EP. 42 | Scott Fawcett on DECADE, a Revolutionary Course Management System Using Complex Analytics to Simplify a Player’s Approach

Scott Fawcett (@decade_golf)  joins us on this episode.

A former college golfer for Texas A&M, Scott Fawcett never got his professional career to where he wanted. He had one appearance in the 1999 U.S. Open where he finished dead last in putts, leading him to create the DECADE Course Management system.

In this episode, we talk to Scott about how he came to create DECADE, and how combining shot distribution patterns and PGA Tour scoring statistics has helped countless players since its inception. 

Follow us on Instagram: @urbangolfperformance
Follow Mac: @mactoddlife
Follow Leo: @leo_ugp
Website: urbangolfperformance.com

Follow us on Instagram: @urbangolfperformance
Follow Mac: @mactoddlife
Follow Leo: @leo_ugp
Website: urbangolfperformance.com

Transcript

Scott 0:00

just stopped trying to make birdies and trust me, it's going to work out better.

Leo 0:13

Welcome to the podcast, Scott. Great to have you on, I mean, really, I think this started, obviously, I think we've all known about decade for a long time. And just recently, you know selfishly, I started to look into it more deeply because my club championship is coming up and I haven't practiced enough. So I was like, how am I going to get an edge? And I was like, okay, well, I've been seeing you know, your posts for four years and uh, you know, four players that played their whole life competitively. They're always nuggets that just stand out and makes you think. And so we, I dug deeper in and so that that's. Selfishly, why you're here, not just kidding. We're super excited to talk about this because there's so many topics to cover and it seems like just recently you've gotten a lot of traction and, and people are really taking this on at every level I think. And, and it's really interesting to have a something that PGA tour players get excited about and actually kind of beginners get excited about. So why don't you start just kind of talking about your background and, and how decades started and then we'll go from there.

Scott 1:31

Awesome. Well, you know, obviously thanks for having me on, and it's funny when you say selfishly, like that's one of my favorite things about Tim Ferriss, where he's like, I don't think I'm a unicorn. So anyone that I kind of want to talk and learn to, like every guest I have on is. I kind of want to talk to them and I just assume other people will too, and that should make it all work out. So I certainly appreciate you guys having me on, and I try to say some unique things in each one of them. So we'll see what we can come up with here. My background, you know, I'm a pretty good math and logic. It's funny because I definitely used to always play up more. I'm pretty good at math and definitely over the last few years of doing this, I realized that it's actually my background in logic when I was a kid who was in the gifted classes, whatever, but mainly I loved doing those grid style logic problems. And so for a full day, a week, when I would go to our little gifted classes off campus, I literally just sat there and did logic problems for like eight hours a day. And I would do them at home. Like I was definitely just obsessive about them, really enjoying. That in combination with being decent at math, but then honestly more than anything, I, I played professional golf. I played golf at Texas a and M I started electricity company back in 2002, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I went back and played golf again in 2009 through 12. And when I got my amateur status back that second time was right when the strokes gained, statistics were starting to be released. And I had already been playing a lot of poker. It's actually where I met Chris coma was playing underground poker here in Dallas. And I had already started taking my logic and understanding of the game of poker and applying it to golf while I was playing professionally that second time. And then in 2011 is when they started releasing the new strokes gain statistics based off of the millions of shots in the ShotLink database. And I was like, oh my God, like I could just see it immediately that if I know how many strokes it takes to hole out from anywhere, I can really start answering some pretty fundamental questions that have just been mysterious. In all these years, so far of, of golf history and that as a result, I could really help myself because I was a lunatic on the golf course and understanding just the realities of math and poker, especially because when you get all your money all in and some guy sucks out on you and it's awful and you just wasted a ton of money, but, you know, if we just keep doing the same thing, eventually I'm gonna get my money back. I'm gonna, it's gonna work out again, assuming you're doing the right thing. And I started realizing there's no reason that's not going to be true in golf. Also if we've got the data. So the first thing I started doing back in 2011, I actually, luckily for me wrote a thread on an online poker forum in the golf sub forum that was just titled as dry for show putt for dough. Really true. And the only reason I'm lucky I did it was because there's definitely enough people that don't like me out there in the world that have been like, you've just copying other people's stuff and you're taking all the mark Brody stuff and just acting like it's yours. And I'm like, well, 2011 before anything came. And you can already see the wheels turning. So, you know, again, I tried to play professionally again while having a full-time job and a kid at home, shockingly that didn't pan out. I went back and and, and got my under status back. And that's when I did all this work, combining track man and shot, you know, launch monitor data with the strokes, gained statistics. And then in 2014, when it was time to kind of try to put this stuff to use, I've got a cortisone shot in my right arm. And the guy paralyzed my right arm for a couple of days, which obviously came back to life. Yay. But as a result, he said, you really should not play next week in the text examiner. Well, you got to be kidding me, dude. I've literally done months worth of work to try to work on some strategy ideas. And in hindsight, it's the luckiest thing that ever happened to me because as a result of not being able to play, I called junior golfer at my home course, who I used to have to explain who it is. His name is Wilson. Arturis who we at this point, all know who he is. If you watch golf at all. And I just told he's a 17 year old junior golfer. I've known since he was in diapers almost, and played a lot of golf with them and tried to help him. But without having the data to support course management ideas, just, just, it all falls on deaf ears on kids. So I told him, I'm like, let me caddy for you next week. If you do what I tell you to do, you're going to, when we went to lunch, I explained to him all the math, he's a bright kid. I explained to him just everything about why, why we were going to do what we were going to do, because that's, I have always attacked every question and problem. What would it take for me at that age to listen and it's 17 or 25 and I'm like, you're really gonna have to explain to me why this is what we're doing. Cause it seems dumb in my opinion, and lay it all out for them. And then again, there's just a couple of key little things that I don't even really know where the idea came from to, to emphasize it so much. But I think that the most important thing that I really struck on early with will was I'm going to give you a target. That's not the flag most likely. And then you really have to try to hit it at that target. You can't aim five yards right. Of a pen and then hope you pull it. Like that's, that's the worst thing you can do. I'd rather you aim right at the flag stick. And definitely now seven years removed and working with a number of tour players and my own game. I know for sure. The vast majority of the outlier shots on the PGA tour come from. That just aren't committed to their target. I don't care what the target is and that commitment can be, I'm aiming away from a flag, but I'm hoping I pull her push it close. You've never once sat on a driving range and thought, I hope I pull it 15 feet, but now you're out there on the golf course on seven aiming right. Of a pin, because left is dead. And then you're hoping you pull it by the pen. Like it's literally the dumbest. We say that out loud. And I'm like, I feel like I'm sound like such a moron saying that's what we do, but that's what all tour players even do. And it really is just incredible because I do think there's some point in your improvement where you don't need like a a hundred shooters. What are you even talking about? That doesn't make any sense. And then you eventually get good enough that you're starting to kind of figure out a little bit of strategy and then you start aiming away, but you just don't have the patience and discipline to actually try to hit it away and trust your shot pattern. We didn't need a launch monitor. Tell us your shot pattern is huge. I like the fact that we actually did require getting to this point in time, but it didn't understand that a shocking, but so it really came down to telling, well, we're going to pick this target. That's not the flag you got to attack. Bambi winds, the Texas sand by three. And I'm like, that was unbelievable. I did not actually think that was going to be that easy. Luckily, the, you know, the U S junior five weeks later, it was here in Texas. So I went down and I caddied for him there. He won the U S junior hint. Honestly, he almost won the us amateur that summer people don't realize that he was third out of the 312 and the stroke play qualifying. And he beat the world. Number four in the first round, he beat Jordan Zeebrugge in the second round. And he lost in the round of 16 to the guy, the only other guy in the round of 16 that was under par. Like it was incredible. How great surely the main strategy was committing to the target and hitting the center of the green basically.

Leo 8:24

Is that, was that fair to say, or was it more because it's not. It's definitely not center of the greens. And that's, that's an easy thing about three posts to go on Instagram for me, it's decade underscore golf. I think honestly, I don't even know what it is. I've got another guy helping with that now, but you'll see that they did an overlay of shots over number 18 at pebble beach, and you'll see them centered over the hole.

Scott 8:47

The scoring average is like, I think it was 3.02 in the scenario that we were in 3.01. Here it is then center of the green again, 18 at pebble beach. It's not like it's a huge green, I mean, it's an average sized green. So laid over the whole scoring average is 3.01. The exact same shot pattern laid over the dead center of the green. The greens and regulation went through the roof. Scoring average actually went up to 3.03 because you destroy your proximity. Then the exact same shot patterns laid over the decade target with the strokes to hole out. And the average score was 2.92. And that for this particular shot, it was basically exactly halfway between the dead center of the green and the flag. And mark Brody. I saw him speak two years ago before the pandemic really started. And he was talking about there's this inflection point from right at it at being not good and center the green being not good. And then once into the green might be good. It depends on the hole and the shot and the size of the green and everything. But you've really just got to understand that it seems like I'm making this harder than it has to be. I do agree with that, but it's the fact that no golf courses, no two courses are the same. No two holes are the same. And so as a result, you simply have to understand how to pick mathematically correct targets. And then you do just go on about, and, and these, these kind of example of that, that I always use is number 18 at St. Andrew's is 52 yards wide, the whole 360 middle of the green. There's decent idea of a decent advice off the tee, but it's not very good advice. I don't care where your second shots from, because you can pretty much put it onto the green number, middle of the green on number 10 at pebble beach from the U S open T's at five 10, and the greens only 17 yards wide. And there's an ocean on the right-hand side, middle of the green. There is actually terrible advice too, because your target should actually be left of the center of the green. And so it is the fact that golf is the only sport in the world. That's not played on a uniform field of competition that just requires you to play smart patient discipline golf. And it is just bunny, because if you asked anyone who are the two best players ever, we won't go with the goat conversation, but we're the two best well that's tiger. And Jack who are the two best course manners. That's going to be tiger and Jack, like, they're the only two that come to mind almost immediately. And it is just incredible. Then how much pushback I get from people where it's like, all I'm trying to do is teach you to think. I can't say like Jack, because I don't have any ShotLink data on him, but I can tell you to think and strategize like tiger, because I have enough data on him that I can essentially reverse engineer his strategy. And it pretty much matches decade perfectly. So here's a guy that's got the best physical skills of his generation. He's also playing pretty much the smartest golf of anyone out there. He's had his mom with the Buddhist background, preaching meditation and mindfulness to him since he was in diapers. Like it really is just the perfect storm. And just in looking at it, it's like, yeah, shocker. He's the greatest of all time, in my opinion, by an absolute model. So go back to sell the Tories and the immediate success. Did you, was there a lot, was it a lot more sophisticated or. Very simple techniques that took him to those wins.

Leo 11:54

Did you talk to him about putting and, and so forth as well? We literally took him overnight from being a struggling junior golfer to the U S junior champion in five weeks. And he, again, he was literally 3,300 in the world in the junior golf rankings in June of 2014. And in September of 2014, a few months later, he was third in the wagger the world amateur rankings.

Scott 12:22

I mean, it's just, I mean, he literally had gone from never winning anything to winning the Texas amateur, the transmits, the U S Jr. Almost winning the U S amateur. And then he got his first collegiate win in a second start that that fall semester. And that's what put him to third and it's again, it's it, it, it is anecdote. But as I say on Twitter all the time, it's amazing how many anecdotes I get to experience. The whole reason that this deal took off after will is simply because I live in Dallas and I've known Jason and Lowe, who was the SMU coach for 30 plus years and end low. I saw him at the Texas amateur here in Dallas. And he was like, wow, that's really cool, man, congrats, whatever. I then saw him down at the U S junior. And he walked a couple of holes in the practice round with us. And I was explaining to him a little bit of what we were doing. We'll wins the U S junior and end load calls me. He's like, dude, I mean, this is unbelievable. And he's like Bryson with all due respect, he plays golf like an idiot. He fires it every single pin. And at the time he was 67th in the world. He had already won either the Southern or the transmits, one of the, the solid amateur events. But he certainly was unfilled potential at the time. So low is the one he's like, if you could put this into a seminar and teach it indoors, it had to be done indoors. The NCAA would wouldn't consider me a third paid coach was like, as long as you can do it indoors, I want you to come teach Bryson it. So I literally created a seminar in order to go teach it to Bryson and did that in February of 2015, three months later, you know, Bryson wins the NCAAs two months later, actually we played a practice round in Eugene at the pet coast amateur. I was catting for Zella tourists, and we played a practice round with Bryson. And that was the first time that I saw him hit his big ball, which, so he had the fairway finder. So he like bumps it off the first few teas and on five I'm like, well, let's see it. And he just hits it 50 yards further on command. And I'm like, what the hell was that? He was like, well, I'm just kind of scared. It'll hurt my back. And where at my body I'm like, buddy, you need to get over that. Now it took him another four or five years to finally realize. You can't leave 50 yards in the tank and then he's taking it so much further than I ever would've thought physically possible. It's like, well, okay. Maybe not quite that far, dude. I mean, again, it's, it was comical on again. Cause I'm the one that told him in 2015, you need to hit this thing as hard as you possibly can. And then also texting Como during the masters on Wednesday night, like get him off the range and get the driver from the U S open bag in his hands. It doesn't seem like the 48 is going to work this week. Boys let's move on. And so it is just hard even at that level to not, to not just get lost in the weeds sometimes of, but I really want this to work like, well, 200 drunk drivers the night before the first round at full speed with 48 inches. And then nevermind, we're going to go back to 45 tomorrow.

Leo 15:09

I'm going to simplify it. If we're going to simplify, asking for a friend here w if you have one minute to, to teach what you taught, you know, sell a tourist cause it was kind of overnight. What, what, how do you bring.

Scott 15:23

Super aggressive off the tee hit driver everywhere you possibly can. If you hit it over 270 yards, that litmus test is about 65 yards between penalty hazards. If they're 65 yards between penalty hazards and the fairway, doesn't pinch down to 40 ish yards it's driver, I literally don't need to see anything else about the whole I don't care what it looks like. I, I literally could not care less because my shot pattern is just huge. And the fairway is going to just jump in the way of a certain percentage of shots and it's going to pan out because what I've really gotten into telling people a lot lately is if you, if you don't want to hit driver, you have to think to yourself, what's the alternative? Well, the alternative is three wood. Three wood does not go materially straighter than your driver. It goes a little bit straighter, mainly because it goes shorter, but the. And, you know, again, so we might hit five or 7% more fairways, but we're going to hit a hundred percent of our t-shirts 40 yards shorter. That's a bad trade. Now let's drop back from there to five wood or hybrid or three air in or whatever. Well, now we're going back 70 yards. I mean, I hit my driver about 3 10, 3 20, my 300 off. The tee is going to go about two 50. You got to hit a lot of fairways to give up 70 yards. So Zella tourists, we're going to hit driver off of basically every single tee, especially at this golf course. Cause it was a short tree line golf course. We're going to send it. And then because the greens here were pretty average size. Again, I hate saying middle of the green or not, but essentially from one 20 and then we're going to fire it most pins there, weren't a whole lot of water hazards on this course from one 20 to 1 60, 70 ish. It's going to be towards the middle and outside of one 70. It's the middle again on this course. And again, I always just lay that caveat out there because. If you're playing St. Andrew's middle of the green is just terrible advice on every single hole. And that's, that's the fundamental problem with golf. You guys teach a lot of golfers indoors. Most, you know, even teaching pros are teaching out on a driving range. Very few people get out on the course very often. So you give a bunch of young kids without a prefrontal cortex. They're not idiots. They just aren't capable of actually thinking yet. And so you get them hitting the ball grade, and then you're like, all right, we'll go figure it out. It literally, it would honestly be like working with LeBron on a jump shot and then not telling him, well, you're also going to have four players out there on your team and there's going to be dense like, well, I can shoot it really well. And what was the, what was the main difference from what Salvatore's was doing before? So if that was the, kind of the main strategy he, because will, and again, this is like what we figured out in post analysis, and then it's exactly what I figured out when I worked with guys like Keith Mitchell and just all these other people for the first time. These guys hit it. So good. It's ridiculous. I hit the ball really well, which is why I know what they're thinking. Excuse me, because you hit it well, and I personally, wasn't a very good putter. Will's not necessarily the greatest putter Keith stats show. He's not necessarily the greatest putter. We all think, well, we need to stuff it. And in order to make birdies, it's like, no, actually most of your birdies are going to come on par fives and drivable ish, par forest. Yeah. You birdie likes. I think it's 16% of par fours. The vast majority of those are from inside one 20 and or 15 foot putts. You just don't take a seven iron very often and hit it inside of eight feet and make the pie. It really just, isn't how it works. So you get a whole bunch of people, especially on tour that are super talented. They're seeing everybody else go low. So they feel like they've got to go out and birdie every single hole they're trying to force. They wind up making all these pedantic mistakes, like no offense, but you finish her on a golf, you shoot 75 and you're like, I should have shot 71 today. Like it's four shots is a ton at that level, but every single round of golf you ever finished, if you're shooting in the seventies, you feel like you should have shot typically two to four or five shots lower. And those are always again, just silly mistakes. So we've got these stats that we track in the decade after the tiger five. So these are the five things tiger track way back in the day or late nineties, early two thousands. And they were, how many bogeys did I have on par fives? How many doubles, how many blown easy saves? How many, three putts and how many bogeys with nine iron or. That's what tiger was tracking out there. Not how many greens did I hit? How many putts did I have? None of that. How many stupid mistakes did I make? And if you think about every time you shoot 75 and think I should have shot 72 or parents listening, my son should have shot three shots, lower or daughter, whatever. He's an idiot. No, he's not an idiot. He's just not recognizing you can't make enough birdies to offset the silly mistakes. And once you see that and understand that and know that as your scoring average drops through the seventies, 70 to 80% of that is going to be from a reduction in bogeys, not from more birdies, only 20 or 30% of your improvement as you get better through the seventies from more birdies, the vast majority of it is from avoiding bogeys. And the vast majority of those are from avoiding the stupid bogeys. Not because your wedge game got miraculously better, just because you finally learned how to play. I mean, I really do believe that. And it's, it's, it's what the data showed me. This is what's been pretty cool over 70. I knew all of this. My seminar literally has not changed at all in seven years, but I teach it totally different. The ideas are all still exactly the same. I used to talk about avoiding bogeys, but now it's like, well, we, I knew avoiding bogeys was what's important. And now you find out, well, that's all tiger. I'm not saying he was out there tiptoeing around trying to avoid mistakes, but basically he was out there avoiding trying to avoid mistakes. And just recognizing what I tell to her players, if you're going to go to a Monday qualifier, if you're going to win this week, you're going to call me after the tournament and say, well, I played the par fives really well. I didn't do anything too dumb. And I made a couple of extra putts this week. Like that's literally how you win. It's not because you went 19 under on the par fours. 14 under on the par fives. And then you didn't screw up the threes and fours with silly mistakes by trying too much. Well, like you're saying, like he was playing you know, smart, but not, you wouldn't ever describe tiger woods is playing timid. Right?

Mac 21:39

So in a lot of ways like this, you know, your system, what does it do for the psychological and emotional aspect of the game and how does it build confidence? Well, so that is the big, that's a great, great question because tiger. So, so 2014, I caddy for Zella tourists in the text, Sam U S Jr. Coincidentally Como got hired by tiger in August of 2014.

Scott 22:03

That's when I first got access to the ShotLink database. That's when I literally went through 20,000 of his shots by hand, trying to help figure out where he needs to work differently and figure out exactly what needs to happen. And then it is you just, you just see very clearly in the data. He's just not doing dumb stuff. With his wedges and less. And then I heard him in the booth. I swear to God, it was such a, it was like the greatest moan in my life when I found this video clip. But I went down to watch the hero and they had him in the booth and they asked him, you know, tigers, you've gotten older, do you play more aggressively or more conservatively? And he's like, oh, I've always played very aggressively, a hundred percent. And I'd already done all this work to, if you're telling me tiger woods says, I'm playing aggressively. That means he's firing at flags and, you know, fast your brain where something like. But he finished the sentence, but I play aggressively to my spots. So wherever I decide German, that spot should be on the green, which might be on the more on the conservative side. But I'm playing aggressively to that spot. And that is again, it's it's that I've recorded. And I was like, oh my God, that's amazing. And then I lost the video and like three years later, I was just going through all my stuff on my computer and I found it. It was like, like I literally just got chills right now. Just even thinking about, cause I was like, it was so incredible. Cause I'm like, that's it. And I've been telling people tiger said that forever and nobody believed me. And then I found it. That is exactly where we started with. I'm aiming five yards away from it, but I hope I pull it. No tiger aim five yards away from it. And then really tried to put it there and then trusted. He probably actually wasn't going to hit his target. Anytime you see these guys stuffing it it's pretty much. Yeah. And I don't say luck, but the one shot you hit close is basically luck. And then when I'm out doing playing lessons with guys, it's just awesome. Because the way that I show this, it really is incredible how consistently this happens. Let's say I give them a target five yards right. Of the pin. And they just flag it right at it. And they're like, see, I should aim that edit. I'm like, okay, how far were you trying to hit that shot? 1 57 will get up there in every single time. The actual shot will be 1 50, 2 or 1 63. Like, so yes, it was right at your target, but it wasn't the right distance. You have to get them both right. For it to matter. So here's where your actual target was 1 57 and five yards. Right. We'll pace that off. uh, someone's going to bust me with the tree, but I agree in theorem here, but that's an 18 foot pot. And if you actually then pace it to the hole, it might be 26 or seven feet. It matters, but it really only matters how close again. There's so many statements. I feel like everyone's going to closer, better, but. Closer is not better if you miss the green more often. And so you really have to trust that unless you get it inside of about eight feet, I'm not going to say it doesn't matter, but the difference in 15 feet, 1.79 strokes to hole out 20 feet, 1.8, seven it's 0.08 shots. It matters, but not much. And that's, you know, a five foot difference. We get inside of eight feet, eight feet, 50, 53 foot to a hundred percent. Basically those five feet are a half a shot. The closer you get, the more important it is. But once you get outside of 15 feet, again, closer is better, but not much. You can go all the way up to 50 feet, 2.13, like literally from the, I never even thought of doing the math this way from 10 feet at 1.6 to six to 50 feet at 2.13, those 40 feet are the exact same Delta as the. Five feet from three feet to eight feet. I want you closer, but it's just not just not that important to you and alert to you know, how important distance control is, you know, the approach shots with the approach shots.

Leo 25:56

I know you have a similar philosophy in putting and we'll get into that later, but I'd love to focus in, on target and committing to the target. So how do you coach a player to that? Cause obviously the classic small Ms. Small targets, small miss, what, what w how do you coach that? And is that cliche statement true?

Scott 26:18

I, I, I literally use that. I would, I would actually say is instead of aim, small, Ms. Small, I say aim small and no you're going to miss. I mean shot patterns are just huge. So I've got in the decade app, obviously all kinds of images of, of, of launch monitor data. Especially I use Aaron Wise as a time here, we were hitting balls at TPC Summerlin. We're on the other end of the range. We're hitting the same seven iron over and over and over again. And in a shot pattern was 27 yards wide hitting the same shot off a flat piece of ground ball in hand, normalized to know when like shot patterns are just huge. And so when people are like, like number six at Wingfoot, they should just lay up, just hit it out there in the farewell. The fairway is 24 yards wide. Aaron Wise. Couldn't hit it every time with a seven iron let alone and not even in a tournament and with no wind, like it's just not how it works. So you've got to really take this launch monitor data and just use that to show people I'm not showing you how bad you are. There's there's a lot of really important points. I'm not doing this to show you how bad you are. I'm showing you doing this to show you how hard golf is. And it really is this paradox that like golf is so hard that you have to play it correctly. And once you understand how to do that, the game is actually really simple. I mean, it just stopped trying to make birdies and trust me, it's going to work out better. And depending on your skill level, maybe that stopped trying to make pars. If you're a 90 shooter, just make a ton of bogeys and it's hard to make triples and higher, like it really is commensurate to essentially stop crying.

Leo 27:53

It was small, but realize the shotgun pattern basically. And how do you get someone to create confidence in that? Right. Cause if I'm okay, so I am small and I commit to my target, but in the back of my head, I know, okay. My shot pattern dispersion with this club is going to be significant. And I aim between the edge of the green and the flag because there might be trouble. And I'm I'm I'm on committing to that is the confidence created in the, in knowing that if I miss my shot, I'm still going to be okay.

Scott 28:28

Everything that I talk about with regards to mindset and the patience and discipline, I'm giving you the 100% utopian view of it. So the reason I say that is like, this is perfect. There's no chance you're going to do this. But somewhere between a total lunatic and perfect is what worked. We, we're trying to just get closer to perfect and re and you have to be able to laugh at yourself. Some because you're just going to do dumb stuff. But the, the answer to that technically is you just get out of results. You get out of being worried, what you are to par you don't focus on score. You focus solely on your process. And again, there's a reason, the greatest all-time coaches, Nick Saban, Phil Jackson, pat Riley, they all use the word process constantly. And so there are some sports cliches where. I'm sick of hearing them talk about process. Well, do you want him to talk about what really matters? The only thing that matters is what is my process of hitting good shots? What is my process of picking good targets and then fire your shotgun at it? Do not judge it at all, walk up, and this is a totally new game. And now I'm here now, what do I do now? I've moved it there. Now, what do I do? And you just have to be completely oblivious to what your department and or the tournament. And like I say, that's impossible to do. And yet it's right. I mean, there's just certain things where it's like, well, just because it's hard, doesn't mean it's easy. It just, you know, it's just a really difficult thing to do, but you have to use the, the shot pattern data and you don't have to have a launch monitor. I mean, Google earth, or you just even get in Chrome maps on your computer. It's unbelievable how accurate the, the measuring devices are. So you can get out on the range and measure the green at one 50 and see that it's 20 yards. Cool. Go try to hit that a hundred percent of the time. You will not be able to do it. And now you get out on the course and the green is 22 yards wide. Should you be aiming at dependence five yards from the right edge? If you can't even hit the green a hundred percent of the time in practice. And that's the reason I bring up the Aaron Wise thing, because it really is incredible. When I show that in my seminar, I I've got a way that I just progressed through shot patterns and then into target selection. But we start with shot patterns. Here's Aaron Wise shot pattern 27 yards wide. Literally nobody believes me that it's his they're like he's the reigning tour. Rookie of the year. He won the Nelson just a couple months prior to this, this range session. No one believes it's actually him. Then we go to number 15 at Innisbrook on the PGA tour on Saturday or Friday, rather a couple years ago, The wind was 10 miles an hour off the left. The green is 27 yards wide and the actual shot pattern on the PGA to. In play was 50 yards wide and 50 yards deep. So I'm like, if you don't think Aaron's shot pattern at 27 yards wide is reasonable with 190 yard, seven Aaron at altitude in Vegas. Then explain to me why it's literally almost double that. And it's almost double that because the pin on this particular day was on the front left and all these guys, a lot of them like hitting fades. Now they're trying to hit these flighty draws and they're either leaving it right. And blowing it a double cross straight. Right. Or they realize I don't want to double cross it. So they smother it left in the. The double crosses are what destroyed golf scores and shot pattern sizes. And so what's funny about it is again, I use this whole specifically for a reason, it's a light ish wind off the left. A lot of these guys like playing fade, but they're going to try to draw a shot now, which means the wind is off the left and they're going to start it. Right. And they're miss is a block cut, riding the wind further, right? Like it really is. I don't disagree with everybody. That gives me a hard time on social media that this is common sense, but it's not until you hear that. You're like, oh shit, you're right. If I'm going to try to draw it. And I'm a fader and my misses a block cut, I'm aiming it further right than I normally would already. And I'm push cutting it. There's this is just off the planet. There's no scenario where that works out well ever. And that's again, when I say the vast majority of outlier shots on the PGA tour are either guys that aren't playing aggressively to their spotlight. Or they're trying to work the ball too much, which is why I focus on one shot shape. So often I just, I love this quote I've got from Claude Harmon where, you know, he's talking about, the question was, tell me about when you first started working with Brooks forever ago. And Claude's answer was when I met Brooks, he was wrestling with shots shapes in which shot to try to play cause he's, you know, you get out on tour and you see so many guys trying to get good at four to five different shots and they aren't good at any of them. We worked on making Brooks, his swing is repeatable and one dimensional as possible. And this is Claude Harmon. Butch's son talking about players on tour. Aren't good at any of their shots. This isn't the six handicap at your home course. they all suck at it. I mean, there are just, I mean, there's just not anyone that's really good at working both ways. In my opinion, I, I really do mean that too. And, and I get it. Rory gets out there with the driver and tries to work at both ways. And he's by far the best driver over the last 10 years. But that doesn't mean that he's not a unicorn. The Olympic sprinters are really fast. That doesn't mean I should just be like, well, what are all these?

Mac 33:45

If everybody starts running the system, then you know, all the curiosity and doubt and speculation goes out the window. I honestly, I will say there is a part of me. I really do mean this. There is a part of me that feels bad about what I've created. I do agree that a huge part of the game is the folklore and the mystery of the game, but that's gone.

Scott 34:05

I mean, and again, that's where I tell people like, be careful how much you listened to me because it will change how you see it. And if you're an architecture lover, it's gonna destroy a lot of what you enjoy about the game. Like everyone that I like working with, they liked shooting lower scores are pretty agnostic about architecture, which is the way I think you should be. Especially if it's your living, but the, the whole idea of, well, the architect was trying to fool you with this bunker. It's 40 yards, shorter, the green, which fools your mind. Well, we destroyed that 20 years ago with place. I get it. The mongers 40 yards short. I know it's 1 62. I'm not doing this by vision. And now with just shot linked and again, decade, for lack of better way of saying it. The rest of the mystery with, with satellites is gone too. I mean, I played a course just last week in Denver, rolling Hills country club. It's a short, tight dog leggy course. I intentionally did not ask my host for any information. Cause I wanted to use this new driving target feature in the decade app. And it's just crazy. Like I'm sending this driver on lines that the guy that's been playing there for however long is like never saw that line. And I'm up there just chipping off the front edge of the green and it is just comical. Right? It looks like you're just sending out into a forest sometimes. And you know, my can joke on that is like, what's a picture of earth. It can't be wrong. Like there's land out there. I know it just, well, how much. I just, it just takes me back to like junior golf days and all the things I've done wrong.

Mac 35:31

Every time I do these podcasts, like, it's like, oh, how many mistakes I made? But it's like the curiosity, the curiosity, and the doubt. And I think about like swing changes. And I think about like what this system has to avoid. A lot of people getting technical with their golf swing and arbitrary raise the Dell matter, you know, that they almost are like, they're out there and they're making bad decisions. They're looking at it. They get filled with curiosity and doubt again. And then they're like, oh, I need to change my swing or I need to do this. And then all of a sudden they're down a rabbit hole. How much of that have you seen and how much is that part of a discussion?

Scott 36:02

Well, Martin Flores is the example that jumps to mind. There, obviously, Martin, unfortunately for him is had a lot of hip injuries and surgeries over the last three years. So he's been struggling, but going back to 2016 or so he was struggling out on tour and he, you know, he asked me to come caddy for him one week, cause he he'd have known each other for a long time. And he's like, I kind of think I know what you're up to, but can you come caddy for me? I'm like, well, I can't, I've got too much to do, but I let him come caddy for me in a, in a qualifier. So then we started working together a little bit more closely. The following year, he got off to a great start with like two thirds and two fourths in the first six events. You know, he's played great golf about halfway through the season. He's 14th on the money list or something like that. And he called me just freaking out. He's like, dude, I'm hitting it so bad. Everything's going right. Just total freedom. And I'm going to get my car. If I don't get my button gear, I'm going to finish 23rd and then me playing both tours and this is going to totally suck. And I get it calm down, come out, hit some balls. I'm an amateur golfer. I do not give swing advice. So come on out. Let's let's just chat, we'll play. And we have some lunch talk about expectations and everything. We go out and I'm expecting to watch it and hit it, like crap on the range. And he's just striping it. I mean, striping it, but he was right about 15 feet right. Of his target. So it's like 10 balls. And he literally takes with an eight iron, a little pile of balls here and puts them out there about 20 feet, right. Of his target. And he's like, city everything's going, right. I'm like, there's a pretty small shot pattern. Can't you just do the same thing and aim it a little further left, like just do the same thing. Just open up. And he did, and he just starts striping and he literally won the next week on the Korn ferry tour. And I'm just like, here's the dude that is in full freak out mode. Like you're just saying sometimes it's not about changing yourself. It's about understanding how your shot pattern works. Most people have a shot pattern that is skewed to one side. So if we're aiming at a white flag, there'll be 70% right. Of the target. And then they're like, what should I change? Like change where you're aiming, because I think of aim as being the center of your shot pattern. That's a functional shot pattern. It's just centered too far. Right? Let's bring that thing a little further left or right. Obviously whichever one it is and just keep doing the same thing. And once people see that, and again, once you are really good at hitting one shape and one shape only, it's pretty hard to double cross it. I mean, I'll still occasionally, barely turn one over, but I will not. I'll never snap hook one, your shot penance. It's pretty hard with the driver to wipe it 70 yards. Right. As long as I'm not double crossing it left, it's pretty hard to have it awful. Right. And again, I'm saying that as a good player within reason, you know, everybody, I'm 48, I've played a lot of golf. Everybody has their own swing things to be working on to get to that point. But once you've gotten to that point, I mean, that's where you look at DJ, like how simple is this? The dude it's this paradox of choice also of shots is Zella. Taurus was a junior he's walking up to every shot thinking, what am I going to do? Low draw high, cut, low. Like I've got my nine box drill. I do all day long. What am I going to hit? When I'm walking up to a shot, it's going to be a cut, low, medium, or high. Like there's so much of the decision making process that just goes away. You know, throw a train from me. Cool. I can draw it, but I dropped by putting it back in my stance, changes path without changing my swing. I assume if you're a draw or you can move it up in your stance, as long as you don't chunk it, and it's going to help the path exit a little further left, there's just a few little tricks like that, where once you understand how to own a shape, and then most importantly, you watch the guys out on tour that are great drivers. Most of them, Kenny Perry, one of the best drivers, all time draws at Tom layman draws at Bruce Litsky cuts at DJ cuts. It Brooks cuts it like Rory. Yeah, he's an anomaly. I don't disagree, but also you can even see him wrestling with it right now. Cause he's hearing it. He knows what the modern advices you can seem like. Well, I think I would just cut focus on cuts and he just hasn't, he doesn't have the patience and discipline and not. He's got to try to work it both ways. It's a really hard thing to trust. And again, he is a unicorn. Like there are very few unicorns in the world. He's five foot, nothing, and is basically the best driver of the golf ball. That makes no sense because he's a unicorn. Don't try to do what unicorns do, be a horse like everyone else, I guess this works, but it's a hunting. Six almost gets rid of this like internal dialogue that golf is. So this internal monologue you have and then gets you focused on your external environment in a way that gets you more dynamic and, you know, and, and. And I've read all of the great sports psychology books. And I know they all say a lot of great things. I think that the one thing I've done differently than, than the ones I've read is just really talk about that inner conversation. Really. Like you've got to focus on what it is you're saying I not only went through 20,000 of tigers shots by hand. I also timed a bunch of them. And it's incredible to watch that guy, especially back in the early two thousands, when he was rolling, you can see, could stand behind the bone. I know everyone can't see me, but as he would take his. His first step from behind the ball, his hands would come together. He would walk in, he's got the spot in front of the ball. I mean, he, it was literally, he was pulling the trigger within about two tens of a second on a 13 and a half second process. He's pulling the trigger really, really consistently. I think there was like, I think the standard deviation was 7% of the time. And then you look at other people. Well, Jack, Nick there, Jack Nichols was Greg Norman. I just, someone just posted him on 12 or 13 at Augusta this last week. Whenever I think he was falling apart from the moment he was standing there addressing the ball, it took him over 25 seconds to pull the trigger as he's just waggling and settling in. And I went back in time, some of his other shots, some of our 14 seconds, some of them were 32. Like it's insane. The variability in his overall thought process. He's one of the greatest players of all time. Greg, if you're listening still don't punch me in the face if we ever meet, but he had a lot of demons in his head and in my. And that's him. Like if I am sitting here and thinking tire, I've got my spot in front of the ball. I've squared, my club face squared. My body, my swing key today is X there's. No. All right. Well, on 13, I don't want to miss it. Right. Well, the left is either. There's no good either Greg. Well, like I he's just got an inconsistent mental routine going on. And so what I'd really try to tell people is when you're hitting your driver on the range, you're not thinking, Hey, there's a lake on the left. Don't go left. You're just thinking, there's my target. I'm hitting it at it. You've gotta be recognizing the mental chatter that's going on in your head and on the range in order to take that out onto the course. So when you find yourself over a tee shot with the lake on the left and you're over the ball and you think, all right, well, don't go left. Whoa. I don't think that on the range, like the alarm bells will start to go off a little bit more. Once you realize we're rehearsing our mental chatter, as much as our golf swing. So that way when you get out on the first. And now all of a sudden you are standing behind the shot. You're not just dragging another ball over and hitting it. People talking about they can't get from the range to the course. It's because everything slows down and that mental chatter totally changes, which changes the rhythm of their swing, the rhythm of their pre-shot shuffle and their weight shifts just changes everything. So you've got to understand what works for you on the range, and then try to do that same thing out on the course, which requires what we were talking about earlier. Not giving a shit where it goes. You have to not care. Which is really hard to do. You got to give up control, you know, it's, it's the Yoda saying to gain control one must give up control and that it reminds me a lot. We just had a horrible company. We closed down all facilities on Saturday to have linen Pia come in from vision 54 and talk to the team which is awesome.

Leo 43:39

And, you know, it was a lot about removing the outcome and focusing on the process, just like you're saying. And also interestingly enough the Playbox over the ball and how the, the keys, you know, they say four to nine seconds, whatever it is for you, it needs to be short. It needs to be, you know, committed. But you talked about, so it's really interesting just to see the similarities and the synergies between, you know, individual staff studied this for decades, right. Segue from you talking about hitting a cut, I'm calling mark cava. Colin's an interesting guy, you know, w we started working with him when he was at Cal very smart guy. We S we helped him with fitness and recovery. He's very intelligent, you know, went to Cal business school hits, hits, hits a cut. And like you said, when he double across it, it's not, it's not extreme. Doesn't hit it very far compared to others. How do you, how do you look at Colin's game from in this, from this lens and perspective?

Scott 44:38

I mean, I think it's, I think it's amazing, honestly. I mean, so Rick cessing house is obviously done a lot of work with constancy as a kid. I'm trying not to get myself in too much trouble, always and make sure I pray. Rick has done an amazing job, teaching him mindfulness and target selection and everything. But it's just a simple fact. Colin attended my seminar in college. He sat right there in the front row. He took a shitload of notes. I sat there and watched him and he came up to me two years later at the Walker county. He's like, dude, it really has helped me solidify a lot of the things that I already knew. You know? Thank you. And so what it is is giving a guy like that, the data and the information to say what Rick is telling you is correct. What y'all are telling him is correct. You can play golf this way. This is how it works. And once you've done that with a guide and that's really good and really smart and really chill the sky's the limit quite obviously. Now, would anyone think he's done what he's done? No, but look at how he's doing it. He's just hitting the same shot over and over again. I have 125 mile an hour club head speed with my driver. I hit it really far. I don't hit my irons anymore. I mean an eight iron for me is about one 60. If you offered me a million dollars to hit a lob wedge 90 yards, I really couldn't do it. I don't have any Ford lane because of my elbows, but whenever people give me a hard time, I'm like, well, why do I need to hit a lob wedge 100, I've got a sandwich. I get all the way up to a foreigns, two 30. Like, what do I really need here? And I think Colin does a great job. I do think he should change chase a little distance with the driver, just because I do think he's running really hot right now. I don't think he sustains an eight or 9% win rate. Now I'm going to get myself in more trouble with the more COVID team, but that's a really high wind rate, but he's also doing it by, I shouldn't say meditation because I don't know if he has a meditation routine or what, but Rick assessing us. And I've had some long conversations about mindfulness and harping on this from. I honestly believe that's, that's not, it he's really, really, really good at golf, but he's one of the few guys that has been working and understanding the importance of mindfulness. You California's have got it all figured out. There's a lot of stuff. Y'all, don't do it right. That it trickles out to Texas. I'm like, no, leave that in California. But then there's other stuff that I'm like, no, let's bring that from California here. Let's get the meditation part and the avocado salads over here, leave the rest of that crap over there. But that really is again, does Alitura like it's, it really is fun. How it all ties together. 2014, us junior, his dad owns his, his dad's a, an asset manager for a real estate company. So we had free hotel rooms down in Houston, 45 minutes away from the golf course. And I'm like, dude, we're trying to save a couple hundred bucks here. We're gonna spend 45 minutes in the car every single day. That's insane, but I'm not paying for it. So sure. Let's do it in hindsight. Brilliant. That was luck because what will and I did every single day in the car to and from the golf course was listened to the art of learning. It's a book by Josh Waitzkin. I think it's by far the best book I've ever read. It's just a mindset sports psychology book, but what's important about it to me is it's not written in a golf context. It's stories about chess and the stories about Amazon literally a hunter in the Amazon rainforest. Like it's all these other anecdotal stories, but then you give it your own interpretation into golf, but basically what will and I were doing every single day was we didn't talk like it was by design. We got in the car and it was like, buddy, I don't want to talk for the next 45 minutes. We're going to be on the golf course all day together. We just sat there and we listened to this book on audio, the whole way out there we got out of the car. We floated under the range, floated around the course, right back into the car, 45 minutes on the way home, take a shower, have dinner, do the same thing the next day. That's the things that like a more a Kawa. I'm not saying he's doing. But we were on the doorstep of understanding the importance of meditation and mindfulness and a guy like Colin's been working on that for God knows how long. And I honestly, I think, unfortunately for tiger, he had a really bad car wreck, fortunately for the rest of us. It wasn't one day sooner because the day before his car wreck, he played he had his playing lesson deal with Jada Pinkett Smith and they got to talking about meditation during it entire, you know, she said, well, when did you start meditating? And he just kind of smirked. He's like when I was born and I was like, oh my God, he finally, first of all, he's talking about it. And second of all, he said, basically, I've been doing this since I was born. And that is so important in my opinion, for people, younger people to hear. And this is where, yeah, we're on the precipice of, of artificial intelligence and all kinds of stuff about to go off. But I do believe we're also on. The brink of a, of a human wide awakening to understanding the power and importance of meditation. Again, just five years ago, I felt like a lunatic talking about this, and now I'm obviously super comfortable with it, but the Jordans, the LeBrons that all the greats of the, of their day had some sort of a meditation or mindfulness practice, even if they didn't call it that. And we didn't know that we had no idea. George Mumford's written a book. Now he was Pete Carroll and pat Riley and Jackson and Coby and M J's meditation consultant. Many of the great coaches, great players. That's what they knew before the rest of us knew people asked me what's the most important thing I can do. I'm like, get Sam, Harris's waking up app. It's free. Don't tell Sam. I told you that you can Google waking up bat free. And Sam is amazing. Apparently he's really rich because he's like, Hey, money's a problem. I'll just give it to you. Like, well then who the hell buys it? Idiots like me, but. It really is incredible. You pay whatever you want. Right. That's that's his deal. Yeah. And he's just like, you know, Hey, if, if in a year we'll send you an email. If it still hasn't shaped up for you financially, we'll give it to you another year for free. Like, I think it's just incredible. I would love to do that with a decade yet, but I got two little kids. It is just unbelievable that the access to information really high level information via podcasts. I mean, with all due arrogance, I'm the guy that taught ELA tourists in de Shambo. And I've got doc Redmond's flag over there and Maverick McNealy's, I've got a PGA championship flag over there in case I can get ever, ever get more a car with a sign. It I'm the guy that taught these guys to some extent what to think and how to strategize. You get to listen to that for free. Like that's just never happened before in the world. And I think as a result, it's going to be unbelievable. The quantum leaps that, that like our society, we're either about to implode or really start doing some great things. And it's, it's up to us to figure out what it's, I think at the same time as entropy, you know, I mean, one of the twos it's either about to get really good or really bad, I actually do believe that.

Mac 51:15

And social media is the the contrary and forced a meditation. It's so true though. I mean, to be able to have like w what we have access to today, I was just, I'm thinking about, I was like, man, growing up as a kid in west, I didn't realize either to grown up in, I grew up in El Paso at El Paso country club. And I had, you know, JP Hayes there and rich beam. And then bill Estrin, Brenner was like a really great golf pro that like really kind of knew the ropes and was mentor to those guys. Christie Alvers was on the LPGA tour. So I had all these like really great, like people around, it was a very west Texas way of understanding the game and, and everything else. I didn't realize how good I had it, but I wouldn't seeking IMG. And most like trying to, I went to 16, 15 years old IMG and was there at Bradenton and it seemed like they were just trying to figure it out at that time 20 years ago. And there was a lot of kind of guessing and staff changes and everything else like that. And it's evolved quite a bit, but it's, it's, it's unbelievable how much, how much we have evolved and how much access to content we have and how it's getting sorted and organized and how much these, how much better these kids are too. Now. I mean, Do you notice a big shift in terms of how this information is trickling to the new user and the new generation of golfers already?

Scott 52:25

Yeah, I mean, so rewind this thing back six years ago, and Como set me up to go play down in San Antonio, play book, a PGA tour, practice around with one of his players. And it's a guy that's really, really good at golf. He'd made 10 million or something on tour already. And I went down there. I drove all the way down from Dallas to San Antonio. So this guy could for 18 holes, tell me that's not how he sees it. I'm like, I know it's not how you see it. That's why I'm here. I didn't drive down here to hear how you see it. I drove down here to tell you how I see it. You're welcome to tell me you don't want to see it that way, but this is how it works. And that guy, unfortunately, for him was, you know, he's had a lot of injuries and stuff, but he just competed in second stage. The reason I bring him up is because that was the one that made me realize I don't want to work with veterans. They already have it. It's I can't really do anything to a 28 year old. Who's made 10 million, but kind of screw them up the way I was at the time. Cause I'm still a little, not nervous about what I teach, but I haven't done. I haven't had the success that it's had now where I'm like, this is how it works. If you took me to that same player, now I'd be like, well, then you just need to shut up and listen to me. Like, I would be more aggressive. I decided then, you know what? I'm just going to focus on my college players and I'll graduate out on tour with them in four years and then I'll worry about it. And I feel like it was a defense mechanism, but here we are now four years later and I've got about 40 guys. I send my packet to every single week on the PGA tour. The vast majority are 26 years old or younger. So your question of how do you see this trickling down to the younger. It is, it's just a function of them watching, you know, these, these, podcast or watching the content and the decade app thing, everything else on two, have you got, I do give the commentators a hard time. I mean, I do believe it has to be the hardest job in the world to fill four hours of dead air every single week. But every single time they say something that's not correct. Ish. I'm tagged with it on Twitter. He's oh, he's trying to do this. He's trying to do that. Like, so everyone's learning, everyone's seeing it. And you know, guys like shambly and novela and others have attended my seminar actually just trying to learn more. And so they're getting there and that will help trickle down to the younger players also. But I had a kid last night that they called me for the first time. And he's 16. He's been recruited by some big schools and I'm like, just out of curiosity, do you know anything about me or decade? He's like, no, I've never heard of it. And I do. So crazy to think of that at the junior golf level. But if you think about it, as kids are just, there's just more, you know, kids growing up every single year. So everyone's, it's just going to constantly have to be the first time you've heard about it. So it is just, it is just a revolving door at this point on the, on the younger level, they're just going to see things differently.

Leo 55:12

It's amazing. I think, you know, it's interesting. I actually asked Collin last time I was out there with them. I asked like, you know, well, what's your secret? No, but,

Scott 55:22

um,

Leo 55:23

what have you learned since you got on tour? And he said some interesting things. I said the biggest learning curve has been this is technical, but around the wedges and actually interestingly enough, he has learned the most from JJ, his caddy kid, JJ caddy for Ryan Moore and obviously really good player himself. But Collin said, I've learned. More and significant information about how the balance works and wedges since getting on tour. But, but then when I asked about strategy and course management, he basically said, which is just going to reinforce this message. People just do silly stuff out there. And so it's just because Colin is a very, very methodical, efficient individual. He, he, he hates Lucy like wasting time is very pointed. Like it's very, very sharp very, very kind and, and, and humble. But when you really get into it, he's, he's a killer and he is very, very particular with his time. And efficiency is key. And I think you see that on the course it's and I didn't know that he had seen you and learn from you.

Scott 56:33

So that was, that was great. It's it's organized. I mean, he's just organized and that's, again, back to Keith Mitchell's. I worked with Adam shank earlier this year, the week before he finished third, which is his highest finish ever. And you know, I just post stuff like that on Twitter, like at a new guy this week. First time again, I, I think people think I work with a lot more people on a weekly basis than I do when I teach it takes a couple hours. And then you kind of got it. So here it is, here's a few hours. And so whenever I post I'm maybe work with a new guy every third week on tour this year, just having be the first week Adam shank finished third, first 50 whole four whole lead ever. Keith Mitchell's agent calls me that weekend. He's like, Keith's the greatest player I've ever seen and he's not getting anything accomplished. And so I just do a quick dive into a stats and it is, it's just comical to me again, as a guy who drives it really well. I know what it takes to hit a driver. Well, and then I look at his stats and I just was on a, a decade members webinars. So I've got them up actually over. It's incredibly well. I mean, yeah, his strokes gain driving for the, his four seasons 18, 19 20 21. He was seventh, sixth, 21st and 11th in strokes gain driving. His strokes gained, approached the green the year that he was seventh in 2018 and he was a hundred and 40th approach six, then driving a hundred and second and approach 21st and driving 170 third and approach 11th and driving 160 fourth and approach. And literally what I tell a guy like that, I'm not buying it. I'm not buying. You can hit the driver that well, and you can't hit a gap. And if you can't then put it further back in your stance and hit down on it, dude, it's not that hard. If you can hit a driver and it comes down to the fact he hits the drivers so well, and he's got so much less into every green than average guy. And so he's like, I should be looking at eight footers for birdie all day. That's just not how it works. And so, as funny as it sounds, but literally when I've worked with a guy like that for the first time, I say, let's start by not sucking. And we'll build from there. Like just give me a week of zero strokes gained approach. I refuse to believe you can't do that simply by trying to hit the green. And so we go through all that. The next thing we look at is strokes game, putting his four years on tour, 180 third, a hundred and sixty six fifty six. A hundred and 20th, I can go look at some short putting metrics to see, is it your line? That's probably not as line. There's a couple that are a little dicey that, but then I just flat out ask people like, do you have the hips? Most people try to beat around it. It's going to change my advice. So I don't give a shit. I'm going to ask you, do you have the hips? No. Cool. Then you cannot be that bad of a putter. Well, now let's look at approach putt performance, which is the average length of your second putt. It's not a perfect lag putting metric, but it's pretty damn close. It's not perfect because if somebody got bad line or bad read, it can get skewed, left and right. And that'll still inflate the approach, but performance, but. Well, second buts, the average length of your second putt. And so there's a lot of, like I say, this is why it's not a perfect metric, but it's, it's, it's as good as we got without doing a ton of geometry, but his four years of approach, but performance a hundred and 70th, a hundred eighty eight, a hundred and fifty fourth, 190 third. And this season through two events, he was negative. Two strokes gained putting for every single round and he was dead last and approach by performance. And so he's like, wow, I've never even seen that stat. I didn't know anything about it. I go through the idea on putting, if you have an eight foot putt, that's breaking a cup outside the right. If you hit it too soft, it'll start breaking sooner. If you hit it too hard, it'll start breaking later. So even given the exact same start line, your speed will make your shot pattern big wide, which means the whole is going to get in the way of fewer of them. Just try to lag it around the whole dude. I mean, literally let's start by not sucking and let's build from there. And the dude falls asleep. Quite obviously with, with this, I got to open this thing back up. Cause it was just hilarious to me. I'm sitting here and watching along in the first round, he has a 21 footer on one. He hits four feet long and I'm like, dude, really second hole, 31 foot. Or he leaves three feet short, three inches short rather I'm like, okay, maybe he caught it early. He then makes a 14 foot or 19 foot or 14 foot or 13 foot or four foot or 15 foot or 14 footer, 26 foot or 24 footer in a row he had. And that was when he shot 60. Right. It was like 10 under four plus 4.8, six, five strokes gained putting in again. Now that's anecdotal for sure. But here's a guy that was literally dead last on tour in strokes game, putting I tell him to start lagging it. I don't think your lines, that bag and you get some pretty flat, pretty perfect. The whole did jump in the way of a whole bunch early, but they're the entire event. He's plus five and change. He was like fifth and strokes game putting for the week. He was like 24th in the field and approach putt performance. There you go, dude, just stop trying to make putts again, as silly as that sounds, stop trying to make putts, but what's funny is I go through by hand again? I, yeah, I understand the date and shuttling, but um, I've, I've looked unfortunately at too many shots in sh in tracker to the actual images of where the shot went. And I just can toggle through a 72 hole tournament pretty quick, 20, 30 minutes. And I pick out about five or eight shots to just ask the dudes about, like, tell me about this. And the one that stuck out to me was the 71st hole. He has nine feet, four inches to get a shot back. He still has a chance to win. Theoretically, if he can Eagle the last, he has a nine foot putt, he hits 47 inches past the hole on the. I'm like, there's no chance. You didn't try to jam that in. And so what's funny and where I gain credibility with these guys, I'm like, what do you think the one-shot I want to ask you about is, and he pilled, I think it was number 11 or 12. I think it was 11 in the second round. I was like, well, that's on the list actually, but that's not number one. Number one is the putt on 17. Why did you hate that putt? I didn't ask him anything else about his thought process. I told him he hated that putt. You tell me why. And he's like, I read it straight and I hate straight putts. There you go. Well, if you read it straight, you should just commit to it being straight. Don't try to make it straight. That ball had to hit the dead center of the hole to go in. And that's where it's just like, that's the first putt all week you tried to make and it's by far the worst putt you hit all week.

Leo 1:03:17

That's not a coincidence. I mean, it's just. Your your general you know, recommendations there, even for people listening that are on tour is essentially, you have so many different lines to make a putt and the most important variable is speed. And so you, you hit it, you call it the hurricane pattern, right?

Scott 1:03:39

Like there's just a big kind of hurricane. And what are you referring to as the hurricane, if you're watching the weather channel and a hurricane's coming in, it gives you this track that as the hurricane gets further from where it actually is, the track just keeps getting wider and wider. It looks kind of like a bowling alley, but yeah, carry on.

Leo 1:03:53

Yeah. And so the, the, the, the, the mindset is just getting, getting it in the hurricane pattern and not worrying too much about whether it goes in or not obviously, but just getting it into the hurricane pattern and make sure you have the right speed. And sometimes it will hit the hall and sometimes it will stop within a foot and you always to pot. And I, you know, I started doing this a couple months ago. I'm just not good enough putter, but I, I definitely saw the results right away because it's this kind of reverse psychology where you're not focusing in the hall, you just get it out there in the break, and then you, it gives you a sense of comfort that it's going to be there.

Scott 1:04:39

And sometimes it's going to go in, but most of the times it's not going to go in actually. And then, and the only time that's different is, you know, three to six footers or so, right. Is that fair to say yes, once you get three to five ish feet, maybe six feet, again, your speed is still extraordinarily important, but yeah, you need to hit it on a pretty good line inside of six feet for it to go in. But once you start getting outside of eight or 10 feet, if you think of a swarm of bees, so we've got a swarm of 20 bees that are all like compacted to the size of a single. But those are golf balls. And once you hit it, if the punt has any break on it whatsoever, the swarm of these slowly starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And so just the worse your speed is, or the more that a putt is breaking that beehive that swarm of bees just gets bigger. And now just run that swarm of bees over a golf hole and the hole still going to get in the way of some percentage of them. And that's the deal with reading the green. It's why aim point with John Graham and Mark Sweeney teaches so great. It gives you a pretty good read. Is it perfect? No, but it's pretty darn close. And so if, if, if a read is a cup outside the right, and we're 15 feet on tour, the make rates only 23%. So if I had a gate out there that was four cups. It's just not hard to roll it through a foot wide gate from 15 feet. Well, if I can do that, theoretically, the whole is a quarter it's occupying a quarter of that space. It's going to jump in the way of a quarter of those putts, as long as your speed's good. It's going to go in just your line is never the problem. Again, this is a statement that's commensurate to your handicap. So if you are a higher handicap player, your line is worse typically than a lower handicap player. But if you go out and you try to roll a putt 20 feet, so just put a ball mark out there, 20 feet in the green uh, away from it, and then try to roll it at the ball mark, and go move it off to the side each time. So that way you're creating a shot pattern off to the side. So you're trying to recreate where that potential. Your shot pattern will be four to six times deeper than it is wide. I don't care what level you're at. So Aaron Wise, I had him do that exact same thing whenever we were out in Vegas. That, that, that, that that time he's rolling, a 20 footer and a shot pattern was about three cups wide. And it was about 18 cups. Deep. Now take that same idea and put it on a breaking putt. The putt that he hits softer than he intended to, it was going to break sooner. The putt that he hit harder, they intend to do is going to break later. So even given the exact same start line in the exact same read, his shot pattern is getting wider because of a speed at a six to one ratio. I mean, it's, it's I mean, literally for the vast majority of even tour players, I don't care how good your line is. None of their speed is good enough. I really do mean that like, okay, it's a perfect start line. That one didn't break. Yeah. You probably hit it a little harder. Like it's just, you have a shot pattern on approach shots that tilts long, right. Or excuse me, short, right to long left. You really have a shot pattern on putz. Also that skews, the long putts are going to be skewed towards the high side. The shortcuts are gonna be skewed towards the low side. So you get this elliptical shot pattern also on putts with the whole, hopefully in the middle of it. But the speed is what's dictating depending on the pose right to left or left or right. The speed is what's actually creating the shot pattern. Not. And I say this as a guy I played in the 1999 us open. I was dead last in the field and total putz. I had 36 butts boat days, unfortunately now as a 48 year old, I know what a little bit of a yet feels like. So as a result, I know I did not have the hips back in, in, in 1999 when I was 24. And I could do that to ti tiger drill. We've got the putter sitting inside of two T's. I could do that drill all day long and never hit the teas. That information tells me my line was good. Every single day. All I did was that drill. And then I would just randomly roll balls around the green for my speed press. Having a very organized, orchestrated speed drill. Obviously we've got a few in the decade app, but I don't care what it is just to go work on a speed drill. Whichever one you can find on the internet for free will probably be better than whatever it is you're doing. Now use all of your time on the practice screen. And I literally mean all of it doing that speed drill. I've got a great modification of my normal speed drill and the decade app that Maverick McNeilly created that is him running a drill from five to 15 feet and not surprisingly the vast majority of where the best putters on tour, separate themselves from the average putters on tour is from five to 15 feet. You just got to get great at then that's the whole reason to here in my simulator. You can see behind me, that's a 35 foot well-put mat, so I can do a 30 foot speed drill. And then I've got a 16 foot one going across the front right there, so I can do five to 15 foot putts. That's what I mean. I'm not going to say that that's all that matter. But again, as a guy who was dead last, I'm not, I wasn't dead last by a couple. I was dead last by four. Total putz. I firmly was the worst butter in the 1999 us open. When I, when I finished the first round, my buddy called me. He's like, you get one green more than tiger. And he beats you by 11. Thanks. When I missed the cut, after a pair of 70 nines, my instructor called me. He's like, well, let's go back out there and practice. I'm like, yeah, that's a great idea. Go out there and see all the fans and do whatever. I was like fifth or seventh in greens and regulation, dead last and putz. What did we go do? Hit balls again. I played a smart guy on the internet, but I'm such a moron. It's unbelievable. You were a moron total

Mac 1:10:21

but I'm also not a unicorn. So what are you saying about yourself? I think it's just incredible. I think it's just incredible what your contribution to the game has been, especially the coaching side. I mean, it's like to have this data and to have. What you've gone through as a player and then as a coach, and then to kind of go through this whole experience and then be able to share this information. I mean, this information seminated right, is transformative for coaches, especially cause like you said, you're like you went from being timid about sharing the information to being like, I need more data. So you put yourself out there for all these years until you let them say, Hey, I'm confident enough to say this is how you do it. You know, don't fuck around. Here's all the data to show that that's the case. I mean, that's that, you know, I just, I just want to say thank you for putting yourself out there for all those years and, and being in a vulnerable state so that, you know, so that the rest of us could benefit from that and we could chart a better future.

Scott 1:11:10

I certainly appreciate that. And it's hard to say, like, I agree with you, but it's a very unique combination of, I got a lot of free time. I've kind of got a decent background in animal. just happened to be the right guy at the right time. I'm sure somebody else eventually would have done it, but like you're saying the vast majority of what I do well and teach well is because I was so bad at it when I was playing professionally. And even though I was bad at it, I still won 10 times. Like I was still a good player, but I traveled with Chad Campbell and Chris Riley quite a bit. And we played a lot of practice rounds together. And I swear, I was always like, I'm better than these dudes. How is it that Chad is winning half his starts Riley. They're both future Ryder cup players. And I've never got off the Korn ferry tour. Like I never even got full status on the Korn ferry tour. And it's all because I thought at the time it's because I thought it was cause I was a lunatic. Like that's definitely what I chalked it up to my bad platter. And I'm a lunatic. I never, nobody, unfortunately, no nobody ever grabbed me by the ears and be like, you should try meditating, dude. Like you need to eat some mushrooms or smoke some weed and go meditate, man. You gotta, you need to chill out, dude. That's kind of the advice I actually needed at the time. Unfortunately, I never got it. Now. I'm not telling everybody to go do those other two things, but I am telling you, stop telling yourself you're a lunatic and figure out a way to address it. I never thought as again, as dumb as that is, I never thought, well, let's figure out how to not be a lunatic. I just thought that was my DNA. And it is definitely my DNA. I definitely run hot. I definitely have a little bit of depression to where I'm a pretty unique character. But through years and years of effort, I I've I'm past it. I mean, again, maybe that's, I'm 48 less testosterone. I'm not worried about money. There's I get it. There's other there's confounding variables here, but also I know what I do and I get to repeat it pretty often with guys and you see guys like Going out there. This is what he's doing. I mean, the the biggest compliment I got personally was during the masters, watching all of the announcers, just freaking out at how composed he was. And I can't take all the credit for that. He works with Dr. Larden, who's my sports psychologist of 15 years. He's worked with Mickelson and Duvall and a lot of great players he's taken it to the next level with will, but we started it in 2014 through 17 with, again, I don't want to say meditation because it's not what we were doing at the time, but it was essentially a moving meditation. And as I learned more and more about it, what you're really doing in meditation, it's not trying to have no thoughts. It's trying to recognize the ruminating thought patterns before it spirals out of control. That's it? And so it's not like, shit, I suck at this. I keep on thinking about other stuff like that's mine. Just keep coming back to the present moment. You're supposed to suck at this. You're supposed to fail. You're human, but you keep starting over and starting over and starting over and eventually. You're going to get better at it. I mean, it's impossible not to get better, even adds more to the beauty of the story. I mean, you took your anger and frustration and like depression, all the other things. And then you're like, Hey, let's statistically analyze my way out of this.

Mac 1:14:19

And in that process found a system to help countless people in the future. So I think, again, I empathize strongly with that, with the building of UDP. I mean, again, the same thing, I'm, wasn't a freak athlete. So it was more that, Hey, it was like, this is something that's hard for me. It's going to be hard going to the future.

Scott 1:14:34

Let me create something that can help people and, and eliminate confusion and actually have it be a catalyst and the inspiration for others for growth. So again, thanks so much. And thanks for taking the time for this thing and sharing your knowledge. I really, I really do appreciate that. And again, it's, this is, what's hard for me because I know that the way that I handle all of this stuff, I come across as the most arrogant asshole on the planet. I'm doing that intentionally because I'm just trying to show you, this is what we're doing, and this is how it works. this is, the way it all works. And I could be able to try to leave you a little more humble or timid or whatever, but then the message would be totally different. I'm just trying to tell you, this is how it works. Take it. If you want to, don't take it. If you don't want to hate me, if you want to, I couldn't really care less. I think that's another thing that's important is so many people get worried about what other people think about them, especially when they have to post a score next to their name. And again, I'm really mean this for the juniors. I do all of this for the junior golfers. I really do because I saw will just in tears countless times. I mean, I was in tears. If you haven't had a golf cry in your life, you and I probably aren't going to get along very well because you're not trying very hard. But seeing that and just understanding like there is. Uh, Way out of this, it really is all for the juniors to see that. Yeah, I know. I understand you finish every single round thinking you should have shot lower. This is why these are the reasons you feel like you should've shot lower. Now it's going to take a lot of work to recognize in real time. This is a situation where if I make a bogey right here, I'm going to have to record it as one of those tiger five. Now just don't try to make a bogey. I mean, literally, that's what I want you to do. And then just trust the birdies will be there. Just try those pedantic situations. Just don't screw those up.

Leo 1:16:21

And the rest of it's probably going to be okay saw some. And as we wrap up here, the last thing I want to say, it's just a, we've talked a lot about kind of the high level elite golf players. And the strategy around that. But I think that what's cool with this whole concept. Scott is, you know, we have over 20 full-time golf coaches and expectation management is what we do every single day with almost every single client. And so using the statistics and using the numbers to to really help that conversation go better because beginners Midat and Hinton handicapper as low handicappers, they can enjoy the game more. If they understand the statistics and they understand what they can expect on the golf course. I still don't think that knowledge is out there for four 95% of golfers. They don't know that the make percentage from, you know, it's 50% from eight feet for the best players in the world. It's just not common knowledge. I'm excited to see this go out to the, to the masses because I think people enjoyed the game more and they will play better golf and they won't be so fucking hard on themselves. And so disappointed all the time. Like that's the worst thing, right? Like the it's when you have expectations, it can create disappointment and disappointment can lead to stop playing the game, quit, quit the game, or just be constantly negative around the game. And I think that we see that every day a UDP and we need to get better at having those conversations so that people enjoy.

Scott 1:18:00

Well, you, you do, you use the math as funny as it sounds, you use the math to understand how hard the game is, which makes your expectations better. I mean, decade is just an acronym, distance expectation, correct? Target, analyze discipline, execute. If I ever write 10 books on golf, you'll know that I've sold out because there's nothing more to it than those six things. I can tell you this a whole bunch of different ways. But it's always going to come back to one of those there's six letters. And I got really lucky Zelle Tor sent me a text after the U S the Texas amateur in 2014. That just said, I'll never know how to thank you. You've given me 25 years of experience in five days. And that's where I got the idea of decade. We're going to take decades off of your learning curve. I didn't realize at the time how lucky I got that, the first word I attempted to make an acronym out of actually worked. I was like, wow, that actually works. Yeah. I kind of finagled to see correct target, but the most important two letters of it all are not the math ones, the correct target and the analyze. The two most important letters are E expectation and D discipline. Those are by far the two most important letters, because without those, the rest of it's irrelevant. I mean, and I do say this to people. I could teach you decade, the course management side of it. I could teach you in 15 minutes, but without the other 10 hours of tutorial content in the app or the other four hours in the live seminar, You would have no chance of putting it in play consistently because you have to understand the realities of scoring the realities are shot pattern, the realities of one shape. I find it incredible how often I have to argue this one shape idea with people and I'm like, just go watch more Kawa the dudes doing fairly decent, and yet sure. He hits some draws. Not many DJ love it. Huh? He doesn't love it. Yeah. I mean, I actually, I sent cessing house a text after one of the par threes at the British open. Colin clearly was intentionally drawing like a six iron on a par three and I sent Rick a text. It was just like, why would he try to draw that shot there? And Rick didn't reply because I think it was either. I don't want to tell you why or I have no idea. I don't, I don't know which one of it. It was, but it was one of those two. He was just stressing. He was stressing hard. Honestly. I love to hear that he's working with you guys. It's it's he's a great guy. Great kid. Again. I really do want to meet Rick and spend a little more time with him, because again, at the end of the day, I hope you shoot lower scores. I don't really care if you do or not. I really do actually, legitimately I don't want to get too existential here, but I hate the world we're currently building. Like, I really do think we're going down a bad path. And if I hadn't had two kids, eight and 12 years ago, I probably wouldn't care. I'd be like, well, this is it's up to you guys to figure it out. Once I'm going. But I really do hate the world that we're living them. So I do hope that the decade ideas and principles and the meditation and all that stuff will not just help you shoot lower scores. It's going to help you be a better person. Live a happier life again, as a guy who's battled his own depression and his own levels of batshit crazy. I know again, there's a lot of you out there that are struggling with it. And isn't an alternative than just, well, the way I viewed it, my dad was a hot head. I'm a hot head. It's who I am, does not have to be that way at all. And then you take that and amplify it on Twitter and politics and health and fitness.

Mac 1:21:23

And it's just, we're just a train wreck waiting to happen right now. Yeah. There's some shining lifestyle. Like I said, at me, hearing you talk and hearing you share like this, and the more that I see insightful people that are making a positive change in the world and growing things like we'd never been in my dad would think were ridiculous being this vulnerable with our emotions in this conversation. So it's like, I think that the world in there's some positive things that are coming too. I think it's just when you're ever dealing with this much. You're dealing with friction and frictions cows and cows is uncomfortable. So I think that I'm an optimist. So I think that we're heading towards a really good place.

Scott 1:21:54

She didn't have to go through some pretty nasty places to get there. Yeah. I agree with that. We'll average, our average, our overall outlook, and is probably correct. I'm completely dire. You're thinking sunshine and roses. It's probably somewhere in the middle. It was just a little Swedish. He's just a realist.

Leo 1:22:07

He's like, all right, you guys can just talk about whatever. I'll just keep going down the path of mom. What's wrong with you guys? This is awesome. And we could talk for hours and hopefully we'll meet in person soon and we can keep the conversation. I would absolutely love it. I really do appreciate you guys. And I appreciate anybody who's doing these podcasts and trying to

Scott 1:22:27

uh,

Leo 1:22:27

get the message out there. The vast majority of us doing the podcast, aren't actually doing it for money.

Scott 1:22:32

You're actually doing it to teach the next generation tonight and to learn. Yeah. And I'm sure you guys are doing the same for the same reasons. And I think that's awesome. So uh, I started talking about this podcast brings in like, you know, a hundred GS a month. He just wants to win. He just wants to win his club championship next week in reality. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, well, actually we're not even releasing this. We just wanted to have a chat. So we had to go buy these headphones. Uh, Scott, anytime, man, you want to come have an avocado salad in California, man? Just let us know. We'll be here. I would absolutely love to my brother.