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
Mastering Modern Golf Instruction: Eric Schjolberg on Personalized Coaching and Breaking Traditional Beliefs
Feel free to text me at (831)275-8804
Unlock the secrets of golf mastery with insights from Eric Schjoberg, a distinguished
coach from McCormick Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona, who joins us for an enlightening conversation on the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. Dive into Eric's captivating journey from an injury-battered aspiring golfer to a renowned coach, sharing how the teachings of David Leadbetter reshaped his path. Eric's analytical approach and perseverance are a testament to the transformational power of finding the right guidance and methodology in golf coaching.
Discover a fresh perspective on modern golf instruction as we challenge outdated techniques and emphasize the value of personalized teaching. Eric critiques traditional concepts, like the infamous 80-20 weight distribution attributed to Jack Nicklaus, and advocates for an individualized approach to coaching that prioritizes mechanics and personal feel. From humor-laden anecdotes about Butch Harmon to the exploration of how coaches like Kelvin Miyahura and Hugh Marr influence the game, this episode is a treasure trove of insights for golfers and coaches alike.
Connect with Eric as he shares his coaching philosophy and invites listeners to enhance their golf skills through his services. Visit ejsgolf.com for more information and access to his wealth of resources. Whether you're a beginner looking to improve your technique or an experienced coach seeking to refine your methods, this episode offers wisdom and practical tips to elevate your understanding and enjoyment of the game.
To reach Eric, his website is www.EJSGolf.com
To reach Justin, his email is justin@elitegolfswing.com
To reach Jesse, text him @ (831)277-0343
A big THANK YOU to TaylorMade AND JUMBOMAX Grips for their incredible support.
Hello, this is Jesse Perryman from the Flag Hunters podcast Flag Hunters golf podcast Welcoming you after a little bit of a layoff, had some stuff to deal with and had some computer issues, but we're back online and ready to roll. This week our guest is a man by the name of Eric Schoelberg. He is out of McCormick Ranch in Scottsdale, arizona, and it's a great general discussion. I won't bore you with the details, because the details are full of great pearls of wisdom throughout this conversation with Justin, eric and myself, and I will make sure to have all of Eric's contact information in the show notes available to reach out to him if you're in the Scottsdale area or if you want to imply his wisdom in your game his website, his digital availability to help you and all of us get better playing this game.
Speaker 1:Eric's a good one, folks, has a great background, has a great training platform and overall good practical information that has been tried and tested throughout the decades. I encourage all of you to get a hold of him. He's a good one, folks, and that's all for this week. Hope you're hitting them straight. Cheers, hello and welcome to the flag hunters golf Golf Podcast, where we go deep, and this week we're going deep Once again. I'm welcoming my friend, colleague, podcast partner and general commiserator, justin Tang out of the Tanimera Golf Club in Singapore, and our guest this week is Eric Schulberg, who teaches out at McCormick Ranch in sunny Scottsdale, arizona, where it's always sunny it's probably perfect this time of year, but hey, eric, welcome. We appreciate you coming on, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, hey, thanks for having me. It's an honor to be on and really looking forward to talking to you guys, and I love going deep on golf anytime I get the chance to talk more about it, so I'm looking forward to it hey, maybe a quick intro for our listeners.
Speaker 3:How do you get started in golf?
Speaker 2:yeah, let me breathe. I'm like probably a lot of uh, a lot of golf coaches had the dream uh to play my um. Ideas and dreams of that ended really early with injuries around 19 with my back, a lot of injuries throughout my uh trying to come back around 19 with my back, a lot of injuries throughout my uh trying to come back. I've ended up having a lot of surgeries, but anyways, it led to golf but. But, looking back, it led to teaching golf. But looking back onto it prior, I was um, as a kid since I'm I'm older, I'm 52 before the internet I was gathering golf, digest, golf magazines that were tip top, tip magazines and even as as a kid this is before I knew I wanted to go coaching route I was ripping out magazine articles, categorizing them, and I'm so glad I saved so much of my stuff because it's so cool looking back on it now, how I categorize it, to how I would do it now, you know, with how my influences have changed and everything, but really what? So I was always that guy and I I'm sure I told everybody wrong stuff, but I was the guy that as a kid that everybody came to with questions um, hey, how do you do this? Because I was always reading on it. I mean, I'm sure I was just telling them what I read that day in the in the magazine, you know, at 14 or 15 years old. But I was also just really, um really intrigued by the swing.
Speaker 2:And the truth about my golf game is I was a terrible golfer. My brother was really good, he was a scratch golfer, he was playing in all big state events. My dad was a scratch golfer, playing in mid-ams and big stuff at a caddy for him. And I was absolutely brutally horrible. Until about 14 years old I was 10 or 12 handicap and the reason I say it's horrible at that is because I practiced a lot, I worked very hard the game and that's the best I could get, the best I get with coaching.
Speaker 2:Well, I found David Ledbetter and his teachings and within two years I was a plus two handicap. So I was a very analytical person, which I'm still very analytical. I just needed and this is what David and coaches back then would laugh at me because I'd say well, how do I get to this position? How do I get here? Tell me, that's crazy for thinking about that stuff. And then Ledbetter came around. He said well, this is how you do this, this is how you get to this position, this is where you should be at here. And it all clicked to me really quick because I already put so much effort into it, I didn't need to work on that and how to practice. So Ledbetter is my initial, I'd say, mentor as far as how I went as a coach. But that's a quick summary kind of how I got into coaching. Injuries got me out of it and then Leadbearer kind of really got me going after I became a good golfer.
Speaker 3:Did you work under David Sagan? Did you work under David?
Speaker 2:I never worked under him. No, just read everything I could read on him, but never worked under him. No, just just read everything I could read on him, and, but never worked under him. No, and and met a lot of people that worked under him. So I feel like I feel like I know him, but don't yeah, david is one of those guys.
Speaker 3:That has been grossly misunderstood. Everyone thinks of him as a technical coach, but I think if you've worked with him in person, if you've really spoken to him about instruction, he's anything but that. He is actually maybe one of the most holistic instructors ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why?
Speaker 3:do you think?
Speaker 2:that he did get turned. I've heard him talk about this exact topic that you're talking about, and why do you think he did get turned into the technical and that's it.
Speaker 3:It's marketing, right, so it's easier to sell that. Oh, step one, step two, and I think he's got this 11-piece thing that he teaches to all the certified instructors. So from a marketing, from a pedagogical standpoint, it's easier to sell certifications, sell books, if you go hey, this is the 15-step swing, this is the five-step move, blah, blah, blah. You can't sell a golf instruction book and say, hey, you know what it's holistic stuff, it's not for everybody, because there'll be too much material. And what do the average retail golfer want? They think golf is easy, ball doesn't move. So let's find something easy. $50 book, five steps, let's go. Jim McLean, eight steps swing. You think about the golf swing, right, there are only two positions set up and finish. Everything else in between is a motion. So it is hand-eye coordination. Yes, it is set up, it's a bit of everything.
Speaker 3:So David said something that really, really resonated with me. You can put someone on track, man foresight, three degree ease into out, three degrees face to path, then you've got your vertical swing plane at 60, 45, whatever the case may be. He said, but it doesn't tell you, the machine does not tell you how the golfer get got those numbers. When he said that it struck me like a stack of bricks. I'm like that's absolutely true. The thing doesn't tell you how he got there. I don't know what Jim Furyk's numbers are, I don't know what Gary Woodland's numbers are, but if both of them have a zero out path, it certainly doesn't look the same how they got there no, that's that's for sure.
Speaker 2:I know I it. That that's. It's a great, that's a great statement. He says I, I can get. I can get trapped in times, I think, as a coach, especially in the past, and getting too positional at times and especially I think I do it more and I look at my own golf swing. I can get too trapped in that mode and that can be death. Position Positioning.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So there's this thing I'd like to discuss with you, eric Relative and absolute instruction. So relative to a person's feels and absolute to what the camera shows. So some of my students get a shock. If they're too inside out on the way down, I say, hey, you're going to feel like you're slicing the heck out of the golf ball. No, I don't want to do that, I don't want to come over the top. I say, just do it, let's see what the camera says. And they're shocked because typically when they do the opposite, the extreme opposite, what they tend to end up with is something in the middle.
Speaker 2:Yep, nice tight draw probably from that one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and tell me right, if this is your experience, a lot of students don't want to buy into the, the extremes of it, and I know I'm getting ahead of myself. I want to talk about the john jacobs method, but what I like to tell golfers is this right, what you feel and what you see are totally different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a lot of credos to it, I think you know. I like to, like you said, show people the difference. You know. I, for instance, said a guy today same scenario, way inside eight to 10 out, and I'm just like we got it way over the top. And one of the videos I like to show is there's one of Alex Noren, or you can find back in the day. There's one also of I'm forgetting his name. He won the US.
Speaker 3:Corey.
Speaker 2:Pavin, corey Pavin. Yeah, and I showed him this. I'm like, just do it, just do this. And you know, and he tried to do it, and this is what I talked about. Tight draw, like just do it, just do this. And you know, and he tried to do it, and this is what I talked about tight draw.
Speaker 2:He ended up plus three, you know, on his path and he's like that just felt awful. You know he's like well, you know, look at the video and let's look at it. You're a plus three. So that's the field we're trying to go for, is that? And I him to get more inside and he had gone so far to the extreme inside, and you know. So I showed him here's a checkpoint you can walk, check and I'm big into using for checkpoint.
Speaker 2:I like to look at p6 a lot. Um, you know, when you video and say, hey, if this club's a little bit behind your hands there, we're probably in a pretty good spot for coming from the inside. You know, if this club at p6, which is parallel to the grounds outside your hand line, the pet is, you're probably coming across a little bit. So he didn't have any checkpoints before he came to me, so he had just taken this as far inside as he could. And now he said he was hitting behind it when he came to see me because he got too far inside. So we got that better and that fixed his um hitting his low point, moved up to four in front after that too.
Speaker 2:But you're so right that people don't, especially ones that are over the top and went to the inside or a little more inside out. They hate that thought of coming over the top because they've worked hard to get out of it. They associate bad golfers with that move. So you tell them to do that. But typically when I show them better golfers practicing that move, they're like oh okay, I guess it's okay for me to try it and then then to see the results. Hopefully you can stick with it with some checkpoints. But yeah, I agree a hundred percent with you, this field thing getting them to feel it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that is really the Rosetta stone to understanding all the golf magazines that we see out there today. You find you find you pick up any generic magazine out there and they will talk about curing golf faults with seemingly very diametrically opposed drills, and I think that really stems from a feel versus real difference and really understanding what I feel is not real. Yeah, I think once you look at that, then you can understand what these top players are saying. Like, for example, jack Nicklaus used to say I can't throw the club down, I can't release the club early enough, and then you've got another guy saying, hey, you've got to hang on for dear life the club early enough. And then you got another guy saying, hey, you gotta hang on for dear life. Yeah, it's like, hey, both are great players, but these two, these two uh tips or instructionals, seem to be at the opposite ends of the spectrum well, I feel like that's what the I try.
Speaker 2:You should never pay attention to what other players say they're feeling or get advice on the feel. I try to never give any heels away to anybody. Like well, what? Like well, what should I be feeling? I go. I have no idea what you should feel, but let me show you how you can gain a feel by doing this move. Let's close your eye. I'll go through a bunch of different steps of doing this. Let's do this drill, do it a few times. I'll usually have to do it with their eyes closed and I go let's later.
Speaker 2:But you got to figure out how to pick it up, because each day we're not going to have the same feel that we can go back to.
Speaker 2:A lot of times it's going to be gone the next day because our body feels different.
Speaker 2:I do think, though, that what I notice is some like I feel like you get the, the player that's less supported, let's say, and maybe not as good as golfer, versus the higher level, and they still have a disassociation between feeling real, but I feel like sometimes theirs gets a little closer because they have a better perception of where the club face is in space. The better player. So I feel like although they're not correct in the end, because I think one of the worst things that ever happened to golf was jack nicholas had this article way back I think it was in the 70s some point that talked about how we're supposed to move our weight and it was 80, 20, get 80 back. You know, and that to me is every golfer I see that's, I'd say, most every golfer I see has struggles with that move and they all say 80-20.
Speaker 2:And I think it all stemmed from articles back in the past of 80% of your weight, your mass, getting to your back foot. And then you know, whatever, 20 on the lead foot, and it's just, it's destroyed golfers because they're on their back foot at the top of the backswing. And that may have been what he felt. But we can go through now, I mean, and look at these books that were written a long time ago and say, well, I'm sorry, they're actually just talking about fields, that really wasn't what was happening in their golf swing.
Speaker 3:You know when, when I understood that, I felt that my, my teaching went to the next level, it went to the stratosphere. Because now when I look at my stash of golf books in my library I go, oh okay, I can use this feel on this guy for that fault and try to, as you say, not exactly tell them what them what to feel, but hey, like what the golfing machine says, let mechanics produce and let feel reproduce. I said, hey, I usually tell my my guys don't ever tell me what you're feeling because the very act of you trying to categorize the feel you may corrupt that, that sense. It Just realize, okay, this, whatever, whatever is this and just repeat this or that.
Speaker 3:Yeah like that and it just, it just helps. Helps my guys when I explain it to them the way you just explained it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we're trying to do whatever we can to get them better as quick as possible, right? Yeah? Yeah, we know that's. The quickest way is to get them to be able to reproduce some kind of field they're gaining. You know how we get there Teachers may get there different ways, or instructors may get there different ways, but hopefully in the end they're able to gain those fields that we're trying to get them to get.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's go back to how you've actually started playing golf, get on the path to improvement. You mentioned that you are naturally a curious person and through interviewing top instructors such as yourself over the years, I realized that and obviously this is true in all facets of our life. Our experiences shape us to where we are today, and I think being curious is such an important part of being great at anything, because that leads you to think of, to be solution oriented. Most of the lesser instructors that I've also had the privilege of observing. They just do the same thing over and over and over again and, as Einstein said, you keep doing the same thing but expecting a different result. That's the very definition of insanity, Correct? So with that in mind, right, what are your, what's your philosophy Like? When a student walks through to your studio, is there a process that you put them through?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say there is an absolute process, and I feel like that's what I've gotten better at forming throughout the years, I guess, is putting a process in place, which I don't find a bad thing. I remember watching this thing where Butch Harmon said something kind of negative towards Stack and Tilt about this process. Oh, everybody comes in, it's just this process. And then the interviewer goes. So okay, and then he's talking to Butch for a little bit. He goes, so Butch, what's it like when somebody comes and sees you? He goes well, the first thing I do is I ask him this, then I ask him this, then we do this, we do this and he goes. That kind of sounds like a process you got there. Processes are pretty good. Right to go through a process, as long as you have a good one of what you're doing.
Speaker 2:I mean, first off, I try to get to know the player. Um, I want to know who they are, what they're thinking, what is their, what is in their head about what this golf swing is, what do they do for a living? I like to know because I want to know are they analytical, are they non-analytical? Are they? Are they gonna be more touchy-feely, do they? Are they gonna be an engineer where I'm talking numbers and data to them, like I kind of got a picture of that first, and then I want to see how their head's been. I want to say what is their picture of the golf swing already in their head? And usually I feel like we're fighting that a lot for a lot of golfers is what this crazy picture they have in their head is, and debunking myths I feel like is a big part of my job nonstop. So after I get those things down, I'm looking at their swing and during this time I've also done a little evaluation. I just do a quick TPI to see where I've asked about injuries, I'm seeing how they can move, trying to find out if there's restrictions before we get into things, and a lot of times I'm doing some of these things while I'm doing the initial videos. Let's say we're doing the first lesson, gathering data, so I'll use video, I'll use my TrackMan, I'll use Sportsbox to get some better, a little deeper measurements if I want to use those, and then after that it's just finding honing in.
Speaker 2:I like to spend time with them after this first lesson, which I always do, my first lesson for two hours, because I feel like it takes time to explain these things to them and I want to give them a clear picture of where we're going to go, and my philosophy really boils around is and this probably goes back to Leadbetter, but I truly believe on my own is just that Do we want the tail to wag the dog or the dog to wag the tail like? I believe this, the way we move our body, is just so important and I it's very I don't, I don't think I've ever seen anybody move their body really good and not be a decent golfer, you know, like with good tilts and not swaying, not, not up. And I've never, like I just haven't seen it. I see a lot of bad golfers that have poor body motions, like. So I I usually will start my assuming they don't have a good body motion. I start off working on their body, which is, you know, working on some rotational drills, just club across the, you know, chest getting. I'd like I love mirror work, um, getting them in a mirror with some lines on showing them how we move, and it's very hard for most of them and I show it and I just tell them right there. You figure this part out which can be done at home, not in a golf course. You can become a really good golfer because I'll tell them that story. There's not any I don't know a good golfer yet or a bad golfer that can do this move and it can be done all at home. But not a lot of people want to spend time on that, on just working on their rotation. So I try to.
Speaker 2:I try to go for low hanging fruit as best as I can, you know, and I also try to find out what do they want out of this. I think we're delivering in our lesson. You know, I'd say in the past where I may have gone wrong years ago was I tried to deliver what I wanted and that was to them go home and practice, you know, and I never thought people would practice a ton every day, but I wanted them to put in some amount of practice daily and my daily practice, I tell people, is at home, like you don't have to go to range, there's tons of stuff you can do in mirror at home. Commit to five to 15 minutes a day and you're the fruits of your labor are going to be, you're going to become a good golfer if you can commit to that and it's not asking a ton. But I found out that a lot of people don't want to do that. So I prescribe what they want and I find out what they want and then I try to give them what they want. So if somebody's going to practice more, they'll get a little different story from me. Or some just tell me no, I don't want to embarrass myself, I need to quit to learn. Stop chunking this thing. So that person is going to get a way different lesson than the other person. So, um, you know, I think long and short of it.
Speaker 2:I'd say, if you boil everything down to it, I just want golfers to strike the ball better. I, I, I, it's all to me. So much golf is boiled around low point, getting a consistent low point. So we've come.
Speaker 2:Consistent blows my mind and I look a lot at like golf professionals say what do all of them do? What do? And then, what do amateurs not do? Well, most amateurs don't hit the ball first, but every pro does Right. So it seems like something should be probably a priority that we should. So every lesson that's coming into me I don't care who you are First lesson, where we are, we're working on hitting that ball. First. We're doing drills that are for are performed around impact. Um, we're going to start with ball striking and we'll build up from there, but it's everything I do is built around, I'd say, ball striking and becoming a better ball striker. Um, you know, if you're a pro, you obviously don't need to work on getting um your low point more forward. I don know you may need consistency, help with it, but probably not. So that's a different story.
Speaker 3:You know, I said this on an interview with Mark Immelman. I said what's the one thing that all pros have in common, all really good players have in common? And then I said this is not impact you said it's not impact. It's not impact it's not impact, it's not the common thing, because if you look, if you really, if you really put all these top pros under the the magnifying glass, all of them look different at impact you're saying straighter.
Speaker 3:Yes, some guys have more shaft lean, some guys have a straighter leg. Oh yeah, some guys have more rotational and whatever you you look at Louis Oosthuizen, he's got left wrist extension very different from Sergio Garcia left wrist affliction. But the common thing is this where the club hits the ground, it hits the ground after it hits the ball. So when I explain that to golfers, as you say, it's like someone turned the lights on. It's like, oh, I didn't realize that. What do you mean by hit the ground?
Speaker 3:And I find that, just going back to what you were saying about string pictures, I kind of feel that instructors like yourself and myself, we're like artists. We need to paint pictures in people's head. And back to what you said, a lot of golfers cannot imagine themselves swinging like, say, call it a fret couples. They cannot imagine mr abc, myself, swinging like that. All they can see is this shitty string of themselves cutting across that bad setup and and all of that. Yeah, and you said something that really, really resonated with me move the body well, but before that, how does one get into position to move the body well? And too often I see golfers with maybe too much extension in the upper body and and too much extension in the upper body and too much flexion in the lower body and that results in too much weight in the heels and it's just impossible to set the club correctly.
Speaker 2:Keep the hands in front of ourselves during the P1, p2, the takeaway phase of the golf swing, and I know you are a big guy on the takeaway, so please dispense your pearls of wisdom for all this well, I, I say this, it's, you know, I, I would say, one of the things I feel like that's hard, uh, in our industry, and maybe both of you could tell me your, your um thoughts on it um, relaying to students the importance of setup. They're there, they've spent a lot of money to come see you, they want these tricks, they want this thing. They haven't heard of before then, this dumb little setup issue where so much can be solved at setup. And so maybe that's my poor job, I guess, and maybe not relaying it well enough at times, but I feel like just trying to get that across to people is just the importance of it, and I feel like why? Because anybody can do it, anybody can get in good posture and how can I?
Speaker 2:not see people. I don't see most people in good postures. People have horrible postures and you know, even you know it's, it's, it's, um, it's not that hard to get in a good one, and you know it's. So I you know why takeaway, why is it so important to me? Um, I, just my belief is, if I start the backswing, um, you know, typically we we see this right and most swings we see a person go like this the hands go out, club goes back, right. So if you're looking down the line, you see somebody's hands go out in the club, they get behind them and the club head is wide open or toes point way up or even wide open here, right, so this is a typical takeaway that we see.
Speaker 2:Right, what did we not see when I just did that? My body move at all. So I'm a firm believer if I don't get my body involved from the very beginning, that I'm never going to recruit it correctly again. It's just, it's too late, right? What am I going to do if I don't have any movement there? So I just feel like, if we can get started from I even try my students get to p like a one and a half just over their thigh. Yeah, if they can get just to their thigh, feeling just, you know, like if you put that club in your belly button and move it just to your thigh with your arms extended, you'll kind of see what that move is. Your belly button, chest, move a little bit.
Speaker 2:Now some people will feel their back, their, you know, their lat moving it back. Some will feel their chest, some will feel their belly taking it back, you know, some feel it somewhere else in their core. I, you know it, I don't like them feeling in their hips because then they over-rotate their hips and suck the blood too far inside. But yeah, it's a really simple thought. I just like to feel them get it started. That way the whole body is recruited and I feel like then you're kind of off to the races.
Speaker 2:It's a lot easier from that point to keep the body moving and keeping some of that you know, I say some of that, some of those dimensions that I like to keep, of keeping my hands, you know, kind of this hub hands in front of the chest longer and so completely gone from it. So, um, yeah, I, I think it's super critical and it's something that can be one of those things again that can be practiced at home. You don't need a range to work on this thing. Do it in a mirror. You don't even need a mirror really, but you can just do it and set a couple alignment sticks up, um, for you know, to have drills, uh, put a ball behind your club and just push it straight back is another way. You're going to be in a good position. We do that, you'll find out. Your hands are never going to go out doing that in the club back, you're going to move your hands a little bit inwards and your club will stay out without you doing anything, just gonna happen.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely, like from down the line view. A lot of people don't understand that the hands need to stay in for the club to stay out. Yeah, it's, it's such a revelation for them. Yeah, and you know you. You mentioned about the importance of the setup. So what I normally say to get people's attention is this the setup and the backswing is 90 of your golf game. That gets their attention and then the importance of takeaway. I always say this right the takeaway is like a rolex watch. Everything moves together in sync.
Speaker 2:I love it I love it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the the 90 thing was taught to me by my mentor, calvin Mayer. Here, so one of the first few guys that uh overlaid anatomy on the golf swing.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:And that was his uh finding. You may have heard of him.
Speaker 2:Oh, I've read as much of this stuff as I can and you know, try to. I try to keep it between my ears because that I love. I wish he was still around.
Speaker 3:Oh, he is still around, but he's retired from teaching golf he is still around.
Speaker 2:Kelvin Miyahura is still around.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's still around.
Speaker 2:I didn't know he was. I thought he was gone.
Speaker 3:No, no, he is. I speak to him every week.
Speaker 2:I had no idea. Okay, I thought he was gone. He's just out of golf.
Speaker 3:No, he fell sick. And then he in 2017, yeah, and then he decided to retire oh okay, I, I guess, I, I guess, I. I thought he passed when he got sick no, no, no, you, we can take this offline, but if you, if you need anything about his stuff, okay, because I tried to find as much stuff as his I can and I tried to read everything I could on his and um. I got it, man, I got you covered bro.
Speaker 2:Okay, gosh, wow, that's crazy. I can't believe this. That's amazing.
Speaker 3:I don't know the power of the internet. Right here I am in Singapore, you in Arizona and Kelvin in in Hawaii connected through the internet. It's insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's insane, amazing. Yeah, that's crazy Okay.
Speaker 3:So let's talk about your main influences, Like who, who are your? Whose teachings have really made you into the top instructor that you are today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I obviously David Ledbetter when? Um still to this day, um, but I've never, I've never worked with him personally. Um, everything that he does. He formed so many of my early thoughts and everything through all the readings I did of his, and it still obviously sticks with me today. Um, um, and I try to, you know, hear, read or listen by every book or everything I can that he has to say I try to listen to or read or whatever. Um, I'm a big reader. I like, I like to read things, not just see, not just watch videos. Um, I feel like I get more out of it. But, um, you know, hugh Marr is a big mentor of mine. Um, for sure, we work together now. I share lessons of mine with him. And, hey, what do you think about what I'm doing here? Blah, blah, blah. You know stuff like that.
Speaker 2:He's a great friend of ours oh, really good, good, yeah, good, yeah, I love you man. He's incredible and doing great, great things for coaches out there too. Um, uh, dr mark bull, uh, I like to work with he. He's a guy that has 3d yes, yes, he has opened my mind to he. What he does for me is he makes me question everything, so I say something, and then he says something like oh no, oh, geez, okay, I gotta go rethink that again, but um so, did you get his?
Speaker 3:uh, he, he put out this manual of coaching and it's not exactly it.
Speaker 2:I have all four.
Speaker 3:It's not exactly a manual. But no, I said to him like hey look, dude, this thing is like a compendium of Yoda like things. Yeah, I said I can't make it past to every time I read it. I read one line. I go like OK, I've got to come back to this like in a week's time, like that's so funny. Yeah, that's so funny because I read one.
Speaker 2:That's. That's what it is, because I I have all four of them, and when I get it I'll read it all, and then I can.
Speaker 2:I do one a day yeah because it's usually one of them is so deep. That's all you think about some. Some aren't. They're little quips, he'll say, but, like you said, they are there, they are. That's so funny too, yeah, that you read that. Um, I love it. He, he, just, he makes you think about move. I guess before really meeting him, I had not thought about movement the way I did, and now, um, he, he makes me. I mean, it tells you how much more I need to learn being around him Also, but just understanding the questions you ask people matter. There's so many things that go into it that I've just learned from him and just how we move and what we're like.
Speaker 2:You said something earlier about our environment, how it influences us. Yeah, I just started started working a guy that came in from, um, you know, the east coast of ireland. I mean, what do you think? He is like? The ball barely gets off the ground and he's like, but that's what he needed when he grew up right and and playing golf, he had formed a shot that's as low as can be and runs, but his environment formed us. So understanding environment's huge, but, um, so, yeah, dr bull. And then, um, you know another one is, uh, we know is, uh, tony manzoni. So, um, one of the things and tony's no longer around but one of the things is I in my teaching and I found that is I always this 80 20 thing always bothered me in my coaching and I never understood because everybody kept coming in there on their back foot.
Speaker 2:I'm like this is just crazy and and I never um, I I'm not gonna say I'm not a stacking tilt guy, I've read it. I like so much of what they do, um, but I I don't teach 100 everything they say, um, so but I always I've taught a lot about and and one of the things I did when, um, I like doing a lot of drills where I call it heels together, toes apart, feet together, so you have basically one axis to turn around Right, and I start to see people start hitting the ball well, and you see chaos happen when feet get apart. So in my teaching I just gravitated to those more swinging around this left leg, more being more on this left side. And then I found Tony Manzoni. I'm like, oh my, my gosh, that's exactly what he's talking about and just kind of you know, and not that I thought I was doing anything crazy, just I'm on my own doing this. It's just, I never even really thought about it. I is. This is just how I was teaching more people. I'd put on their left side, staying there swinging around their left leg and they hit the ball so much better.
Speaker 2:But I really didn't know and I had no idea that there were other people out there doing that. And you know, you knew Static Tilt did some stuff. But also I had no idea Tony was doing it and when I found out that I was like, oh, this is amazing. So it was neat to see what he had put down in the book and in words that I hadn't even I didn't even really know that's what I was doing. But I was doing it because I found out that's what is for them to be a little um, they don't is to get them more off their trail side and they become better golfers that way. So I'd say those are my um biggest. I'd say you know I have a bunch of others. You know that I'd say are kind of influenced. Those are my biggest ones. I say that influence me. I'm like. I'm like coach. You know scott kowks a lot too.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, um, yeah, I so I've done all of his uh classes yeah, I started at six.
Speaker 2:Was there some before that? So I didn't. Six is where I started. So plenty, yeah, so yeah, um, those are. He's incredible with this stuff. Um, there's a lot, there's so many good. You know you can find so much good stuff out there. Um, it's a matter of formulating into your own, I think. Uh figure out what you're gonna do in order to make the golfers that come see you better?
Speaker 3:exactly so. Just earlier we talked about what why do. Why did david let better get so technical in quotation marks? It's because if we tried to write a book about what we just discussed in the last 10 minutes, I don't know, it's going to be a thousand pages.
Speaker 3:No one's going to buy it you're right and I think, like instructors such as yourself, who, who's so open-minded, so curious for for improving themselves, when you kind of go out there, it becomes like an art form, like I learned this from Tony Manzoni, I learned this from John Jacobs kind of like put it in together and it's like an algorithm, right as you say, your process, like what? What you observed about Butch Harmon.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Great instructors like yourself. When I observe them, it's kind of going like okay, I've seen enough. In their head it goes click, click, click, click, click, boom, this is what comes out. But before you have the click, click, click, you're going to have the material inside. Man, yeah. And the better the player you teach, the more granular the information needs to be.
Speaker 3:You can't be just telling me a setup okay, maybe if you're a 24 handicapper, you're just getting a generic setup. But if you're a better player, like, okay, what's the angle of the right femur from face on? How is that going to affect your ground forces? For example, what's the length of your limbs in relation to your hips? How is that going to inform us about stance width? The wider the stance, is it going to increase our horizontal ground forces? And then you kind of look at that against the kinematic sequence. Is that what we want? Against what the ball flight produce looks like. And this is an ongoing exercise and the really, really good instructors such as yourself don't skip a beat. You can't tell he's all checking something, it's just all in the head whirring in the background. And that's the amazing thing about guys such as yourself.
Speaker 3:Well you know, hats off to you, man.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, hats off to you. I appreciate the kind words. I still feel like you know. One thing I've learned in golf is that if you ask me what I knew 15 years ago, maybe 20 years, I'd say I knew a lot. You ask me today, I'm going to tell you I don't know that much. I feel like the gap has gotten wider and wider and it's just because I think the more you learn, you know, the more you know you don't know. And I think just the constant calculus that you know good coaches have you know, such as you guys, that you want to be able to help everybody. You want to know those things. And I think the hard thing about golf is is that you know.
Speaker 2:You look at something and say you see something on your launch monitor. Like to me, every change I make like has to affect something, otherwise why am I doing it like I'm not changing somebody's like takeaway unless I know that there's something I want to to reflect eventually on this ball flight that I'm going to see in my launch monitor. So there has to be this there is always going to be cause effect for any changes we make. So what are they going to be and are they going to be the ones that you want, right? So that's the thing that takes a while to learn. If I change this wrist angle, or I change this, or if I change, if I put this foot out a little more, or if I open it up my left foot, so is that going to change the ground reaction forces? So then, how does that change the way the person comes through impact?
Speaker 2:There's these calculations that the better you get, hopefully you're a lot better predicting those and what the result is going to be, instead of at the very beginning, when someone's like, oh, do this drill, I saw, you know, let's see if this one works, or what, right. So and I explain that to the students, like, okay, we're gonna do this to see if this happens, you know, and there's times I've had to say, oh well, oops, that's not happening. Okay, we're not getting it. You know, let's, let's, let's go this, let's do this. Uh, over here to do it, you know, but it's, it's not. You know, hopefully we get better at it every day, but it's, um, you know, that calculus, like you're saying, of knowing what you're going to, the change you make and the result that's going to come out of it is is what we're, I think, striving for.
Speaker 3:Basically, I think.
Speaker 2:I think what we're saying is you need experience in so many words, a boatload, a boatload right Of experience. But you know, and I'd say, got it. You have to be around, you have to, and I think you nailed on a lot of it. But if you want to be a good golf coach which is probably a lot of things you have to want to go under the hood, because I just don't, I don't think, you know, maybe if there was some teaching out there that we got, you know, like I think everybody ought to be a golf coach should have to go through a ton of anatomy first before they do coaching.
Speaker 1:And I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:I wasn't given any of that when I started. So I'm probably telling I'm sure I was telling people stuff back in the day to do stuff. There was no way they could do, you know, like I didn't know. I had no idea how it was connected to what when I started and they didn't you know.
Speaker 3:PJ any of it, so you had you have to learn it on your own right. Yeah, so that's why. That's why tpi has found a niche for themselves. Yeah, yeah, and we mentioned experience. I just want to say that I'm so privileged to be teaching this game next year my 20th year now so privileged to be, to be doing this, and it's.
Speaker 3:It's fun, right. Like meeting instructors such as yourself on Zoom. I learn from each interview I conduct. It makes me a better coach. That's what makes me do this, and I'm sure it's the same for Jesse and our common mentor, huma. He really challenged me, right. He said if you can't fix a problem in three balls, you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, who?
Speaker 2:told you that Humor. Yeah, yeah, I love that. It's so true. I'm like wow.
Speaker 3:So every time. So so right now on Instagram, when I, when I do videos of my kids and golfers, I put hashtag the three ball challenge and it's a personal challenge to myself. Yeah, I can't fix this in three shots, I don't know what I'm doing. I better go go check the cause and effect manual again. Yeah, and I think I think again it's about challenging yourself as an instructor.
Speaker 2:That takes you to the next level it does and you know and he will tell you. You don't have to come up with that answer in 30 seconds. Watching him, like you know, he said sometimes he's sat there 15 minutes looking at this going oh what? You know, 30 minutes. What am I doing here with this guy? But took his time to come up with it and then does it, which is way I mean way better than just throwing stuff out, like I see it all the time. I'm sure you guys have all seen other coaches do it. They start throwing all this stuff out, seeing what sticks on the wall, and that doesn't get confidence from the players. They get confidence when you fix it quickly.
Speaker 3:It's what I call the problem of having too many toys. You've got too many toys to play with the golfers. Sometimes you get confused yourself, but at the same time you've got to have all those toys. But it's again experience knowing what toy to use to fix that particular problem. And really it goes back to your process about understanding the golfer as a human being. It's not just a golfer If he's stuck in an office all day, hasn't played any sports his whole life, like okay, we got to use the, the easiest fix for him. He's not gonna have time to go. Try to understand why you need to have your setup in xyz position, just give it to him, whereas a more curious guy such as yourself like I, gotta explain why we're doing this and the knock-on effects, the down the line effects yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's everybody's different and I think that's what makes it so fun. Every, all your, all our lessons, it's what you know. I'm giddy waking up every morning, coach. Everything is different every hour, every two hours. However we do it, you know everything's always changing and it's even somebody you coach all the time that comes in weekly to see you or whatever.
Speaker 2:Their body is changing, their questions are changing, you know, or you're going to a new level upwards. So that challenges you too. You know. Why are they not getting better quick enough? You know. So there's, you know.
Speaker 2:Then there's so many facets of the game to get into. Um, they're just, you know, wonderful that make our job, you know, so great. So I'd say I don't know. But I've always thought this I don't know how interested I'd be in this game of golf anymore If, if we had not had the explosion of what happened after track man. You know we got. I don't think I would enjoy it that much. I don't even know if I'd be doing it right now. I really don't, because what was it? It was I would.
Speaker 2:I would maybe try to get a secret out of you guys, because I found out you guys are doing something good with people. I'm like, hey, you would maybe wouldn't want to tell me your secret or the stuff that was out there. That was just, you know, crazy. And you know they like to say they did and and and there's a lot of stuff that's just flat out wrong. I mean, I know, I taught it, you know, so, um, you know, and nowadays, with the evidence we have, it's just I like this, so it's evidence-based. So that's why you tell my students, hey, this isn't me just guessing, um, this is evidence-based. So I and which to me, makes a lot better than me just telling somebody what to do this is. We already know, we know it works, I know the answer because we have physics in our game, finally, instead of just guessing.
Speaker 3:Indeed, and with track man, with 3d motion analysis, with four splits, you could argue that there are no more secrets left in the golf swing. Yet improvement for some golfers seem to be fleeting. The PGA average is more or less the same.
Speaker 2:So what do you think?
Speaker 3:You hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 2:We are still all you have to do is people to me. I tell people this I I do a year-long program with over half my students are in my year-long program. We meet weekly and you know a lot of them get really, really good. But there's there's always this people that after a certain amount of time they're improving. And what is the issue? 100%. Always I talk to them and it's this hard conversation. Their practice is horrible. They're not doing what I said. They don't have the ability, or I wouldn't say they don't have the ability, but they haven't learned the ability yet to learn to put their process over the result.
Speaker 2:So many people you go to the driving range. I think they did this study. I know they did this study and I don't remember exactly how it worked, but it was something about they gave golfers five balls and then told them to do this certain move and if, after two to three balls, most of them quit, if they hit it bad and if they would have stayed with it through five, which the other ones did they improved. So it was a better move. But most people couldn't handle hitting two bad shots in a row with the result instead of saying, oh, this is just the process I'm going through. I'll work through it.
Speaker 2:So people are too, you know they're result oriented, they don't want to follow the process, and I just think it's the human element where they have to get better at that. It's the human element where they have to get better at that. There's so much as a coach you can do, but you cannot. You can teach them how to practice too, but you can't be in their mind and give them the mental fortitude. I think that's why golfers, I don't think, have gotten better for the most part as amateurs.
Speaker 2:It all boils down to practice, because coaching to me for the most part, well, I'd say there's a lot of really good coaching out there if they want to find it Okay. So the good coaching is out there. So what's the problem? Why aren't you getting better? It's still you, the person. So what's wrong? Your practice stinks, and now maybe they haven't been taught practice yet how to practice properly. But if they have, which you know, then it comes down to them. Why do you not have the ability to focus on this? Why can you hit 15 balls instead of a hundred and go through this process, right?
Speaker 3:So human, basically the the one to pay the price for what they want. Yeah, price to be paid.
Speaker 2:Huge and golf is one that's very uh. I mean I tell my students, especially the new ones and maybe I'm wrong in saying this, but I tell them it's very hard, it's a very hard sport. And I say, especially the ones that come to me, new, and tell me they're not trying to become a PGA Tour player, and I'm like I know you're not. I'm glad we don't have to worry about that. It's not going to happen. You're paying for me. I'm going to be honest, right for me. I'm gonna be honest, right, and you know so somebody. Maybe I'm too blunt at times, but I think they have to know that this is a hard sport. It doesn't mean we can't get them hitting the ball and making contact, you know, and getting the ball down, the getting down being okay, but you know to act like this game's easy.
Speaker 2:I hear too often like, go back to when you were a little child and be free, and when you just did all this I'm like god, I sucked as I sucked as a kid. What do you mean? How? How is that true? You know, like I hear that all the time, I'm like that can't be true, because I was terrible as a kid. I see a lot of juniors come to me that are terrible. So there's not. It's just not this freedom as we were kids. I think it's a. You know, there's some that get through it and they're the anomalies I, yeah I think I think you hit the nail on the head right.
Speaker 3:The golf swing is easy, I feel, but the game is hard. I mean it doesn't take take a lot for someone to understand how to use their tool and hit decent shots correct. Carry the ball 230, 240. That doesn't mean you're going to be shooting the 70s all the time, because environment changes all the time. Your physical condition changes from hole to hole. Even uh, where your ball lands changes all the time, so it's a tough game.
Speaker 2:Everything is in the constant state of change yeah, and I mean and I feel like talking about low hanging fruit improving people's scores. You know it's pretty easy to do. If you can track and measure most golfers what they do on the course. You know you take your upper 80, shooter your pie, I tell people most, any golfer, unless they're really good, you can shave at least five strokes off the run pretty easy going out with them, maybe even 10, you know just on the way they play. You know they're going for front pins with bad distances. I mean you see it out there. They look at their cart. It says 180 to the pin.
Speaker 2:They go grab whatever club they think is a 180 club. Well, it's like wait, there's a lot of factors involved here that are going into this. Where's the pin right? What are the slopes on the green? Where's our hazards? Do you really carry that thing 180 or is that your best swing ever? That's your best swing ever? You really hit that 165. So, like you know, they came to a recent study in 2024 did where 85% of shots by all amateurs come up short.
Speaker 1:What does that?
Speaker 2:say I mean, you know, people don't hit what they think they can.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they don't really understand their averages. Right, and that's the great thing. Like a radar launch monitors, like track man for silent flight scope, come in. It gives you a true picture of what you're actually doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct For sure. So yeah, a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff with golfers that you know that just with a little little little tweaks they can shoot much better scores.
Speaker 3:What's the fastest way for golfers in general, the lower the scores, besides going out with you. What's your observation?
Speaker 2:Oh, to lower the scores.
Speaker 3:Yes, in general.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think, improve. If you're talking about scoring, I say just improve your. I think there's a few stats you can keep, very real simple but improving. We know there's a few stats you can keep. They're real simple, but improving. We know there's a direct correlation in greens and regulation to your score. Mit did a study If you take your greens, hit in regulation multiply that by two and subtract it by 95, and then you have your score there.
Speaker 2:So it's pretty easy to see how important that is. I like to add on to that this is a real simple one penalty strokes off the tee and then how many times does it take you? Three strokes within 30 yards. And those are a few stats. But you know, if you just keep that, if you just keep greens regulation, when you get better, yeah, let's add on some more and let's get more in depth on how close you are on the greens and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:But just starting wise, hit greens, you know, aim for the middle of the green. I know that's hard. But the other thing I think golfers don't get the amateur golfers. They see, you know Tiger Woods or whatever. Somebody hit 20 feet left of the pin and this is what I think is wrong in strokes gained averages, because they'll say, OK, from 100 yards or 15 feet right. So or do we know where Tiger aimed or where do we do we know where those people were aiming on that shot?
Speaker 2:Right, Because they're aiming most of the time to a certain spot on the green Right and that is their shot. So they nailed it within two to three yards. They're not 15 feet away from their target. The target is their created target, not the pin yeah. So that is the big difference, I think, is that these guys are creating their target, not the pin yeah. So that is the big difference, I think, is that these guys are creating their target, not the pin. So, golfers, go create your own target on the green. Forget where the pin is Now. You may want to say, okay, my target is dead center of this green and I bet most golfers out there today if they did that are going to shoot better score next round guaranteed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like what the bull weekly used to to say, the center of the green never moves yeah, it sounds like I haven't heard that one boo, but it sounds like a boo saying for sure yeah, and he was one of the top guys in greens and regulation yeah, oh god, I love that swing that strong grip held it off extreme shaft lean. But hey, whatever works, man love his swing. He likes fishing more though, I think, don't he?
Speaker 3:yeah, so it's like kind of like byron nelson, right after he earned enough to buy his wrench. That was it. Golf was simply a means to an end, as it was for bruce let's keep bruce what a great golf game, man I mean the stuff that we heard about him. He really owned his golf swing and that's kind of like staying true to your own dna. Imagine if someone came to him saying hey, you cannot have hands over the top inside out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think we would have heard of uh, bruce, let's keep no, and you, you wonder how many golfers have been we don't know of because of stuff like that?
Speaker 2:and you know I I say I've looked back at my career over 10, 15 years ago. I'm glad I didn't get certain people oh, I wasn't good enough then to know to leave. I wasn't good enough then. And I think that's another thing launch monitors changed and stuff is. You know not you know, but I think I may have made changes that I should have. Who knows who knows right. But you look at the, are you going to change Jim Furyk? I mean if you just saw that swing, somebody may go, oh, whoa, I mean elbow behind him at P6. I mean there's a lot of things in there. You'd go, wow, don't do that. But one of the best ball strikers ever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess what they see right Matchups, compens, compensations and what have you, it's all uh. And that we bought, it's all matchups. We're always matching these up, aren't we? And it also depends, right, if, if jim furick came to us at maybe 10 years old, you figure that there's a runway to optimize his move. But if he came to us at college and when he was in college and you try to change that, yeah, dansky, like Mike, mike Fury I think Mike Fury was telling the story about how he took Jim Fury to to this particular college. The college coach says hey, you're in, man, I can't wait to get my hands on that sink. Mike says we are out. True story, wow, hands on that sink mike says we are out true story wow, jesse, and I always talk about that.
Speaker 3:Mike furick should be in the pga hall of fame I would definitely agree, for sure definitely agree. So, uh, in closing, jesse, do you have any questions for our esteemed guest? In closing, jesse, do you have?
Speaker 1:any questions for our esteemed guest. No, you all have nailed it. No, I really appreciate the insight and you know me as an overall student of the game. I can appreciate where you guys really do the golfing populace a big service, helping populace a big service by demystifying some things, which is great and just really to help us all understand what's possible, and that's a big one. That's a big one because I know I speak for a lot of fellow golf students, lifetime seekers, and that where sometimes we get so down we don't think that there's a way out, and so it's really great to have quality instructors out there to help us find our own way. Really Thanks, jesse, cheers to you.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you To me that's so huge.
Speaker 2:Jesse, you said that because I feel like we do have a huge duty to do a good job at coaches and because of that, because there's so many people that quit because of bad coaching, how often do we read in blogs that, oh, I get way, don't go to this or don't go get coaching, you're going to get way worse, and it's just like that doesn't have to be the case. You shouldn't get way worse. So it's like there is a big, we have a big job to do to keep golfers involved, to get golfers better and it it is disheartening and I, we both know it that there are golfers out there like you said. I get disheartened that and hopefully we this, this coaching and everything can continue on a mass to get better. Like there's no problem with students. I think only about 3% of students take coaching, get coaching or something. So more people would be involved in golf. The better we get as coaches, the more coaches get better. Like it can just explode and get better. So we demystify this that it doesn't have to be this secret thing out there. What is this big secret that we hold or whatever, and and make it down into a better learning level so we'd be more coaches. So it's hopefully the future is continues on this route and we can get better.
Speaker 2:So there aren't any of those feelings someday, or less of those feelings, cause that's that's why I coach because of the fallacies and things that I've heard growing up and one of the one of the main reasons all those fallacies and stuff I heard growing up, they're just like these are stuff I heard growing up. They're just like this is crazy and you still hear it today. I mean it's a bad shot. And they lift, they pick their head up or you know they're slow down. Your swing, jane, when she's swinging 65 or 65 miles per hour. So it's like they're still out there and you know we got to somehow do a better job of breaking them down. That's your job, justin.
Speaker 3:And yours too.
Speaker 2:And the fallacy world and the fallacies out there.
Speaker 3:But yeah, no thanks, speed up Mrs McDonald's sing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't slow down, don't slow enough, we don't need slower.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for your time, Eric. Really appreciate you having on the podcast.
Speaker 2:We appreciate you, eric. Thank you, thank you guys. Where can our listeners?
Speaker 3:find out more about you and the services you offer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just go to ejsgolfcom. I have all my links there to, you know, instagram and YouTube and everything there. So just ejs, as in Sam golfcom.
Speaker 3:Wonderful.
Speaker 1:Sounds great wonderful sounds great, thank you guys appreciate you.