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
The Mindset Revolution: Shifting from Mechanics to Performance
Karl Morris, a performance coach based in the UK and host of the Mind Caddy podcast, shares insights on developing effective golf mindsets and transferring range skills to the course. He explains how separating training and playing mindsets can help golfers access their true abilities during competition.
• Two distinct mindsets needed: training (skill development) and playing (skill access)
• Five potential "one-points" of attention: target, ball flight, golf club, body, or something unrelated
• The red dot technique - placing a colored dot on clubface to improve awareness and impact control
• Becoming comfortable with variability and using errors as learning feedback
• Explaining shots with facts (dot was late) rather than opinions (I'm terrible)
• Categorizing shots as ones (good), twos (good enough), and threes (poor shots)
• Pre-allocating a certain number of poor shots before playing to reduce emotional reactions
• Ryan Fonk's breakthrough from shifting from avoiding mistakes to pursuing good shots
• The power of possibility thinking: "Is it possible this next shot could be a good one?"
• Simplicity often trumps complexity in effective golf performance
Find Karl Morris at TheMindFactor.com and download the Mind Caddy app for personalized coaching, including the new AI version that provides customized guidance based on Carl's expertise.
Justin’s email is justin@elitegolfswing.com
Please text Jesse at (831)275-8804 or
jesse@flaghuntersgolf.com
Jesse Perryman here with the Fly Hunters Golf Podcast, welcoming you to a great conversation with my man over there across the pond. His name is Carl Morris. He is a performance coach based in the UK, has a great podcast called the Mind Caddy, and Carl and I are pretty similar in our pursuits of getting down to the truths of what truly can help us improve playing this game that we absolutely love Anybody who listens to this. I know that you love this game with the passion and it's in the very fabric of our collective DNA, so I welcome you, and Carl and I are very similar. In fact, I really look up to him. I look up to him as a thought leader in this game and somebody who's not afraid to unturn any stone.
Speaker 1:He's had some phenomenal guests on his podcast and he also has a great performance practice, great performance coaching, which you're going to hear about in the main body of this conversation with Justin Tang and myself. He also has an app MindCaddy on all of the podcasting platforms MindFactor and if you Google in MindCaddy you're going to land where you need to land. I'll make sure that all of this pertinent information is in the show notes anyway, to give you direct access to Carl and his information and I highly recommend it and I highly recommend his podcast, mind Caddy. So go and check it out and get this enriching information that's really going to help you think outside the box and, quite frankly, you might find exactly what you're looking for to help your game.
Speaker 1:If you have any questions, he typically has the guest on that will answer any of these questions, no matter how ridiculous you may think it is. Cheers everyone, have a great week and keep them straight, and it's going to be a fantastic British Open, so look forward to watching that. Cheers everyone. This is Jesse Perryman from the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, welcoming you to another edition along with my co-host, my partner, my friend, my commiserator, justin Tang, out of the Tanimera Golf Club in Singapore, and Carl is gracious enough to donate an hour of his precious time to us so we can enlighten you on playing this game that we all love a lot better.
Speaker 2:Gents welcome.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Jesse.
Speaker 2:Great to be back. I always enjoy the conversations that we've had in the past.
Speaker 1:Indeed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Thanks, Carl, for gracing us again with your presence Today. It's a very special episode. We'd like to talk about mindsets. I think in the game of golf, skill sets always takes the attention of most coaches as well as players. But I think before we even go down the rabbit hole of skill sets, the mind must be in a correct place before it can acquire new skills.
Speaker 2:I think for me, justin and Jesse, I think this is a huge opportunity for coaches in the future. You know, I'm very much on the back nine of my career now. I'm maybe not quite at the 18th tee, but I can certainly see the clubhouse from where I am. In terms of where I am, I think that the real opportunity in the future will be for coaches who understand we really need to have almost two kind of personalities.
Speaker 2:Really, that's a training mindset where we develop some skills and understand impact conditions and things like that. But then how do we then switch that mindset to a playing mindset as opposed to a training mindset? Where we can, we can take the skills that we've, that we've got, and we can then access them on the golf course, which is the the only place that we need them really. You know, if, if somebody just loves hitting balls and they never play golf, well that's fine, that's, that's a decision. But I think the vast majority of people do feel that they've developed some skill but they're not really accessing that skill when they get out on the on the course yeah, there's this uh saying called being a range pro.
Speaker 3:So you've got a swing of a range pro, but you don't learn how to score. So could you enlighten our listeners on the strategies they could take, they could utilize to bring their range game to the course? To bring their range game to the course? That's a loaded question. I think we could spend the next 45 minutes just talking about the various aspects of that topic.
Speaker 2:I'll just share a couple of things in the last couple of years, justin, that, almost by accident, have been found really useful with players and the kind of metaphors really. And one is is this idea that you can use lots of metaphors, but this is one. A useful one is that when you go, when you're trying to get better at golf, it's like the separation between being the engineer and the driver. You know the engineer would be in the garage making sure everything in the engine is as good as it can possibly be. They would check in all the sort of different systems, but then, fortunately, in formula one, you get out on the track and surely the driver, whether it's lewis hamilton or whoever, is focused on the task at hand, the the road in front of them, whatever they need to respond to what's coming at them in that moment. And further furthering that metaphor and this sounds a bit crazy, but it's really had an impact surprisingly, I've had players who've been struggling with this Literally when they now play golf, they wear different hats.
Speaker 2:They wear a different colour hat. So the blue hat is the training hat, where they appreciate that they're in a certain state of mind to learn skills, and then perhaps the red hat is the, a different color is then the playing mindset and it creates this, this spatial objective separation between the two. And even on the range, when you were in the red hat, when you were in, when you're going into the playing mode, you go to a different part of the range, you go and do a different set of tasks to actually then elicit those skills. And what's become a fascination for me in these last few years and it's from conversations with Justin yourself and certainly Jim Waldron a lot of the time is what is actually going on in that that 1.2 seconds that we, that we swing a golf club. Where is our attention on the golf course in that time? 1.2 seconds, which is just a click of the fingers in objective time, but for the mind it can be an eternity, because we've all experienced we're out on the course and within that 1.2 seconds, how many different thoughts can pop into our head within that time. It's, it's incredible what the mind's capable of, and I don't think we, I don't think we spend enough time, enough time as coaches really trying to find out. I call it becoming an attention detective. Where is the best place for an individual player to have their attention in that 1.2 or 1.3 seconds to elicit their skills, to actually get out of them what they have capabilities of on the golf course.
Speaker 2:And a lot of this came as a hopefully I'm not going on too much here, but just to make this sort of final point on this is that a lot of it came for me from maybe the most influential book I've ever read.
Speaker 2:It was a book called the Principles of Effortless Power by a guy called Peter Ralston, and this book has got nothing to do with golf, but everything to do with golf in the sense that it's not a golf book, it's a book about martial arts, and Ralston talked in the book about how training in martial arts he was the first non-Asian to win some huge games in China and he talked about going into the dojo to work on moves technically in his craft, in his karate, and he would do things in slow motion and things like that.
Speaker 2:But when he went into combat, when he went into battle, if you like, in matches, he talked about the one point.
Speaker 2:And the one point for him was, he said I settle my attention in what they call in martial arts the dantien or the hara, the sort of centre point of the body. And he said, with his attention settled in that arts, the dantien or the hara, the sort of centre point of the body. And he said, with his attention settled in that place, that centre point of the body, he said all movement seemed to emerge naturally from there, that it was almost as though his body knew what to do. And that kind of got me thinking that, wow, martial arts is teaching us something here that you train in one environment and you think in a certain way, but then you go in combat, in the matches, you go into a different mindset. And he's talking about this idea of a one point. So I've become fascinated by that the last few years and I think every player listening to this with their coach could really do a lot by exploring what potentially could be their one point to elicit their skills.
Speaker 3:That's such an interesting last two minutes. You spoke about Peter Ralston. You were the one who turned me on to his teachings and when you mentioned the Hara, the Dantian, that one point. It really brings to mind the concept of the here and now. Like you always teach me being present in the now, that's almost like a focal point for golfers and I recall Tim Galway when he was shifting his focus from teaching only tennis to golf. He came up with this back hit so he got his students to think of hit at the point of impact and that's almost like an equivalent for Peter Ralston's Tantian Ohara.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, what I've kind of not said this is I'm not saying this is the absolute truth, it's just the kind of where I've arrived at, justin is that I think there's potentially five one points that everybody could explore and it varies a little bit depending on you know, your development and where you are with the game. So the five one points that I get players to explore would be number one would be the target. You know some players just holding the image of the target in their mind's eye for that 1.2 seconds. That can be really effective. The ball flight seems to be another one point that's effective. Again, tends to be better players.
Speaker 2:The one point that I think a lot of people could perhaps look at and explore would be three and four. Now three would be the golf club. I mean, fred Shoemaker said to me 30 years ago. He said do you think you could keep your attention on the golf club, could? I mean, fred Shoemaker said to me 30 years ago. He said do you think you could keep your attention on the golf club, the face of the golf club, for the whole of the golf swing? And I thought, wow, that's got to be the easiest thing in the world until I tried it and then we started to explore this and what I've done with a number of players to highlight this and a golf club should be in my office here, but it isn't. You can never find a golf club when you need it. But, um, what I do with with a lot of players is actually, is actually, I'll draw a dot, I'll get them to get a sharpie and draw a dot in the middle of the club face, a colored dot, maybe a red or a blue dot, a couple of grooves up and there's a visual as a strong visual then, and then I'll say to them do you think that you can keep your attention on the location of that dot throughout the swing? Now, what is up, what is very beneficial with this one one? It's a great focal point. It's a one point, but you can also tie in.
Speaker 2:Pretty much every shot that you don't like in golf can be can be referenced back to the behavior of the dot on the club. You know, and I'll say, I'll say to a player you know, if the ball's going out to the right, the dot's coming in a little bit late. If it's going to the left, the dot's coming in a little bit early. If you get a good shot, it's on time. If it's too high, too low, if it's going to the left, the dots come in a little bit early. If you get a good shot, it's on time. If it's too high, too low, if it's too close to the ground or too far forward, so you can really drill into impact conditions with this one point, focus, but again, it's a great resting spot for the mind. The other one would be body. You could focus on body, but it needs to be something that you can settle your attention on for the duration of time, as playing thoughts for good players.
Speaker 2:And then the final one is a really interesting one, referring back to your Tim Galway point, justin, was that the fifth one is what I call unrelated and that basically would be that, for the duration of the swing, can you hold your attention, your conscious attention, on something that's actually duration of the swing? Can you hold your attention, your conscious attention, on something that's actually unrelated to the task? Now, this sounds completely counterintuitive, but there was a guy you'll perhaps both remember and know, a guy who was very well known as a manager of players, chubby Chandler. He had a stable of the best players in the world at one time Ernie and Rory and Graham McDowell and Darren Clark and all these guys and Chubby was a very good player, played on the tour for a while and I remember having a conversation with him where he said he said now it's making sense. He said the best year I had on tour.
Speaker 2:He said all the way throughout that year. He said I couldn't imagine the language that Chubby would use. He said I couldn't imagine the language that Chubby would use. He said I couldn't get a bleep, bleep, bleep song out of my head. He said and I thought that was a bad thing. He said and I had a great year with this song constantly in my head the whole time. He said I'd get over a shot and the song would be in my head. I'd hit the shot. I had a great year. He said I finally got. I finally got rid of it at the end of the season. He said, said and I was never the same after that. But the point being is that unrelated is an interesting area for somebody to explore who's just been lost in too much technical input. You know, galway in the inner game of golf suggested that people hum. They hum during the swing and that's a perfect example of an unrelated one point of attention. The conscious mind is occupied, while the genius of the body then takes over.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's such a great word, the genius of the body, you know. Let's just recap your five points, carl. The target hold the image in the mind's eye. Number two visualize the ball flight, something for the better players Golf club, the red dot on the sweet spot. That's amazing. And we'll go back to your three principles Intention, attention and attitude. The fourth one body, balance and tempo, undefeated throughout the annals of the history of golf. And number five unrelated.
Speaker 3:That really recalls to my mind Vijay Singh. He used to say 17. It's got nothing to do with golf, I don't think. I mean, if there's a 17th hole, well, you've got another one to play and then after that you've got the 19th hole. So it really doesn't make sense. Um, it's, it's. You know, the the five, these five points. What's common to me is that they are all abstract, so different from the swing keys, the swing thoughts that a lot of modern day coaches give to students. They go like, okay, keep the, do this shallow, get steep and all that. Those are very concrete type of swing thoughts, but here you're suggesting using abstract swing keys and that's, that's really more compatible with how the brain actually functions well, if you look at it from.
Speaker 2:You know there's guys that I've had on my podcast who kind of the pieces started to come together Me, stephen Yellen, who wrote Simplicity I don't know if you've had Stephen on your show, he's a great guest. Jim Waldron, obviously Izzy Justice has talked about you know being able to sort of reduce the electrical activity of the brain and different thoughts have different frequencies. Where you know being able to sort of reduce the electrical activity of the of the brain and different, different thoughts have different frequencies. Where you know, as you say, if you're, if you're very much into right, I've got to start the downswing by doing this and shallowing and putting pressure into the ground and all that kind of stuff. That that may well be fine for your training, that's part of your develop, developing your skills.
Speaker 2:But it's a state of mind on the golf course where the brain is revved up and then the ability for the body to coordinate movement is is affected. But I think that this here's what I think technology can be so useful these days. You know you could take this principle of the one point, become an attention detective and just just go and explore with your coach which of these points of focus, use technology, trackman or whatever, get some data. You know, hit 10 balls with one focus and then 10 with another, and just start to understand. And this is where I also think journaling is so important. You know, in the mind caddy we have a whole section on journaling about.
Speaker 2:As I said to players, success leaves a trail behind, but we often don't look for it. You know, start to become more aware of you as a unique individual and it might be in your game that different parts of the game have different one points. You know, putting probably is going to have a different one point than your driver. Or you know your short irons may have a different one point than your driver. Or you know your short irons may have a different one point. But just get curious about. You know, instead of we keep going around in circles, don't we?
Speaker 2:Whereby most people's experience of golf is this they want to work on the game, so they take lessons and they get better on the range. They go to the golf course, feel bad on the golf course because they don't perform. And when they feel bad on the golf course, where do they go back to? They go back to do more work on the range where they feel good again, and we're never really the elephants in the room all the time. We're never really addressing what is what is really going on in the gap between between training and performance, and and if you've developed skills but you're not accessing the skills, developing more skills doesn't help you access the skills, so it's this kind of insanity that we're in.
Speaker 3:Yes, I agree with you. Like our friend Stephen Yellen says, you've got money in the bank, but do you have the passcode to get the money out of the bank? And he mentions this concept of blending everything so that it's a smoothie. But in your smoothie, if you can see the seeds in there, you can see chunks of the watermelon, then it's not really a smoothie and it's not abstract. And, as his PhD partner, dr Fred Travis, says, you're not going to be able to access the genius of the body, as you mentioned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, one of Stephen's key sort of principles is counting the nines. I think you know nines is a shot and the ones and the twos.
Speaker 3:I kind of lost track and great.
Speaker 2:you know that's A it's abstract and B it's unrelated to the task, but again it's a perfect example. That would be a one point.
Speaker 3:And also not to make this podcast about Stephen, but he says something really interesting that we can tie back to point five of your your your uh points earlier is that it's not what you think, it's how you think it and it's really about uh. You can think unrelated thoughts, but it's how you think it. If it's a very hard type of focus, then you probably are going to disrupt the electrical signals to the body and then you will sense that hey, something's out of time, especially when someone says to me Carl, I'm going to try really hard on the back nine, yeah, and then you go like you mean you were not trying hard on the front nine. Like what does that mean?
Speaker 2:I remember a conversation with Laurie Cantor, who I worked with for a long time, and we were talking about the description of the shots. And you know, laurie, when he played his best golf he would be really, really in tune and really clear on his intention. But it was interesting to your point just in that when we talked about this there was a different way of describing the shot. One would be it was kind of like a conversational style oh, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna hit it over there and I'm just gonna draw it a little bit off that right hand bunker, just like a conversation between two pals just out for a round of golf. And at times the conversation got right I'm gonna hit it there, I'm gonna hit that bunker, I'm gonna do this. And there was an intensity to the conversation and we worked quite hard on that for a while of with this caddy, just describing the shots in a conversational style rather than in an intense style.
Speaker 3:And again, I think that's something that folks could explore you know, earlier you mentioned you use this term being curious. I wonder how many golf coaches and golfers are actually curious, as in they think out of the box. Hey, you know, we've been working on your over-the-top action. Hasn't really worked. Should we try a different approach? And I often say this to golfers if your practice swing or your swing key looks orthodox, it looks like it could be part of an actual swing, it's unlikely that it's going to work because the brain doesn't work in P1, p2, p3. That's great when we are dissecting the swing for analysis, but when we're learning a motion it really doesn't work that way. Think about the time when we were kids learning how to walk or learning how to cycle a bicycle. It's not step one, two, it's. It's like what you said is one. What's one? One it's one action. It's not many steps in that one action but.
Speaker 2:But that's the point about walking justin. I think such an important one, and I say so it's about all the guys I work with this. If you're gonna, if you're gonna change your golf swing, you've got to change your relationship to error in the sense that error error needs to become your friend yeah because because you know how did the baby?
Speaker 2:it still baffles scientists how the hell we learn to walk because it's such a complex skill. But a baby doesn't learn to walk by getting it right. A baby learns to walk by falling to the left, falling to the right, falling backwards, falling forwards, and eventually the brain organises around those errors and I think you know to be able to go out there and be comfortable with extremes, you know. Back to the dot again, you know if you can present the dot late and you can present the dot early, you can start to present it on time. But you have to be willing to present it on time and and but yeah, but you have to be willing to present it early and late and see golf balls go left and right for your brain to then organize somewhere, somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2:And you know there's so much, there's so much talk and there's so much emphasis on this world that we're in now, which is a very visual, very aesthetic world that we live in. We like symmetry, you know we visual, very aesthetic world that we live in. We like symmetry. You know we like nice buildings, we like to look at. You know, attractive people. We'd all love to swing it like Adam Scott and we worship at the altar of symmetry in golf swings. Oh look, how good this is.
Speaker 2:There's a world of difference between an aesthetic view of a golf swing and an actual function of a golf swing, and I think you know I've had some success with players and I've literally banned them from from looking at a video of the golf swing for for six weeks because they've got so tied in knots with the aesthetics that they just become numb to what's actually happening through impact. You know, and from a skill perspective we've had this conversation just in from a skill perspective, if you're not influencing your impact conditions, you're in the wrong place. You, it's just window dressing. It might look better that you're doing whatever with the golf swing, but if you're not influenced your impact conditions, you're not going to become a better player, I think we talked about this term before, carl being a golf swing fashion teacher.
Speaker 3:It can look good, but does it produce lower scores? That's the most important thing if you're playing golf for the sake of lower scores. And I think we also mentioned Jim Furyk. He shot 58, 59 on two separate occasions on tour. So people want those scores, they want his career earnings $75.5 million but they don't want his swing. That baffles me, because they are inseparable.
Speaker 2:Bernard Langer would be another example, justin. You know golf coaches should do it. There should be a PhD study in Bernard Langer. We should become doctors at doctors at Bernard Langer study. You know here's a guy in his late 60s who could still win, you know, on the main tour almost, and you know, missed the cut in the Masters this year by a shot. You know playing a course that's hugely long for somebody that age. But my God, this guy's career spans you know what is it? Four or five decades or what it is, whatever it is. And you know he's a perfect example.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't necessarily copy the aesthetics of Bernard's golf swing, but he's become a master in understanding himself. He's a master at knowing what he can and can't do. And I think you know we, as I say, we live in this world now that is so it's so sort of skewed towards how things look. We're also skewed to the perception of expertise. I I still I've said this in some of the seminars that I do, I'm still waiting to hear this that I've spent the greater part of my life walking up and down driving ranges and practice grounds, as you guys probably have, and I'm still waiting to hear this whereby you'll get two guys who were stood on a range and you know two buddies working together and one guy will hit a ball that goes 50 yards to the right and he'll turn to his friend and he'll say what did I do wrong there? And I'm still waiting to hear this answer for the first time. I don't know.
Speaker 2:The lure of expertise at every level is very powerful, isn't it? And some of the stuff that you hear when somebody asks that question what did I do wrong there? Oh, you did this and you did that and you did something else in the latest sort of alphabet suit. One thing we know if that ball's going 40 yards to the right, it's probably something to do with the face orientation at impact, and if you're not looking there, you're looking in the wrong place.
Speaker 1:I got to add something here, boys. I think the conversation around Scotty Shuffler is fascinating. I mean it's really fascinating. I mean everybody wants to look at his footwork and they classify it as not teachable, idiosyncratic, all that stuff. But there's two things that Scotty has right now and they're both bordering on, shall I say, tiger-esque. And in every interview, every single interview, that man says I'm really good at staying in the present moment, I'm really good at accepting mistakes. Mistakes are going to happen. And when we're talking about aesthetics, he, I mean I, I really think he could give two shits less about how it looks. I mean he really doesn't care.
Speaker 2:In fact, he and randy smith, they don't use video a lot, they don't even use track man a lot I I I had a great story from a good friend of mine, randy joiner, who's a great player in the states.
Speaker 3:Randy's a great, great uh coach. We need to get him on too great, can you?
Speaker 2:and I'll introduce you guys, because he's a fabulous guest and he told and he does a lot of radio now on the pga tour and um, he told me a story about Scotty Scheffler and Randy, and apparently Randy calls Trackman the drama box, which I think is a great phrase. But what he did say was that you know, in that final round in the PGA where he kept going left all the time, you know, eventually his caddy said to him you know, you've just got to square your shoulders off, we've just got to get this thing starting a bit more to the right. And he didn't panic with it, he didn't go into swing stuff. And Randy said to me that the conversations he'd had with Randy Smith he said primarily the thought that Scotty Scheffler plays with his. One point is he basically because he's trying to get that little fade all the time. He all he tries to do most of the time is make sure that the heel just gets to the ball a fraction earlier than the toe and that's it.
Speaker 2:Now people would hear that and think I can't be that simple. I had a guy. I had a guy in Canada a few weeks ago. I was doing some schools over there and we were talking about the dot on the club face and he did some good shots thinking about the dot, and then he turned to me and he said he said it can't be that simple, can it? And I said I said, how long have you been working on your golf swing? He said, well, I've been working on it for over 20 years. I've been working on it for over 20 years.
Speaker 2:And I said, well, chances are, if you've been doing this for 20 years, the 21st year isn't going to be the year that clinches it for you if you stay working in the same way. And it's almost like we refuse, or many people refuse, to believe it could be simple. It's simple but not easy. I think that's the principle, and what we're looking for these days is complexity. And unfortunately, it's very easy to look for complexity because we can just keep going to the next thing that titillates our mind. You know, getting the dot to arrive on time requires some effort and some skills and some observation, some feedback. You know, just looking at the latest video for the latest secret, that's easy, but you're never really going to get anywhere with that yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 3:You mentioned this red dot thing. That is an incredible uh task if you think about it. We're trying to swing a small red dot on the end of a golf club that's 45 inches long across what? 28, 30 feet of an arc, depending on the length of your arms. At high speeds the body needs to self-organize itself for the red dot to collide with the center of the ball. And it's interesting what you mentioned about complexity simple can work, but I think most people let their egos get in the way. Like I'm paying the coach us 300. Like can't be that simple, I want to hear something more complicated. But if the coach can't explain it in a manner that an eight-year-old can understand, then maybe the coach himself doesn't understand it. There's this phrase that I often use with people and it's this we teach complexity simplified, but some people make the simple complicated.
Speaker 2:The principle with the dot, which you know. I remember first doing this in China a few years ago with a bunch of kids and got them to draw a dot on the club face and then a dot on the ball. And I'll still. I can still close my eyes and just hear the sound of some of these bullets exploding off the club face, because what I'd given them was a one point that I recognised now, but I'd also given them a clear intention. And this is where the genius of the body can come. If you allow the genius of the body with a clarity of intention, your body can organise movement because that's how we've survived as a species.
Speaker 2:So you know, we can't logically work out perhaps how we could get a dot to arrive on time to hit the dot on the ball, but with an intention to do that, it's amazing how efficient the body is to be able to do it, and even relatively sort of not relatively even beginners have done this sort of stuff with. And it's amazing how very quickly they start to get the idea of it and they start to become in tune with that golf club and in tune with the club face and we must be the most detached sport, of any sport, from the implement or tool in our hand. You know, a baseball player is in tune with that bat. A cricketer is in tune with the bat. It's wimbledon at the moment back in the in the uk. Those guys are in tune with that tennis racket. Every sport snooker players, billiard players, pool players are in tune with the cue. Most golfers have got no achievement whatsoever to the tool in the hand because the retention has just been diverted somewhere else, with lots of technical information given to them by somebody else.
Speaker 1:Great point, Carl Great point.
Speaker 3:Every other sport, we're fixated with the implement that we're using, except golf. Except golf, we're thinking about positions, largely. You know, Kyle, just know you talked about the, the genius of the body. Give it an intention and the body will self organize. Could you give our listeners some helpful tips for commonly faced problems on the range? So so, perhaps we could, we could have one for an over-the-top move something for thin shots perhaps?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think you know, for me a great one would be. I was talking with Andreas Carley a while ago. He was a guest on the podcast and Andreas is a great golf coach and I know we've talked about this, justin, about you know, what separates better players is controlling the low point, isn't it? You know, if somebody just got a fraction better at controlling the low point, well, you know, the golf would be pleasantly surprising for them. And just simple things. Like you know, can you place a tee in front of the golf ball in the ground and have the intention to collect the golf ball and the tee and then just sort of move the tee around and it sounds again, it sounds really simple. But my goodness, by doing that you start to become more efficient with the club face, with the low point. You know, I think if somebody's got an out-to-win swing, I don't think the brain does anything. The brain doesn't do anything for no reason. Why have we got an out-to-win swing? Why have we got a path eight degrees to the left? Because it's the brain working out. It's the only way that it can keep the golf ball on the course if you've got an open face. So we've got to get that face sorted out, I believe, before we can do too much work on the path. So again I'm beating the same drum, but can you get the dot there really early? I say to players, you've got permission these next few shots to get the dot to the ball really early. It might go 30 yards to the left, but we don't care, just get the dot there early and they start to organize that face better and then if the ball isn't curving 30, 40 yards to the right, the brain starts to say, well, we don't need to swing it left anymore. So again, you know the key and this is where I think we need to be honest as an industry that when you look at the golf swing you could either get involved with the macro or the micro. The macro would be the overall fundamental movement patterns.
Speaker 2:Now, I'm not denying that working on fundamental movement patterns could be really, really beneficial and make you swing the golf club better. But if you're going to undertake trying to change fundamental movement patterns, you better know what you're buying into. Because if you're going to change fundamental movement patterns, it probably involves lots of swings indoors fundamental movement patterns. It probably involves lots of swings indoors, lots of swings in the mirror, lots of slow motion swings. This is a long haul process and if it's a 14, 15 year old kid, absolutely that's what we should be teaching them, because efficient body movement is a great support for what the club is doing.
Speaker 2:But let's be honest 99.9 percent of people who play this game have not got the time where, with all of the physical capability, to make much of a fundamental movement pattern change. But what you can do is you can focus on the micro, you can focus on what's happening with your impact conditions, with the club face, and we can genuinely make progress with that. So you know, I don't think we're honest enough as an industry and say to people know, I can give you all this stuff about how your body needs to move and I can give you great information about ground reaction forces and all that kind of stuff. But unless you've got the time to practice this and you're willing to work at it for a long period of time as I said, probably indoors in front of a mirror I'm giving you information that you're not going to be able to turn into movement. However, you can get that dot to the ball a little bit earlier on the very next shot. That, to me, is the choice we should be giving people with honesty and integrity to do that.
Speaker 3:So essentially, carl, what you're trying to do is change five things with one intention Get the red dot there early or late. What we would call being variable would change the five dysfunctions in the golf swing. But, as you mentioned, as an industry today we seem to have lost our way. We want to teach five things, to change that one thing, when the opposite is more or less the truth. In how the brain learns motor movement patterns, we almost seem to want to complicate things so that we can sound smarter, so that we know we appear to know what we're talking about because we're using jargon.
Speaker 2:But the red dot, no, carl, that's just too simple, that's too simple and that doesn't make me look smart as a coach. You know there's a lot of complexity underneath that simplicity. But you know, and this is, you know, I think every one of us I'm sure, jesse and you, justin, we've all been down this route. Oh, yes.
Speaker 2:If I had a shred of integrity, I should look up everybody that I gave a golf lesson to for the first five years of my career and give them the money back, because the only exercise in the early days was for me to sound as smart as possible and show everybody my credentials and show how many things I knew about the golf swing. And you know, I think eventually, as I say I'm, I'm on the back nine now and I probably say things a little bit more as I wouldn't have done in the past. But you know, a golf lesson is not about you as the coach. I got a golf lessons about the person in front of you and if and if you, if you're not, if you're not providing an environment that helps them learn, no matter how smart they think you are, they're not going to get better. You know, and there's, you get so many people who's you know the, the, the sort of, the appearance of, of knowledge and having secrets and things like that as a coach can seem to the ego. It's very, very appealing. You know I've got all the secrets. You know it's a very, very appealing thing to the ego. You know and I look at.
Speaker 2:You know I've spent so many years walking around golf courses with, with players and the coaches have been there and a player will hit a shot offline and they'll look at the coach and say what did I do there? And in the past I've heard people say, well, you did this with the left hip and you did that and you did. And I look back and I think this is just absolute bullshit. How on earth can you determine what the body is doing from shot to shot? It's just not possible. But we can determine what the face is doing. We can determine the dots.
Speaker 2:Too early, too late, you know, and I think it's a stark choice to make that as a coach, I think it's very, very important that you go and study the golf machine and you go and look at all the technical side of it and really understand it in its entirety. But to then take all that information and deliver it in a simple way. That's that's where I think genius is and that's where the great coaches, the mike head, bronze of the world, and the fred shoemaker's. You know, fred shoemaker knows the golf swing inside out. I know that for a fact. But he doesn't display that like a peacock to the people who he coaches. Yeah, because I think.
Speaker 3:I think Fred is so enlightened he knows that it doesn't matter what you think about me. What matters is you hit the next ball better. Yeah, exactly, and this is why I always now that I'm older, wiser I tend to gravitate to older golf professionals because if they're humble, a lot of the ego has already been stripped away and they tend to give you the unvarnished truth, just like what you're doing for our listeners right now. And you know, I want to talk a little bit more about this red dot being early, being late and then being on time. That's really how the brain learns things. As you alluded to kids walking, I fell to the right, now I put more weight on the left. Oh, I'm falling to the left, and then it's kind of like calibrating. So with the red dots, it's early, it's late and then, oh okay, it's just nice. So can you talk a little bit about the value of variableness as we acquire skill?
Speaker 2:I think you know, if you're to have a range session there and let's say you've got a 7-iron or a 5-iron, something like that, and you just become, you put your red dot. It doesn't have to be red if you support a different football team, if you're an Everton fan, it can be blue or whatever. You know, you just stand there and put the dot on the club face and then you know, hit five balls and you know see how late you can get the dot to arrive and the ball will go a long way to the right and just become really curious about that and then go the other way how early can you get it there? And you start to just get interested in those conditions. But it's the variability, instead of standing there trying to repeat movement over and over again, which I think you know has limited value in terms of skills, very limited value actually, whereas if you're exploring the outer edges, then your brain is in a really high learning state. If I can deliver the dot really early and I can deliver it really late, and then I can start to adjust in from that. Now I start to be able to have some awareness of where that club face is. You know why? Why from our conversation today, why is Scotty Scheffler so far and away the best player in the world at the moment? I would say is because his awareness of what that club is doing through the swing. He's just on another level.
Speaker 2:I think Tiger, at his very best, had an incredible awareness of. I mean, tiger talked more about his hands rather than the club, but he, his very best, had an incredible awareness of. I mean, tiger talked more about his hands rather than the club, but he had an incredible awareness of where that golf club was. Do you remember? I think it was at the Masters, where he was on the 12th. Was it on the 12th or the 13th? No, not the 12th, 13th or the 15th. He was on one of the par fives and I don't know.
Speaker 2:If you remember, it was years ago. He started his swing and he started the downswing and a bird flew in front of him and he managed to pull out of the shot. Go back to the 1960s. There was a study done with Cochran and Stubbs in the search for the perfect golf swing and they tried to work out at what point could you abort the swing, and I'm going to butcher this, but I'm pretty sure that they found that most people, when they started the downswing, couldn't actually stop the swing. And I saw Tiger do that and I thought, my God, can you imagine the level of awareness of what he has, of where that golf club is in space to be able to pull out of that shot like that?
Speaker 3:you know, you. You mentioned this word awareness. I think we could replace that or with, uh, open-mindedness as well, where you're open to what can happen. And I think that that kind of mindset really comes from understanding that mistakes can be feedback and it's not failure. And this is why students should not avoid variable training, because on some occasions the situation might call for the red dot to be early or late. So a shot that strays to the right or to the left, as the case may be, may not be a good, bad shot in and of itself. It depends on the situation.
Speaker 2:It does. And I think it's back to what I said at the start, just in that for me, to get somebody to get better at the game, the relationship to error has to change. Yeah, that we're so invested in doing it right and poor shots are such a dent to the ego that we become fearful of poor shots. And then what kicks in is that on the golf course, that the golf course becomes a place to avoid poor shots rather than pursue good shots. And when our brain is perceiving an environment as a threat, you think about what the primeval response is to threat. The primeval response to threat is to fight it, to flee from it, to run away or to freeze. And I think, again, we don't understand that with this relationship to error. If our brain is perceiving the golf course as a threatening environment, no amount of training on the range is going to protect you from that. It's, it's that relationship.
Speaker 2:And this is where, again, when you're on the golf course with the dot, for instance, is when you've hit a poor shot or an outcome that you don't like, you can explain a poor shot. One of two ways you can either explain a poor shot with facts or opinions. Now, if I hit a poor shot and it's gone 30 yards to the right. The fact is the dot was late, that's a fact. The club face must have come in a little bit early. I've not shanked it, you know, I've. I've got the cliff. I pretty stuck, struck it pretty solidly and it's gone. It's gone off to the right. That that dot's late, that's a fact.
Speaker 2:However, what most people do on the golf course, they don't explain poor shots to themselves in terms of facts. What they do is give themselves opinions, and opinions such as I'm useless, this is terrible, I shouldn't hit shots like that. I'm such an idiot. And opinions inflate our brain Sorry, inflame our brain. They inflame the emotional reaction and most people are out there giving a bunch of opinions. So a bad shot becomes the end of the world. When you start to explain shots on the golf course in terms of facts, not opinions, there's a neutrality to that that allows us to accept the shot, as you've talked about, and then move on to the next one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great statement, carl.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we were talking about taking our range game to the course and we've got two colors here blue and red. Earlier you talked about training being blue color, your blue color hat, and then playing with the red color hat on, and then now you've got this concept of the red dot, then playing with the red color hat on, and then now you've got this concept of the red dot. So could you, could we, could we then utilize the red dot in training by focusing our attention on it, and then what do we intend to do with the dot? And then create a variable training framework, and then, when we get out on the golf course, we put our red hat on, we start to respond to the environment, as you say, carl. What does the situation require? What shot is required? And then you kind of go back or at least our listeners go back, to how should the red dot behave? Would you think that there would be a fair summary of bringing our range game to the golf course?
Speaker 2:I think that's spot on and one of the things that you could do in practice is a very simple game for me, but it's a great training game as opposed to being involved in mechanics. But it's simulating the requirements of the golf course, where you would perhaps finish off your session and you would give yourself 10 balls and 10 different clubs, 10 different targets, and each shot that you hit is either going to be a one, two or a three. So a one would be a good shot, a two would be good enough and a three would be, for you, a poor shot, by whatever level you you would deem it. And it's a great exercise to do a because you're picking different targets, you're using different clubs, all of the stuff that we've perhaps heard in the past about variable practice. But the beauty of this is that you start to practice how you would explain a three. So if I hit a poor shot, if I hit a three within those 10 shots, I can then start to think okay, it went to the left, it went to the right, I caught the ground first, I caught it a little bit thin. What must the dot have done on the club to produce that shot? So I start to practice, I start to train explaining shots to myself in a kind of competitive environment way. So I'm simulating this shot is going to be given a measure of quality one, two or three. If it's a one, fantastic, enjoy it. If it's a one, fantastic, enjoy it. If it's a two, acknowledge it. But if it's a three, okay. What's the story here that I'm going to? Am I going to give a story of fact or opinion? And it's a great way of getting into that mindset.
Speaker 2:Then, and I'll say to players, every round that you play for the rest of your life will contain those three types of shot. You'll you'll hit good shots, You'll hit good enough and you'll hit poor shots. Even if you shoot 58, you'll still hit some poor shots, probably in them. And I say, your future as a golfer depends on your relationship to those three shots. And if most people were to examine that, if they listen to this podcast now and they wrote wrote those three shots down. So write down number one, good shot. Number two, good enough, three poor shots. And just ask yourself and and have an honest conversation with yourself, what is your current relationship to those three inevitable outcomes on a golf course and, for most people, what they end up doing, especially better players. They end up having a relationship where one is only just good enough. So one is what I should do. They have no relationship to two, ie an acknowledgement that, yeah, that wasn't a great shot, but it was good enough.
Speaker 2:It found the fairway, it found the green, and then they have a a relationship where they're trying to avoid threes, that that they really don't want to see threes. They don't want to see threes in practice, they don't want to see threes on the golf course. But what we're doing is we're denying the reality of the game. I've had some players it's been a big breakthrough for them before every, they'll give themselves a number of threes. Before they even start They'll just say, right, I'm giving myself 10 threes today, or 12 threes or whatever. Well, guess what? When the first three comes along, when the first poor shot comes along, it's just one of your quota, so you get on with it. We've got to find a way of pre-programming the acceptance of the inevitable chaos that the game throws at us.
Speaker 3:That's what I said Carl. I think Ben Hogan was once quoted as saying he only hit seven or eight shots in a round, the way he really wanted it to be.
Speaker 2:I think he said three, Justin, didn't he? I think that was his Three. He said he only had three or four shots and that's the most competent player that's ever played the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, I got to add to that too. Walter Hagen allowed himself seven bad shots before he even teed off. There we go. Before he teed off, he says I have a quota, I can hit seven bad shots before he started whatever, losing it. Or you know, he probably said something pretty funny back then. But yeah, imagine that one of the greatest players of all time in his era, you know, played against bobby jones and, uh, he allowed himself seven bad shots. And then I see the 15 handicap of losing his ever-loving mind if he misses a three-footer. Damn it, the guys on tour don't miss those I had an experience a while ago.
Speaker 2:I was with a guy. They wanted to do some stuff with me and I went to his golf course. Because I always, when I'm working with somebody individually, the first thing I always do I only I only do kind of 12 month programs when I'm working individually with people, but the first thing I always do I only do kind of 12-month programs when I'm working individually with people, but the first thing I try and do is watch them play some golf. You know, because you see the truth on the golf course, don't you? You don't see a sort of what they imagine that the golf is like.
Speaker 2:And this guy, he's hit a decent tee shot down this first hole, he's hit the green and then he's rolled it about 15 feet, he's rolled it four feet past and he's missed this four-footer. Coming back and he looks at me and he goes there you go. He said am I allowed to swear on this podcast? Swear away. And he looks at me and he said that's it. He said the fucking day's over. And I'm thinking, I'm thinking, jesus, that's some pressure if you miss a four-footer on the first and the fucking day's over.
Speaker 1:You know, that's one thing. That's one of my arguments with all of us who watch golf, especially at, you know, high-level, elite, professional golf is. The cameras don't show that, but those guys and girls out there, they're whiffing three footers, four footers regularly. You know they'll map it occasionally, you know not often, but that's why they work on their short games, that's why they have contingency plans. I don't see a lot of tour pros losing their minds after miss hit shots, but I see a lot of 15 handicappers that just want to go kill somebody after they miss a five iron. You know.
Speaker 1:I think that I want to add to what both of you are saying, especially you, carl, with the allowances. You know, here in the US we still don't teach acceptance. We still don't on a fundamental level, just starting in school, where mistakes are still demonized. You know, as as, instead of being not only a part but an integral part of the process, yeah, like, if this is necessary, you know it's necessary, it's necessary for the brain to see that so the brain can reorganize, take the information and reorganize. But our nervous system and our brain is not going to take that information unless we start to look at things objectively, and it's still a problem here in the US, not so much in Europe. I was just in Europe, where mistakes are a part of the process, fundamentally for the most part, and forgive me if I misspeak on that, but here in the US mistakes are still the devil. Yeah, and that's a problem.
Speaker 2:What was the famous Michael Jordan quote, jesse, when he talked about why he was so good and I've not got all the numbers to hand in the quote, but if you look up the Michael Jordan quote about why he was so great and he talks about all the shots that he's missed, all the free throws that he's missed he's missed 10,000, whatever it was he basically said he was great because he actually missed so many shots but kept taking on the next one. There was an acceptance. You know, one of the all-time greats in a sport. The foundation of his success, by his definition, was his willingness to accept the variety of outcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, greatest basketball player of all time, yeah, yeah but missed a lot.
Speaker 2:What a surprise. Yeah, sorry, but missed a lot. What a surprise, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, kyle, sorry, go ahead Jesse. No, no, no, go ahead. Justin Kyle, now is probably a good time to talk about breakthroughs. Ryan Fonks he won twice on the PGA Tour this year and Ryan's a client of yours. Could you talk a little bit about what you've been working with on Ryan and what were probably the key, the key moments before he broke through to win twice on the PGA Tour?
Speaker 2:I mean he's. I mean I've worked with Ryan now for seven years, I think it is, and we speak pretty much every week. And you know first of all I mean number one he's a great talent. If you look at his golf swing it's an unorthodox move, but he's been true to himself and you know his background. His dad was one of the great All Blacks. Grant Fox was a legendary All Black player and I think his granddad on his mother's side was a great cricketer, so the genetic chain has been pretty good for him.
Speaker 2:But one thing that we've worked a lot on over the past couple of years, something that we've touched on on this podcast, is shifting the mindset from avoidance to pursuit, in the sense that you know, even by his own admission, at times he would be out there on the golf course trying to avoid mistakes rather than pursue good shots. And and pursuit. Pursuit doesn't mean you're just recklessly taking driver everywhere or going for you know every every par five in two or whatever everywhere, or going for you know every every par five in two or whatever. But pursuit is ties back into that word that we've used today is is having a really clear intention of what you're trying to do with the golf ball. I mean, ultimately, you know when you look at a round of golf for everybody the next time that they play. If you can think about it this way is that you'll go out on the golf course and, depending on your ability level, you will have between 60 and 90 separate puzzles to solve. The golf course is presenting you with a series of puzzles and if you're in tune with the golf course, you'll see clearly what that puzzle is. And the answer to every puzzle is in the shape of a shot or a put. But what you do need to have is a real clarity on what you intend to do with that shot.
Speaker 2:And I think when we start to struggle with that game, we get away from clear intention, we get into avoidance mode and back to what we said all the way through this.
Speaker 2:If I've got clear intention of what I'm trying to do with the golf ball, it doesn't guarantee a good shot but, my goodness, it sets the foundation for the opportunity for that and then we can work on how to apply the club.
Speaker 2:And Ryan again by his own admission, when he is very, very much on the golf course into shots, he is a dangerous competitor because he's not scared of winning, and one of the things that we've talked a lot about over the years I'm sure you wouldn't mind me sharing this is is, and it was something that fred taught me years ago is this idea of of the art of the possible that, you know, a question that we can all ask at any time on the golf course when we're faced with the next shot? Is it possible that this shot could be a good one now, unless you create a story? Otherwise and a story is an opinion that it's not my day or I've lost my swing, or this is crap or I don't like whatever story it is we only shut down the possible with a story and the actual fact is the next shot that you hit on a golf course, it is possible it could be a good put or a good chip, and that was highlighted in the playoff in the Canadian Open.
Speaker 3:What an amazing three-wood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know the golfing gods smiled on him that day. They didn't smile on him a couple of years ago he lost a couple of playoffs in Europe through sort of freak occurrences. The other way that you think, hey, how the hell's that happened, but he lost playoffs. But the golfing gods said yes this time. You know one of the playoff holes he hit for him a really poor second shot on that par five. He spooned a rescue wood up in the air and was very lucky not to go in the water really, and that could have unnerved him.
Speaker 2:But then the final playoff hole, that question, it's so deep in him now saying is it possible this could be a good shot? And what possible does it actually actually in that moment, to a large degree it stops you going into the past, it stops you going too much into the future. Is it possible this shot right now could be a good one? And and the answer, unless, as I say, unless you come up with something that's a story the answer is always yes, and he was open to that possible. He was really clear on what he was trying to do.
Speaker 2:You know, three wood from 250, I think 256 into wind and knocked it to about six feet. So he said he went from one of the worst shots that he's hit in a long time to one of the best shots that he's ever hit in his life within a couple of holes and that's the top player at the height of his powers. So I I think there's a message there in it for all of us. Every round is going to contain some of the bad stuff, but is it possible that the next shot hit could be a good one?
Speaker 3:Possibility thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3:So in closing, carl, could you talk a little bit about AI, carl?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had this app just Justin for a few years now, called the Mind Caddy. It's a lot of players have used and in the Mind Caddy there's various programs in the training programs, how to get the best out of you, your practice and then sort of on-course stuff. But about 12 months ago the guy who's designed it all for me said we can, we can create the AI version of you. And I said what the hell do you mean? And he said he said well, basically, with AI we can feed in everything you've ever done or said all the podcasts, all the presentations, all the books and everything will feed it all into into AI. And then if you ask it a question, it will answer it as though it was you. And at first I thought, god, that's going to make me redundant. But no, I think that's not a bad plan, to be honest. But anyway, what you can do with this facility on the and we think it's the kind of world first I'm sure many will follow, but certainly in the performance realm you can basically ask it a personal question about your game, whether it's something happening on the golf course, whether it's the way that you train, it's you know how you deal with setbacks and things like that. If you ask the AI a question, it will answer as though you're sitting having a consultation with me and it was.
Speaker 2:It was something that we sort of thought. You know, I'm pretty proud of it, really, because you know the vast majority of people. You know I live in the UK. Not everybody's got the wherewithal to perhaps get over and see me, but you know for, really for the price of you know, not even the price of most golf lessons these days. You can, you can avail yourself of this, and it's like having a performance coach with you at all times. So, um, the only worrying thing is a few people have said that the ai version is better than the original thing, including my wife. So that's, but that's another.
Speaker 3:That's another story time always flies when we have you on the podcast. Yeah, fantastic. Can you tell our listeners where we can find out more about you, as well as your app?
Speaker 2:yeah, so if they want to go to my website, it's themindfactorcom. If there's coaches listening, we do the Mind Factor certification. There's going to be a new version of that, a learning platform that we're launching shortly, so anybody interested in becoming a certified Mind Factor coach they could have a look at that. I know a bunch of guys over in Thailand did the course last year. But then the app if you're interested in you can do a free trial, test it out for yourself, see if it's going to work for you. You basically just go to the app store, look for MindCaddy, search for MindCaddy. Oh, there's a website, the MindCaddy, If you just tap in Mindcaddy, If you just tap in Mindcaddy to a Google search it'll take you to the website and you can have a look around there.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much again for your time, Carl, and for your wisdom that you so generously and graciously dispensed to us.
Speaker 2:I've thoroughly enjoyed it, fellas. I always enjoy having a chat with you and great questions. Thank you, enjoyed it, fellas. I always. I always enjoy having a chat with you in great, great questions, thank you.