort of like the Wednesday before the week and they have a whole seven days before the tournament. And something like that for me is almost crazy.

I couldn't handle staying in that city for that long and sort of preparing with that intensity. So I tend to just because of that setup where I played a lot in Europe and I would have a Sunday to Monday schedule and start again, I'm kind of used to that sort of three-day prep time now that my career has progressed a bit. The other thing that's interesting along with jet lag is actually altitude. So for example, there was a tournament somewhat recently in Mexico. I'm blanking on the name of it. But a bunch of players that I remember reported having really low recoveries because their body was adjusting to altitude.

And that's another thing where it's like if you don't get there a few days early, then the profound adjustments actually happening during the tournament, which is obviously going to make it harder for you. Yeah, and you're adjusting while the tournament's happening. So I grew up in Johannesburg, which is 6,000 feet. So that tournaments at WGC event in Mexico. That's right. I played that two years ago.

And for me, breathing the air and everything was fine. Like, I didn't feel any effects there. Obviously, having grown up in Johannesburg, might have helped that. But it's definitely something. And along those lines, I heard something crazy from another pro Joe Ogilvie. He mentioned to me, oh, you're flying back and forth to Europe. What planes do you normally fly? I'm like, I fly commercial, dude.

What are you like, what are you talking about? He's like, no, like different planes have different pressures in the cabin. You know that, right? And I was like, what? Yeah, it's a big thing. He said, yeah. So like the new Airbus has sort of this 1,100, I don't know, he started Hector Pascal's and he started talking about air pressure and he said that has a big factor in recovery and sleep

and you should probably research that and book your flights according to what planes are in the fleet. And I was like, wow, that's next level, bro. Yeah, it's pretty interesting, isn't it? If we think about your actual routine, the week of a tournament now for a second, and I know you're a big weightlifter, talk about what days you'll do some of that. those heavy weights or not and sort of how you think about planning a Monday to a Sunday. Okay.

So obviously macro scale depends whether in a strength phase or a power phase or whatever section my trainer wants me to focus on. And the weekly structure would be Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a workout, ideally. Monday is typically more on the metabolic side. So we'll do a lot more metabolic stuff than weight lifting, probably split at 50-50. the Wednesday lift will likely be it'll tailor more towards power. I don't want to have too much strength because then there will be a whole bunch of doms the day after Thursday, Friday, which is our competition day.

And then sometimes a Friday workout has to get pushed to a Saturday. If we have a Thursday morning tea time and then a Friday afternoon tea time, I can't do the workout Friday morning before my round. So I'll push that to a Saturday. But it typically is tailored towards the tea times and trying to get away from it. so have the most time to recover, but I'll go through, and I've done upwards of like five sets of eight reps sort of strength phase during a tournament at 75, 80%. I'm never going to really be pushed to 100%, but my trainer has all those numbers and he's got it on file so you can go

back and see what I can handle. So when you win the John Deere Classic last year, what are you doing like the morning of that Sunday round? So that would have been just a little movement prep. I'd go in and see Nick, my trainer and physio, it stretched me out, loosen up, and then I'll do a few movements with bands, just get everything activated, ready to go. And then I typically try and pressure situations like that, I try and keep it short and simple. So a normal warm-up will be just over an hour for me, but situations like that, I may make it even shorter just to give myself less time with having those nerves. I was actually three or four shots back in that situation, so there was actually very little nerves to deal

with, which helped, I guess, kind of, I wasn't in contention, didn't have to deal with it until, I guess, the back nine. But yeah, it's a tricky thing to work out. But I often try and find little ways to take the stress off, whether it's arriving a little later at the course. Some guys get there early on and they're just sitting at like the table they're having lunch, just like running things over in their head and they get stressed out before they even started. I tend to save some time there. Well, you try to block out coverage of the tournament too? Yes. I typically, you don't watch scores, just in general. If I'm playing well or poorly, I don't look up and I don't check the lead boards.

Often I'll see guys in the locker and you're like, hey, how's it going, dude? Oh, no, good. How are you playing? He's like, dude, I'm leading the tournament. What do you mean? And I'm like, oh, sorry. Like, I don't really check that stuff. Like, congrats.

Like, keep it off. But I wouldn't know. So that's pretty interesting. That seems unique, right? Like, I would think that most players would want to know, okay, the leads at minus 10 or at a bare minimum or something like that. Yeah, I would hear that through the great vinyl looking at a leaderboard, but I'm not sitting there scanning down the leaderboard going,

okay, which guys are two back or three back and I'm seven, but I'll know generally what a good score is on that day and try and aim for that, but I'm not going to get bogged down with. You can often get so like outside of yourself. I think, oh, I'm now five shots back and six shots back. And I found for me, I end up pressing and trying to change things. And I think, no, let's rather just put this formula together, put it out there and see what the final product is after.

72 holes. You've been using we a lot when you talk about, you know, if RT times this, right? And, you know, from an outside perspective, golf's an individual sport. But talk a little bit about the team around you that makes your success possible. It's, I mean, it's kind of a shift. I always used to think, oh, no, this is all on me. This is all like I traveled Europe on my own. And then I got to a stage where, hey, now I can actually employ people to help me in these different aspect. So that's been a huge help over the last year and a half, two years since I've made that transition back to the US. I mean, I had help in South Africa when I was playing in Europe, but I finally got a setup where I have a physio, trainer, a mental coach, swing coach, and a

doctor. So it's crucial to have all those aspects with sort of professionals in their own right in those spectrums because I like the thing I can read a lot and listen to a lot of podcasts and gain the info. But unless I have a PhD or something, I probably don't know half for a quarter as much as someone that does that full time. So it's crucial having those outlets and for me, mainly to bounce ideas off them and say, oh, I discovered this. What do you think? And they go, no, that's quack science.

That's crazy. Forget about it. Or, yeah, you're right. You're on the right track. Maybe go and read this. That's been awesome for me now to go down that sort of discovery path to last year and a half. And mainly in that training, physical sort of doctor realm.

Now, how long have you been on Woop? So it's January of line. year. So beginning of 2019, that's when I started. My trainer gave me this little thing in a box and I was like, what the heck is that? Open it up. I'll explain it as you open it up. And, yeah, after the first week, I was pretty much hooked on it. And how do you like to use the data? So it's kind of transition now. In the beginning, I was using it a lot to do with recovery and looking at it constantly. And then my trainer said, hey, don't look at it every day. Just kind of use it as a guideline. We're just using it to stock information here and have it on file. And I shifted more to

looking at the sleep. So I focused on the sleep the last sort of eight months, 10 months. And I actually had a sleep study and you'll be interested in this. They put all the electrodes on you everywhere, blah, blah, blah. And we compared your readings to what that sleep study gave. And they were almost identical in like the different stages and how they mapped out. So that was a pretty cool, right? Good benefit to me to know that it's pretty accurate. And then the other thing I use it for is tracking my hours. So I log all of my chipping, putting, pitching, full swing, all those different aspects in a spreadsheet. So I can look at the whooped at it to say, okay, I was practicing golf from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. That's 3 hours. And then I go back and I know, okay, I was about 20 minutes on

putting, then I was about 40 minutes on hitting balls, and then an hour on chipping. So I use that to give me the exact time duration that I was playing golf, because previously I would just guess it. I'd be like, it was about three hours, but now I know exactly it's three hours and 10 minutes. So my spreadsheet actually reflects an accurate overall number. I may get the little division slightly wrong, but at least my overall time spent playing golf is correct. And then same for training, same for recovery, all that stuff gets tracked and it helps a lot with that. On the week of a tournament, or even mornings of the tournament, will you look at your sleep and recovery statistics? No.

So that was a mistake I made. I think last year I came into the physio area and I saw Nick and I was like, oh, I wonder how I slept. And I think I was in the top 10. I was in some like contention situation. He said, no, no, no, stop. Don't look at it. Don't look at it. And I said, why not?

He's like, you're fine, dude. You don't need to look at it. Like you look at it and you get a bad score. Now all of a sudden, you're going to feel bad because you think you feel bad or you see a great score. And now maybe you're going to get high and kind of get cocky about it. But he said, don't worry about it. That's long term. We're tracking that overtime.

Like, don't get stressed. out by it. So performance-wise, I don't check it. But I will check it in the training setting now off-season. Just keep watching it. Make sure I'm not trending in one direction and I'm getting enough sleep and recovery. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, that that whole phenomenon of do I want to know my recovery before a big athletic event varies a lot by different athletes. You know, I was just, I was just with Roy, for example, and he was talking about how he still looks at it every single morning. You know, even the mornings of tournaments, he's in contention. and he still wants to know it.

And it's just, I think, a different preference, you know? You know what I find is interesting. What I've started doing is I try and guess my score. Oh, that's cool. I wake up and I go, okay, feeling pretty good, little stuff, maybe a little tired. I think I'm in this sort of range. And then I'll look at it and go, oh, I was right. Cool.

That's cool. So you start to intuitively know what the numbers are telling you and know how your body feels. And, I mean, let's be honest, you have the best. feedback within yourself. You know how you're feeling emotionally, physically, whatever it is. And if that starts to correlate, then you think, okay, this is great. This is just extra feedback that is verifying what I feel. So in that sense, checking it, but giving yourself a score before you check it is probably a wise way of doing it. I like this notion of trying to build your intuition around what your body's actually feeling. I'll meet you halfway in that I think

people, especially highly tuned athletes, are very good at feeling the status of their body but the important thing is the 10% where they're wrong and and what happens for a lot of athletes and is that that 10% where they're wrong where they think they feel fine and there's actually a signal that they can't feel where their body's off and they'll go do a big workout or they'll train and train and that's how you see athletes overtrain or get injured or you know misinterpret fitness peaks so that's why this happened to me last week okay there we go yeah so and then you know for everyday consumers, many of which you are listening to this, like, and I'm one of those, you know, today in my life, I actually find that it's still pretty hard to know for sure what,

like, what the status of my body is. And I think like, you know, in some ways there's maybe more variables going on for an everyday executive than a professional athlete who is so focused on making their body dialed. You know, a lot of us, unfortunately, it can be an afterthought at times of making sure that you're optimal, right? And you may sacrifice your health towards your job. Whereas for you, your point of view, I think, is my health is my job, right? Literally, yeah. And so that's where, you know, for people listening to this,

I think it is powerful to be able to look at that data and manage it accordingly. Yeah, I mean, I heard a cool story of you think about your sleep. That was a Jerry Seinfeld reference and said, Jerry doesn't like nighttime Jerry guy because he stays up late and morning Jerry hates nighttime guy and it's just this like constant cycle and you're like well hang on if my job needs me to be at a certain level why don't I change my lifestyle and change these things to complement everything and that's that's kind of the way I look at it in terms of sleep and score and trying to get everything together and people can do that as a professional whether they work in 10 hours a day 12 hours a day there are little things that they can improve and use the tools that we have on offer to do that. Now, are you, I completely agree with you. Are you tracking anything specifically in the Whoop Journal right now to see how it may affect your data? Yeah, I've added, so I added magnesium supplement. I need to add, is there an option for vitamin D or can I customize it?

I haven't even looked at that. But those are two markers that my blood tests recently have been low. I have an underactive thyroid, so that has a pretty strong correlation there. So those two things I'm tracking, just using it as a reminder basically to get that supplement and make sure I'm using it um sleep I've got sadly not being used now but did I travel have I flown and then am I sleeping in my same bed so yeah trying to watch those variables to see if different beds different I mean I travel with my own pillow so that's constant but I'll see if sort of the sleep data changes according to sleeping in different beds I'm tracking those as well and it's

interesting I've now gone like 35 days in a row without getting on a plane or something it's awesome isn't it? It feels so good. And I realize like, wow, it's probably been, you know, at least five years, maybe more since I've gone that long. Yeah, no, it's awesome to have that consistency finally. Now, if you think about, you know, this season or next season or, you know, how do you like to orient yourself around goals, around objectives? Do you have more of a daily mindset of like, let's just get a little better every day? Or do you have more of a macro mindset? I want to win a major by the age of 40, you know, something like that.

I'm definitely more along the daily goals situation. The last two years, I really have barely written down many goals. I got into that in college and junior golf, I can go back to my old computer and find all these goals that I set. And I got away from it two years ago and all of a sudden I found myself back in the top 50 in the world. And I was like, wow, I was focused mainly on just getting better each day and doing my practice routines.

And that seems to work for me. But now I've gravitated more back to writing it. down and I've told myself, okay, let's try and set some goals and trying to hold myself more accountable. But I think it's different for everyone. And I'm mainly focused on those sort of short-term, medium-term goals. I don't want to say, I want to win a major, or I want to make the President's Cup team or something like that doesn't really give me much fire. I figure as long as I do my homework and I do everything diligently, the final product is going to end up being a top 50 ranking or a President's Cup team member or winning a major. Yeah, that reminds me a lot of

of the book, the score takes care of itself by Bill Walsh, who's a famous 49ers coach who won a bunch of Super Bowls. But his whole point was like, don't focus on the score, focus on all the ingredients that go into the score. Yeah, there were way too many variables to. I mean, you can have that goal and pin it on your mirror and your bathroom, but I just don't see the value in that. Some people gain from it, but I certainly don't.

Yeah, look, I mean, I think a lot of people will say the opposite. they'll say, and I've talked to athletes who literally say, you know, they're putting on their, on their door NBA championship winner, you know, every, and they're looking at it every single day kind of thing. And there is, I mean, there is some science behind this idea of having a really strong visualization of something like that and holding a trophy up. But I, I personally have found, at least in building a business as an entrepreneur, like the daily grind, the daily growth mindset is a better one in that if you just get like 1% better every day yeah you'll be amazing to be up in a few years i get a much bigger high from like reading a new book and finally like

i've got this journal right next to me here and i write down my medical notes in there and i find something little like that i'm like euphoric i'm like this is awesome i just found something that may help me like winning a tournament is yeah it's in front of people and it's sort of exciting in that sense But I gain way more because I know this little thing that I found is going to apply to my life for the next 20 or 30 years. It's not just a moment holding a trophy that's gone in maybe an hour or two and you have to come down. It's gone. So those little things really hold a much bigger part in my life than one trophy or one cool experience. Yeah, that's a powerful mindset that you've got.

It's like we just had this Dr. Andrew Huberman on the podcast and he was talking about the dopamine reward system, you know, and this idea that if you attribute too much of a reward to, you know, say, winning the, the U.S. Open, for example, and that's in turn giving you dopamine along the way that's driving you to get there because you're telling yourself this is going to be, this is going to change my life when this happens. And then you win it and you wake up on that Monday and realize you're still the same human being, you're still the same man, you know, and you have this huge come down. No, yeah, I definitely feel like the small victory. are the things that are most rewarding to me.

What's an example of a small victory? You mentioned picking up your journal and this one thing that, you know, all of a sudden you realize this euphoria, this could help you for the next 10 or 20 years. What would be an example of something like that? So probably the biggest one in recent time was my doctor mentioning, hey, Dill, your metabolic system is not very good. It's like, your baseline is not great. I'm like, what do you mean?

I'm an athlete. I can run. Let's go run right now. Well, let's do it. So we did a, what do you call it, lactate test? Like a V-O-2 max test or something? No, not V-O-2. We just did a basic lactate.

So starting walking on the treadmill, amping it up every, I can't remember the intervals, but pricking the finger every two minutes, checking what my lactate level was and getting that zone 2 threshold, basically seeing where that sits. And I was terrible. Like, I thought I'd be good. I'm an endurance athlete. I walk six, seven miles and around a golf, and that turns out, no, I'm actually pretty bad. So that was six, seven months ago, and I've been able to train that zone two now and push that to a point where I'm, I guess, an athlete again.

But that was a shock to me that, hey, your metabolic and your cardio system is just not functioning very well. So that was a great setting. I mean, for me, it's like, hey, I'm walking five hours, six hours during a round. And if my sort of heart rate's going way up, way down, my carbohydrates are being smashed because I'm not burning those fats consistently, that's going to have an adverse effect. And as soon as I switched that, I felt way more level on the course, energy levels are way more consistent. And I'm sure that correlates to way better golf. Well, what I also like about the way that you described that is you found this discovery

actually as an opportunity, right? You know, some people might look at that and say, oh, gosh, there's something kind of wrong with me or, you know, I'm not as athletic as I thought. But you said, you know, hey, I'm already this good of an athlete with this huge deficiency or whatever you want to call in one area. if I can improve that, think how great I can be now, right? And I think that's a really healthy month. It was powerful because I was like, no, come on, I can run.

I can do all this stuff. But, oh, hang on, I don't do any sort of, yeah, training. I don't get on a bike. I don't run, but there's the opportunity to get better, as you say. Where do you think the state of golf is in 2020? Are you feeling okay about everything that's going on? And under COVID circumstances, are you excited to play golf in a world of COVID-19? in? Yeah, it's definitely going to be interesting. I'm excited to get out there. I think golf is

uniquely positioned that we can possibly get out there sooner than other sports. Contact sports and sports with huge crowds are obviously tricky to govern, but we can definitely put out a product with limited interaction. So I'm sure the PJ Tour Commissioner is, I mean, he wants us to start in June. We're hopefully going to be there in June on the TV screens and giving guys some some golf to watch, but I'm just excited to get out there. I mean, I haven't played golf in five weeks. I'm starting my training again now, amping it up, but it'll be awesome to get some competition under the belt and see all this sort of physical training that I've put in now, see if it pays off. When you say you haven't played golf, you mean you haven't played competitive

golf? No, I literally didn't touch a club for five weeks. I got away, cleared my head, just this is probably the only opportunity I'll have as a pro to take that much time off. So I clutched it with two hands and said, okay, here we go. No golf, just training, working out, clearing my mind, and it feels great to be back. Now, is it possible that the first round you play when you're back, you might go shoot like a 62 or something? Isn't that one of those weird things? Honestly, that's what I've noticed. I try and take three breaks a year or two breaks a year. I'd do two weeks without a club. But usually when I come back, that first week is just, wow, like your swing just falls into place. You're feeling fresh. And yeah, your mind's fresh. So there's no.

no lingering, ah, don't pull it, don't push it, don't do all these random things. And you often excel in those situations. Yeah, well, it's really powerful how that works. Well, where can people find you, Dylan, who are hoping to learn more about you or get to follow your amazing career? Instagram is the one place I post a lot. I give a lot of sort of behind the scene stuff and I'm trying to increase that. I've got tons of knowledge, but I'm scared to put it out there. So I'll try and improve that. But, yeah, Instagram for television is my name. A little play on words there with my last name.

But, yeah, try and give guys a little behind the scenes look into a PJ Tour, player's lifestyle. Well, we'll include all of that in the show notes. It's been a real pleasure having you on the podcast. And also, we're proud to have you on Woops. So good luck this season and beyond. Cool. Thanks for having me.

Well, I've enjoyed it. Thank you to Dylan for coming on the Whoop podcast. We're going to get to a little Q&A here shortly. But first, a reminder, please check us out on social media at Whoop, W-H-O-O-O-P. You can find me at Will Ahmed. We do listen to your feedback. Please subscribe to the podcast, rate it. All of those things help us as we think about future episodes, future guests,

and making this as valuable as possible for you. Okay. Now to Q and A at Shaq Inibo asks, is higher strain always better for any fitness goal, losing weight versus gaining strength, et cetera? Great question. So strain is a measurement of how much stress or intensity has accumulated on your body over time. It's primarily looking at cardiovascular load. So the higher your heart rate is the more strain that Whoop will give you credit for.

Now, why is that important context of this question? Losing weight is often a calories game. So you want to be burning more calories than you take in. And having a generally active day may actually burn more calories than accumulate strain. So I would encourage anyone with the fitness goal of losing weight to focus more on the calories burned calculation that Woop is giving you. Because a higher strain doesn't necessarily correlate price. perfectly with a increasing calories. In terms of gaining strength, a lot of it is really looking at

that balance between strain and recovery. So that's a situation where when you have a higher recovery, we want you to take on more strain. If you have a lower recovery, we want you to take on less strain. And in fact, you can think of high recoveries as the green light to really crush your body. Brent Hughes asks, does Woop take HRV all day while we wear it? Or is it only the last five minutes of our last slow wave sleep? Sometimes I can't have it on 24-7 and was wondering if that affects my HRV data. If it's not all day, I'm assuming the strain we place on our body reflects in HRV during slow-wave sleep. That is a great question and that is correct. It's correct in a couple of sense. First of all, we do collect HRV all day. However, the statistic that we use to

calculate your recovery is indeed calculated during the last five minutes of slow wave sleep. So let's pretend you ran a marathon and you wore whoop and you ran a marathon and you did not wear whoop, right? In both cases, whoop would still be giving you potentially a lower recovery the next day because even though you weren't wearing your whoop during that period of high strain, your body has not forgotten that you just put this enormous amount of stress on it. And so that's going to show up in your heart rate variability. So even if you're not wearing WOOP 24-7, but wearing it while you're sleeping, that heart rate variability should encode a lot of what's already happened to your body. Now, of course, we do encourage you to wear Woop 24-7

because that should give you the best results. Okay, that's it for now, folks. Always a pleasure. stay healthy, stay green, and thank you for listening.