Unlock the secrets of the golfing masters with Shawn Clement, the holistic golf coach and Director of Development at Royal Quebec Golf Club, as we traverse the less-trodden path of golf instruction. Sean's treasure trove of insights on Wisdom in Golf unveils the full spectrum of the sport, bridging the gap between the science of swing mechanics and the art of harnessing your body's natural movements. Our candid conversation with Shawn touches on everything from the importance of an intermediate point for accuracy to the unexpected power derived from leg pumping, mirroring the dynamics of skateboarding and BMX biking, a testament to Sean's innovative and comprehensive approach to the game.
Golf aficionados, prepare to challenge your paradigm with discussions that defy conventional golf wisdom. We examine the significance of a dynamic stance, the historical evolution of golf techniques, and the necessity of aligning golf club fitting with a player's true swing. Shawn shares anecdotes of misguided fittings and the pivotal role of clear communication between fitters and instructors, providing invaluable lessons that ensure your next trip to the clubhouse equips you with the perfect arsenal for your golfing journey.
As we close the tee box on this episode, the warmth of gratitude and anticipation of future dialogues with Shawn Clement radiate through. The camaraderie and respect shared between us all underscore the community spirit at the heart of golfing. Join us for this exploration into the deeper aspects of the sport, and walk away with a fresh perspective that could very well reshape your approach to the green.
Be sure to go to www.wisdomingolf.com to see Shawn’s amazing website ! To get a hold of Justin, you can email him at justin@elitegolfswing.com OR on Instagram @elitegolfswing.
Unlock the secrets of the golfing masters with Shawn Clement, the holistic golf coach and Director of Development at Royal Quebec Golf Club, as we traverse the less-trodden path of golf instruction. Sean's treasure trove of insights on Wisdom in Golf unveils the full spectrum of the sport, bridging the gap between the science of swing mechanics and the art of harnessing your body's natural movements. Our candid conversation with Shawn touches on everything from the importance of an intermediate point for accuracy to the unexpected power derived from leg pumping, mirroring the dynamics of skateboarding and BMX biking, a testament to Sean's innovative and comprehensive approach to the game.
Golf aficionados, prepare to challenge your paradigm with discussions that defy conventional golf wisdom. We examine the significance of a dynamic stance, the historical evolution of golf techniques, and the necessity of aligning golf club fitting with a player's true swing. Shawn shares anecdotes of misguided fittings and the pivotal role of clear communication between fitters and instructors, providing invaluable lessons that ensure your next trip to the clubhouse equips you with the perfect arsenal for your golfing journey.
As we close the tee box on this episode, the warmth of gratitude and anticipation of future dialogues with Shawn Clement radiate through. The camaraderie and respect shared between us all underscore the community spirit at the heart of golfing. Join us for this exploration into the deeper aspects of the sport, and walk away with a fresh perspective that could very well reshape your approach to the green.
Be sure to go to www.wisdomingolf.com to see Shawn’s amazing website ! To get a hold of Justin, you can email him at justin@elitegolfswing.com OR on Instagram @elitegolfswing.
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. My name is Jesse Perryman and I am your host, along with my co-host, justin Tang. We're happy to bring you another great episode this week. Our guest this week is none other than Sean Clement Sean, just to give you a list of a few of his accolades, and it's a very long list. He is the Director of Development for the Royal Quebec Golf Club.
Speaker 1:In Academy, he's a regular contributor, an instructional contributor, to golf WRX, golfworks and, if you're unfamiliar with GolfWorks, it's a great forum with a lot of great instructors that chime in and have open forum discussions about whatever the topic is in relation to your golf swing or whatever modality of improvement that you're looking for, and it also has a great classified ad section for tour level equipment. I highly check it out. Golf WRX he actually has his own podcast. It's called Golfs Imperfect. Well, it's called Golfs Perfect and Perfections, and that's also available on Golf WRX as well, and it's their only instructional podcast, I believe, and that, once again, is wwwgolfglfwrxcom. And Sean is what we would call a holistic coach. It's not just X's and O's of the golf swing, it's so much more than that. There's so much depth to this game and when I started this podcast, I really sought out to find instructors that teach the whole game. Justin certainly is one of those guys. That's he may not tell you what you want to hear, but he's going to tell you what you need to hear to help you get, to get you to where you want to go, and Sean is certainly in the same fold of that.
Speaker 1:Sean has a phenomenal website and this bears mentioning. His website is called Wisdom in Golf. It's all one word wwwwisdomincolpcom. He has so much great content on this website I cannot I can't even begin to repeat it here, but I think he's charging 10 bucks a month for his premium content. You're going to have everything that you need in that site, including access to him as well. You've got instruction, you've got everything. On top of that. He's got some delicious recipes, so you're going to get a lot of bang for your buck in this, on this website. I highly recommend checking it out and, without further ado, if you need to get ahold of Sean, he's easiest reach on that website. You can also find him on Instagram Wisdom in Golf.
Speaker 1:At Wisdom in Golf, you can find me and Justin both on Instagram at elite golf swing for Justin at flag hunters golf pod. All one word for Justin, and Justin made a special request. If you also, if you do not have Instagram, you can find him easiest. Justin at elite golf swing All one word at elite golf swingcom. And you can also get ahold of me, jessejesssse at flag hunterscom Flag hunters. Yeah, jesse at flag hunterscom Pretty easy email, remember.
Speaker 1:Enjoy this episode. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. It helps us out. Also, I want to give a special shout out to our sponsors, taylor made and Adidas. Thank you, you all. Keep putting out some great stuff, great equipment and great clothing to wear. We really appreciate the sponsorship and cheers everyone and have a fantastic week and a big shout out and a thanks to Sean for coming on. We know he's a busy guy. So, sean shout out to you. Thank you, pal, and everybody have a great week.
Speaker 1:This is Jesse Perryman with the flag hunters golf podcast. Welcome to you once again to another edition with my cohost brother from another mother all the way in Singapore. His name is Justin Tang it, just in case you're a first time listener. Justin is regarded as one of the bright minds in the game of golf. He is a holistic teacher and most likely, if you go to see him at the Tana Merer golf club, he's going to tell you what you most likely don't want to hear. But you're going to come away thinking that you've gained a lifetime of wisdom. And without further ado, our guest today is Sean Clement from wisdom golf. Sean, thanks for coming on, pal Justin. Thank you as always.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's an honor to be here with you guys today, and anytime we can move the needle forward for this game, it's a good moment.
Speaker 3:Thank you, jesse, and thank you, sean, for gracing us with your presence. I've known you for a long time indirectly, and it's such an honor to be doing this interview with you. Could you give our listeners a brief background of how you got into the game of golf?
Speaker 2:I was actually dragged into the game kicking and screaming. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I was the, the, the, the jock.
Speaker 2:In high school I was quarterback and football I was on the tennis team, I was on the baseball team, I was on the swim team, I played hockey, I played every sport in the book. And then I see these guys in these tight plaid pants. I'm going you got to be joking man, there's no way I'm playing that game. So I'm invited to one of my friends at a summer cottage and after four days there's some golf clubs in the boat and I'm going what are you going to do with that? Are we going to go hammer bullfrogs or something? Are we going to do some hunting?
Speaker 1:And he says no, no, we're going to the golf course, I'm going.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to golf course, you guys can go, I'm going to stay here, it's as well. Unfortunately, my parents are going to back to Montreal for the day and you know the best daycare you can get. This is only second year high school. We were 12, 13 years old. So I said all right, let's go. So I said you got some left handed clubs for me. And he goes no, no, these are right handed clubs. I said well, you know me, I played baseball and hockey left hand. I got to play golf left handed.
Speaker 1:He says no, we got right handed clubs.
Speaker 2:So again, you know, every little step along the way was just a pain in my rear end. So we finally get to the golf course and I take my first swing off the first tee.
Speaker 2:There's no range there, so there's no warm up and the ball falls off the tee as I with it off the toe and it was like a lightning bolt struck me. I'm going wait a second. So I plot along the first hole, shoot a 16 on the first hole and then and then get on the second hole and I nut one in the screws deep left woods. It's an odd. I had never hit an object that far in my life before and I'm I'm the the cleanup. I you know, in baseball I always batted forth because I'm the cleanup guy, you know, I'm the home run hitter and I'd never hit a home run that far before and I was doing it right handed that. From that moment on I'm going. Who in my family plays golf? I need golf clubs. This is it. And I gave up every sport, every sport in the book. I gave up that day and I just became a golfer. That was it.
Speaker 3:So there's story, amazing story and 180,000 subscribers on YouTube. You are one of YouTube's most popular golf instructors. Was that part of the plan or a happy accident, just like you described?
Speaker 2:well, my dream was to play on the PGA tour and on my way to doing that I fell into golf instruction to you know, make money in the meantime. And then I really fell in love with helping people out. And when I went out on tour finally on the Canadian tour and North Florida PGM mini tours I just thought it was the loneliest place on the planet. I mean, I was very unhappy. I was away from my people, I was away from the provision of help. I found a niche where I would help someone feel better about their game and feel better about themselves and leave very high and then feeling very satisfied to. It was all about me and it was all about the support of me, and I'm just not built that way.
Speaker 2:So you have to have a certain selfishness to perform well on tour and you gotta be ultra competitive. So I realized that the competitiveness was, it just wasn't there. When I was in high school playing, you know, I played basketball and one of my buddies were playing so competitively and they had to win at all costs and they were so unhappy if they weren't winning. I let them win because I hated to see people unhappy. So there's my competitive spirit for you right, I'm not the kind of guy that's gonna step on your neck and make you miserable and try to push you down as far as possible out of the spirit of competitiveness. I wanna help people. I want to make people feel better about themselves and bring them to a state where they're gonna maximize their potential, and that's where I really found my niche in the golf instruction side of things.
Speaker 3:So there's a lesson that staying true to yourself, whether it's your golf swing or your personality and it really feels that a lot of golfers that I teach that we know of are not staying true to their own DNA to build like you and Usnam, but they wanna swing it like Davis Love or vice versa, just because that's the flavor of the month. That's what the winningest golfer in the month is doing right now is the popular swing cue swing thought.
Speaker 2:Yep, I always laugh when somebody looks at my swing on my YouTube channel and they go. Man, that's an ugly swing I love what you teach, but I can't watch you swing.
Speaker 2:I'm going well that's too bad because I wouldn't change a damn thing in my swing. My swing feels incredible. I mean I had another benchmark golf shot yesterday with my seven iron, where I was demonstrating to a student how to deliver, collect the ball from where it lies and release it into the direction that I want to start the ball. And with my blade seven iron, like last year, I was hitting my beefed up 31 degrees, seven iron, about 185, and now I'm hitting my 34 degrees, seven iron, 190. So I'm getting better every year and every month and every week and I mean I just wouldn't have it any of the way. I just my swing feels incredible.
Speaker 2:It's efficient, it's easy to produce. I'm never in a slump, I always know where I am and I can always predict that I'm going to nut the ball in the direction that I want it to go. It's going to curve the way I want it to. How close is it going to be? That I couldn't tell you, but I can tell you it's going to be pretty good. How good is it going to be? Well, let's find out. And that's where you let it release.
Speaker 3:It's a lot to unpack in the last two minutes. So you spoke about ugly. Ugly is a subjective term. We've heard of the same beauties in the eye of the deodorant and a lot of golfers get caught up into my swing. It's too upright, it's not flat like Ben Hogan's or it's too flat, it's not upright like Scotty Shuffler's ugly. But what we cannot agree on is the magnitude of so-called ugliness. We can agree that the cat is black, the cat is white. Whether it's cute or ugly, it's up for discussion, up for debate. That's kind of the debate, the discussion, the narrative surrounding golf swing methodology right now. It's always ugly, it's always no good, but people miss the forest or the trees. They don't have an idea of functionality. Jim Furick's swing is certainly not pleasing to the eye when sat next to an Adam Scott. But who has the better career? Who has the better career earnings? That should be the benchmark. We should look at swings and go how much money has that swing made? Not how pretty it is, because that's it.
Speaker 2:And also it will lead to money. You noticed the scoring records too A 59 and a 58 is the only guy that's in.
Speaker 3:That's it. You do separate occasions. No one else has done that, for your symmetrical swing glory.
Speaker 2:So my deal is well, which one is gonna get you to the target in the ball flight that you want? And it's when everybody's thinking about if they miss a shot. Immediately they think they did something wrong. That's the first thing. That is absolute nonsense in golf instruction is the idea that you're defective and you need a fix, and you'll go to 100 different golf instructors and they're gonna give you 100 different things to work on and you're just chasing your tail in a galaxy far, far away, whereas I bring it simply to a task. How long would it take you to learn how to chop trees down with an axe? How long would it take you to cut grass with a grass whip? And the answer is the day of. And once you understand how that works, you can pass it on to your kids and your grandkids and it'll never get lost. So what is? You know? Where do you feel you need to be in your swing to deliver a shot in the direction that you wanna start the ball?
Speaker 3:And then it becomes very simple because you know and I don't know if you've seen my Goldilocks theory I've seen everything of your stuff, but our listeners probably have not, so let's expand on Goldilocks, the best teacher in golf. That's right, golf digest, top one golf teacher.
Speaker 2:Goldilocks is the best teacher out there, absolutely. So if I was going to just initiate, let's say there's a kid on a swing and in front of this kid there's a beach ball, and you say, okay, kid hold your legs out and you pull the kid back and you let him fall and the, the move, you know, just the motion of the swing moves the beach ball forward.
Speaker 2:So it's just the weight of the kid, the momentum of the kid, that moved the beach ball forward. So you're not going to pull the kid to one side or the other and cause the kid to miss the beach ball. Once the momentum is in action, it's it's virtually impossible to change. It's like a train on a rail and it's very difficult to derail a train. So you need to. You know you need for your backswing to match the direction that you want to start the ball. So the, the one of the most important aspects this is the North Star of your golf swing is an intermediate point in front of your ball. Jack Nicklaus, if you watch him in this in his prime, you would see him look at the target. Then his eyes would fall to the intermediate point, about a foot in front of the ball, and then the ball and then back out to the intermediate point and the target and then back down to intermediate point and ball and then he would deliver his shot through the intermediate point. And that is one of the things that has never been emphasized enough. If you want something to really help your game, this is it. Right here, this is the best nugget that I can give you, and this, this is what keeps us in full time employment, right, justin?
Speaker 2:So my side vision you know our eyes as human beings, our binocular vision. They're at the front of our face. We are the ultimate predators of the planet. If our side vision were to be good, the eyes would be on the sides of our heads so that we can avoid. You know our predators, but we're not birds and fish.
Speaker 2:We got our buddy to watch our six and we know, you know how to keep everything forward. So if you talk to a pilot, he'll say well, the critical instruments are 30 degrees below my nose. So I have immediate reference, instinctively, to the information I need to fly my plane, and that's that. You know. The less critical instruments are going to be on the periphery. So when I'm walking towards the valley, well, my eyes are looking in the distance and then they're going to come down 30 degrees to make sure I don't trip over something and hurt myself on the way to where I want to go. So we're constantly panning up and down. However, if I'm turning to the side, I'm not going to go down and turn my eyes like if I was going to look at a golf shot. I'm going to do an about face I'm going to turn you know vertically, you know horizontally straight towards where I want to go next.
Speaker 2:So if I'm facing you face to face and I do a golf swing, my golf swing is essentially going 90 degrees to you, right Then I turn in your direction as a golfer and I try to swing in your direction.
Speaker 2:My eyes are trying to see you with binocular vision. So I start facing you and that's one of the things that I didn't like about Fred Shoemaker's book is that he is he would be facing the target as he was throwing the club. He was not using an intermediate point to throw the club, which would cause you to throw it dead left. So when you start, you know, when you throw clubs for the first time, when you throw overhead, it goes straight because you're facing your target. But then when you go from the side, you immediately start to throw to the left, but as you're trying to face the target and in so doing, if you face the target, you're going to pull it across your chest and it's going to go left. So then you put a club on the ground in front of you and you say, ok, I'm going to throw to the right edge of that club and immediately you start throwing straight, which is out of my YouTube video called Throw the Club Straight Sean Clement Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love doing that drill.
Speaker 2:It is a phenomenal drill if you've got an intermediate point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you talked about the right edge, left edge, to kind of work the ball, and that's how complicated working the ball should be Right, you mean how easy.
Speaker 2:So now that we have an intermediate point in front of the ball, most people don't even know where the club is passing when they swing the club. So the first thing I introduced my student to is well, can you see the blur of the club as you make your practice swing? So you see your ball and intermediate points. You pick your intermediate point from down the line. You don't want to be more than a foot in front of the ball. So when you get beside the ball, your ball and intermediate point are in your immediate vision and the intermediate point is in your peripheral vision. Then you make a practice swing above the ball and just observe the blur of the club, just to see where, what direction, you're swinging on. And most people look at that for the first time.
Speaker 1:They go. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize. The club was passing at that distance from me and is going to the left. Well, that explains me pulling my shots. So I said all right here's how we're going to allow that club to move through the ball and to the right edge of the intermediate point, so we can start at a little right of the target and draw it back to the target. So then all of a sudden they start seeing that in front of them and the first thing they say is oh my gosh, it feels like I'm going 30 yards to the right and then they go.
Speaker 2:well, I don't want to go to the right. Then they pull across the ball and they go 30 yards left.
Speaker 2:I said well did you see the blur? And they go no, I was just too scared to go to the right. So then I say pay attention to the blur again. And they see the blur. And they say, ok, just follow the blur. And the ball starts about three degrees right and hugs the right edge of the flag all the way to the flag and their mouth drops to the ground. They go oh my gosh, I can't believe I was that far off all this time.
Speaker 2:So once we got the path straight, then we organized the grip club relationship so that when you deliver in the direction that you want to start the ball, you want the ball to curve in the air the way you want it to. And then we organized ball position, because ball position will immediately affect the direction that you're going to start the ball on. So if you play the ball too far forward a center you're going to pull it all day and you're going to have the lunge to prevent it from pulling. Well, that's an interference. You can't swing freely from there. And if you play the ball too far back, in your stance you'll feel the need to reach back and then you'll have to. You'll have the tendency to flip the wrist and have a chicken wing and lose your leg only because your ball position is too far back in your stance. So if the ball position is in the right place, you can freely let momentum go through the arc blur into the direction that you want to start the ball. So if you can do that and not interfere, then you can free swing all day long, not worry about direction or contact, because you've made the prediction at address that everything is in order. So that's where we use goalie locks. Play it too far forward, you feel the need to go get it. Play it too far back you feel the need to reach back. Play it in the right place and you go wow, this feels really good. Stand too far from the ball. Try to swing to the right of the intermediate point without losing your balance. You go I can't do it, I have to reach for the ball just to hit the ball. Well, that's an interference, you can't swing freely from there. Then you get way too close and you go wow, I'm going to have to do a Scotty Scheffler and jump away from the ball just to allow my arms the freedom to do that.
Speaker 2:If you watch Scotty Scheffler, that's the perfect example of someone who's too close to the ball but has done that since the age of six or seven. And what are you going to do? You know he's the best ball striker on the planet, but he's all over the place. I mean, he's falling all over himself. But there's the athlete. And what keeps him on the straight and narrow quote, unquote is his target. He's always firing at the targets. He's not trying to hit the golf ball. If he tried to hit the golf ball, he'd shank it all day. So you look at Mark Calcovaccia did the same thing and watch Greg Norman in his prime. Greg Norman's move in his prime was exactly the same as Scotty Scheffler's.
Speaker 3:I was going to leave this for later, but since we're on the topic, let's talk about what people confuse about ground reaction forces, and I emphasize that our reaction forces yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly. So one of the one of the things that you know because I've been around the block for a while I fought the establishment of resist with the lower body coil upper body against the lower body. You want the lower body still. You want to keep your knees at the same level all the time. That was butch harman's thing, don't let the legs go up and down Right.
Speaker 2:And at one point I put out a YouTube video and like I was smoking I've always been a long hitter, so I'm smoking my seven iron 210 to a flag stick. The flag was at 207 at the Richmond Hill golf club. It's the last flag stick for irons before you start hitting the back net. And so I'm peppering that flag and during the video and feeling like there's no way I could hit the ball any better than I'm hitting there. And then somebody comments in the video saying Sean, your head is bobbing up and down.
Speaker 2:What is up with that? If you kept your head still, you would hit the ball further and I'm going. Well, that's interesting and obviously that's really against the grain. So the question I asked myself was well, what is it about that up and down that creates such beautiful rhythm and such incredible power. And then I watched my son on a skateboard and he's pumping down the backside of a hump and gaining speed as he's pushing down on his skateboard. And then I watch him in the park on a swing standing up on the swing and pumping the swing to go higher and higher and I thought wait a second, I did that as a kid.
Speaker 2:Now I know what that is. If you look in Norway there's this sport called. It's spelled K-I-I-K-I-N-G, key-e-king right, and it's a swing with rigid chains that you can go loop-de-loop on where you're going at. You're doing a full 360 around the support post of the chains of the swing and you watch them pump that swing and it's unbelievable. It's like a major cardio workout and strength training workout for the legs. So then you look at on a bicycle you know BMX bicycling and you watch them how they pump on the backside of the jump to get more speed and I'm going. Well, if I was tossing a horseshoe or I took a three pound hammer and tossed it underhand, I would never use arm force. I would let my arm swing freely from my shoulder socket and pump the legs. So now take a sledgehammer, a six pound sledgehammer, with both hands, let it hang in front of you and feel like you're going to heave the sledgehammer out there about 20 yards.
Speaker 3:You're going to do it with your legs.
Speaker 2:You would never do that. Pushing with the arms, you would absolutely hurt yourself. So now let's look at what happens in the golf swing. Well, at a dress, most people are way too tall, way too close to the ball. They need to be much more loaded in the legs, where the glutes and quads are active, and applying some nice pressure to the arches of the feet. And then you would bring your hands together and pre-deploy the arms from there and then bring that into the ball and you'll notice you're sitting lower and you're further away from the ball than what you normally would be. And then you would think that your butt is on the ground and you'd say to yourself there is no way I could ever hit a ball from here.
Speaker 2:And then I put that on video and I show it to you. And then I show you the before and after. I show you the picture afterwards and I say is this your first or your second posture? Everybody says it's the first posture. And then they look at the first posture and their mouth drops. They go. I can't believe it. That was actually the one where I was really bent in my legs. So perception versus reality in this game is off the charts. Bad right. And it's very difficult for someone with all these preconceived notions about what's going on in instruction, because we've been brainwashed with these positions and these be careful and these watch outs and these must. Do's that anything remotely different than that and you're going to have a boatload of friction and resistance. But then when you actually execute and see the results, you go where has this been all my life, Right? So this is what I know you and I are dealing with.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of our listeners at this point are just listening with their jaws dropped. You mentioned balancing on the arches of your feet, so that's a foot aversion and that engages the back chain muscle. Now, here's the thing, right, many coaches and players seem to be deficient in anatomy and how the body moves, so they would have no idea. Oh, I could do this and elicit a particular response in the glutes, in the quads, from the body. And a lot of coaches, in the form of saying this, are proficient at golf talk, but in the last 30 minutes you've not engaged in any golf talk, which is get your violin grip, neutral grip. Let's get your planes steeper or shallower, like how many planes do you have in your hangar? 10. Long, I've got 100. So then yeah, and you also mentioned this Many coaches and players seem to miss the point about the relative difference between what you feel and what you think you're doing. Yes, and this goes back to what you said about Goldilocks again, yes, so getting to swing plane?
Speaker 2:here's something very simple. Your golf club is first and foremost a grass cutting tool. Literally, bill Melhorn right.
Speaker 3:Well, you've never seen it. Bill Melhorn used to have a grass cutting tool.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right, bill Melhorn, and so he started with the grass whip, passed it on to Harvey Penick, and Harvey Penick passed it on to Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite, so, and then Bobby Shave took the torch from Bill Melhorn, and so, and then we are now, you know, very firmly in the saddle of the grass whip.
Speaker 2:Now the golf club is a grass whip in itself. One point Steve Stricker was playing with a set of Titleist 773s, I believe, and he had had the same set of clubs for over 10 years. And Titleist was, you know well, into their third or fourth generation model since then, because they switch every two years. And then, steve, steve, you know we really appreciate you trying these new clubs that we have, and it was a second generation. What was the name? It was a cabinet, the AP twos. The AP twos, that's right.
Speaker 2:So he tries the AP twos, hits a few shots and said, yep, I'm good. He says, wow, that was fast. Why was it that these clubs were so easy to change to? He says they feel great through the turf, great turf interaction. I can play with this. So if the golf club has terrible turf interaction, you won't feel that you'll be able to deliver golf shots with it. And on a fitting standpoint, here's something that really is going to resonate with a lot of the listeners. You know I'm the one who started TXG in Toronto with their first club champion.
Speaker 2:So they're now club champion. And so Ian I introduced Ian to YouTube and got them firmly into proper marketing. Those were the days where Matt used to work for me, and so we do the video. And at one point he says you know, we're fitting my clubs and he thought that my toe was a little too high in the air. And I've done that my whole career. And so he flattens my lies and I couldn't play golf anymore.
Speaker 2:And then I come to Royal Quebec. So I had my lies brought back to you know, I'm half-inch long and one degree up and he had me one degree flat to flatten that out. Because we looked at the lie angle that was coming off the GC Quad and we were reacting to that. So I had a student out here who was six degrees down, toe down, and so he went for a fitting from Quebec City and went to see Ian over there at TXG and Ian tried to fix that and he sent them his clubs. He received his clubs and he couldn't hit the ball anymore. I can't play with these. So now we learn that the lie angle if the sole of the club is completely flat on the ground, that's when it has the most friction. So I think in the future you're going to see golf clubs where if your toe down, it's less friction with the ground, if your toe up, it's less friction with the ground and you can find your way through the turf with a lot more ease. And if you're moving through the ball and into the direction of your target, you're always going to hit the ball very straight.
Speaker 2:The proof of that one of the things that I dispelled the myths of is ball above feet, ball below feet. I take dead aim with the ball below my feet or the ball above my feet. I take the same ball position as usual, except that I'm going to position myself, distance the ball and balance point on my arches of my feet, because the arches of your feet are like a buffer zone. So when the ball is below your feet, you're going to have the weight more toward the heels and you're going to deliver your arc blur through the ball and intermediate point.
Speaker 2:You can draw or fade on that lie at will and the ball will start in the direction that you want the ball to start if you're in balance and if you deliver in that direction. Well, when people fall off balance because of those situations, that's when the ball goes crooked because you'll see people pull the ball with the ball below their feet. This thing about the ball is going to start to the right you have to aim. Left is the biggest load of mule muffins out there, and so if that's the case with hilly lies, it is definitely the case with lie angle. So lie angle is really not the most important part of the fitting the most important part of the fitting is you trying the different clubheads?
Speaker 2:I'm completely agnostic. I play for Cobra and the reason being is that I tried their product and I love their product and that's why I was able to move seamlessly into that company, from Callaway, which I love the product, and Ping, which I love the product, so and I was a titleist and Nike before that. So you look at the different clubheads that suit you and you try the different clubs because they're all going to tell you they're the best in the industry and you'll gravitate towards one that's got a better sound, a better feel and a better look to your eye, and then you'll fit a shaft to that and then you'll go to hey, maybe a little longer on the shaft. You know, because I'm six foot one, I got short arms, or you're five foot seven and you got long arms, so we may have to make a small adjustment there but it's not going to be major.
Speaker 2:And then the grip size and the grip material. That's even more important. And so you'll have shaft flex, shaft length, shaft weight that really suits your needs, and then the proper grip, and we're good to go. Then you make best friends with your set of clubs and you're good for a decade, like Steve Stricker, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you mentioned this thing about getting the toe up in the air and I think a lot of golfers and a lot of coaches don't really understand why you do that. That's because of shaft droop through impact and if you use a softer, lighter shaft you're going to get more shaft droop. So your toe better be high up in the air to accommodate that. Yeah, and it's not just golf, it's just fitting. It's like, oh, let's have it black and white when we're fitting someone. Well, I've got news Fitting and coaching the golf swing. It's not black and white, it's 50 shades of gray and extremely messy. And the faster you get out of that black and white thinking, I think the more effective you will be as a fitter and as a golf instructor.
Speaker 2:The biggest mistake people do fitters do is they try to fit the club to the errors of the golfer. A perfect example I had one of my students who sees, I see, every Saturday and he goes to the Ping Fitting Center in Toronto. He's all excited, he gets there because he loves ping, he loves the product, he loves the feel. And so this is when I was a little more naive as to what was going on around me. I thought everybody would fit that way. So they don't have any targets in their net over there. So he didn't have a target and he forgot about his intermediate point.
Speaker 2:So he starts hitting shots and he starts pulling shots left immediately and because he's not there for a lesson, he keeps pulling the shots. And the fitter says well, since you pull a lot, we're gonna flatten your lie to make sure that we don't pull it too far left and we can offset that a little bit to keep you straighter. And when you're pulling left you're coming over the top your seat and your ball doesn't have enough spin and it's going a little low. So we're gonna weaken your lofts by two degrees. So we're gonna go two degrees flat, two degrees weak. And so he comes back and he says I had my fitting, but I don't know if it was right. It was so weird. And he explains it to me. I said well, what was your target?
Speaker 2:And he says oh, shit, I didn't have one. I said what about your intermediate?
Speaker 2:point oh shit, I didn't have that either. I said, okay. So now you started pulling the shots because you did have a target. You were focused on the ball and you were being distracted by all the bells and whistles around you. And now that you have your weak flat lies, you're gonna start swinging to the target and releasing to the target and everything's gonna be short and right.
Speaker 2:I said why don't you just cancel that fitting and cancel the order and let me do my fitting with you? And he came in standard standard black dot, standard length. The ping fitting chart for a shaft length and lie is actually very good. I mean, you've got decades of experience there and they've really ironed that out to a science. So you can very much rely on that chart for 90% of your fittings. And so I fit him properly and he's nutting it straight. It's doing exactly what it needs to do and he's a happy client. So that's what I. You know, if you get a fitting and somebody's gonna fit you for the mistakes that you have at that time and they don't allow for any potential improvements in the future, then you're getting the wrong fit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I gotta chime in there on that, boys, because there's such a divide and I absolutely love what you're saying, sean, you too, justin there's such a divide between instruction and fitting, such a divide and I hope, moving forward, you know as these conversations progress that the divide can be completely eradicated because you know the fitter doesn't know what the students' intentions are, the fitter doesn't know what the instructors' instructions are for said student and if there isn't a clear line of communication between the two, you know oftentimes that person is gonna be misfit for their stuff and they're gonna go back to the instructor. I mean, it's just a vicious cycle. So you know, that was a big help for me when my instructor told me what to do with my clubs according to my intentions. That was such a massive revelation. It's streamlined the process to help me clean up my pattern and my ball turf interaction improved 10X, just fantastic. But just with having a conversation and being clear with the intention with that conversation, yeah, easy easy really.
Speaker 2:You just reminded me. So turf interaction. Let me close the loop on the previous conversation because I mean, in this game there's so much to it it's easy to go off on a tangent, the golf club being a grass cutting tool. So if you're cutting grass in both directions, you're gonna cut grass toward the target, then you're gonna cut grass away from the target. If you're able to cut grass in both directions and the club is passing in the same place, on the same line and through the same arc, you're on plane period, you're on plane for you and that's your swing plane with that particular club. So if you've got the ball above your feet and you swing back and through without stopping we call it perpetual motion in how we teach and you're able to have beautiful turf interaction while staying in balance, then you've got the recipe for success on that particular lie. So when you perform that with a driver, you'll notice that your hands are further away from the body, and when you perform that with a wedge, you'll feel like your hands are much closer to the body and that's gonna show you how to adjust your setup to the dynamic motion of your swing while it's going. And that's one of the things. That really is poorly translated is well, your hands have to be a certain distance from your body and your body, your ball position's gotta be here, inside your left breast pocket, and then your grip's gotta be neutral, with a square face. And now we're ready to hit the ball. Wait a second, where do you want that ball to go? Oh no, it doesn't matter, I wanna hit the sofa. All my positions are good. I'm gonna hit a really good golf shot, really good golf shot, right. So that's why the industry is chasing its tail, because 99% of the instruction out there is designed with hitting the ball in mind instead of taking the ball from where it lies and delivering it into the direction that you wanna start the ball into that flight plan dynamically. And the analogies are very simple.
Speaker 2:If you were playing tennis and you're getting ready for second serve left side of the service box with a lot of side spin you just toss the ball up. Well, your toss is reacting to that. Your eyes are on the tennis ball. What do you see? The other side of the net, into the part of the court that you wanna send that tennis ball, and you're doing that with the feel of that second serve, which is a brushing release. So you've got a very specific feel to a very specific direction and everything you're doing with that toss is in reaction to that.
Speaker 2:You're not gonna toss the ball up and just swipe at it like you're trying to hit a fly. And you can even do this on with a fly. You bring both hands to each side of the fly and you're gonna sweep the fly into the other hand. You have a direction to send the fly into and it's amazing, you just one after the other, you're just gonna nail it. But if you're just swatting that the fly with no direction, you'll never hit it. So target is everything. It's the glue that holds the whole swing together and it's through the intermediate point and the arc blur into that target. That's the stepping stone to do it in for the ultimate inaccuracy.
Speaker 3:So you mentioned earlier that you hit your blade seven iron, 190 yards through the air. I'm sure a lot of our listeners have heard that and go hang on. How do I use the principles and wisdom of golf to help me hit it further?
Speaker 2:Okay, back to the ground forces we were talking about, right.
Speaker 2:So in 2020, mark Blackburn, pga teacher of the year, came out with a video that said hey, if you wanna use the ground and the downswing properly, you gotta come up in the backswing.
Speaker 2:So if you look at, imagine Bruce Lee finishing off his opponent and not jumping up before he crushes the neck down, right. So there's this beautiful ebb and flow of up and down, and if all you have to do is study a human walk, so to walk forward, my center of gravity has to fall forward and down, and then I catch myself and the swing of my arms helps bring me back up for my next step. So when you're flowing up and down, let's say you step out of a concert hall or a movie theater and you're walking down the street and it's slightly downhill and you see everybody walking in front of you. All you're gonna see is a sea of bobbing heads, the heads going up and down. But then if you try to walk without that, within two minutes your legs would be burning because you're trying to keep the same level in your walk and that would be the most inefficient way to walk on the planet.
Speaker 3:I wanna add to the bobbing head observation you mentioned earlier. So when you walk down the street you see ladies or men with long ponytails. You will see the head bobbing up and down, but the ponytail goes left and right.
Speaker 2:That's your goal, that's right. There's your golf, that's your arm, that's it. So your arm club unit, hanging from the shoulder sockets down the club head, would be your swing. The seat of the swing and imagine, the legs supporting the swing sets have springs in them so you can raise the swing, set up and down and you'll have an amazing way to turbo charge that kid on a swing. Or you can have the kid pump his legs up and down and do it himself. If you watch skating and hockey, same. If you watch skateboarding, same, it's all the same. So you have an arm club unit hanging from your shoulders.
Speaker 2:Imagine you cannot use the arms. They're just hanging there and the upper arms are resting up against the rib cage. How do you get the arms to start moving without using them? This is where everybody gets stuck and it's a very simple solution the let's say, you have the feet together drill. You remember that? Yes, so in order for my, if I put both feet together and both knees together and I swing my arms into the back swing, my butt is gonna have to turn towards the target. To counterbalance this, in order for my butt to turn toward the target, well, the butt is basically my pelvis. My pelvis sits on top of the hips. The hips are the femur and the femur is half your knee. So the knees have to give for the butt to swing toward the target. That raises the body and it raises your head indirectly. So you have this beautiful counterbalancing move and the head goes up. Now the arms fall and the butt starts to return and reloads the legs, and then the legs squat and load the ground, allows the club to collect the ball along the grass and then, as it goes out, the legs extend and the trail arm extends and releases towards the target.
Speaker 2:A beautiful golfer to watch is Cameron Young. You watch he's got a decent posture, a little bit of knee flex it could be more and then he takes it into the backswing beautiful pause, nice width, and then watch his squat in the downswing it is deep, it's Tiger Woods deep and then watch through impact how his legs are very flexed and his trail arm is very flexed, like Joaquin Neiman, and he's collecting the ball from where it lies. And then you see the explosion up and out towards the target. That's where he gets all of his power and it's not something you need to think about. You just want to use the weight of your arm club unit to deliver grass clippings or a dandelion stem or throw the club in the direction that you want to start the ball. And a really cool thing happens when the brain is throwing objects, it's always testing the weight.
Speaker 2:So if I put a baseball in your hands and I say, okay, throw a baseball style to first base, and you go, no problem, sean, here we go Then I put a 10 pound shot, put in your hands a big ball of steel, 10 pounds, and I say throw that baseball style to first base. And the first thing you're going to say is are you nuts? I'm not going to rip my arms to shreds just for you. That's going to hurt and I'm going to disable myself for life if I did that. So then you've got to reposition the weight up against your chest and you're going to heave it and push it that way. And if you want more momentum, you're going to spin and give yourself rotational momentum to give it even more delivery power. Or you're going to do it underhand and toss it that way and use your legs to toss it, but if you don't have enough grip, you're going to have to do it shot put style.
Speaker 2:So immediately the brain protects the body. It's a self-preserving unit. It is Pinocchio without the strings. It's unbelievably accurate and powerful and wise. Already it's there to keep you on the planet as long as possible. Right, the ultimate adaptation machine.
Speaker 2:So you put a golf club in your hands and you can throw it baseball style. It's light enough. And then you put it in your hands and you go wow, this is light enough for me to manipulate. And this is one of the things that I like to describe to my students Is, if you try to manipulate the club to meet the ball or find a position, you're asking your brain to immobilize the body Right. So if you take the phone out of your pocket and you're going to start texting while standing up, you become a statue. If you're a surgeon, you have your operating table with special arm rests and you're going to be a statue very quiet, very calm, while you perform your surgery. But if you're a lumberjack, swinging at very sharp and heavy acts, you got to get out of the way. So then you start to react to the weight of the instrument.
Speaker 2:The instrument's weight in golf is your arms and club as a unit from the shoulder sockets down. One arm essentially is about 9% of your body weight. Times two plus a club, for a 200 pound person like me, that's 40 pounds. So I got this big 40 pound weight hanging from my shoulders. I'm going to take that and swing it in this beautiful arc and allow it to track through the arc blur into the direction that I want to start the ball with momentum and I'm going to enjoy the ride as I go.
Speaker 2:And what's really cool about that is that the club is attached to the shaft. The shaft is attached to your grip and if your grip is sound, that's attached to your shoulder sockets and it doesn't go anywhere. It makes beautiful circles. So the more free you are, the better your circle, the tidier your circle and the more accurate and the more powerful your swing is going to become. And the turbo charging action to that are the legs. So it's like a lasso for a cowboy. What turbo charges the lasso? It's the rotation of the humerus of the arm. As the elbow leads, the lasso follows and then the lasso releases past the elbow. Now the elbow is pulling away and pulling the lasso back and it's making beautiful circles.
Speaker 2:Now that the lasso has shaped, you can throw it accurately. But if you immobilize the, you know, if you don't move it in a circle that way, it just lies like a pile on the ground and you can't throw it anywhere. It's just, it's impossible to direct accurately. So you always have a target, you always have an intermediate point which is non-negotiable and you're always delivering.
Speaker 2:The arc blur through and out into that direction with momentum and then you use Goldilocks to predict hey, am I too far, too close to the ball? No, it feels just right. Am I my ball position too far forward or too far back? No, it feels just right. Am I? Is my grip too strong or too weak? No, it feels pretty good If I let momentum go that way. It feels like the ball is going to curve the way I want it to in the air. And are you low enough in your squat that you're going to cut grass when you let your arc go in that direction? Therefore, you'll meet the center of the face, the ball will leap into the air in that direction, will curve in the air the way you want it to, and you'll be a really happy golfer.
Speaker 3:And there you have it Wisdom in Golf. Where can our listeners find out more about yourself and the services you provide?
Speaker 2:Well, what's really cool is that I made my first coupon code for my website just for you guys. Awesome, thank you so much. So if they go to wisdomengolfpremiumcom and they in the coupon, the coupon code is flag1, for the flag hunters Is that capitalized.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all caps flag1 and you'll get your first month free. That's awesome, and you know my life's work can be had for $10 a month, right? So for the PAR program, you get your first month free. So that way, you know, we put our money where our mouth is and we were very confident about the information that we provide and I know you'll benefit greatly from that.
Speaker 3:That's flag1, flag. Is that ONE or is it the so flag, flag and the number one? Thank you so much, sean. Thank you enough, and this is obviously the first of many interviews we hope to have with you. I want to talk about things like staff and moos, stuff that you guys are doing Awesome work and yeah looking forward to that day.
Speaker 2:It's pretty cool that when you take a beginner five years ago and now he's 74th on the world stage of Long Drive and essentially as a lefty, he's playing like he had a three-wood where everybody else has a driver. They're playing with 2.5 degree drivers out there and his driver the lowest loft because he's left handed the lowest loft he can find from manufacturers with Cobra is 7.5 degrees and he's only two yards off. He's made a lot of top 30s and he's only been playing for five years. That's how fast you can really achieve greatness in this game and what we have is number nine in the world of Long Drive after five serious years of golf Pretty cool huh, very cool, and you can find out all about that on Wisdom in Golf WisdominGolfPremiumcom or.
Speaker 2:WisdominGolfcom. Those are our two websites. Awesome, Amazing.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Sean Pleasure guys, thanks for having me on. Thank you, sean.
Speaker 2:Look forward to our next opportunity. Indeed Thanks, justin. Thank you All the best. Thanks, sean. Great Apply soon. Thank you, bon appétit. I love you, arist, thanks for your time today so long. Have a great day. What are you doing with us now, aris? Prayers you.