Unlock the secrets to a killer short game with the wisdom of Parker McLachlin, the Short Game Chef himself, in our latest podcast. We're dissecting the fine art of wedge play, covering everything from the right selection of wedges to the mental strategies that'll shave strokes off your score. Whether you're facing frosty fairways or sunny swathes, Parker's insights are your ticket to turning that dreaded chip shot into your secret weapon.
Embark on a journey that begins a mere 100 yards from the green, where I regale you with tales of my short game evolution under the tutelage of golf legend Paul Azinger. Discover the pivotal role of self-belief, grip nuances, and tempo in mastering your wedge game. Through anecdotes and expert advice, we lay out a blueprint for amateurs and pros alike to revolutionize their short game approach, ensuring you leave the course with a sense of triumph and a newfound zest for the game.
The episode rounds out with a deep dive into the technicalities of wedge features, like grind and bounce, and how these could be the game-changers you need. Listen as we draw on personal experiences and the savvy plays of pros like Max Homa to illustrate the profound difference the right equipment makes. And for those hungry for more, Parker gives a taste of the exclusive content and community waiting in his Short Game Chef monthly membership. Swing by our podcast for a session that's all about transforming your wedge play from an afterthought to an ace up your sleeve.
Unlock the secrets to a killer short game with the wisdom of Parker McLachlin, the Short Game Chef himself, in our latest podcast. We're dissecting the fine art of wedge play, covering everything from the right selection of wedges to the mental strategies that'll shave strokes off your score. Whether you're facing frosty fairways or sunny swathes, Parker's insights are your ticket to turning that dreaded chip shot into your secret weapon.
Embark on a journey that begins a mere 100 yards from the green, where I regale you with tales of my short game evolution under the tutelage of golf legend Paul Azinger. Discover the pivotal role of self-belief, grip nuances, and tempo in mastering your wedge game. Through anecdotes and expert advice, we lay out a blueprint for amateurs and pros alike to revolutionize their short game approach, ensuring you leave the course with a sense of triumph and a newfound zest for the game.
The episode rounds out with a deep dive into the technicalities of wedge features, like grind and bounce, and how these could be the game-changers you need. Listen as we draw on personal experiences and the savvy plays of pros like Max Homa to illustrate the profound difference the right equipment makes. And for those hungry for more, Parker gives a taste of the exclusive content and community waiting in his Short Game Chef monthly membership. Swing by our podcast for a session that's all about transforming your wedge play from an afterthought to an ace up your sleeve.
My name is Jesse Perryman and this is the Fly Hunters Golf podcast, bringing you another edition here in January of 2024. As we start off the new year with a bang, we want to welcome you and extend our deepest gratitude. Along with my co-host, justin Tang, we aim to bring you the best quality instructors and experts in their unique fields, to help bring you the best information, to help you, the player, get better and build something, and also to cure what ails you and what ails your game. And now that we are firmly entrenched into winter, it's a good thing to think about and contemplate. Maybe, in these months of away from the game, if you are in the northern hemisphere, or if you're the southern hemisphere and you're able to play golf, you can apply this immediately.
Speaker 1:Our guest this week is none other than Parker McLaughlin. He is the AKA short game chef, former tour winner, now turned into one of the better short game coaches in the world. So Parker and Justin and myself have this great conversation about wedges, about short game technique, mindset, understanding how to assess different scenarios and different things. As it relates to the short game. Parker has a very unique way of explaining things in their simplest form. He's very easy to understand and extremely legible. As far as understanding what he's saying if you catch what I'm saying Very easy to understand, and his years on the PGA tour and being around great players and learning from great players, along with his own short game being fantastic, has come up with a great way to coach and he's got a great website called the short game chef dot com where you can become a member and get very unique and intimate access to hundreds of videos from Parker and with all of his expertise and wisdom. Those are all in those videos. So you're going to find everything as it relates to wedge play assessing lies, knowing what bounce to choose, knowing when to engage the bounce, when not to engage the bounce, how to have different bounces, different bounce profiles for different lies, different scenarios, situations. Some people may have different preferences when it as it relates to bounce profiles, waiting of wedges, things like that. He covers all of that on his website and he's also has a 1500 plus member of a very powerful discord server and you get access to that server provided you are a member of his website, short game chef dot com.
Speaker 1:So, without further ado, to the main body of the podcast. I don't say much, just an answers all the asks, all the questions. But he and I discussed prior to and it's great I was I was just like you, a very curious listener and thinking of the different pearls of wisdom that Parker puts out that I can apply to my own wedge play. But you can become a wedge master. You know, you may not have 125 miles an hour in the bag. You may be able to build speed, you may be able to build power, but wedge play I kind of I'm kind of a little bit of a hard ass on it with putting is there. There's no excuse to become a great wedge player, or at least a wedge player that you can accomplish. And I mean I will 100% guarantee and make a promise to you that if you apply these principles, that your wedge play will get better and hence your scores will lower. And you need your wedges to get you out of dodge. Sometimes you're not going to hit the ball great every day. It's. It's a misnomer.
Speaker 1:One thing I want to add before we get into the main body. When you watch golf on television whether it's the champions tour, the PGA tour, live tour, lpga tour, whatever tours out there, the DP World Tour and you look at these phenomenal athletes, these phenomenal players, both women, men and women alike. One thing that you don't see is how proficient they are with their wedges when they're ball striking isn't that great, because the cameras only show the players that are firing on all cylinders and really that's. I got a little bit of a bone to pick with that. That does it to service to the rest of us. But you know, I get that we want to watch great golf, but for those of us who want to really learn from what the greats do, it's beneficial to watch them also when they're struggling with their ball striking and finding out how it really, how they really get the ball in the hole, how they turned 75s in the 69s in vice versa, and how we can hit the ball sideways and turn a potential even par around into an, into an 80, just because we're mediocre or lackluster with our wedges. So take this, take this conversation to heart, be sure to go to Parker's website, sign up. I promise you you will not regret it and enjoy the episode. And once again, please remember or it helps us out and also please remember to rate, review and subscribe at any directory that you listen to your podcast with. Thanks, everybody. Have a great week and once again, I'm going to say it again because we're still early in the new year Happy new year, hello, and welcome again to another edition of the flag hunters golf podcast.
Speaker 1:Today's a special one, you know. Along with Justin and myself, we really wanted to start to get down into the nitty gritty of scoring and the important aspects of it. And even with better players today, they still there's not still a great understanding of the art and the subtleness of wedge play from 100 to 120 yards. And then all the best players in the world Exemplify this time and time again. And yet the whole minutiae of golf improvement. These were the best players in the world. Golf improvement these way this these days is still speed, which isn't bad. But we've got a guy that's on today that is exemplifying this very phenomenon in spades. His name is Parker McLaughlin, former PGA tour player, former PGA tour winner, and you may know him better these days by the short game chef. So thanks for coming on, parker.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Love being with you guys.
Speaker 1:Oh, and before Justin kills me, I want to thank our sponsors, taylor made and Adidas. But thanks, parker for coming on. Justin, always a pleasure to see you, my man, thanks, thanks, hey Parker.
Speaker 2:Can you just let listeners know how you got started in the game?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was. I was introduced, you know I was. I was a gym rat, ad was a basketball coach, and so I was always in the gym and you know, for me it was, you know, team sports was always sort of first. And then when I was introduced to golf, around eight, nine, 10 years old, it was that that sort of was sort of my first introduction to an individual sport. Yeah, and it was, you know, just kind of.
Speaker 3:I think that I fell in love with the creativity of golf. I fell in love with, you know just sort of, how hard you worked, was was usually, you know you were, you were paid back on that with regards to your score. And so, yeah, I was, I was. I was definitely hooked, as we all get, with golf at a young age and yeah, that was, that was sort of how I got my start and just kind of played, played a bunch of junior golf and then college golf at UCLA and and then just sort of rose, rose up in the ranks and in the in the professional world and yeah, I got all the way up to being a PGA for a winner. So pretty, you know, pretty cool ride that not not a lot of people get to sort of experience.
Speaker 3:And then I also experienced kind of the downside of of that, which was, you know, chasing, chasing a better swing, chasing a more efficient swing, and you know the hard work that I put in.
Speaker 3:I wasn't paid off on that hard work. It was almost like the harder I worked, the worse I got, and yeah. So anyway, but now I'm sort of doing the, I've taken deep dive into the short game coaching realm and trying to get, trying to get good information to the amateur golfers, because I think that from them, the amateur golfers that I played with in programs and that I play with back in Arizona where I currently live, it really does seem like there's a disconnect of what the PGA tour players are doing with their short games and what the amateur golfer is doing with their short games. And I wanted to bridge that gap and I wanted to bring some of the PGA tour secrets, so to speak, to the amateur golfer and make it a make it a simple and easy thing for make, make the short game a bit more approachable and bring the sexy back to the short game. So now we're on the subject of sexy.
Speaker 2:How did the nickname short game chefs come about?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So short game chef, you know, I had a caddy friend of mine who had caddy for me quite, quite a few tournaments. And he says, he says, you know, I think that you should jump on Instagram, start giving some tips, and your short game is so good that people should learn how you do, what it is you do. And so I was like, well, I'm not on Instagram at the time and he said, yeah, I'll film some videos for you and I'll help you set it up. So he helped me set it up and we put the videos on there and he said, ok, now you have to come up with a name. I was like, all right, well, it's got to. You know this, this page is going to be dedicated to short game and short game instruction, and so it's got to have something to do with the short game and the name.
Speaker 3:And so I was thinking short game wizard, short game genius, short game savant, like you know, any of those kind of thoughts.
Speaker 3:And then I was like, well, you know, short game chef kind of came to me because I was thinking you know, every shot around the green there's, you know some, some ingredients that you have to use in different ways, and each shot there's a certain type of recipe.
Speaker 3:So if you're going to hit a flop shot, the recipe is going to be you got to open the face, you got to get the shaft in a proper spot. You got to get your feet in the right spot, you got to make a longer type of a backswing. You've got to have a certain release. There's a recipe to each shot. When you get close to the grains versus sort of your stock full swing shot that you're hitting with driver and with irons around the greens is much more creativity and so I try to. You know, take that, take the creativity that I've learned from you know, 35 years of playing this game and exploring this game and be able to bring that 35 years of experience and try to simplify it into one simple recipe that someone can look at, they can digest and they can use that really encapsulates the nature of the short game.
Speaker 2:Not that you're not a genius, savon expert guru as you, as you consider naming your site. So talk a little bit about your membership site, what our listeners could expect to get when they sign up yeah, so we've got over 180 videos on the website currently.
Speaker 3:I walk you through step by step on how to bump and run, how to pitch the ball, how to flop shot, how to get out of the bunkers, plug lies. Any type of lie you could imagine is going to be on there. We've got stuff about green side rough that that really sticky bermuda rough that that can really cause cause havoc. I teach you how to get out of all that. Um, 50 to 125 yard shots everything's on there.
Speaker 3:Putting as well um, I felt like when I was playing on tour, one of my super super powers was putting. Um, I held a record in 2018, I think it was, where I went 354 holes without a three putt in a row, and my superpower was wasn't that my stroke was better than anyone else's, it was that my routine was. I felt like put me in a spot where I could hit the best putt possible. So there was it eliminated the fears and the doubts and all that stuff. So I dive really deep into routine and how to build a good routine on the website. Um, there's also some really neat sort of I call them secret recipes with players like Lee Trevino, ben Crenshaw, keith Mitchell, matt Kutcher, brad Faxen, and we have these sort of long form conversations on the website that are they're really neat, that dive into what Ben Crenshaw was thinking about and feeling when he was putting same thing with Brad Faxen, what Matt Kutcher thinks about to how, to how to hit his most perfect pitch shot, which Matt Kutcher last year was number one in stroke skein around the green, so he's a wizard with the wedge and we dive into how he does it.
Speaker 3:Um, and there's some really interesting stuff there that you, that that these players that like some of the Keith Mitchell videos to me are, are really really well explained by Keith and they talk about how his feels and what he's trying to accomplish and how he gets there, and he does a really good job of explaining all that and uh and breaking it down so that people can understand it and and see what it is he's talking about, um, so those are, those are some of the things that are on the website.
Speaker 3:There's also a private discord server that is attached to it where you can upload, upload videos under uh, swing critique and and myself and other members of the community will give you feedback and so, anyway, we're we're developing a really a really neat community, especially on our discord server it's it's a great community of people that are just they love the game of golf, they love short game, they're wanting to get better and we've got 15 or 1600 people on the discord server and so you get a. You get a lot, of, a lot of good feedback from from the community in a really positive way and it's it's been a, it's been a neat thing that we've, that we've created there.
Speaker 2:Thanks could we take one step back? I'd like to ask you were you always attracted to the short game growing up?
Speaker 3:yeah, absolutely. Uh, I was never a great ball striker and so I always was, you know, having to get up and down. Um, you know, I I would continuously have rounds where I'd hit nine greens in regulation and shoot four or five under par, and that was just sort of almost standard for me. Um, and so I was always good at at just any type of shot around the green. I was great with putting. Uh, I felt like once I, the closer I got to the hole, I could, number one, be creative, but also I felt like I could sort of finish out the hole, so to speak. Um, so the closer I got, the more or my focus sort of honed in a bit better. Um, so, yeah, but I was always, I was always really good at it, but then I was.
Speaker 3:I got really lucky to be um, to be able to be mentored by paul aizinger for a handful of years, as my after my career kind of went south. Um, you know, paul was there to kind of help lift me back up again and take me under his wing and um really helped me uh, find, find my golf game again and, uh, and in the process I learned quite a bit just by being around him about short game, about how to play bunker shots, and you know how to hit these beautiful pitch shots, um, so, yeah, I think that, uh, I was always very good at it, but I think I I took my understanding and my learning to another level.
Speaker 2:You know, spending time with paul yeah, paul himself had a great short game. I'll never forget him holding out. The rider cut from the bunker and in the memorial and he was always an advocate of using uh, the soul of the club he would. He would stand the shaft of the wedge up and kind of have a chip putt motion and he was schooled by doc redmond, if I got the name correct one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, doc redmond, I think he's, yeah, and I think paul spent some time on a short game with um, uh, bill rogers, I believe, um, bill roger, yeah, and and so, um, yeah, I think it.
Speaker 3:You know a lot of this stuff goes back to, like you know, paul runyan, and you know a lot of the old, old school guys, that it just sort of gets passed down from generation to generation, which is which is neat and it's um, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of schools to thought on on how to, how to, how to play shots around the greens. Um, the way that I like to do it, I I try to, I try to get my ameter golfers, I want them, I want to stack the odds in their favor. Golf is so hard as it is that if I can make a shot around the green just a little bit easier for you and a little bit so that if you miss hit it, it's still a pretty good shot, I want to be able to do that for for my ameter golfers, make make golf a little bit easier so that you can shoot better scores and ultimately have more fun you said something that really stood out to me earlier.
Speaker 2:You said that as you got closer to the green, you had this belief of finishing up. How important is that belief at the highest levels of the game, and how can our listeners apply that to their own game?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean, I think that belief is everything, um, and even if you don't quite have, you know, that belief, maybe you haven't put the time in, or maybe you, you just you don't trust your, your mechanics. You know there's something about faking it until you make it, and if you just, you sort of talk yourself into it, um, the good things can happen. And so I think you know it's always sort of like is the chicken or the egg? What comes first is it, is it a good technique? And then I'll believe in myself, or is it? I gotta believe, and then the good technique will come.
Speaker 3:I just think that you have to find a way to believe in yourself. Whether it's like I can trust what I'm doing through impact, or I trust my eyes with this pot, or I trust the way that I'm reading this lie, I can really trust in that. The second the doubt creeps in. You're pretty much done right, you're not going to hit a great shot, and so you've got to just believe. And I always like to think that you know PGA tour players, they're almost delusional in how good that they think they are.
Speaker 3:You know, I was that way for a long time. But man, I think that it's important to have that belief, even when you don't feel like you've got your best stuff. It's important to have some type of a belief so that you can trust Yep, I know I can feel the sand underneath my feet. I can trust this lie. I know that I can go down and go get this thing and it's not going to bounce up out of the sand. You got to be able to have some type of belief in reading the lie, or reading the wind or your trajectory or watching the ball roll, like trusting your read, any of that stuff. You have to have this belief that goes into your core and, like I said, even if you got to fake it for a little bit, that's okay.
Speaker 2:Thankfully, with your website, our listeners have a tool that they can use to help them feel more confident whenever they approach the dreams. So let's talk a little bit about your short game philosophy and kind of. By that I mean at what distance does the short game begin for you and how do you teticurize the short game shot?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I would say it probably starts around 100 yards. I would say, because the short game is just, it's not really full swing. And so if you're at 100 yards and let's say you've got a little bit of wind into your face, you're probably not going to hit a full 56 degree, you're probably going to take something off of a 52 degree, and so then it becomes a three quarter type of emotion. Okay, so at that point, what things do you need to put into place to make sure that that three quarter swing works out for you? And that's sort of where, if you have some recipes to rely on now, you can trust. Okay, this three quarter swing, I can trust in these recipes and it's going to work out for me. And so as we get closer, I mean, I think that a lot of my philosophy is sort of within the 50 yards from the green is where a lot of my philosophy lies. But I would say that the short game sort of starts probably around 100 yards and in.
Speaker 2:So there would be an overlap between what we normally call distance wedges and the full swing. So, john novices, that the full swing tempo is going to be something like three to one. What kind of tempo or rhythm do you?
Speaker 3:ascribe? Well, that's a good question. I don't know if I can give you an exact answer on that. I do. I do pay attention to to grip pressure with my students. I do pay attention to how much that pressure here is working up the arm, into the elbow, into the shoulders and just paying attention to to. Is there tension there? Is it good tension? Is it bad tension? Is there still pliability with the arms and the elbows or have we just gotten it so stiff Because we've got too much, you know, pressure and tightness and tension in our, in our hands.
Speaker 3:So it's, it's. I would say that that's sort of where I, where I would start when it would come to tempo, because if you, if you grip it really really light, it's going to be really hard for you to have quick, too fast of a tempo, right, because if you're just gripping it really loosely, it's just going to usually go swinging, something like this where it's very slow and in therapy, if the tighter you grip it, the more it wants to be fast and jerky. So when you talk tempo, you really have to look at and start with grip pressure. And where does that tension go?
Speaker 2:up the arms, into the elbows and into the shoulders, and I would suppose you're going to have different grip pressures for different shots, different distances from the green.
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah. So I would you know, like I think, on flop shots, I love to just really soften my grip pressure for a flop shot and then it and make that nice long swing and have a nice release. But I feel like I'm allowing the club head this and the weight of the club head to do the work when I jump into the bunker. It's sort of a cousin. The bunker swing is sort of a cousin to to the, to the flop shot swing, but set ups going to be a bit different, handle position is going to be a bit lower and you're going to be gripping onto it a bit tighter. Right, you're going to have, you're going to have, you're sort of having a brace for impact with the sand.
Speaker 3:That's really, you know, provides a lot of resistance. So you've got to, you've got to, you know, have that grip pressure be a bit tighter. But in getting that grip pressure tighter we still want the same playability with our hands as we did with the flop shot. So it's, it's it's sort of managing, you know, your grip pressures a little bit from. You know that syrupy flop shot where I feel like my grip pressure is a two or three out of 10, to then getting into the bunker. And then now my grip pressure changes to more of a, you know, probably a six or seven, but I still have some playability with my hands. That's really important. So can we?
Speaker 2:go a little bit into the difference between your approach and say the traditional method, so sort of like an open stance versus a square, close stance type debate In the bunker. Not just bunkers, but I guess the game, the short game in the professional levels, has evolved to where guys have moved from an open stance seat downswing to kind of neutral clothes where they want to club to be coming a little bit more from the inside. You mentioned Metcoucher earlier. I think he's a big fan of hitting draw wedges, so that's more of an inside out approach versus a guy on the opposite end of the spectrum, jordan Spath, who wants to, who feels like he wants to cut everything from. Call it 60 yards.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think that you know, again, there's, there's multiple ways to to get the job done. I think that you know, when you look at some of the, some of the greats with with hitting sort of these, you know sort of awkward wedge yardages, sort of 20 through 60 yards, 20 through 50 yards, you know, I think that what, what Matt Coucher does, what Steve Stricker does, what Keith Mitchell does, cam Young, Cam Smith, they, they play more from the inside on a lot of those shots. I think Tiger talks a lot about hitting a draw pitch shot. He says he says he feels like it's, it's really easy to sort of hit that steep cut. He calls it rakey kind of a, you know, low spinning shot and he feels like the one that he practices and wants to to have good control is is hitting that slight draw pitch and it now you got to, you got to remember this is, guys, feels they the ball will not be drawing when you're hitting a 20 yard pitch shot. It will. It will not draw, but the feel is that it's, it's ever so slightly drawing. That's the feel for, for the, for the players, and so. So anyway, yeah, so I just I think that you know that philosophy.
Speaker 3:I was playing golf with Matt Kutcher two days ago and we were talking philosophy and he talks about when he feels like he gets steeper with it. He feels like actually, the ball has less spin for him when he's trying to go steeper and so he tries to be more on the shallower side, more from the inside, and in doing that he also feels like he's accessing more spin for himself. And secondly, he feels like he's putting the margin of error in his favor. He's stacking the odds in his favor. And so, you know, at the highest level, you kind of want to stack the odds in your favor and you look at a guy like Matt Kutcher not the longest in the world, pretty straight driver of the golf ball, but not the best iron player to ever live and yet he's, you know, made 60 million dollars and had a career 20 plus years on the PGA Tour, almost always finishing inside the top 50 on the money list, which is it's absolutely mind-blowing.
Speaker 3:So how does he get it done? He's trying to stack the odds in his favor because he doesn't have room, because he doesn't hit it at 340, he doesn't have room around the greens to give up shots. So he wants to make sure that. You know. He knows he's going to miss hit some shots, but he wants to make sure that he's stacking the odds in his favor so that when he does miss hit a shot he's able to still be within that 6 foot area where he feels like he's going to make every putt. Some of these other guys that hit it a long way, you know they can get away with a short game that isn't quite as sharp or on point as a Matt Kutcher. Matt Kutcher can't afford to have a short game that you know gives up half a stroke a day to the field. He really has to be gaining strokes with his short game every single day.
Speaker 2:So for the benefit of our listeners. What separates the short game of a Matt Kutcher versus that of a hypothetical long hitter?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good question. I think that you know the long hitters are really good at understanding how to create speed, how to create ball speed, and so you know, as you look at a guy who can really send it you know a Dustin Johnson, for instance you look at someone like him everything in his golf swing, every move that he makes, is in an effort to create ball speed. Once you get inside of 50 yards, everything that he's doing with his golf swing is hindering him from becoming a great wedge player or a great short game player, because everything inside of 50 yards is about distance control, distance management, ball speed management and yet still finding a way to maintain spin. That's where it becomes, you know, a tricky proposition. It's like okay, well, yeah, we can kind of slow the ball speed down, but are you, are you going to hit these high knuckle balls or are you going to hit some more mid-flighted trajectory pitch shots that have some spin on it?
Speaker 3:So the trick is helping that really long ball hitter, help them understand how to slow down their ball speed in the proper way so that they can still have spin on the ball. They're fine. You know speed and spin are going to go hand in hand. But you know for a lot of the long ball hitters to watch them. You know a lot of times they'll be able to create that speed for, let's say, a 30 or 40 yard pitch shot but it's full, big bounce, big bounce, and then it sort of tries to stop but it's already 12 or 15 feet past the hole. It's about helping them to understand how to slow down that ball speed in the right way while still maintaining the backspin.
Speaker 2:That's a really interesting thing you talked about. So I've always thought about the kinematic sequence of the full swing and the short game. You kind of want to reverse that. You kind of want to be a little bit more inefficient with your smash factor. Instead of going for a 145 on the driver, you kind of want to bring that down to about 1.1. And it's really interesting how some players think about managing their speed and spin for the situation at hand. So I've seen pictures of Fred Couple's wedge and he used to hit it off the toe. Do you suppose I've not spoken to him about it, but do you suppose that's one of the ways in which these great players kind of intuitively bring the smash factor down?
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely yeah. I spent a lot of time with Paul Azier and he always talks about hitting it toe side, a center on his wedges, and how it takes away, like you said, some of the smash factor. And so when it takes away some of the smash factor, what's that? Give you the freedom to do Swing a little bit harder. If you know you're going to hit it slightly toe side, you can swing a little bit harder because the ball is going to come out a little more dead, and if you can swing a little bit faster, you can impart a little bit more spin on the golf ball. So I think that's really what the guys at the professional level are trying to do. When they're hitting it toe side is they're trying to dent it, but as they dent it, it gives them that freedom to swing a little faster. And then you spoke a little bit about hitting that right at the wedge shot.
Speaker 2:You work a lot on a launch gate at, say, below sub 30 degree launch angle on your wedges with your players.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say you know there's. If you're hitting a stock standard, you know wedge shot, yeah, you want that. You want that launch to be in that sub 30 range. But there's a lot of shots around the greens inside of that sort of, let's say, 40 yards and in where you may not want this thing to launch at 26, 27, 28, because if it does and you've only got four paces to work with because there's a bunker in between and the pins tucked in a little spot there where you've got to stop it quickly you're not going to want something coming in there landing really low, right, you're going to want a steeper land angle, and so you may want to launch it at 32 or 34. Now, as you start to launch it a little bit higher, the trick is to be able to still maintain similar spin while you launch it a little bit higher. The thing you don't want to do is just hit it straight up and have it be a knuckleball. You're not going to, you're not going to have any control of it. But there's ways to be able to hit it high, you know, launching at 32, 34 and still be able to maintain that's that spin rate that we're looking for to get that ball to stop.
Speaker 3:I think it's really important to you know, as I, as I was doing some stuff on Trackman a few months ago over at Titleist, you know it was it was interesting to sort of play around with attack angle and then what that did to the launch and what that did to the land angle, and then what it did to spin, and then all in all, you look at it and you say, okay, well, where did it land? Okay, it landed at 20, finished at 24. Okay, now what if I go a little bit steeper with my angle of attack? Okay, now the ball is going to launch a little bit lower, land angle is going to get a little bit shallower, and so now I'm landing that same, that same shot. I'm landing it at 20 and it's finishing at 27. That three yards at the highest level makes a big difference. But that three yards in general, you know, makes a big difference. For for any player, that three yards is nine feet. That's a big, that's a big difference between having a tap in or having a 10 footer.
Speaker 2:So you spoke about steeper. There's been a lot of recent interest in Victor Hofflin's short game and our friend Joe Mayo was talking a little bit about hitting down. A lot of amateur golfers don't hit down enough. Can you just translate a bit of that information for our listeners? So a lot of our our listeners would probably take that information and say let me hit down on the ball and what they end up with is getting a nasty fat divot around the greens. How should our listeners be thinking about that kind of information?
Speaker 3:I think that there's there's a lot of good in what Joe's doing and that that thought process of trying to maximize spin, but I think that a lot of it because it's, you know, sort of been on social media a lot of it sort of gets lost. A lot of it gets lost in translation, so to speak. I see a lot of people that misinterpret the information. Especially in the last couple of months I've seen a lot of people that have come to me that have misinterpreted the information and as they try to get steeper, their misses become more extreme because they haven't put all the puzzle pieces together to be able to execute that shot. And you know the Matt, you know Joe's not necessarily wrong on on any of his math.
Speaker 3:But the thing that I would sort of put in there is that you know you're still dealing with a human element of you know someone getting up there and and the steeper you try to get somebody for, let's say, a 12 to 20, 30 yard shot, the steeper you're going to get somebody. They're going to have some fears and some doubts and some uncertainty, thinking like, okay, I'm getting really steep with this. This ball is going to probably come out much hotter, so I'm probably going to hit it too far than what I want to do. There's going to be a counter reaction, because someone doesn't want to hit it too far, they're going to back out of it, they're going to buckle their knees, they're going to try to soften the blow, they're going to flip out it.
Speaker 3:And so the human part of it, I think, hasn't really been taken fully into consideration, because I just think that I see too many people that have come to me in a spot where they they are already on the steep side and they're really struggling to to not only make contact but to actually move through the shot with authority and with conviction and with free flowing athleticism. There seems like there's a lot of there's not constant motion, it's sort of an interrupted motion is what it looks like from my perspective. When you try to get, especially an amateur golfer, when you try to get them very steep, it seems like the motion gets interrupted because of thoughts and fears and doubts of I'm going to hit this too far or I need to be super perfect with this because I am coming in so steep. There's no margin of error. If you hit a little bit behind it, well, that's why we have that short game chefcom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just, you know, for me, I think, you know like, I think, when I look at Matt Kutcher, he's ranked in the top. I know he led the tour two years ago and strokes again around the green, and I know that he was leading the tour most of last year and strokes again around the green. So one of the best players on planet earth with with the wedge is an advocate of feeling, feeling some shallowness on his, on his wedge shots, those you know, 10 to 50 yard wedge shots, and he wants to stack the odds in his favor. I don't to me. I'm like, well, I want to look at that guy and say, well, how can I copy his motion? This guy's been at the top, at the top, at the top, and how can I copy that motion? But also he's he's doing it consciously because he wants to stack the odds in his favor.
Speaker 3:Why would a weekend warrior not want to copy what Matt Kutcher is doing? Because that weekend warrior does not have the time to practice, he does not have the hours to put in to perfect a difficult movement. And so you know, in my mind I just I look at and say I want to, I want to try to do what's easiest, because golf is so darn hard. I want to make it simpler. I want to make it easier, especially for the amateur golfer that is not able to practice every single day.
Speaker 2:You spoke about realistic expectations. A lot of amateur golfers have unrealistic expectations. They look at a tour golfer and they go I want to do what he's doing Instead of thinking about how these guys think they just want to copy the motion. They just want to copy what these guys are playing. So can you talk a little bit to our listeners about what our short game strategy should be to help us shoot our lowest scores?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm just, I'm a fan of keeping things simple, I'm a fan of, you know, again, we look at, we look at the ball is sitting right there, it's not moving, it's just sitting there. How do we make the simplest motion to give us the best chance for success? To me, it's especially, you know, especially in the short game. The swing is going to be shorter, the swing is going to be smaller, which is why, for most of my amateur golfers, I'm a huge fan and proponent of them learning how to use lower lofted clubs around the greens. For a tour player, they use their, they they most of the time use their highest lofted club or maybe their second highest lofted club as well. But for the amateur golfer it's really important to get the skill of using a lower lofted club. It becomes a shorter swing, it becomes a shallower swing and it it it gives you the best chance for success.
Speaker 3:The more loft you've got, usually, the longer the swing becomes and for the amateur golfer, more things can go wrong. So when you've got a little bit less loft, you know, let's say a seven iron or nine iron, a few yards off the green and you're trying to hit a little bump and run using a seven and nine iron is the right thing to do. Don't go grab your 60 degree wedge and then put the shaft way forward and put the ball position way back and it just it it. To me it's just not going to work out as well. If it's somebody who is not practicing all the time, that's a shot that if you're practicing all the time, go for it, have at it. But if you're not practicing all the time, you should be going with something that's a little lower lofted so that you can make a swing that's a little bit shorter and less. Less things can go wrong. Less timing is involved.
Speaker 2:One question that a lot of our listeners are bound to have would be this ball position and club selection. Do we use one ball position and or different clubs, or do you manipulate these things?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the ball position is going to change a little bit here and there depending on the type of shot you want to hit. I don't think that the ball position is going to change super extreme. You know, it's sort of like if you're going to put that ball sort of outside of your back foot and you're going to lean the shaft 25 degrees forward with a 60 degree wedge. That's a super specialty shot that tour players have and sometimes use on a very rare occasion. But if you're going to do that, you may as well, rather than hitting a 60 degree, you may as well hit a 35 degree club which is probably a seven-eier and eight-eier. Yeah, so to me it's more about just manipulating that ball position just a little bit. I like keeping it between your feet, so sometimes it's off the right toe, sometimes it's off my left toe, sometimes it's right in the middle, and then, yeah, play around with a variety of clubs.
Speaker 3:If I'm going to hit a bump and run, I'm probably going to go off my right toe with a nine iron, lean the shaft forward a little bit and hit my little bump and run motion. If I'm going to hit a pitch shot, medium trajectory, I'm going to go more off my left toe with a higher lofted wedge like a 56 or a 60. Swing is going to be a swing, is going to be a little bit longer and that ball will come out with a little bit, a little higher, a little floatier, a little spinnier, and then if I'm going to hit one high I'll probably still keep it off my front toe but clubface is going to be more open at setup and I'm going to have a longer backswing and more of a release with my hands. So you know things change. But you know just, you can always be open to things changing just a little bit. But I don't think that you necessarily need to go to the extreme of ball position outside of your front foot or ball position outside of your back foot.
Speaker 2:So you hold the three part avoidance record in 2018 for 354 consecutive four and you said that was the result of your super. So your routine, your superpower routine. Can you just give our listeners a little bit of that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I like to equate. You know, putting in the routine for putting it's similar to a free throw in basketball, so it's just you in the hoop and nobody's going to block your shot. In golf You're not really going to have, you know, 10,000 fans screaming behind the basket at you. So I equate it to getting ready to shoot a free throw.
Speaker 3:And if you look at different routines of free throw shooters the good ones versus the bad ones you look at Michael Jordan, steve Kerr, a Steph Curry. You look at their routines for shooting a free throw and it's always timed out, it's always rehearsed, it's always in a place where it sets them up to be in flow Steve Nash would be another one I would throw in there. And then you look at someone like a Shaquille O'Neal or Dwight Howard and you look at their routines and there's a lot of datac energy there. There's there's it's sort of a staccato type of a routine. There's not much flow to that routine. And you can see in the in the disparity of 50% free throw shooter versus a 90% free throw shooter. Like that's a big difference. It's the same, it's the same shot. Right, they're standing at the same line, it's the same shot, but there's a 40% difference in in make percentage.
Speaker 3:So in my mind I want to set myself up in putting to have a routine to where it sets me up to be in flow. It sets me up to not have fears and doubts. It sets me up to make the best stroke possible. I'm not, I'm not going to make every pot. That's not necessarily like the goal. The goal is to set myself up so that I can make the freest stroke possible. Once I feel like I'm doing that really well, then I can start to channel a bit more of my energy into actually making the putt. But you got to start with that routine. The routine has got to be built in a way where it really sets you up for success and gets you in a state of flow, in a state of you know it turns your right brain on and it turns your left brain on.
Speaker 2:So quick one. What do you look for in your short game equipment, and could you just spend maybe a minute or so to educate our listeners about flight lines?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, flight lines was something that I created kind of during the pandemic. It was a COVID idea that you know, sitting at home I was just thinking about. How can you know? I'm working with tour players but I'm also working with amateurs. How can I get my amateur golfers to set up like my PGA Tour players? Because my PGA Tour players were all pretty similar with their setups for a flop shot, a pitch shot and a bump and run, and my amateur golfers were set up all over the map.
Speaker 3:There was no consistency with their setup for those those three shots, and so I milled lines on the hosel of a golf club to give you the visual, visual aid to be able to open the club base, have a neutral shaft position so that you can play a bunker shot or a flop shot just like a tour player.
Speaker 3:You can set up just like a tour player, because we've measured it and with the middle line, the pitch shot line, to hit a mid trajectory shot. You know, we've got that line set up to where the club base is fairly square, shaft is going to lean forward about a degree and a half and now all of a sudden we're in a really good spot to set up to hit a pitch shot like a tour player. And then the final line on the furthest right of the hosel is a line that's sort of angled a little bit rearward so that as you lean the shaft more forward to hit a lower flighted bump and run shot that line, all the lines are going to run to your nose. So it gives you the awareness to have club face positioning and shaft positioning so that you're set up just like a tour player is to hit those three different trajectory shots.
Speaker 2:Any particular preferences for your wedges in terms of bounce, grind, wedge, flares, weight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I've used the same. You know I use dynamic gold S400s. I've used those forever, which is one step down. I use Project X 6.5. So it's one step down from the Project X and so it gives me, you know, a little bit more playability, not quite as stiff as far as grinds go.
Speaker 3:I think it's an interesting discussion because sometimes what people will do is they say oh boy, I like the way this one looks. And let's say it's a 10, 10 degrees of bounce. And let's say it's a bokeh S grind, and they say I like the way this one looks, I'm going to get this in my 60, in my 56, in my 52. And they, they just say I'm going to, I'm going to do it throughout the bag. And Bob Bokeh thinks the opposite. He wants you to have a variety of options with your bounces and with your grinds. So, for example, you look at a max homo. So max goes with a 60 degree L grind, which is four degrees of bounce. In his 56 degree. He goes with a 14 degree bounce F grind. So he got he's 10 degrees of bounce difference between his 60 degree and his 56. It's a big. That's a big difference, right? Most amateurs would not think to be that far apart.
Speaker 3:But I think what, what Bob Bokeh does and what max is trying to do, is he's trying to give himself options to where, boy, if I, if I'm in a bunker, that's really, really thick sand I want to use something with more bounce. I want to use that 56 with 14 degrees of bounce. If I'm somehow in, let's say, a. You know, in Arizona there's a lot of sort of desert areas where it's really firm and let's say you've got to hit us some type of a touch shot from a firm, hard pan lie, you want to be able to use that 60 degree with four degrees of bounce, and so he can open that face up and he can slide that club underneath.
Speaker 3:And I think for for for the average golfer, I think it's a really interesting experiment to to go a high bounce with, let's say, you're 56, low bounce with your 60, or you can flip, flop them. Just try it out and see what it is that you like better. But it's it's. It's important to have a little bit of difference in in those wedges so that you can have access to more playability and that you're not stifled by just having one wedge or one grind in all of your wedges.
Speaker 2:So as they say, variety is the spice of life, so how can the players and our listeners get hold of you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think Instagram is. Instagram is the best. I I check that fairly often and you know it's at short game, chef, and that's that's probably the best way. But yeah, it went. Once you're once you're a member of our website, you get access to our discord server and that's a great way as well to to be able to connect with me and other members of my team and also just the community in general. It's a great, a great spot to to just you know, there's like when you go on that discord server there's you can dive down rabbit holes of all the different questions that people ask, just like a lot of the stuff that you've asked today. There's questions in there about that like, hey, how do you play off of a hard pan lot? What do you do about your grinds, what about wedge flexes and shafts? And so we dive deep into all those short game topics on the discord server and the website.
Speaker 2:again is short game. Chefcom, Jesse over to you for closing thoughts.
Speaker 1:Well, I just wanted to add what what you said, parker, about the variety. I have a six degree 60, I have a six degree 62 Cleveland RTX wedge and I switched to a 56 Calaway with 10 degrees bounce and it's probably been the single greatest equipment upgrade as far as in my wedges that I've ever done in my life. For that very phenomenon different, different, different bounce profile serves for different lies, different environmental factors as well. I mean firm, soft, like you said, you know, and, and you know, even taking it to the next level, as far as to be able to identify with your feet the various thicknesses of the sand and to be cognizant and aware of that, because one size does not fit all when it comes to that, especially here in California, you know, along the coast we tend to have fluffier, thicker sand because of the wind. The wind blows a lot of sand out of the bunker, so we got to continuously add sand to the bunkers. So that's a phenomenon and something for people to think about. But I just wanted to add to that and in closing, parker, I wanted to thank you for you, for you doing what you do to enlighten all of us into, into really such a such a huge part of the game, oh, my goodness, huge part. And I'm going to say this, justin, you and I have talked about this in closing as well. My goodness, the best players in the world are the best wedge players in the world. Period, period, summer, better than others.
Speaker 1:But you know, ever since Justin had been doing this podcast, I get a lot of questions on what? What do I think is the the separator? And you know, with all of the like I mentioned earlier, with all of the, you know the onus being on speed, I mean even Bryson DeShambo, you know, arguably a mediocre wedge player for somebody of his caliber, he still is going to beat the brakes off most people with his wedge play and I just want to reiterate that. But, parker, thanks again for coming on and your website does have a monthly membership, correct? Yep, yep, exactly. So once somebody gets signed up for that, they have access to the videos and they got access to the discord server, exactly, right, right there, and in and of itself is worth the worth, the price of admission, absolutely. I want to thank you and don't want to keep you for too much longer and hopefully we can get you back on again to talk about next level Jedi master, short game stuff with the short game shop.
Speaker 3:Thanks Jesse, Thanks Justin. I appreciate being along with you guys. Thank you, Appreciate it.