Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Hello and welcome to Flaghunters ! It is a privilege to bring to you this powerful insight into playing better Golf. In all my years of being in the game of Golf from competing at a high amateur level, to caddying, teaching, and being a overall Golf geek, I have an insatiable, curiosity driven desire to get down to the bottom of what it takes to truly get better playing the game of Golf that we all unconditionally love. This has been one of the greatest journeys of my life and I am deeply grateful for all that Golf has given me. Thank you for joining me in this incredible journey. This is my ever evolving love letter to Golf. Jesse Perryman P.S. Please Rate, Review and Subscribe !
Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Crafting Champions on the Course with Graham Walker's Instructional Genius
Feel free to text me at (831)275-8804
Ever wondered how the mind of a top golf coach operates? Swing into the insights of Graham Walker, the maestro behind the golfing prowess of players like Tommy Fleetwood. In our latest podcast episode, we traverse the undulating terrain of golf, from the rigorous discipline of practice to the freewheeling artistry of play. Under Graham's guidance, we uncover strategies that fortify confidence and refine technique, providing a masterclass in every aspect of the game, whether you're a weekend warrior or dreaming of the tour.
Grip your clubs tighter as we move from the tee box to the green, dissecting every facet of the game with Graham's teaching philosophy as our caddie. Through candid conversations, we share the evolution of champion players and decode their journey to the pinnacle of golfing success. We tackle the psychological elements that go into those nerve-racking moments, transforming potential into performance. Furthermore, we delve into the five colors of performance—a palette every young golfer must master to paint their path in the golfing cosmos.
Finally, we tee off into the realm of coaching with stories of mentorship and the indelible impact of a wise guide on a golfer's career. Not only does Graham enlighten us with technical nuances like the 'put with loft, hinge and hold' shot, but he also imparts the soulful side of coaching, where the joy of seeing a student thrive is the true trophy. Our narrative rounds off with a salute to the dedication of golfers who constantly sharpen their short game, and the contemplative reflections of a coach pondering the legacy of his teachings through the written word. Join us for this swing session, where every anecdote carries the potential to change your game forever.
We thank TaylorMade and Adidas for their support.
To get Graham Walker’s incredible app, go to https://golfscoringskills.com
To reach Justin, his email is justin@elitegolfswing.com
For Jesse, jesse@flaghuntersgolf.com
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Flaggers Golf podcast.
Speaker 1:This is Jesse Perryman, your host, along with my co-host, justin Tang. We welcome Mr Graham Walker on to this week's pod. Graham notably works with several high level players, including some tour players, notably works on Tommy Fleetwood's short game and scoring areas along with Tommy. And this week we talk about all things just getting better and how to get better, how to solidify your wedge play, how to think your way around the golf course and I'm going to keep this short because it's a fantastic episode. I don't say much. Justin and Graham really go into the depths of it, but Graham notably is a head professional at the Oaks Golf Club in England. He is the lead golf coach there and he is a master pro PGA master pro and he has so many great things to say in this episode. It's just hard to wrap my head around too much for me to even try to summarize here. You just have to listen to it and enjoy it and take this wisdom with you to help you further improve your game as well, as I will, and Justin will as well. And also Graham and Tommy Fleetwood are coming out with a scoring app and I'm going to make that relevant in the show notes and in the upcoming promotion stuff that I will do for Mr Walker and Tommy Fleetwood. It looks amazing. I'm going to highly recommend it because I've seen the beginning parts of it and it's going to really teach you how to gamify practice and that's really sort of the missing link here is gamifying practice taking the skills that you are acquiring in the practice area under the golf course.
Speaker 1:But without further ado, cheers everyone and a big special shout out to TaylorMade and Adidas for their incredible supports. Cheers everyone. Hope everyone has had it. It is having a great week and enjoy this episode. 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, mr Justin Tang, one of the lead instructors from the Tanamera Golf Club in Singapore and one of the bright minds in the game of golf and in the game of golf improvement. Our guest today is a man by the name of Graham Walker. Those who are in depth with the game and in the world of instruction know who this man is. He is coming to us from the UK, graham. Thank you for coming on, justin. Thanks, pal, thanks.
Speaker 2:Coach.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Coach for gracing us with your presence.
Speaker 3:Thank you for gracing us with your presence. We finally made it happen. So Coach Graham Walker was the lead coach of the England squad for 11 years, up till 2022. It was a multi-toll England coach of the year. He is a short game specialist and the short game coach to Tommy Fleetwood, the 2024 Dubai Invitational winner. So you were good enough to play in the British Open in Royal Trune 1982, where Tom Watson won. How did you get there?
Speaker 2:I might say fortunate enough to play in the British Open then, but when I played in that you learn so many things trying to play the game of golf, don't you?
Speaker 2:And I realised one of the things that I needed to do was to practice in order to perform. I think that was one of the big things that came out of that. So it did shape some of my practice habits and my beliefs until now, I suppose. Really, I realised that you had to try and challenge yourself in practice rather than just do pure technical practice. You had to challenge yourself, you had to have a number of challenges in every department to the game in order to help you perform. So that was one of the things that came out of that. And I think always when you play in such a big tournament, everyone seems to be bigger and better and healthier and fitter and everything. And when you've played it you play a few times you start to realise you get a lot more comfortable in a competitive environment, and I had to work very, very hard to become more comfortable in a competitive environment.
Speaker 3:You mentioned that you were so nervous you had problems teeing the ball up on the first team. When you managed to tee the ball off, they don't know you One could actually perform at high levels even when nervous. So, for the benefit of the competitive golfers that are listening to this, how do you practice performing at high levels while being nervous? Are there any drills that you do with your players?
Speaker 2:Well, I thought you might get to that at the end of the podcast, but we'll start with that one. We've developed we all have these things these days, don't we? And we've developed a thing called golf scoring skills. It's a web app. You can get it and there are over 100 challenges and it goes live. This sounds really strange this one just. But when you see somebody setting the stove for a little TV interview and then they say, about your new book and this sounds like one of those things, well, about my new app, I'll just do this for you because it's an important part. So there you go, if you can see that.
Speaker 3:Yes, so that's the name of the app.
Speaker 2:It will be golf scoring skills. It'll be available to download and to subscribe to and it'll be going live on Monday.
Speaker 2:Oh, monday, yes, yeah, good time. But within that, I believe that players keep pretty good at remembering when they were good at stuff, so for me it would be. I wrote a lot of these challenges over the years and Tommy now he's taken on a number of these. I used to teach Danny a lot of these challenges as well, and Danny used to take on a lot of these challenges as well, and a number of the young players. Now we were getting out on tour again. What they've got very used to doing is taking on these challenges. So there's one here for and I'll just click on it as a short game part of it and we'll have.
Speaker 3:I'll just scroll through there Nice, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 2:So start challenge and then there's for all of these and I should probably be able to, you can have an overall the date. So fairway shot, rough shot, sorry, fairway shot again, and all the time. And I'll just quickly do it, go through this for you and then I'll show you a little thing with it. So three fairway shots, three rough shots, three bunker shots. So I've done this sort of thing many times. I get a lot of players to do it. Tommy did it recently in a practice round what about this? In Hawaii? So when he was practicing in Hawaii took the challenge and he did it. Nine shots on the golf course, three fairway shots, three rough shots, three bunker shots. Before he's done it it, we did it at the the Honda in America, around the bear pit of the Honda. So you can do it on the golf course, you can do it off the golf course, etc. Do a good short game, and what it starts to do when you've done that is it gives you a little.
Speaker 2:You know that the scoring system that they said if I did that footage I would lose 1.25 shots relative to strokes game. So Tommy did it a few weeks ago and he did 22.5 feet. His personal best before that was 27 feet. 22.5 feet gains 5.8 shots, strokes game. And it just comes up like that and then it does strokes game. It plots your progress at the bottom there.
Speaker 2:So it keeps you honest, basically keeps you honest, yeah, and you can do that with every department of the game par 3s, you can do it with driving, you can do it with distance control, you can do it with wedge play, you can do it with putting and it just keeps you on it and it's been great. It's been great to sort of develop it developed with a guy called Graham Leslie, who's just his golf data lab as well, and between us we've spent just an hour upon hour getting it right. But the good thing about it is is that a lot of the time, you know we talk about stats and stats gathering and we talk about it. You know you're not in enough greens, in reg or fairways or whatever it is, but I've been for 30 odd years, whatever it is, developing games and challenges and challenges really, and now we can measure it against Stroke's game or what we call VPAR, and we can measure practice and it keeps people honest in practice.
Speaker 2:And I think one of the hard things to do with players is not get is sorry, not hard. It's difficult not to get them to practice well. So if you can get them to practice really really well, put a variety of things in there in their way that they can practice, then they can carry on and monitor their practice, as well as monitor their play, and that's what's been. A big part of what I've tried to do as a coach is getting people to practice really, really well rather than just talk about play. So that's been one of my.
Speaker 3:Whether it's a quest, I don't know, but mine so, essentially, what you're trying to do with this is gamifying practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I often talk, I have this little when I'm teaching players and I had this, I think, what I call for ages. I used to call it, not used to. I still call it the golf in the Catholic. So, the golf in the Catholic. We were talking years ago, a few of us, about practice and partitioning in the game. So to put to chip, to bunker shots, to lofter shots, to pitch, to iron shots, to hit fairway metals, throw woods, driver nutrition, golf swing fitness and nutrition course management. So if you split it into sort of 10 sections, and what I've tried to do then is then direct a player into whatever section I felt they needed to work at.
Speaker 2:Now, a lot of the time when you're coaching, it's always seen as an inferred criticism. So you look at it, you look at a player, they come along, they want to golf lesson, etc. And but as you give an advice, sometimes it always seems like it used to seem like it was a criticism of the person and what I wanted to do was to get it to be a critique of their golf game. So, right, what sort of? What sort of advice do you need? Okay, I want to work at my chip in my wedge game, my putting, my par 3s, my driving, etc.
Speaker 2:And then I would have a challenge, sometimes even just a three shot challenge you can do using a measuring device, using the quad, using the flight scope, using the track plan, etc. And you can use those. You can use the three shot challenge, the six shot, a nine shot. You can do them all on the golf course, every one of them. You can do them on a, on a putting green, etc. So you can do them all over the place.
Speaker 2:So we'd have a snappy challenge that somebody could do and it would be there right. Well, you could do that better rather than just bluntly saying, oh, you know, that's not good enough, so we're going to work at ABCD. So I really tried to get it that they could see why they would want the need for working as well, the need for practice, the need for some technical advice and, through the golf and the Catholic, through the app, etc. What it is, then, is it's given the person, the player, a clear view of what they need to do in order to improve, and that's been the. That's been something I've tried to follow for years and years and years.
Speaker 3:So this is a departure from the old one size fits all approach. Oh, you know, drive for show, but for do we know that that's not true, based on statistics. Statistics has helped us diagnose a player's game and then prescribe a solution for them to reach the highest potential.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. The beauty about that, justin, is when you're then asking somebody about sorry about their game and you're looking at how they then practice their game. Someone's analysis isn't always a straightforward analysis and people have very good strengths and weaknesses in their game as well, and what you don't want to do is lose a strength. You want to keep practicing a strength, obviously, but what you want to try and do is I don't always like saying you know, practice weaknesses or trying to improve weaknesses, but you know the things that you are not so good at, the things that you need to improve, and you might say, well, they are weaknesses, but the things that you need to improve, so the player can see the things that they need to improve.
Speaker 2:The beauty about it as well, is if you can then get something that you can do well in practice. You can then get the confidence to then take it onto the golf course and then go and use it in play. And I do believe that you've got to be good technically in each of those departments, but sometimes you don't have to be the best in the world at each of those departments, but you do have to be proficient in it. So, but also when you, when you're practicing correctly, you can prove that you're proficient enough during your practice. You can gain confidence during your practice and, as I often say, you know you can't have too much. You can't have too much confidence. You know it's a great thing to have, especially in a young golfer, even if you just do the same three or six shot challenge daily, weekly, monthly. But you get into that habit and you can develop. You can develop practice habits and you can develop confidence. It's a great thing to have?
Speaker 3:You know? You've got this saying train like a scientist, play like an artist. Now, with this app, we can train like a scientist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the idea was I was talking to one of the young players I teach yesterday and recently. I was walking through Manchester airport and I could probably get up on my phone. I took this photograph and he said the best robots make the best artists and I thought, wow, and I took a quick snapshot of it. You know the scientist and the artist.
Speaker 2:But I do believe that, if you can, you're very, very good technically and you're able then to then branch off and become that artist and be able to to then practice your feel and practice your vision and do all of those things. But if you can do all of those things and that's when you are back to the, you know the challenges If that challenge and you just stick to your great routines and the way that you like to do things and you allow the artist to play, you can be quite surprised at how good the artist is. But sometimes, if you're not good enough technically which is, you know, to us as golf coaches, we've got to help people improve their technique as well as their mental side, as well as their you know their artistic side as well, that's supposive.
Speaker 2:One of the sorry, excuse me, one of the other things that we often say and talk to Tommy about it. And we have this, this goal of run and shoot, and I don't know whether I've sort of you've heard me talk about that before, but run and shoot is being able to quickly make up your mind and then be able to walk into a shot and execute the shot very, very quickly, rather than becoming too studious that you can't play the shot. So run and shoot is a, you know, a great way to be able to play.
Speaker 3:Oh, I guess running gigs embodies that right Running with the ball from the left wing, you cut in and you shoot. You don't overthink your options. No, you are very instinctive and I guess what you're trying to do with your practice regime is that you build that instinctive side of the golfer so that you can just execute like an artist, as you say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's the idea is that and I'm quite certain I made a few minutes ago as well learning to build up confidence.
Speaker 2:You know, we get a lot of parents as well as a lot of coaches these days and you know, and I used to say to a lot of the younger coach, you know you're teaching someone as a child, you know they love this child, they want to see them do really, really well and I think sometimes with parents, you can help them in that they can then see and they can then help the child monitor and help them build up confidence in themselves as well.
Speaker 2:And I think that's a in any stage of play you know, younger, old, it's a very, very difficult thing to do is to build up confidence, because as golfers, the only time we ever really seem to be confident is when we we've shot 63 or 64 and we said played well today, played great, but but then if you shoot 63 or 64, you can always shot 61 or 62, couldn't you? You can always see that you could be better, whereas I think that if you can see that you're improving in practice as well, and I think that then that helps you then to then go and play freely on the golf course, rather than becoming too studious on the golf course.
Speaker 3:How do you train a player to have a mentality of going low? Some guys go like oh you know what? I've never shot even par before I'm close to it. And then they basically freeze and make a hash out of things.
Speaker 2:We interesting thing was when and I don't think I was England coach at the time, but you know the young like called Eddie Petrow played on the European side now for a number of years. Eddie and as he came up to see me a few months ago, we did some work at the Oaks and Eddie likes to talk. He's a good thinker as well. Eddie and we, when he was a young lad, we sat there one day and we used to do reviews. You know we'd have a review of the day what do you think to the day? And one player would say I had a lovely day. You know, I really enjoy the practice.
Speaker 2:Another day had another players come up with something else and Eddie sat there once and he was just, he was studious, and you know when you're thinking, oh, what's going to, what's he going to say, you know. And he said you know what we need to do. He said we need to go and play off the front teas this week sometime. Go play off the ladies teas. He said we're all young players and we need to know what it feels like to be lots on the par, because tour players are playing and they're going lots on the par. So we need to know, as players, what it feels like.
Speaker 2:And I thought, cracky, you know what a what a wise thing to say from such a young man. And since then you know we tried to do things sort of where we would go and play off more forward teas on the golf course and have a more of a wedge game, a wedge day, where you play more forward, you play, make sure that you got wedged into most games, that you could get way under par, and that's been a really, really successful thing to do, because players like get that feeling of being or some players like the feeling of being a lot under par. Not everybody likes that being a lot under par and if they don't like that being a lot under par, they're probably not going to be as good a player as what they could be. So I think that was a real eye-opener for me.
Speaker 3:So you work exclusively on what you describe as the short game shots in and around the green up to 50 meters and which play out as far as 130 meters. So for a guy like Tommy Fleetwood, what do you work on with him? He recently won in Dubai and you were there by his side.
Speaker 2:He sent me a message this morning about what we asked him we're meeting on. I'm going over to Dubai on Sunday, we're having two or three days practice next week at his academy and then we're going to meet up again at the end of March and we're going to have another few days coaching and he would be. So he wants to do a little more rough work. He wants to be more confident in cross wins. So, with him as well, I've done performance work as well. So even driver work, learning to hit drivers in play. We've done some distance control work. So it's not just been I don't just work exclusively short game worker, not just within, but a worker at all aspects of the game, but within, especially short game. So if you took him back to 2016, the end of 2016, I think, when we 15, 16, when we started doing some work together, he came along. He came along with his coach at the time, tom O, who you know could follow mine, and we had some bunker shots, we had some fairway shots, we had some rough shots and I started talking to him about being world class with loft. So world class with loft is not necessarily always being able to hit the ball a long way in the air. But world class is loft is being able to control the loft that you hit. So whether you're hitting it within a bunker, off a fairway, out of a roof, out of a semi roof, being able to control the loft. And then, if you cut that down again, I have this saying about the ball when you hit it, the ball goes on a green with three elements goes on with the pace that you hit it, the elevation that you hit it with and then the spin that you hit it with. So then that then feeds into lie work. So if you can understand the lie, that you can, how are the ball will react out the lie and you know what sort of pace and elevation spinner balls going to mount. And we would practice, and we still practice, out of three different lies perfect lies, average lies, below average lies. So someone like Tommy a while ago and back to challenges again. So when we first went we're doing bunker shots he wouldn't necessarily be the player. He you know he's today out of bunkers. But we have a little challenge, a little six shot challenge. Two shots between 10 and 15 shots, sorry. Two shots between 10 and 15 yards. Two shots between 20 and 25 yards, two shots between 30 and 35 yards. So the Oaks Golf Club, where we have the Academy is, we have what I call the Oaks challenge. It's a six ball bunker challenge available. You can do it on the app as well. Still there, and Tommy now can get that in 21 feet is his personal best for six shots. Now another young lad who's done that recently is a lad called Dylan Shaw-Ratford who was a very, very good not was is a very, very good young player, english player as well. So you can sort of you can plot where players are moving forward in different parts of the game as well.
Speaker 2:So if you look back again, take you back into 2005, six, seven, eight, something round about that. And Tommy was in the England squad and a while ago I was looking through my a lot, of, the lot of you know me well, notice that I have a lot of these notebooks around Right and I was looking back through one of the old notebooks and I said I found some notes and I said there's a video as well of in it and I said it's Tommy's 20. And I said you got these 20 shots that you learned in that little era. He said yeah, he said, and you know what he said and I've still got the notes for those 20 shots. So 14, 15, 16, 17 years later, he's still able to get the notes that, so there's a lot of. I think there's a lot of value in being able to write things down and be able to save things as well, because I think that then there's a lot of memory attached to that. That was a long-winded explanation, wasn't it?
Speaker 3:No, it was good. So I recall you saying when Tommy first started working with you he only had about seven, eight shots around the greens and then he expanded that 13 to maybe 15 shots and he was very diligent about it and Tommy was a guy that would stay on the practice screen just so that he could get that one shot to be a straightforward chip shot.
Speaker 2:Well, what he does which is unusual in professional golf at times is he will give you time to watch him execute shots, hit shots. So I've watched him play a lot of golf around the world over the last few years and what it does as a coach it enables you to make notes, look at the things that they need to improve. So after he'd won in Dubai earlier this year and then played the Emirates, I'd watched him for two weeks, watched every shot he hit under pressure for two weeks and I was able then to give him a few things that I felt he needed to work at. That would help his performance moving forward.
Speaker 2:But the other part of what he does is that around the green he will hit shots and we have this little saying of we hit shots into nowhere. So we don't hit shots to a flag until he can execute the shot as he wants to execute it. So no flags are involved early in a practice session. The flags might be involved in a warm-up session, but in a practice session it's about hitting the ball to nowhere, first executing the shot to the best of your ability and then, when you can do that, then you can then expand that out and go to flags and hit shots and do your challenges, so really being able to back to your up, not quite your robot, but back to being able to technically hit the shot first and then allowing yourself to be able to free flow into playing the shots.
Speaker 3:So what was the turning point for Tommy? He turned pro in 2010 and one six years later he's Johnny Walker classic at Glen Eagle's. So what was the turning point for him? For him to win.
Speaker 2:Well, when he won at Glen Eagle's we weren't working together at that time, so that way he was. I've worked with him since then. So for him I don't know what he worked at then, but I do know what he's done from then on onwards and I think that I feel that what he did he did a lot of really, really good work with with, with Tomo. You know he had a spell where he wasn't as he didn't really know he's swing as well, he wasn't playing as well as what he wanted to do. I went back to Tomo, did a lot of very, very good swing work with him, started to understand how he swung the club again. You know he's been over to Butch recently over in Vegas to do some work with him over there. I was there I'll retire a couple of years ago. I did his swing for about a year or so and then he's with Butch now. So I just look after his short game, his way stuff and talk about him about, talk about performance as well. So I think that if you, if you, if you try and analyze that whole area to try and get an understanding of what what he does in order to play well and I think that there's a lot of players that they know how Tiger played and they know how Nicholas played and they know how Ben Hogan played and they know how Justin Spieth but they're just in Thomas played and they know Jordan Spieth, etc. Or they think you know how they play because there's a lot of information out there. You know, there's a lot, of a lot of information. But I really feel that it's very, very important for the player to own that sort of information, to work at the information, to own it, to understand it and to understand themselves.
Speaker 2:And you know, one of one of one of Tommy's sayings is you got to love your trades, you got to love the things that you do, right and wrong, rather than you know. Too often it's like when, when you, when you make this move, you'll, you'll be great, when you do this move, you'll, you know you'll hit it, lovely. But that's not always the case, because when you have that move, you just have that move Doesn't mean say you're going to play differently, just means say you're going to have that move, so. But I think sometimes we say that as coaches and I think what we, we do is we, we make, we try and make sure that they are giving themselves the best possible opportunity. You know, the clubs coming in at a good angle, the faces and twisted, etc. Etc. Rather than there being lots of you know faults in, in perceived faults in golf games.
Speaker 3:Let's get back to the concept of being world-class with love. What can our listeners do to become world-class with love?
Speaker 2:Well, apart from coming over to the Oaks Golf Club then obviously, but it will world-class with love is is is really is to. What I would say is to be able to control the loft. So it's not is is. You know, we have a did a short game lesson recently with a guy called Danny Mord. I've seen him on YouTube and he gave Danny a short game lesson and at the time you know you're all you know, you're only scratching the surface.
Speaker 2:But the one thing that we we did was we went in, we were in the academy and I do this a number of times with players and we hit a number of shots in the academy that were and without demonstrating them now, but I could do this for you if you wanted to at some stage, but I'm not doing it on this podcast, but I'll do this for you at some stage if you wish. And there's a shot that you call put with loft, hinge and hold. So put with loft is like a putting stroke, but we love a hinge and hold is where you hinge it with the right wrist and then hold it what I call the fish's tail, which is how your right wrist works and then joining the body in a lofted shot. And then we have this thing where you go around this little semi-circular balls moving around in different lofts and, if you wish, at some stage I'll do that for you on a podcast. I'll do that, I'll do it at the Oaks and I'll stand in the academy and do it for you.
Speaker 3:I actually have that coach, you do it. I have that. Yeah, it's called the. I think you described it as the three chipping feels one one never was more sharp. Lean the fish tail, and that was really interesting. That was really cool. And again, gary Smith directed me. So you're doing a lot of the stick drills you're hitting I guess you must have been bored to during the lockdown. You're hitting balls under the table, on the table, trying to deflect it one way and the other. Those are awesome Well.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you how that came apart and that came a little bit about the some of the short game. I mean, I would say I was a pretty good, pretty good short game player but I used to, when youngsters used to come along for lessons, I used to put that stick six feet in front of them. They're right, before you start doing anything, roll me the ball off the map on the driving range to a stick that's six feet in front of you. So you put six feet, then you put with loft six feet, then you tend to hold six feet and what? The six came out lots and lots of times just in. It was amazing.
Speaker 2:And then I'm at home in lockdown. I have one wedge with me, I have one stick and I only have six balls. So I was only able to hit the stick six times and that was stuff I'd practiced years ago. And then all the other things that came out from that, you know, like the ball ladders and on tables and things Excuse me, and that was to do with just club face control, you know, and that's that whole thing of the world class with loft thing is the control in the loft of the club onto the ball.
Speaker 3:And from whom did you learn how to coach the game?
Speaker 2:Who did I learn Well?
Speaker 3:John Jacobs.
Speaker 2:John Jacobs is great. I mean he's booked just over there in the in my study. So lots of books, rethical golf All over the place. But I was very fortunate when I started at golf my first two. So when I was a young subweek we used to play with two pals who used to go and play a lot of golf with, and then one turn pro and one made it to scratch. One, you know, was I don't know one handicap. Two on the time went quite low. And good pals I played golf with over the years as well. But my first two bosses was a guy called Doug Paul and he was at Chesterfield Golf Club and when I applied for the job at Chesterfield I was from Sheffield, living in Sheffield at the time. He was very encouraging. He encouraged me to play, he encouraged me to practice, encourage me to teach the juniors, encourage me watch me hit golf balls, encourage me to play with the members, et cetera. And my fellow assistant at the time was a guy called John Kinga. We still firm friends now. Don't seem enough of each other, but John went on to be a pro at Lindry. Another pal of mine was Andy Lane. He was pro at Sheffield. And then my second excuse me, my second.
Speaker 2:Last week I called Ray Wilkinson at Leeshall Golf Club in Sheffield and that encouraged me at the same play with the members. He was a very good coach himself and I used to talk often with him about coaching. And then while I was there at Leeshall I was improving as a player and then went on and did quite well as an assistant he care run up in the British assistants and did quite well. My son, by the way, last year he beat me before because he won the British assistant championship, so he went on to win it. I only finished to run up in it. Then at the time, that grounding of your first two bosses, encouraging you to teach, encouraging you to play, etc. And then the golf club. When I was at Leeshall they were very, very encouraging as a golf club, the members. They had a whip round, as they call over here and put a load of money together and allow me to go and play. I went to play safari tour in Africa for winter.
Speaker 2:The good pal of mine is Pete Cowan, obviously a great coach. Pete myself used to do Yorkshire coaching together and Pete was always, and then he actually coached at one of the ranges where I coached for a while and he'd come up and he was always very, very kind with his information and we'd talk through stuff as well. So I've been blessed with that. Guys then at England coaching, you've got Tomo, you've got Dave Ridley, you've got Paul Asheville as well, you've got Smithy, you've got Phil Kenyon good pal of mine, you've got Nick Soto. Now and you've got anybody else I've forgotten I'm going to apologize, but surrounded by good people.
Speaker 2:And I often say about when you've got good young players, you surround them with good people. And also very, very fortunate to have guys in the biomechanical world as well, like fully. Mark Bulls is a good pal of mine and we often talk and have done a few days together where we've worked together and worked with other coaches and the great like Ramsey Woodmasters was fantastic Since then as well. Paul Farcason is a good guy. He's doing a lot of good work with a lot of players, got a movement player.
Speaker 2:So I think that when you're a coach, not being afraid to talk to like all of those people, imagine the conversations you can have with all of those coaches and during those conversations your mind's ticking all the time of how you're going to pass on information, how you're going to coach it.
Speaker 2:And then the other thing as well is not being afraid to say, well, how would we coach that? Which theme would we coach that? So I think that if you have all of those things that come together, you're shaped by the people that start you off in life and then the people that you surrounded with and work with as well. And I think you look at the passion for and I would say, rids, dave Ridley and myself, as he was England coach before me. You look at Keith as well. He's the England coach before Dave Rids and myself. Then Rids stayed on for a year or two and helped me, and his passion for taking skills to the golf course is one of those things that you look at. We need to make sure that we're taking them skills out onto the golf course. We don't just leave them on the range. And that's again the thing, for the challengers have become much more important. They're bridging the gap as to how you then bridge the gap between technical information and then golf course and learning through those challenges as well.
Speaker 3:So, talking about the golf course, you've always mentioned the five L's Lie look land, loft and line. Can you talk a little bit about that so that our listeners can use it on the golf course?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, there's a psychologist guy called Brian Emmings. You might have heard of Brian.
Speaker 3:Yes, I know Brian.
Speaker 2:You know, brian, and he did a study years ago now, and now the study came good, players are quick-minded. That's one of the things that came out of it. And then you sit there don't lose a coach. And you think, well, we know that, but how do you then teach that? How do you get somebody not to be too methodical when they're making decisions? How do you get people to make a quick decision? That's a good decision. And also, I have a number of things that I try and theme in, like the pizza pitching. You heard that one.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Pizza, pitching five L's. So I'll go to the five L's. So then lie. So then you know how many different lies there are. There's a minimum of 60. Right, so there's a perfect line, average line, a below average line, Flat uphill, downhill into you and away from you. So three times a five times semi-rough, rough, bunkers, fairway. So there's 60 basic lies. Basic lies, that's without going into the other things. So you look at that. So I was looking at this, thinking, crikey, you've got these people you're teaching and you're telling them that you want them to run and shoot, make their mind a quick leg, running and shoot. We're talking running and shoot, but you've got to give them something that you need to give them a structure that they can make the decisions to run and shoot. So I used to have, and I still have, Pro-Spelte backwards ORP. Have you got that one on your list?
Speaker 2:No, that's new ORP is new to me, orp was Pro-Spelte backwards. So I would say, do you want to be a pro? And all the youngsters always say, of course I want to be a pro. Say well, to be a pro you need to be able to do three things really well Observe, rehearse and play. And then the question would come out well, what do you observe? Well, you observe 60 lies. Oh well, that's too many.
Speaker 2:So I used to come up with five Ls Observe the lie. Is it perfect, average or below? Just look at the shot. Where are you going to land it? With what loft? And then what is your line into the hole? So that's what you observe. Then what you must do is you must rehearse the shot. So now I just see one of the youngsters who I've talked for a lot of years.
Speaker 2:A young lad called Jodyne is out in Kenya this year. He's got his tour card, he won his tour card. He's out there and he's saying look, I see you on TV. I want to know what shots coming up. So the rehearsal needs to match the way you're going to play it. So what are you observing? So, observe the lie. So I want to see where your eyes go. Lie, look, where are you going to land it? With what loft? What's your line into the hole? That's what you're observing. Then I want you to rehearse one of the shots that we've been playing but we're laughed at. You know all lofted fish, etc. Doesn't matter which one of the shots it is, but rehearse the shot. And then I want you to step into the ball and play in the way you've rehearsed it Observe, rehearse and play.
Speaker 2:And what it does is it starts to give the player you know it isn't psychology in that respect, like that, you know, brian the tape. It's not that it is, but it's a way of playing the golf shot. And if you've got a distinctive way of playing a golf shot in your own way, you can play that golf shot. And then, yes, you will need to improve those ways. But what you need to do in the first place is have a little system in place that allows you to do that. The interesting thing is is when you see a number of the players that have come forward over the years, you know they can remember so many of these little things because they're just. You know, you would say drilled and drilled in that way of doing it, but not quite in that way it's sort of encouraged to have a system in place that they can rely on that allows them to hit shots.
Speaker 3:Let me talk a little bit about the five colours of performance and how it can help our listeners, so that, against me, the five colours of performance, world class holding out outstanding short game precision, which play ball flight control strategy and tactical awareness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so came in when Nigel Edwards was started as director of coaching I better try and get his title of career I think he's director of coaching these days but really trying to get coaches to focus players on certain aspects. And I think around our profession these days, just in, there's a whole lot of information that players can. You know. They can watch YouTube, they can download the app, they can. There's lots of information. They can add golf lots and lots of golf lessons, lots of advice. They can have lots of gurus, etc. But if you think of it, if you are world class at holding out, you've got an outstanding short game, you're a precise wedge player, you've got ball flight control and you've got tactical and strategy awareness strategic awareness You're covering a lot of bases. Yes, there are other aspects of the game of golf that you want to improve, but if you look at regional players under 16, 17, 18 year old girls and boys, if you they came into a system and they left that system with being better at those five elements, you are doing them a great service because they're going to become a better player. The beauty about that also is that on top of that, they can still work at their golf swings. They can still work at their golf games. They can still work at many other aspects of the game and they should do. They should definitely do that. But it was a way of focusing some coaching and focusing players at a young age that become in better at some simple, very, very simple things.
Speaker 2:I like to see being outside at the middle of the wedge. I mean that sounds a very, very simplistic thing, but I like to see centre strike as often as I can. I'm aware that sometimes you use the toe a little bit more than the you know. Sometimes I will use the toe a little bit more, take some of the smash out the shot and then increase the spin a little bit. Little toe spinners and I'm very, very passionate about and I haven't got one to hand at this moment in time, but I do like Callaway wedges and I like the way that the grinds are made and what I feel I can do with them is when I'm practicing with them, I feel that I can feel which part of the base of the golf club is striking the floor. So if we're in the academy hitting the map, making sure that you've got a good map, friend of mine, malcolm, told me to buy some hook-slip mats a few years ago and made a great difference in the academy because it behaved like a nice firm turf that you could feel the bottom of the club hitting the turf and then whether you're using the leading edge, whether you're using the bottom of it, whether you're using the back of it, whether you're using the toe in, etc. And John and Lita worked me for years.
Speaker 2:John went to school a few years ago. He got his card back and he had and I'll have to get him to say this again in six rounds of golf I think he had 10 chip-ins. Right Now that's a lot and when he probably watches the podcast he'll remind me of just how many he had. But I think within six rounds of golf he had 10 chip-ins and he got his tour card back after a good number of years. He had a lot of ill health etc. So he'd won on Challenge Tour, got his European tour card back, 10 chip-ins, and we hit three shots in practice before he went to tour school.
Speaker 3:We hit crown, base and bounce Okay you know what they are Base and bounce I do. Crown is a fairly new term.
Speaker 2:Well, crown, we call the leading edge of the club. It's like the rivet, the pre-way, so we call the crown the right. So you either put the leading edge into the crown, the base flat on the floor, or the bounce, the back of the club on the floor, hit it higher. So we hit the crown low, base medium and the bounce high. And when you go back to we talked about world-class, world-class, we're loft and outstanding short games.
Speaker 2:I remember saying to some of the coaches a while ago look, just send the players with three shots low, medium and high 10 to 15 yards, 20, 25, 30 to 35 yards.
Speaker 2:We now set a low, medium and a high shot within those distances and we can learn everything else from on top of that. And when you look at it, even if you only wanted to use one golf club 58 or 59 or a 60 degree and you put it on the crown or the leading edge, you hit it in low, you put it on the base, you hit it in medium and you put it on the bounce, you hit it in high. What a great service you would do a player again and all you're saying is look, that club only needs to hit the ball three ways. Forget everything else you know, just put the club to the ball three ways. Now, if somebody going to tour school and going to get their tour card can stick to a basic principle Johnny Malo was a very is a very disciplined player, at times good player then how difficult can it be? We all know it's more difficult than that, by the way.
Speaker 3:So, on that note, what is your advice to tour players looking to get to the winning level? Go on repeat that again to me sorry. What is your advice to tour players looking to get?
Speaker 2:to the winning level. The winning level is to be I have this I told you about the golf in the Catholic that in my mind's eye I have, and in my mind's eye I have 70 to 80% as average. So I have this little mind's eye and this line across at 70 to 80% and I try and raise every department to their game. Above 70 to 80% is what I try and do. So they're above average in every department of the game. So that's my and I think that, yes, you need to be outstanding as a player. You want to be outstanding as a player. Nobody ever wants to be seen as a not a great swinger of a golf club or to be not always great at different things. The but is but you can be a great player and if you concentrate on times at playing the game of golf rather than just practicing the game of golf.
Speaker 2:And I go back to you know we talked about John again and he went to Toursport. I think he played. He said he had to play 10 rounds of golf on the spin at Toursport. So before going out there he played, kept playing 10 days on the spin, 18 holes on the spin. So he knew what 10 holes. He knew what 10 rounds on the spin was. And I think that, yes, you know, there's a lot of pressures on golfers now and there's a lot of golfers that say, you know, we'll play two weeks on the bounce and then some will play three and some will play four and more, and there are all the other things that's travel and there's all the other things that take energy away from you.
Speaker 2:But you know, one of the things I would say is you know, while golf is a club and ball game, get very good at hitting the ball out the middle of the golf club.
Speaker 2:And that sounds very, very simplistic, but you have to get good at hitting the ball out the middle of the golf club in order to control the golf ball. So when you analyze your golf game, that is one of the things that you can simply analyze. You know how often do I hit the ball out the middle of the golf club? Now, in my seven or eight times out of 10, if I'm not hitting the putter, a put seven times out the middle of the putter, then I miss it in my puts, aren't I?
Speaker 2:So I have this little thing about tricking your feels. You're you're tricking your feels because every time you miss it it feels different. And if you don't hit a chip seven or eight times out of 10, out the middle of the club, you're tricking your feels. And if you don't hit a wedge shot seven or eight times out of 10, or an iron shot seven or eight times out of 10, or a driver seven or eight times out of 10, out the middle of the golf club, can you truly control the golf ball? So you know, back to that little matrix that you would see any advice for coaches?
Speaker 2:want to get to your level get lucky and you have that old saying on you.
Speaker 2:you know players make coach and the job that you never apply for, you can't apply for, is to become a tour coach.
Speaker 2:You know, somebody asks you to. You know I'm fortunate, I got a lot of good, some good young players now I teach as well, coming through getting out on tour, as well as the likes of Tommy, and you know Antoine and Callum and Richie, etc. And we're doing nicely, but you can't apply for the job. Somebody else asks you whether you would like that job and then you go about, you know, doing your deals and all the rest of it, and I would say to you this is the one, I would say, the one bit of advice. I could give you a multitude of bits, but lots of advice. So every now and again, if you want to coach, you'll come along and observe or come along and have golf lessons and you know some of the younger coaches now I've taught for a lot of years and they're passing their knowledge on to other players and the thing I often say is whatever I say to you in a golf lesson, or whatever you hear me say, whatever you hear me sort of try and pass on to someone else. Your part, the deal, is to go away and practice yourself being able to hit the ball reasonably well, demonstrating the things that I've been asking you to do, and then, when you can do it yourself and you can demonstrate it well yourself, then go and teach it. And until you can understand it and demonstrate it well, then don't teach it because you don't know whether it works or not, because if you can't do it as a good player, how do you know that? You're the player in front of you? So I try and get them to practice what they're doing. And the other thing is as well, and I would take great pride in it. Since losing my left eye, I can't. My depth perception isn't as good as what it was before, but I still take great pride in demonstrating and I think that to be a great demonstrator is a great thing.
Speaker 2:So you said about John Jacobs earlier, and the one thing that I remember from John Jacobs was he made that game of golf look so simple put the ball to the side of you, turn to the side of you, swing it up a little bit, and he hit the ball really, really well a lot of the time, didn't he? You know, he seemed to hit a lot of very, very good golf shots and I think that if you become a great demonstrator, then I feel, and then when you've gone, learn things from people and my pal Bobby asked me the other day said, you know, are we going to go and have another two or three days at the OAPS this year where we invite people along and people come along and learn things, etc. And I hope I said this last year when the guys came along, because that's something we want to do again. But when people come along and they want to come along and try and learn, I want them then to take that information, use that information, own that information, practice that information and then be able to demonstrate it in their own way, not necessarily exactly the way that I've done it, but in their own way, so that they understand their own ways. And then, as they've got their own ways, then they're confident in passing them on.
Speaker 2:And you know this from personal sort of uses that if you can convince somebody by either demonstrating it or you have a great section of videos or whatever else you have, then players are convinced. So be a great demonstrator. Whatever you learn, go practice. Don't pass it on until you feel confident that you could pass it on. And I would say this also as well. I don't think that the best players in the world, or good players or even average players at your own golf club, are expecting you to hit the ball perfectly, but I think that what they're expecting you to do is have a go at something like you're asking them to have a go at it, and the respect that then that gives you from them is a great thing that they'll have a go at it, and then, when they have a go at it, it gives you the next opportunity to then teach the next thing, yes, and demonstration is something that you have impressed very deeply upon me, and I feel along those lines that you have to always be ready.
Speaker 3:The good players that you teach are not going to say, hey, you know, give you five shots to warm up, they want to see you do it there and then you have to be ready all the time.
Speaker 2:Give you an example. I was teaching me a couple of examples of teaching Richie Ramsey who. He come down and done short game Richie for years and he comes down all the way from Scotland and we're hitting a few shots. I'm talking to about it in the lofted shot and I can see the look on his face. He's a douser, he's looking at me and I thought I'm just going to have to hit one here. So I stand there and hit one and he went yeah, I said I'll have a go at that now. And he was just waiting for that Wait, for that, that moment of yeah, I'll have a go at that now. And I thought, cracky, you could have believed me before I'd even hit one. But no, in his mind, in his mind, he had to wait. And about three years ago maybe.
Speaker 2:Now I mean, we're in Dubai, we buy the chip and green at the Emirates and we're at the end of a of a of a a, a chipping session. It's me and Tommy right, and he goes three shot challenge. But I said you've been practicing all morning. He said I know. I said, do you want a three shot challenge? So I've got to take it on. So the first shot is a straight forward chip up to a flag. So I go, he goes, and one nil up next one. You pick a lofted shot up over it's. It's stiff. We won one and we've been practicing a belly wedge out the semi rough for the Emirates golf tournament. Right, he holds one. By the way, this week, the the, not this year. A few years ago he holds this very same shot. So he goes, belly wedge, wings it like belly wedge. You can see him. And he hits the up there like this. And I said there's a bit of room there. He was like you're not going to be that, I hit it with that beast himself, I'll go. So I beaten 2-1, right, he's not happy because he's unbelievably competitive, never says a word, right, I don't even know what he said. Well, he probably said well done, let's say.
Speaker 2:A few weeks later we're practicing over in Dubai. We get to half past five at night. He's been practicing all day. He's got it on a string. He says you want to come? Go on. Then he puts me on a downhill line to a front flag. I think I swore at the time I can't believe it. And he was laughing because he knew he could hit the shot because he'd been practicing it and he beat me on that occasion. So. But you can see just how competitive certain players are. They don't like Luke. He's as nice a man as he is. He is because he's a lovely man, but still got that competitive edge, which is fantastic. You need to have it.
Speaker 3:Well, we're rooting for Tommy to win his first PGA Tour event. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where do?
Speaker 3:you see yourself in the next five years? Perhaps write a book.
Speaker 2:I've actually wrote six books and I've ripped everyone up and I'm familiar from my my desk over there. I'm in my study at the minute and it sounds very grand. It's just a little, you know, but in the study at the minute and I wrote what I'm going to try and write in a book and I've sort of got my head around it. But I was talking to Mike Kansky as a friend of mine who works with Perth Kenny.
Speaker 2:And yeah, good fellow Mike, it's too nice to be a golf coach, mike. We were talking recently in Dubai, recently down at the creek, and he said have you ever wrote a book, geese, I said, yeah, I've wrote six, but why don't you just write it?
Speaker 2:and I get to the end of it just in and I think I could do it better. It's too simple. Nobody will buy that. Everybody should know what I've just said here, and so it's something I'd like to do, but I don't know whether it's something that is beyond me. I don't know whether I should do it or not. Maybe I'll have another go, but you always feel like you're bearing your soul, don't you Put it out there? But maybe I might have a go at it. But a lot of my challenges and stuff now are on the app, so it's a bit easy. On the golf scoring skills.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's easy, but it's a bit different. You're almost leaving something for future generations and, as you say, run and shoot, don't overthink it.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, maybe. So where can I?
Speaker 3:listen to this. How can I listen to this? Find out more about you. That's the best place for them to go. You want to get in touch with you.
Speaker 2:There's not a lot of that, but I don't do a lot of. I have Instagram now and extracurricular, so you can get me on the Instagram. I think I should maybe put one or two more things on there. One of the things I really enjoy doing I love doing in fact I don't just enjoy it, I love doing it is I love working with coaches. I love working with other coaches.
Speaker 2:And if Bulley and myself can get two or three days together this year again and we do them at maybe at the Oaks, and people come along and just come along for a couple of days and just have a listen, ask questions, do that sort of thing, because I think sometimes is you could post something or you can write something or write an article or whatever, and I quite like sort of being able to speak it and show people it, etc. And I think that's a good way to come along and experience it. Or if you don't want to come along to have to anything that's too organized, get three or four of you together and come and have a three or four coaches come and have a couple of days, and something like that I think would be a good thing. I have four brothers who come along and have lessons together at times, like called Holland the Holland brothers, and then they come along and they sort of low handicap players and they come along and they have two, three, four hours, whatever they have, and but what they learn off each other talking through it, asking questions, listening to someone else's answer I thought for a while that if two, three, four coaches were so minded what they would learn rather than just having some advice themselves, because if they're only asking their own questions, they don't know what questions someone else might ask.
Speaker 2:So I think some yeah, I think that would be a good thing and I've not I've not put any great plan together for anything like that but if they were three or four players, three or four players, three or four coaches got together, got a series of questions, I think that that would be a very, very productive thing for three or four coaches to do, because sometimes you know you're talking to 20, 30, 40 coaches, things can get lost in. You know someone else's agenda, whereas if you only three or four of you, you know that can work. Have you worked with?
Speaker 3:Hu Ma before.
Speaker 2:I have worked with Hu Ma before.
Speaker 3:yes, Hu actually runs a coaches camp every now and then, and he actually records it for audiences across the world. There might be another option for you to consider. Well, share your wisdom with the coaches globally.
Speaker 2:Right, I look on my message. You see, justin, I will have a. I've got a message from you and he asked me to do a day or two with him. And he said, right, you just send me some dates. So you've just reminded me something I haven't sent you a couple of days. I must send you more, a couple of days, so that I do that for him, because I haven't done it, but I will do it.
Speaker 3:So I love to see you on that. And on that note, I will also be meeting Jamie Gough and Lee Cromble next month at the Corsair Cup.
Speaker 2:So you're meeting Jamie Gough and. Lee.
Speaker 3:Cromble Right. Good, there will be a DPWO event in Singapore. Unfortunately, you will be here. It would be nice to catch up with you.
Speaker 2:I think you know Gough. He's got a lot of players now at Goughly. Lee's works with a lot of players. Lee works with a lot of our coach for nearly 20 years. I call Paul Wary. He's been good with Paul and obviously all the players and the Suleyman etc.
Speaker 2:Interestingly, a little story about Suley. So you think that Andy Suleyman, when he was in the England coaching I used to think he's not listening to this kid and my pal Dave Ridley used to say there's something about this lad. He said I don't know what it is yet. He said but he's going to be a good player, this lad. And you know Suley would have a bit of a laugh and a joke and things. And then you know, I would explain a few things to him and at the time you're thinking is he really taking this in? You know, is he listening in? And yeah, andy Suleyman is asked to do a masterclass at the British Masters, right, and his introduction was like what I would just said to you.
Speaker 2:He said well, he said short game, it's all about getting the correct pace, elevation, spin on the ball, he said. And I thought he did listen. So the first three things he came out with and I thought I was really, really proud of that. I'll tell you that because, you know, sometimes you wonder whether you've had an impression on someone and I don't know whether he's still using it. Whatever, you know a lovely lad I speak to, suley, often say hello. So not that I work with him because I don't. He's a good lad, I like him.
Speaker 3:And again thank you so much for your time coach. And here you have one of the golf coaching legends in the world, rain Walker Just in very proud of you, Thank you.