WEBVTT
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Golf Smarter number four hundred and forty six, originally published
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on July twenty second, twenty fourteen.
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Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
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insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
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Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
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interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
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like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
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What you really have to have is a relationship with
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the target, not the target itself. If you try to
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point perfectly towards something, your arm in your hand will shake.
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If you try to hold a cup of coffee perfectly still,
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you'll spill it. But if you just calmly find a relationship,
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it's like looking through a window, and where your hands
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end up is kind of like where the window is sitting,
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and you're trying to get your hands in a relationship
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with that target, not reach toward that target. Just like
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firing a gun. You see the target and you're pointing
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a gun in relationship to that target, but you're not
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actually trying to get to the target. I think that's
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another mistake people do is they try to guide things
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toward a target. You have no control over that golf ball,
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literally zero. So what you've got to do is control
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what's within you. And the only thing that's within you
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is this balance that comes to finish in relationship to
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that target.
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See it, feel it, do it. As told by Jimmy
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Demura to Evan denn This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back
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to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
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Evan, Hi, Fred, how are you doing today?
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I am so well. I've already got the Texas accent. Wow,
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I've talked to you for ten minutes and I am
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so well. You're contagious, my friend.
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You haven't heard the real Texas accent. Go to West Texas.
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Oh well. You know, if I ever spend like a
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week in Atlanta, which I used to do a lot,
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I would have to go down. I would come home
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with all y'all. Yes, I love all y'all, and even
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I go to New Orleans. It just takes a couple
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of days and all of a sudden, I've picked up accents.
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It's nuts. Yes, it's been a long time since we've spoken,
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but we've continued to promote your power Field Golf DVD
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and training booklet on the Golf Smarter website at our
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golfers Maart and we have been getting reaction to it.
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People find it and they purchase it. We really appreciate
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you selling it here.
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All I appreciate you carrying it too.
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Well. Yeah, and it's been what two thousand and nine,
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episode two hundred and eleven was the last time you
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were on, so there are people who will remember you. Yeah,
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though people remember you, but there are a lot of
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people who have not heard about power Field Golf, and
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I thought it would be great to reintroduce them to
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that and talk about what's going on in your teaching
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and your method of teaching because I found it very effective.
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Well, I would say the biggest thing Fred that's gone
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on since we last talked is my goal is always
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to make it simpler because I feel the simpler you
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can make the game, the more fun it is. And
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you know, get people to understand how to use their
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inate abilities rather than trying to imitate or copy somebody else.
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And you know, like I was always told, when you
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try to paint by numbers, which is what majority of
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instruction is, and they try to tell you what positions
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to be in that doesn't fit your body. Everybody's different.
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We've got five hundred and something paired muscles and we
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have to learn how to use them the way that
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works best for us, not the way that looks good
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with Rory McElroy or Adam Scott or somebody else, because
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we're just not going to be able to do that.
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Unfortunately, that's true.
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Yeah, but yet we can find our best game if
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we know where to look.
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Yeah. Well, one of the complaints are the major complaints
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of golf is it's too hard, it takes too long,
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it's too expensive. So when you're saying make it simpler,
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are you talking about making the game simpler or making
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instruction simpler?
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Well, really both, but instruction and the way you go
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about practicing simpler.
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That's huge.
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Yeah. If you think about if you change the way
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you see something, what you see changes. And most people
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just see golf in the wrong way. They see that
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they're supposed to hit a ball with a golf club
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and make it go somewhere, so they're trying to control
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the end of the club rather than understanding how that
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really happens. It's just like if you tried to focus
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on the end of a fork while you're eating or
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the end of a fly swatter. While you're swatting a fly,
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you'll be very unsuccessful. Go on.
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I am enthralled.
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Okay, well, what I found over all the years, and
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it really goes back to what I learned from Jackie Burke,
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Jimmy to Merritt, and Ben Hogan and a few others
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like Julius Boris, who I was fortunate enough to be
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around because they were all good friends with my dad.
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And actually Jackie Burke and Jimmy to Merritt, I lived
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five hundred yards from the club they owned down in
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Houston called Champions Golf Club, and so they were my teachers.
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I started playing when I was nine, and as soon
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as they saw that I was going to be pretty good,
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they started helping me. Well what they started telling me
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was and unfortunately I kind of steered away from after
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I thought I was really good. I wanted to know
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too much. They taught me how simple the game really
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could be. But then once I got into probably my
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junior year of high school, I started listening to all
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these guys. They were talking swing theories and everything else,
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and rather than getting better, I got worse like most
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people do, and so I went through college doing that,
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played college golf major college golf, and then I played
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a little bit of professional golf. But I never felt
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like I had the same game that I did when
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I was fourteen or fifteen years old, because I felt
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like I had lost the ability to just feel the game.
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And one of the things you and I were talking
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to prior to the show we were talking to personally
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about was where see it feel it, and a lot
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of people call it trust it came from. Was when
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I was about fifteen years old, I was playing golf
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with Jimmy Demerit and he rarely played. He played like
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once a year, and he was in his late fifties
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back then, and he asked me to go play one morning,
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and so we went out to the golf course. He
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didn't warm up or anything. His clubs had dust all
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over them, which is in my book, and so we
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get out there and he just smokes it right down
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the tenth tee. We played the tournament course to a
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cypress creek course, and he continued to do that the
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whole nine holes, and on the eighth hole I was
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even par. He was like five under already, and I
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looked at him, I said, mister de merit, I don't understand.
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You never touch a club, you don't practice, you don't
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do anything. You come out here and you make it
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look like it's a walk in the park and there's
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no effort to your golf swing. He said, Evan, you
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see that green up there. He said, all I do
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is I see it, I feel it, and I just
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do it. And he said, I don't think about it.
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He said, I know what it feels like, and i
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know how to control the shot from my hands, and
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I'm not thinking. He said, I'm not thinking about where
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the clubhead is, or my foot position or anything like that.
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So and that's the way he grew up. He rarely
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made to feel the game.
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When you rarely make mistakes, you don't have to second
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guess yourself. For many of us who picked up the
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game later in life and don't play competitively, just love
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to play the game, but are always struggling. Every golfer
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is struggling to improve. That's all across the board. But
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for those of us weekend hacks, you know, we're working
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all week, don't get a lot of time to practice.
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Would love to practice more, you know, inch out every
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hour that we can in the backyard or at a
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range or something like that, wherever we can. I don't
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see it as being so simple like that. What am
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I missing?
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Well, what you're missing is where you focus your energies.
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Like I started to say earlier, where most people focus
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their energy is on hitting the golf ball and trying
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to steer it to a target, so they reach toward
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the golf ball rather than swinging toward the target. And
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one of the things Jackie Burke told me when I
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was probably twelve or thirteen years old was Evan, the
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golf ball goes wherever your hands go, good or bad.
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So if you understand how to get your hands to
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go there, and you have control of the club, then
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you have control of the shot. Now it's happening at
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a fast pace, you know, the usually you're swinging at
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about eighty to one hundred miles an hour. The clubhead
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is but your hands really aren't moving that fast. So
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it's the clubhead that's moving that fast. But your hands
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you can slow them down if you want, to speed
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them up if you want to. But the main thing
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is once you learn how to control the tool in
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your hands properly and direct that energy toward the target
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instead of toward the ball. You change everything.
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I like that idea, So let's figure out how to
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make it simpler for all of us. What are the
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elements that we have to focus on and what do
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we have to stop beating ourselves up with that's going
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to make well the process simpler.
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Okay, let's first get rid of the things you don't need.
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You don't need to know how to put your feet
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at a certain width. You don't need to know where
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to put the club in your stands. You don't need
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to know how to bend your knees. You don't need
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to know how to keep your head down. That's one
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of the worst ones, is keeping your head down because
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that actually gets in your own way of your golf swing.
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So think about that. You What you're really trying to
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do is have as clear and as clean a path
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for your hands to work on as possible. Well, that
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starts with balance. Balance is a feeling. It's a feeling
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of having a tool in your hands balanced that you
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can swing back and forth, not up and down, which
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most people swing up, down and out, and that's why
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most people slice it. But if you can swing back
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and forth with your hands balanced, then the body will
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support that action and it will give the illusion of
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an eye shoulder turn, a nice hip turn. It'll give
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the illusion that your head stayed down when in reality,
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your eyes are clearing the way for your hands on
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the follow through. So you know, if you really watch
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the players on tour, you won't see their eyes stuck
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on the golf ball. You'll see them gently guiding toward
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the target in front of the hands. So it's like
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it's like throwing a baseball. You don't look at the
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baseball while you're throwing it. You look toward the target
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and you kind of clear the way mentally and visually
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for your hand to come through toward that target. Well,
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the same thing happens in golf, but you can't do
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that until you put your energies, your mental especially that
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third eye. If you understand what I'm talking about, toward
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the target. In other words, if you look at something
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ahead of you in pre shot before you swing, and
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you bury that image in your head, then that's where
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your hands want to go. So then you hold that
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image in your head and you kind of do a
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blank stare toward the golf ball, which keeps you from
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focusing on the ball. It kind of takes it out
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of focus, if you want to say it that way.
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So what we're really trying to accomplish is this clear
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space for the hands to work in until they finish
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their work.
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Why do you use the word illusion?
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The illusion of the golf ball is. What you're really
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trying to do is get your mind. You know how
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when you stare through somebody, you're kind of daydreaming about something. Yeah,
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and you can look right at someone, but you don't
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really see them they're right in front of you because
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you're daydreaming. That's the I call that.
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I actually call that peeing in the ocean. That look
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you get on your face when you're peeing in the
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ocean's like exactly.
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That's what you should have on your face when you're
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standing over a golf shot and swinging, because that way,
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your mind, your mental energy is toward the target, not
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at the golf ball. Most people stare at a golf
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ball the way if I was looking at you, I'd
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be staring at your nose. It does very little good,
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doesn't do anything for me. You've got to be thinking ahead,
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not right in front of you. And that's why most