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 the Art of Golf Swing: Jim Hardy on One-Plane vs Two-Plane Swings and the Evolution of Swing Instruction
Feel free to text me at (831)275-8804
Jim Hardy, a legendary figure in golf instruction, joins us on the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast to unravel the complexities of the golf swing. Known for his revolutionary insights into the one-plane and two-plane swings, Jim shares his fascinating journey from a multi-sport athlete to a professional golfer. Through personal stories and anecdotes, he brings to life his experiences at Oklahoma State University and on the PGA Tour, providing a rare glimpse into the evolution of swing instruction that has influenced countless players and coaches around the globe.
Dive into the heart of Jim's teaching philosophy with our exploration of the creation of Plain Truth Golf. Inspired by the teachings of John Jacobs, Jim has honed an understanding of golf mechanics by observing legends like Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan. This episode delves into the intricacies of swing delivery, dissecting the vertical and horizontal planes and offering a nuanced look at how professionals like Bubba Watson adapt their swings. With practical insights and historical context, listeners will gain a deeper appreciation for the art and science behind mastering the golf swing.
This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone passionate about improving their golf game. Jim Hardy's candid critique of modern instruction highlights the importance of understanding ball flight, swing faults, and the vital dynamics of club impact. By focusing on the fundamentals, Jim shares actionable advice that transcends generic teaching methods, offering listeners tools to enhance their performance. Join us for a heartfelt homage to the collaborative spirit of the golfing community, as we express gratitude to Jim for sharing his lifelong dedication to advancing the game.
To reach Justin, please email him at justin@elitegolfswing.com
To reach Jesse, text him at (831)275-8804
A special thank you to TaylorMade and JumboMax grips for their incredible support
Hello and welcome to the Flag Owners Golf Podcast, another edition coming at you on this Friday this week, friday morning here in California, and our guest, justin, and I do this one. And our guest is a very special man, an individual who's contributed a lot to the understanding of the golf swing, a lot to the understanding of the golf swing and actionable, fixable, buildable methodologies to get you where you want to go, and his name is Jim Hardy. Jim has been around for quite a long time, notably the author of the Plain Truth for Golfers, where he breaks it down into two categories the one-plane swing and the two-plane swing. He neither demonizes either and has fixes for both. Specifically, the one-plane might lead to the more athletic player who's able to do that, and there's a specific set of fundamentals for that that he's uncovered and two-plane for the majority of us, and he has fundamentals that cover that methodology as well.
Speaker 1:This conversation between Jim, justin and I was really deeply fulfilling for me and I was really deeply fulfilling for me and, quite frankly, jim goes into depth about how he came up with this and how it's impacted his students for the better. And this is a rare glimpse into one of the forefathers of understanding the modern golf swing and the technique. Well, the golf swing. I'm not going to say the modern golf swing, but the modern golf swing. It was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it. I'm sure you're going to find a lot of really good nuggets of wisdom in there. That Jim says so once again. Again, I want to thank jim for his time. He doesn't do these things very often, so justin and I both feel very fortunate and blessed that he was able to come on and grace us with his hard-fought wisdom over the years. So cheers year, so cheers to you, jim Hardy. Thank you for allowing us, as students and seekers, to broaden our minds, to think of other possibilities that are, quite frankly, very helpful to help us to play our best golf. So cheers to Jim Hardy.
Speaker 1:Please, everyone, rate, rate, review and subscribe. I know that I haven't been very good at issuing or asking at least uh for that, but, uh, I'm kicking myself to do it more. Uh, rate, review and subscribe. I absolutely love reading the feedback that you all give me and it also gives me, uh, great ideas. So if you have any ideas that you want to throw my way, if there's anything that I haven't covered that would interest you that you are also trying to seek to help your own game. Please reach out to me. My cell phone number you can text. It's on the podcast platforms that you listen to. I'll make sure to put all the pertinent information for Jim. He's pretty limited these days in who he works with, but there's plenty of practitioners around the United States and, I believe, around the world that are very educated in helping you within this methodology. They really have done a phenomenal job certifying their coaches. Jim has done a great job certifying his coaches and getting good, actionable, palpable information out there that is achievable via sets of drills, thoughts, ideas that are going to very much help you, I promise Jim Hardy, ladies and gentlemen, and once again, please rate, review and subscribe, and I love to read the feedback. So cheers everyone.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. I am your host, jesse Perryman, along with my co-host and teacher, extraordinaire, happy to be associated with him, happy to call him one of my good friends, justin Tang. And our guest today is a man that you will have heard his name, especially if you're a long-time listener of the podcast and a follower of the instructional space. His name is Jim Hardy. Jim, thanks for coming on and taking the time to talk to us. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You bet I'm glad to be with you, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, jesse, and thank you, jim, for gracing us again with your presence. Could you share with our listeners how you got into golf briefly?
Speaker 2:recently.
Speaker 2:Oh goodness, I loved all sports and I was a very good baseball player and a decent basketball player, and I was looking to find something that I could play by myself, because my personality moved more in that direction Look, I'll take the blame, give me the ball for the last shot, you know, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And I got introduced to golf as a caddy and immediately fell in love with it. And because I was a pretty good baseball player, golf became very easy for me, because the similarities between the two games are enormous. And I was 15 years old, first time I ever hit a golf ball, and at that time I had lied, my team had lied about my age and I was playing in a baseball league against 18-year-olds, like the semi-pro baseball team. And so when I wasn't playing baseball, I was going to be playing golf, and I soon quit playing basketball and baseball. It was a choice. At college, I was recruited in both sports and decided that I wanted to play golf, mainly because of what I said, that the fact that there isn't a manager or a coach or somebody that tells you you can play today.
Speaker 2:You can't play today. You did great. You didn't what, you were on your own and that really rang my bell is is a sport to where it's up to you. And I went to school. I got a scholarship several of them and I picked what was. At that time there were two great college programs. One was University of Houston and one was Oklahoma State University. And I picked Oklahoma State University and went there and we won the national championship one year and I happened to make All-American and I kind of never looked back from there.
Speaker 3:And you went straight on tour post that right.
Speaker 2:Well, I had to go. I went in the US Army for a while and then I got out and went on the tour.
Speaker 3:yes, and how long did you spend on tour? And I think you came to the Far East as well, right, yeah, I spent seven years.
Speaker 2:I never won an official tournament. My best finished official tournament was second. I won several what would be called unofficial events because at that time they were trying to raise the purse money and the way they would raise it is, if you raised it to the limit they wanted it, you would have official money and official win. If you couldn't do it, they understood it you stayed on the calendar. But it was unofficial money and unofficial win, but the money spent just fine.
Speaker 3:So did you win unofficially before?
Speaker 2:Say again.
Speaker 3:Did you have any unofficial wins?
Speaker 2:Yes, I did. I had a couple of unofficial wins, but not any official. As I said, the best I did official win. I finished second. The Quad Cities opened.
Speaker 3:So when did you, or what made you, stop playing on the circuit?
Speaker 2:When I was 18 years old I started noticing my hands shook and I was very embarrassed by it. And in college it got worse and I would walk around all the time either like this or with my hands in my pocket and it got very bad on short putts and I did not realize it and it did not get diagnosed until I was 49 years old. But I had severe essential tremor and the essential tremor got so bad that I didn't have the yips because of a bad putting stroke. I had the yips anytime I had to move something small and short. I could put just fine from 20 feet but I would miss one or two pucks around from under two feet and you can't stay trying to play golf for a living if you do that. So I didn't know what was wrong. I psychologically thought I must be a coward and I didn't understand that because I wasn't a coward with anything else I did, but it certainly drove me off the door.
Speaker 3:It's interesting you mentioned the word coward. That stems from misdiagnosis of the problem, something that's very, very common in rectification of the golf swing, so I suppose that led you down the pathway of instruction.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, when I left the tour I became a club pro at a wonderful old Donald Ross golf course, a very old club in the suburbs of Chicago, and I knew within two or three weeks of taking that job it was a great job, great people, some of them lifelong friends. But I knew that I had made a mistake, because I really wasn't interested in what pair of culottes I had to buy and sell, or shirts or shoes, or first tee or blind bogeys or caddies or cart programs or things like that, and the only thing I was interested in having to do with being a club pro was teaching. But I didn't know how and I found that there wasn't anybody in the club that swung the golf club like I did and I knew how I played golf but I couldn't help it. And I got the bright idea that I know what I'll do. I'll take some speed reading courses so I can read instruction books as fast as I can.
Speaker 2:And I did. I took three speed reading courses and I ended up with a library of about 600 books and you can imagine, after reading about 50 or 60 of them I was very confused. So I just kind of started to pick out the commonalities that seemed, the threads that flowed, and by golly I did start helping some people. I honestly got to say I didn't help all of them, but I sure started helping them. And I got really lucky. I had met a man named Cal Brown who was in charge of Golf Digest, Golf Schools.
Speaker 2:And Cal he knew I wanted to quit my job and Cal asked me if I wanted to come and work full time in golf schools that Golf Digest and later Golf Magazine were doing. He said because I want you to meet a man that I think will change your life. I said but I'm all for it. And it was John Jacobs. And when I met John Jacobs I watched him teach for a half day. Well, I watched him teach full day, but a half day. I had lunch with Cal and he said what do you think? And I said, well, I said I know that somebody out there in the world had this thing figured out. Somebody had to have. And I said I finally found the guy that did. John Jacobs has it figured out.
Speaker 2:Cold, because you see, a step I took after reading the books is I thought well, I'm going to call some of the supposedly great teachers that I knew when I played the tour and asked them if I could come watch. And only had one person ever turn me down and I would go spend a weekend with these people, watch them teach all day. And I would say do you have a lot of people come and do this? And all of them said the same thing. They said no, in fact, you're the first one which genuinely shocked me that other teachers didn't want to go watch other teachers teach. You see, and I quickly learned that teachers tend to build this wall around them and then they build a castle, and then they build a moat, and then they build a drawbridge and they defend their stuff and they're not curious about what the guy down the street's doing or how can I get better?
Speaker 2:And I found that, the opposite of what I tried to be as a player, I would turn over any rock to be better as a player and I felt that that was the only way I was going to become a great teacher. And John gave me the code, if you will, that is still the basics Now. I grew up quite a bit from there. I grew up quite a bit from there. John became like my father. We taught all over Europe together, uk and the experience all those years with John. I formed the John Jacobs Golf Schools along with a man named Shelby Futch here in America years ago. But that's long-winded kind of how I got into teaching and kind of basis of where I I got headed in the right direction teaching that's amazing background because John Jacobs book practical golf is right there.
Speaker 3:yeah, in this the top five of my golfing library. Yeah, in the top five of my golfing library. Yeah, so John Jacobs was the one that personally influenced the creation of, I guess, plain Truth. He told you he would often describe the golf swing as swinging the arms up and down as your body rotated. And then when you asked him about the Ben Hogan swing, he told you that he just rotated his arms and his body on the same plane and that sparked your journey into uncovering and, I guess, creating what is called the Plain Truth Golf. Could you talk a little bit about that? It's called the Plain Truth Golf.
Speaker 2:Could you talk a little bit about that? What John believed? That if you're dealing with swing shape, that the body turns fairly horizontal to the ground, the arms swing up and down. If I said, who's that model? Well, jack Nicklaus in my day, or Tom Watson, justin Thomas today, bubba Watson, you know it's frequent. He believed there were two motors. He did not believe the body moved the arms, nor did the arms move the body. He believed they moved, and I'll use one of Wild Bill Melhorn's words they moved in unison together and I had been in a two-plane.
Speaker 2:That's why I grew up playing golf and so, but I was very curious. One of my great influences on the tour was a man named George Knudsen and I played a lot of golf with George and every day that George showed up, every day he hit a good and it looked the same. You know, it looked like somebody took a movie of him and there it was every day and I watched other guys play and the only guys that seemed to have it every day had rounded golf swings. They didn't have my kind of golf swing.
Speaker 1:They had a rounded golf swing.
Speaker 2:I had the chance to play two days with Ben Hogan. I watched Sam Snead every time he'd come out. He was in his 60s my goodness, that big pivot and around he goes. So I was curious because two-plane golf always requires so much. When I say two-plane, john called it two-plane. Your arms move in one plane, your body moves in another plane and it always requires something you know to either hit it solid or find the direction or the curve, or the start line or the height of the ball or the solidness. It's like every day is a new experiment where these guys one that way. So one night at dinner I said to John John, relative to what we teach to play, the arms swing up and down, the body turns. What would you say Ben Hogan did? I also threw in Peter Thompson and he said well, relative to what we teach, they just threw the whole mess into one play was what he said.
Speaker 2:Well, for the next three years or so I would ask him a lot of questions about it and he would not answer them. He would get irritated with me. And it wasn't until really I'm going to say 1993, that I figured out Now. My conversation with John happened in 1978. So it only took me 15 years. I'm a slow learner to have figured it out cold, dead cold, where I would teach it to anybody. A touring pro particularly. I taught it myself. A touring pro, particularly I taught it myself. Peter Jacobson was the first one I moved that direction and Peter had. I had taught Peter for several years up and down to play and swing. That's what I played. Well, peter hurt his left shoulder, his lower back and his left hip and hurt him so bad that he quit the tour. When Peter was only about 32 years old and started doing television and he was very good at television. But after a year and a half television he said to me I want to go back out and play. I said Peter, you can't, you're tearing up your body.
Speaker 1:He said well, do you think I can make?
Speaker 2:the change in my swing that you made in yours. Do that one plane stuff.
Speaker 3:I said I have no idea.
Speaker 2:I've never taught it to anybody but me. He said can we try? Peter came, he'd get finished a telecast on Sunday and he'd come to Houston on Sunday night and we'd work Monday and Tuesday and then back. He goes to the next tournament Tuesday night and we did this starting in July. Well, in October, november, he wanted to go back and play his first PGA Tour tournament. Uh, that he hadn't played in two years. So he went to one. It was one of the lesser ones. I believe it's called the Capolo International or something like that. It was before the tournament champions had gone there and he won it. And so he started off the year and he won three tournaments and took some time off and then won another one and then finished second at Doral, third at Doral and second at Greensboro and he's a leading money winner. He had already at that point had made the Ryder Cup team. I mean, he was on fire and Peter wanted me to start helping all his friends and I said no, not going to get back into teaching again.
Speaker 2:I was busy designing golf courses, building golf courses and owning golf courses and I didn't want any part of teaching again. And he said please? And I said no. He said well, then write a book. This is 1993. I said no, I'm not going to write a book. This is 1993. I said no, I'm not gonna write a book. He said the world needs to know what you know. I said I'm not doing it, the world doesn't need to know. I didn't write. I didn't write the book till 2003, my first book, playing truth for golfers, and luckily it became the number one selling sports or recreation book in the world. It's been translated into eight languages and it's found three more books.
Speaker 3:But that's the release solid content and masterclass.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right and really, if you look at, if you look at swing shape or you look at what I used to call, that's all about how to help 99% of all the golfers that show up in front of you Sure, jim, before we go into creation correction being a repairman and architect as you introduced to the world in 1990, can we talk a little bit about predisposition towards one of the two shapes?
Speaker 3:So, for example, one of our esteemed teaching colleagues, mike Adams, has stated that if you measure your wingspan against your height and it's longer, maybe you're predisposed to a one-plane golf swing, for example, due to the length of your limbs. Any thoughts around that?
Speaker 2:No, because one of them here's the predisposition for openers. A plane has two elements and a direction has two elements and a direction. Now, the two elements are one. It has to have a circular element, an element going from out there to in here, to out here to back in again, simply because it's a side-on game. There's two kinds of games we play. We play online games and we play sideways games. Baseball, throwing a discus, tennis shots, hockey, polo are all side-on games. Facing my target, I'm sideways to my target, and when you're sideways to your target and the ball's out there and you're going to hit it this way, your club, your bat, your racket, your foot, your whatever it is has to come in and back out and back in again. So one of the elements of a plane takes care of the fact of how we stand relative to the ball. If we were facing the target and the ball, it would be straight back and straight through. I never understand how people can still think golf is a straight line game. Putting might be a straight line game, but golf isn't. The second element has to do with the fact the ball is on the ground. The second element has to do with the fact the ball is on the ground. If the ball were waist high, the plane would only contain a circle baseball, certain forehands and backhands in tennis throwing your discus. The fact the ball is on the ground means that the club that starts on the ground goes in the air and goes back down to the ball back in the air again in order to get the ball off the ground. You see, if we just stay on the ground, we putt, we don't get it up in the air. So down under and up is required to get it in the air. So we have two elements a vertical element and a horizontal element.
Speaker 2:The first day someone plays golf, they look at the ball, where it is and where they're standing and they see one of two challenges. Either they see the game as boy, that ball's on the ground, how am I going to get it up off the ground? That golfer sees the vertical element to get the club down under the ball and get the ball up in the air. The second kind of player does not see that challenge. He might have played hockey and he sees the ball besides him and he sees it a side-on game and he bends over and he swings way around like this, because he sees the challenge of moving the ball forward. Now, if you're playing a side-on game and you see the challenge of a real low tennis shot ball coming in, or hockey, you see the challenge of knocking the ball forward towards the target. The other guy sees the challenge how do I get this thing up off the ground? That is what decides whether you're going to swing your arms more up and down than you pivot or you're going to swing your arms around as you pivot than you pivot or you're going to swing your arms around as you pivot.
Speaker 2:Now, one of the things I talk about in golf in swing shape is a one-plane swing. Will they're playing? Delivery, delivery that's what the fourth book's all about. Release, delivery, delivery that's what the fourth book's all about. The release. But from hip high to hip high, I want them on or close to the shaft plane line with not just the head, with the head and the handle. Now, mike, bless his heart, I love Mike, he's one of my dear friends. But people have said to me well, mike says if your arms aren't this way or something like that, you can't come back on the shaft plane line. My answer is wow, you're on it at address, you're on it. You understand, if you can get on it at address, you can get back to it. You see, that's all we're talking about, the two-plane swing. The plane line is on top of the shoulders to the ball. Interestingly enough, hogan was a one-planer and his book showed a two-plane plane line. You see the left-arm plane line. And so, anyway, did I get too far off subject there?
Speaker 3:No, our listeners are very educated golfers. They love to go into the weeds, so please have at it.
Speaker 2:Well, so anyway, that's how, I believe, people find their own thumbprint.
Speaker 3:Now that's amazing. That's an amazing explanation and it goes into intentions. We change goal strings. Sorry, we can change goal strings by changing someone's intention, and what you said really resonated to me. If you see the task as moving the ball forwards, your string will be a certain way. If you see the task as moving the ball upwards, your string will be a certain way. If you see the task as moving the ball upwards, your string will be a certain way.
Speaker 2:That's right. Now I will say something that's probably very controversial. You can change golf swings all you want to. The hard thing is to change club delivery impact. You see, you don't deliver the club from waist-high to waist-high with both arms looking at the ball. You're either swinging the club down at the golf ball with your left arm or you're swinging it down at the golf ball with your right arm. Now what do I mean by that? I mean your left arm is pointed at, if you will, the target line, the golf ball, the target line, and the club is lined up with the left arm. That's the way two-plane golf plays. Or your club shaft is lined up with your right arm and your right forearm is lined up with the golf ball. Now you have ben hogan or sam sneed or george newton or so, on your left arm lined up. You have justin thomas yeah, well, bubba's is the other way because he's left-handed.
Speaker 2:Now that's what's hard to change, Because if you want to change somebody from a two-planer who's always found the ball with his left arm, you can flatten his golf swing out, but he's still going to try and find the ball with the left arm. That's our locator place going 100 miles an hour. That's our athletic center, you see, and I've seen so many people work as hard as they can on changing their golf swing, and they do, and they play worse and you go. Why is this person playing worse? Because I believe the title of my fourth book was the release. Golf's most important, it's the most important, it's the magic of golf. You see, magic of golf, you see, and if your swing shape all of a sudden no longer matches your release pattern, you can have the prettiest darn golf swing that ever was, and it won't work. For instance, adam Scott for several years played terrible golf, had a beautiful golf swing. Nobody would ever say Adam Scott didn't have a beautiful golf swing, but his release pattern didn't match what he was doing with his golf swing.
Speaker 2:When somebody falls off the earth a good player, that's what's happening and that's that fourth book I wrote is really my masterwork, because the two things we're going to talk about in a moment creation and correction that's the bridge between the two. You see, that's the bridge between all right, I've improved my swing shape, but I'm still hitting, hitting all over the joint. You see, that's because we haven't we, we've ignored impact, we've ignored club delivery. And so my teaching. I was very lucky. They used to have a, an award they gave away to players on the pga tour of the year called comeback player of the Year. Called Comeback Player of the Year Award. I had four players win that award. The four players that won it all had lost their games and lost their card and came back as winners and had great careers. So I guess I'm more proud of that than anything else that I've ever accomplished.
Speaker 3:So these comeback players were Peter Jacobson, Scott McCarron, Olin Brown.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Olin Brown did it at age 47 and hadn't been exempt to play on the tour for three and a half four years.
Speaker 3:And then he shot some silly number at the US Open, if I remember.
Speaker 2:Well, he shot 59 on the second round of qualifiers at the US Open. Then he led the US Open after 36, was tied after 54, and played in the last group with Michael Campbell.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was 95. Sorry, 2005.
Speaker 2:Punted like an absolute dog, but a couple of months later he beat Tiger at the Deutsche Bank in Boston. Now here's somebody who started the year at age 47 with the only thing he had was a past champions category which got him in like five or six tournaments. When they go down the champions list. Here's somebody who started there and finished the year I believe 13th on the money list at age 47.
Speaker 3:And who was the last one?
Speaker 2:Peter Jacobson won it twice.
Speaker 3:Ah, okay.
Speaker 2:The second time was when he won. It was when. Well, the first time was when he had not played and he came back and played. The next time he won it at age 49, when he won at 49 after having an artificial left hip, uh, four back surgeries uh I think that was it and an art and uh, two shoulder surgeries. So he, he was out, he was down for the count, he was gone and came back and won.
Speaker 3:Amazing. So by now you would have piqued the interest of our listeners. Let's shall we go to creation and correction, the bridge to lasting improvement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, creation, like I, your listeners probably hadn't seen that little clip you took out of the the 1990. The Koji Summit.
Speaker 3:So to our listeners. We're referencing the 1990 PGA Teaching Summit where Jim presented and made mention of John Jacobs' influence on his teaching philosophy. Go get that if you can.
Speaker 2:You see, when I was growing up as a player, we didn't have any really teaching aides like like get your camera take a picture, or if you did happen, what we did is we took Super 8 movies, whole movies, and then you'd send them off to get developed and they'd come back two weeks later and you'd put them in a projector and now you'd forgotten about what you were working on. Anyway, by then we didn't have any any, any you know, uh, where you can put it in and draw lines and everything else. I can remember what I used to do is I'd get a video of somebody and put it down to my old vhs and then I'd put tracing paper on my tv screen and I would put lines on it. That way, I remember the first time I ever put lines on Ben Hogan I went well, he didn't do what he said he did, because his backswing, his downswing, was on top of his backswing and he always said his backswing was under his. I mean, his downswing was under his backswing right there. But anyway, as a player I was only interested in the quality of the shot that I hit. I didn't care. I put my shoes on backwards if I could hit it better. You know it may make any difference. I don't care what the club looked like. Was it functional? And guys are saying that a beautiful club. I said I don't know, can you hit it? So for me as a player, I was interested in one thing my impact and golf ball, and whether it was correct and whether it was repetitive.
Speaker 2:Well, when I would go to other teachers, other teachers would always teach to their prejudice and I do not mean prejudice in a negative term there, like you're prejudiced against something, prejudice meaning this is what I like. And so you'd stand in front of them and if Bubba Watson came up in front of, say, gardner Dickinson, gardner Dickinson would have had a heart attack and would have said now we've got to change everything. You know, because they taught off of what I call swing shape. So there's two areas that we're looking at what? What does your swing look like? How does it function? How does it function, how does it sequence, how does it everything else? So we're dealing with swing mechanics there to try and improve them. That is what I call creation. That's being an artist or a sculptor or something. You come and you start 12 steps to a better backswing or whatever it is, but you're definitely dealing there.
Speaker 2:The second one was when I knew John Jacobs was the greatest teacher in the world. The first day I listened to his opening clinic and I watched him and I went. This man can't make a mistake. Everybody, if they simply do one or two things John is telling them to do, hits the next ball better Period Period. You see, john made it go backwards.
Speaker 2:Instead of looking at somebody's golf swing and saying, well, gee, did you see how far across the line that was? Did you see how shut that face was? Wow, did he tilt his shoulders instead of turn them? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. John instead wanted to know what the misses were. Were the misses pushes, hooks, fat, thin toe, heel top. By the way, there's three different ways you can top a golf ball. Were they pulls, were they hooks, were they low traps, were they whatever. And he would get when he was training teachers, he would say first, understand what their ball flight miss is. Second, understand what the club was doing at impact to cause that miss. Number three, it's now time to look at the swing. What were they doing during the swing to cause the club at impact to do what it was doing? And finally, make sure you're looking at the origination of the error, not the culmination of the error. And finally, how do we want to change that Now?
Speaker 2:I actually use the word. How do we want to fix that? You see, fix is a very negative word to golf instructors because they think you're taking a shortcut. They think you're doing something unreliable. Fix is wonderful. If I call a plumber to my house and I say I've got a broken pipe and the plumber says, well, we're going to see. I'm not sure. But if another plumber comes and says hey, I can fix that, wow, he's hired, he can fix it.
Speaker 2:I cannot begin to tell you how many phone calls I've had in my life from players, from junior golfers' parents, that say do you know how to stop a hook? And I say, yeah, it takes about two balls. The reason it takes two is because they don't believe what I'm going to tell them. On the first one They'll say well, he's been to so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so and he's still hooking. I said send him over, because you see, now we're talking about club ball contact. What is it doing? How do we change it? What in the swing is causing it?
Speaker 2:When I do golf schools and I do my opening remarks, I say you're not here for plastic surgery. I am not going to make your swing look prettier. Now, it might, it might. Whoa, won't that be great. I'm going to do one of two things, or both things. The two things that I'm going to be working on is to make your impact more correct or more repetitive. You've already got a good impact, but unfortunately it shows up about three out of seven times, and four out of seven it's off the world because it's not producing a repetitive ball flight. The second thing is that's the second thing. So there's two things. One is to give you a better impact. Two is to make it more repetitive, and maybe we get both, but we're going to get one of them. You see, now that is my bridge between creation and correction, because there's nothing I have ever told a student for 40 years. Wow, I'm old, 40 years. There's nothing I've told them that would not have a direct relationship on impact. I'm going to make that impact better or more repetitive. By the way, I'm going to use a swing-shaped tool to do it. They might think that they came for a lesson, to just get their shoulder turns deeper, maybe their left arm more pronated in the backswing. No, they came because their impact came out of a swing that was way too narrow, and every once in a while, on a Thursday at seven o'clock in the evening when they were playing golf by themselves, they could hit it perfect. You see, the rest of the time they had no chance.
Speaker 2:I have a dog and a cat story. I tell I was a dog man. I had an old, wonderful cocker spaniel that named Sonny Lou. That only could do one athletic thing when the toaster went off she could sit straight up on her big old fat butt and she could beg and not move off of that position until you finally gave her some toast.
Speaker 2:Now, my neighbor friend, he was a cat man, or at least his family was, and they all had cats. Well, one day we were sitting on his back porch and just talking and all of a sudden you heard this cat growling and it fell out of the tree and it landed on his feet and just walked away. Now I thought that was pretty cool because that showed what an unbelievable athlete a cat is. So a couple of days later I caught one of his cats and I held it upside down by its feet and I dropped it and it landed on his feet. Now that cat didn't let me catch him for about a week, but the next time I caught him I even gave him a toss and he still landed on his feet. Now, if I had done that, poor old Sunny Lou, sunny Lou wouldn't have landed anywhere but on her feet.
Speaker 2:Now, what's my point here? My point is what we're trying to do with somebody who comes and that's most everybody that says you know, I can really hit some good shots and I don't want to change my golf swing. I want to understand what I have to do to hit these good shots, because I hit so many horrible ones. They're change adverse, which is why most people won't take a golf lesson, you see, because you're going to ask them to make a change here. We got a new grip, stance, posture, backswing, whatever.
Speaker 2:You see, I tell them the dog and cat story and I say that I'm sorry, you're not a cat, you're not Bubba Watson, who has a golf swing that should be a plumber, but he can find an impact with it, you see, and I say you have to be more in position. If I'm going to drop you, you have to have all four legs pointed down and about this far off the ground so you can land on your feet. You see, and that's when people start trying to imitate tour players in particular, you don't understand what you're looking at for openers there. You're looking at a cat, you're looking at somebody that can find the golf balls hanging upside down the tree, and that's why it's so easy to screw those guys up is because they can find impact from places that the rest of the world can't. You see. So when I'm trying to get somebody more repetitive, I'm trying to get them into a position where their natural impact is easier to come to. You see, if I'm trying to get somebody into a better impact, their impact's already crap. I'm not trying to make that thing more repetitive, do you see? So I've got to make some swing-shaped changes that will allow them to get a better impact, because they're not a cat, you know they don't.
Speaker 2:So the biggest opportunities I find in teaching to bridge what we're talking about here between how do we get somebody with a better impact or more repetitive. How do we get somebody with a better swing shape? Well, first of all, like I said, I'm not going to tell them anything that's not going to affect impact either to make it better or more repetitive. The easiest chance I have occurs in the downswing, if somebody makes a reasonable backswing. Now, what's a reasonable backswing has a circular element to it. That has an up and down element to it. Now one plane puts it all into one two plane. The arms do the up and down and the body does the turn. You see, but if it's reasonable I don't have to have perfect.
Speaker 2:Somebody can say, well, gee, whiz, isn't he a little too bold at the top? And I'll go. Well, have you ever seen one of those guys who really play? Isn't he a little cup? Yeah, I've never seen one. I mean, I'm not a model teacher. That way he's got a good enough back swing.
Speaker 2:Now, how is he going to find impact? The best way? He's either going to find it lining the club up with his left arm and lining his left arm up correctly with the ball and learning how to square the club face, how to square the club face. Or he's going to find it easiest to line the club up with his right arm, point his right arm at the ball and release the club. Now, one of them releases the club with forearm rotation. The other one releases the club more in a throwing motion if you will. But I can get immediate results that way Now, if they need a backswing something, but that's, that's if I do a golf school and I've got 15 people at it, I've got two backswings, I've got 13 downswings, or what I call club delivery. The release golf moment of truth is what I call, and put truth in there somewhere because play group, but it is, and so it's. It's more than a release, it's what I call club delivery, if you will.
Speaker 3:So that's the repairman part of the instruction. Can you talk a little bit about the architect of it? And with that let's talk a little bit about the matrix that you and Mike Crisanti founded and I guess the elements you look at and how to neutralize it, that's more long-term development.
Speaker 2:That is correct. That is long-term development. The matrix is. We've used it as a certified. I was never going to certify a teacher because they're not going to learn enough from anybody in two days, three days, what have you? So our certification is three days, certification is three days and we have to give them a tool they can go home with. That will answer every single problem in golf whoa and how to find it. We built a matrix. The matrix has right at 400 professionally shot videos, teaching, teaching videos in it. It covers two portals that you go into. You can go into it by ball flight, you could go into it by swing shake.
Speaker 2:Now, when I say ball flight, we categorize ball flights into several different categories, but basically we have 14 of them. We don't call a hook a push hook, a down the hook, a pull hook. If the ball's moving left, it's a hook, a slice is the same, you see. So you've got balls that miss right, pushes hooks. I mean balls that miss right, pushes, slices, shanks, heel shots. You've got balls that miss left Toe balls, hooks, pulls that'll miss left. Then you've got balls that go too high. Those can be either chopped chunks that go straight up in the air white paint on this, or you've got balls that are too lofted right there, that go up too high. You've got balls that go too low. You follow me. You've got tops, for goodness sakes. But anyway, we bring the thing down to its easiest to understand terms so you can go into ball flight.
Speaker 2:You say I'm hooking too much. Boom, that will take you to the portal of hooking. Is your golfer or are you a one-plane golf swing or two-plane golf swing Meaning do you swing up and down as you turn your body or do you go this way and you identify there? So then that takes you to the causes of hooking. If you follow me, basically all hooks are not caused by a closed club face. Now I get past that with my certified teachers. The first day I say would you agree with me if I said to you a hook is a face close to the path? They all say yeah. I say you're right and never let me hear you say that again.
Speaker 1:And they're kind of startled.
Speaker 2:And I say because the English language identifies the villain as the club face. A hook is caused by the club face goes to path. That's wrong. The villain is the path. The path is to the right of the club face. You follow me, yeah? So I say would you please explain to people a path is to the right of the club face, because somebody who starts the ball five yards right of their target and hooks it out of bounds think they had a closed club face. The club face was five, was open enough to start the ball five yards to the right. How can that be closed the path if their club face was two degrees open, their path, I promise you was 10 degrees to the right. Make some effort Anytime you go. What's to the right, that's to the right. Bringing the club up is to the right. Bringing the club too much from the inside is to the right. You see, too much body thrust shoves the club off to the right. I can go on for hours. Too much supination. You know golfers hook more because they open the face in the downswing. When you open the face of a golf club, you stick it more behind the arm and the club swings more to the right Soccer players understand how to hook a ball into a net or slice a ball into a net, better than golfers do, because a golfer thinks he's over the top with a closed club face.
Speaker 2:Wow, he doesn't understand it. You know what touring pros think. That Isn't that amazing. They're out there trying to make a living. They don't know in terms of club ball contact. Club ball contact is so critical and that's why John's still my mentor, you'll see. But anyway, back to the major, so you can find out all the reasons. Somebody hooks at a. There's four swing segments and two motors. That breaks down to eight, eight chapters, if you will. Two motors arm mode arm and club motor, body motor. Add a dress. What would be the reasons?
Speaker 1:in the body motor.
Speaker 2:Somebody hooked what would be the reasons? With the arm arm motor they hook backswing body motor, arm motor, downswing body motor, arm motor, impact and fall through body motor and arm motor. So each one of those has the reasons that that could happen. Click on one of those reasons and it goes in there and tells you what that fault is. Is there something prior in the golf swing causing that fault? In other words, let's say I'm looking at the downswing, it's too much into F.
Speaker 1:So you wonder well, I'll go to work on that. Well, hang on a minute.
Speaker 2:Let's see if there's anything prior in the golf swing that could have caused that. So you click on backswing and club across the line at the top. Whoa, he's a natural that's going to drop it off that way. So you go, I wonder if there's anything. Yeah, he stood at address in a super k position, you see, or in the backswing he started to backswing by turning his right hip dramatically away from the ball would suck him inside, but across line. So that's our teaching tool.
Speaker 2:If you go in by swing shape, your questions you're asking aren't about ball flight. They're asking asking how do I fix a closed club face to lay off at the top on a two-pointer? How do I fix spinning out the hips and dropping back on the right leg, so on and so on and so on, and it will give them eight when they get in the right swing shape place. Any fault they look at will give them what it is, what the solution is, and give at least three drills to cure that fault. If you will, some of the more difficult ones, believe it or not, have about 10 drills. Ones, believe it or not, have about 10 drills.
Speaker 2:Now that's what the matrix is really made of. It's a teaching tool. It's really meant to be read or looked at. I think I'll look at two of them tonight. It'll be fun. Maybe you go two months, you don't look again, you go what? I've had a student that's been doing that lately. I think I'm going to look that up, see what Jim and Chris have to say about that. So that's part of our instructor training program.
Speaker 3:Basically the Bible of how to fix a golf swing Exactly.
Speaker 1:I like how you guys.
Speaker 3:I golf swing. I like. I like how you guys. I really love how you guys have codified the cause and effects of a golf swing and ball flight mistakes and, over the years, the concept of pluses and minuses and neutralizing them has really shaped my instruction and helped so many of my students my instruction and help so many of my students. So could you just quickly talk a little bit about the impact of face angle, path and width and how our listeners can quickly use these concepts to improve their impact and their golf swing after listening to this wonderful episode with you?
Speaker 2:You know, so many players that come really don't understand anything about what they're trying to accomplish with the golf club and the golf club relative to the golf ball, you see, and they're worried about well, was that too quick? Did I not turn enough? Did I not do any of these things, do you see? And so we start our students and our instructors, certainly, on understanding the basics of what John Jacobs taught me what is the club doing? The basics of what John Jacobs taught me. What is the club doing? What are we supposed to do with a golf club? Yes, yes, the average eight handicapper that you know, he'll be stumped, you see. So, golf club, golf ball is so important. Now let's understand what's the single most important thing to do in golf. The single most important thing is hit the ball solid, not hit it at your target. Hit the ball solid, you see, because we cannot plan one club out of our bag, including the putter. Sometimes, if you can't hit it solid, you know you're 153. What do you think't hit a solid? You know you're 153. What do you think? Hmm, wow, somewhere between a hell of a nine iron and a really crappy hybrid, which one's coming out today? You've got to hit the ball solid. Now what about impact? Club and ball goes into hitting the ball solid. That's a pretty good one.
Speaker 2:Well, after years and years and years of doing this, I came up with the fact that John had said impact was about face path and angle. And I said well, I think it's more than that. And I added one I added width to the bottom of the swing, because if you've got too sweepy a bottom for the club you're playing, you can't get the ball high enough in the air. If you've got too narrow a bottom for the club you're playing, you usually hit the ball too high or can't find the bottom in the right place. So I said number one, the angle of attack into the ball has to be correct for the club you're playing. And he said well, wait a minute, you just put a condition on that for the club you're playing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, each club has a different length and has a different loft Each club. That's why Sam Steves, first guy I ever heard say it he said well, I'm driving at my best. I'm not ironing at my best I'm. He said well, I'm driving at my best, I'm not ironing at my best, I'm ironing at my best, not driving at my best Driver requires a shallow upward angle or at least a sweepy angle, and you'd go well golly, if a driver requires that, then my three would, and does too. No, you can't get it in the air if you use a sweepy angle. You see, a three wood, a two iron, a one iron, a three iron, really a four iron, are not sweepy clubs yet they're long clubs, and you'd think that wanted to be a long club. It's just the opposite with short clubs, wedges. You see, you'd think, well, I'm real close to him. I need to swing up and down and have a narrow bottom, narrow bottom. You're the worst wedge player in the world. You need to have a sweepy bottom there.
Speaker 2:You need to have a Lee Trevino bottom if you want to be a great wedge player. Butch was very, very smart. The first thing he did with Tiger he said you're a terrible wedge player. Now Butch didn't say his bottom was too narrow. But Butch knew intuitively his bottom was too narrow and he made him shorter and wider. So he got anybody's a bad wedge player.
Speaker 2:That's easy Take off the top half of their backswing, the top half of their follow through, and tell them to quit trying to hit wedges full. Now, all of a sudden, this lofted club, the ball, doesn't run up and down the face of the club. The club and the ball have the same force through it. So what I finally came up with is there are two things that determine whether you're going to hit anything solid repetitively with any of the clubs. One of them, you've got to have a fairly neutral angle of attack. Fairly neutral If you want to be a great long-arm player. That thing has to be a little bit steeper so you can hit down and get the ball up in the air. Three woods, you see. But if it's fairly neutral I can still hit my three wood, my driver. So the angle of attack. The other one was the width to the bottom of the swing. You think why aren't they the same thing? No, I can have a very narrow width and be hitting on the upside of that width all the time. I'm going to catch the ball on the very bottom of the golf club. I can't take a divot, you see. So geometrically wise I love math, I was a math guy Geometry wise even though the angle of attack and the width to the bottom of the swing are not the same, they are not. But golf swing wise, they, about 90 of the time, will always work. Meaning, if I have too narrow a golf swing or have too steep an angle, I call call that a plus. That's easy for me to remember because plus has a down in it. Now, if I have too shallow an angle, that means I'm hitting up too much at the ball or not steep enough down. Or if my swing is too wide, late spino couldn't get a long iron in the air. You see, then that's a minus. That's very easy for me to remember because you circle the field.
Speaker 2:Now, every golf swing mistake, every ball flight not golf swing ball flight mistake, every single one is hit out of an impact that is either two minus or it's two plus, meaning a slicer always has either the angle too steep, you see, or too narrow. A hooker usually always has the thing too shallow coming up. Pushes are shallow, pulls are steep, chop chunks are too steep, fat stems are too shallow, and so on. So all of a sudden I realized that every ball fly in the world came out of one of two impacts Either they were too steep, they were two plus or two minus.
Speaker 2:I then realized that every move you make in golf, every single one, will to one degree or another. When I say one degree or another, that's the amount it will affect. It can affect it little bitty or a whole bunch, but anything you do in a golf swing will change impact, making it either more plus or more minus. So all of a sudden I realized one night everything in golf is a binary code. Everything all ball flight misses are coming out of. Either you've got something too plus or you got something too minus.
Speaker 2:Every swing shape I throw in there is going to affect the impact the same way. Now let's say that I say I'm going to turn your backswing and going to theoretically help you come around more to the left in the downswing. So that would be a plus. It would steepen up the golf swing. If I'm going to restrict a turn in the backswing, I'm steepening the golf swing, do you see, now, only by a little bitty. But if I tell somebody I want them to turn into it and feel like they're swinging out to in whoo, that's a big one.
Speaker 2:You see, the largest minus you can make in a golf swing, in the downswing with your body, is a hip thrust. Swing with your body is a hip thrust. Now, all two plane swings are inherently too narrow. The narrower they get, the more you better never stay in your spine angle. Watch Jack Nicholas, watch Payne Stewart, watch Justin Thomas, watch all two planers, hip thrust. And yet we're saying one of the things we've got to really work on is stay in your posture. That's a big plus, staying in your postures. Hogan not only stayed in his posture but he went down. He needed some pluses. His golf swing was so flat and so rounded and so sweepy in his posture, but he went down.
Speaker 3:He needed some pluses, his golf swing was so flat and so rounded and so sweepy, he needed an angle in there somewhere. You see, can I interrupt here, jim, and say this so many pro careers have been destroyed because of the lack of understanding of what you just said. People talk about oh, you're early, extending. Let's get rid of that. Let's get the butt against the wall. Too many careers have been derailed, yeah.
Speaker 2:They absolutely can't find impact. How about today, most all touring pros not all, but most all, I will go as far as to say 98%. So when they miss, their impact is two minus. It's too shallow. Somewhere they're hitting pushes, hooks, fats and fins. You see they're not hitting chop, chomp deep divots, pull the ball and slice it.
Speaker 2:Now what is one of the things they're teaching people today? Let's everybody shallow the club from the top. Shallowing the golf club is a mega minus. So we're going to tell a touring pro he needs to shallow the golf club from the top when his impact is already two minus. You see, now we've made him some minus. He can't take a divot, he can't hit the ball in the middle of the club face.
Speaker 2:Yet everybody says I grant you, if somebody's swing is too steep or too narrow, they're plus. Shallowing the golf club at the top of the start, down is a wonderful thing. Down is a wonderful thing. You see, because I'm going to pick. I'm going when I teach. I got two toolboxes. One toolbox is full of minuses, one toolbox is full of pluses. You see, I go out there and my student has two plus and impact. I'm going over here to my minus toolbox to work with him on. I'm going to tell him things that will make his golf swing. I'm going to move this thing from plus to minus. I may tell him two things that do it, but I'm going to tell it to him until that bottom of that golf swing becomes neutral. What's neutral? He's got a good impact, he's hitting good shots and he's fairly repetitive, you see. So that's kind of the story of pluses and minuses.
Speaker 2:We tell all our certified instructors when they come the very first day, we say look, I don't care if you learn anything about one plane swings or two planes per minute, I care about this. Whatever you teach, whatever you're teaching, I want you to write down tonight all of the moves that you prefer to see in a golf swing and figure out whether those moves are going to make the impact wider and shallower or narrower and steeper. Because? And then realize that you've probably got a whole bunch of moves that are all minuses, which is good if you're teaching players that are all pluses, you see. But how about when you get a good player in front of you? More good players are ruined by instruction today than bad players. More, I'm going to say, single-digit handicappers get worse. I can't tell you how many people come to our golf schools. I say what's your handicap? 13. Well, what's the best? It ever was Two. How long ago was that? I don't know? Three years ago. Well, did something happen? Did you get in a car wreck? No, no, start taking lessons.
Speaker 2:One of the things we do for level two instructors is we go through instruction books with them and we everything that instruction book tells you you're supposed to be doing. Now we give it a grade. That particular move. This guy says I want you to turn your shoulders as far as you can. That's a big minus. Okay, so we're going to give it a one, three or a five. That'd be a five minus. And then he also says I want you to flare your right foot out a little bit. That's a minus too. So that's a turn more, but it's a one, you see.
Speaker 2:So at the end of the day, we've charted everything and there's only one book maybe two books I know of that come out tied. Mine's one of them. John Jenkins' Practical Golf is one of of them. Every other book comes out overwhelmingly minus, overwhelmingly minus. It's as though the only people that buy books are chopped slicers. They don't buy books. I hate to tell you, but the people who buy books are eight handicappers trying to get to four. Well, they really are, and most of them are already suffering the push-hook-fat-thin syndrome that I call. Either they hit their driver really good and their irons are just terrible, or they're a little bit on the other side and they they're a good iron player and they can't find their ball with a driver, but that's.
Speaker 3:Go ahead. Now that makes so much sense. You talk about the eight handicappers buying the book to get four, and then they actually add another four strokes to their game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that happens, that happens.
Speaker 3:Happens all the time. Because they can't translate the information. Yeah, and that happens.
Speaker 2:That happens, Happens all the time because they can't translate the information and neither can their instructor. I can't tell you how much criticism when my first book came out and I was talking about how the golf swing has to come from end to end and you've got to let the club come back in hard. The club face has to close and go left. Now, when you tell a hooker that he needs to close the face of the club relative to the target, to close the face of the club relative to the target, not twist it closed. Close the face relative to the target and let it go left to carry his hook, he kind of goes. Maybe you haven't seen where my ball's going, but my ball's going left already. Do you want me to do that? Now? The world of golf understands that a slicer we want him to swing more to the right Understands that Slicer kind of goes. That's where I'm already going. Yeah, but it's an opposite game. The more you swing to the right, the more it hooks. I got it. But the minute you tell a hooker the more you swing left, the more you're going to cut the ball. They don't believe it. You see, it goes back to our soccer player. It goes back direction of playing path, what's happening, direction playing and path is far more important than what happens to face. There's a whole lot of great players play play with the club face. Bruce Litschke started the ball left of his target and faded it. Now, if he started it left of his target, you see, the club face was pointed left of his target. When he hit the ball it was closed. His path playing simply was shifting the force left of the club face. You see, I actually call it force rather than path, because force more identifies.
Speaker 2:If I took the center of mass of a golf ball, look straight down. In fact all of our instructors. So we're going to get a big styrofoam ball, stick it on a pointer stick, put a line around, put it down here, down on the ground. There the balls down the ground. And I get them to understand that if the center mass of the golf club goes to the right of the center mass of the styrofoam ball, the ball hooks. If it goes through the middle, the ball goes straight. It might go straight right, depending on the direction. If the center of mass comes to the inside of the center mass of the golf ball, the ball fades. It fades every time, you see, and that's how I get people to understand hooking.
Speaker 2:Try and make the ball spin this way. I don't want them to do it here. That's a weak way to hit. I want the club face to release more on an arc left. That's how you smash the ball and fade it. That's what Hogan figured out.
Speaker 2:You see, when Hogan said, when he said I never hit the ball high enough and feared the hook and my solution was to open the club face as much as I could in the downswing and delay the crossover. And all I did was get worse. And my secret was I reversed that. I opened the face in the backswing and then closed it as hard as I could with my right hand in the downswing. And the harder I closed it with his right hand, the more the ball faded. That's a release faith.
Speaker 2:Now I hope some of the more sophisticated golfers in the podcast are listening, will be willing to try that. You see. But just stick a styrofoam ball big ball, big styrofoam ball on a pole and start hitting it with a golf club and see which way it spins, what you have to do to make it spin. Kick a soccer ball and see what you have to do to make it spin. Kick a soccer ball and see what you have to do to make it spin, Because golfers are sophisticated in terms of where they see all the swing shape stuff, but they're still unsophisticated about club and ball and impact.
Speaker 3:So, in closing. Jim, I'm sure you've captured the attention of our listeners, made up of really good golfers as well as instructors who are looking to perfect their craft. Can you talk a little bit about your plain truth certification module and the summit?
Speaker 2:We, we have been doing that. We've had, I think, about 670 right now. People all over the world come through the program. We used to have a training center in Brussels, belgium, and one in Dallas, texas, and we would do certification for all of Europe and everywhere else out of Belgium and then we do America and Canada and some of the nearer places out of Texas. Our immediate project we're into right now is take all the filming and it's taken us quite a while to edit it, but we're going to put the certification online so people in Singapore can very inexpensively watch the certification, take the tests on each chapter and then take the final test.
Speaker 2:You see, we're cutting down the amount of certifications we do in person. We just did one. Chris and Andy Treanor just went over to London and did one about three weeks ago. We're doing probably the only one we're going to do. We're only going to do them once a year. Once we get this thing online, the next one will be in Orlando and it will be at the same time as well, not the same time. It will be just before the day, the two days before the show starts down there.
Speaker 2:So people are coming to the show, can take advantage of that. They can find out about it on our website, plain Truth for Golfers, and it'll be listed on there. It'll be listed what all it truly does mean, but it's a complete introduction to the matrix. But it's a complete introduction to the matrix, but it's a complete introduction to the two ways we've talked about teaching. Which is creation that would be one plane or two plane Correction. You see which should be all the pluses and minuses and how to apply it. So the first day is information. The second day is application. How do I apply it? And we do it through tons of video. We do it through live teaching. They don't do live teaching, chris and I do live teaching and we teach anybody.
Speaker 3:You know, we line up the students ahead of time and off we go, teach and that's it for the certification thank you for your gift to the world of golf, and Jesse and I are so blessed to have spent this hour and a half with you well.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it's, it's, it's, it's. It's really my passion to be able to share what so many people have shared with me and, in turn, my life's work and Chris's life's work, and really Andy trainer I didn't mention him, but this has been a collaborative effort. I didn't learn this in a vacuum. There is no way I can ever thank John Jacobs enough for his contributions to what I've done, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk to the golfing world, like you've given me, and I want to thank you and jesse a great deal for that, because it's it's very important to me that I'm able to help people, especially at this time of my life we're very humbled by that, thank you humbled by that.
Speaker 1:Thank you, yeah, thank you, jim, for this enlightening conversation and your contribution to the game of golf and helping us all play the game that we love. I think I could speak for a lot of really good players that we put our unconditional effort and blood, sweat and tears into playing a game, hitting a ball solidly most of the time or we try to and helping us understand what's under the hood and how we can fix it, how we can apply it and move on. Life's better when we're playing well.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It is. But thanks again, guys, and god bless you all and everybody out there thank you jim thank you, jim jim hurdy.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen,