Golf Smarter

785: JJ Resnick’s best friend was urging him to come to play golf at College of the Desert, then tragically lost his life. Grieving, and being a typically confused 20 yr old with no direction in life, JJ left Oregon for Palm Desert and after meeting the coach, Tony Manzoni his life changed forever. Today JJ is a successful businessman with amazing stories that include golf, billionaires, and Presi...

784: When Barney Adams introduced the Adams Golf Tight Lies Fairway “Woods” (was the first to use metal instead of wood) in 1988 he changed the golf equipment industry forever. The last time we spoke to him in 2012 he was promoting the wonderful idea of “Play It Forward” for the USGA. A great idea that never really caught on. Now he’s showcasing his newest venture at Breakthrough Golf Technology a...

783: Wedges are critically important to get the ball close to the flagstick. The Wedge Guy, Terry Koehler returns as this week's featured guest. If you’ve heard him on Golf Smarter over the years, or read his blogs, you know he’s frustrated with major club manufacturers who have not made any significant changes to wedges, other than those mandated by the USGA, in decades, even though drivers, hybr...

782: James Ragonnet, PhD, has a compelling new book called Your Inner Golf Guru: Developing the Golf Instructor Within, which contends that to improve your golf swing you need to take a systemic vs analytical approach. The Systemic method means that the golf swing is a sum of all its parts that need to work in cooperation. Breaking down those parts, the Analytical approach, is taking all the nuanc...

781: Josh Zander teaches golf at the Stanford University Golf Course and has been on Golf Smarter many times because his intrinsic understanding of how amateur golfers struggle with so many elements of the game. In this episode we talk about college golf courses, college golfers, the correct way to hit out of both fairway and green side bunkers, and more. Check out the ZanderGolf app for iOS and A...

780: PGA Master Professional Joe Hallett returns to Golf Smarter because he wants to help all of us be better golfers. Being a PGA Master Professional means that he’s one of only 200 PGA Members that are the teachers for PGA Certified Professional Instructors. He also has joined forces with the PerfectMotion app we’ve been talking about to provide you with instruction through the app. Joe usually...

779: Roger Gunn, PGA returns to Golf Smarter to respond to host Fred Greene’s concern that increased yardage is a double edged sword. Of course we all want to hit the ball consistently, but we often speak of how much better we’d be if we could only hit it farther off the tee. There’s a lot more to gaining distance than a new club. It’s club head speed, flexibility, body type, proper mechanics, and...

778: For the last decade, we kicked off the new year with a sarcastic and silly look at the previous year’s PGA Tour season with comedian/TV personality/golf junkie Matty Blake presenting his annual “MattyB Awards”. But because the passed year was so….unique?…MattyB and host Fred Greene just discuss what was great, what was weird, what was funny, and what we hope finds a way to be a regular part o...

777: When it comes to golf improvement, all too often we discuss and dissect various parts of our swings, our bodies, our mental state, our equipment, etc. Our guest today is Dr Ryan Caserta who has studied eye movement patterns as a way to improve all aspects of golf. For the past two decades, Ryan has analyzed key aspects of expert performance and how to maintain those levels. Working with amate...

776: Cary Valentine usually joins us to share interviews he’s done while the PGA Tour is in Hawaii, but because of COVID restrictions, he couldn’t get on the courses, even as a volunteer. So this year, we get an hour with Cary talking about his expertise: improving our mental game. In this conversation we discuss transforming your doubts, fears, & anxiety into success, confidence & fulfillment on...

775: Jamie Zimron, our golf sensei, returns to explain why she loves to play boring golf and what we can do to get there. What’s boring golf? Fairway. Green. Fairway. Green. etc. When we play stress-less, we prosper more. That’s achieved through self-management where you’re trying to minimize damage during a round. Most amateurs are poor at it, but it’s not hard to achieve once you understand that...

774: As we start a new year and our 16th year of golf SMARTER, we open the mailbag to hear a couple suggestions from listeners of how host Fred Greene can get out of his pathetic attitude of not enjoying himself on the course. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to secure a guest for this week’s short episode. Listen for details This week on Golf Smarter Mulligans episode 90, we replay our interview wi...

773: Dr. Robert K Winters is the Resident Sports Psychologist at the David Leadbetter World Teaching Headquarters in Florida. It’s been twelve years since we had our last conversation with Dr. Bob, but his return to discuss confidence, the Yips, mindfulness, clutch performance, competition, and more doesn’t disappoint. You can find him at DrBobWinters.com or his new training site, TheConfidenceDoc...

772: 4x PGA Tour winner, Chip Beck returns for part 2 of our conversation. We cut him off early last week because he started talking about the new app-based expert system for training the motion of activities in performance called PerfectMotion. It's a great new app where you get immediate feedback in addition to being able to have a PGA Teaching professional provide feedback and insights. Chip wo...

771: Chip Beck was only the second player in PGA Tour history ever to card a 59 in a sanctioned PGA event. He’s also only one of two that posted that score in the 90s (1991 Las Vegas Invitational) along with David Duval who did it at the 1999 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. The very first 59 was in 1977 by Al Geiberger, all the rest have come since 2000. Jim Furyk posted a 59 in 2013, yet he also has t...

770: “Muni” a new documentary available for free on YouTube is a love letter to golf and a personal telling of how African-American caddies, despite Jim Crow laws and the lasting effects of racism, built a rich and vibrant golf culture by becoming the first course in North Carolina to desegregate. Our guest is filmmaker Paul Bonesteel (The Day Carl Sandburg Died, The Mystery of George Masa) who le...

769: Bryson DeChambeau’s recent success on the PGA Tour has made single length golf clubs relevant. But are they for everyone? This week’s guest on Golf Smarter is Matt Lake of 1IronGolf.com. Matt claims that the major manufacturers focus on different length shafts for each club for the purposes of mass production and scalability of their business. 1IronGolf refuses to mass produce as an independe...

768: Cody Hale, Director of Tour/Player Development and the SeeMore Putter Institute at SeeMore putters joins us once again to give us another perspective of Lie Angle Balanced putters that we’ve recently discussed. Does Seemore offer that too? It’s called Face Balanced at Impact, but doesn’t get the same attention as it does elsewhere. We also talk about the importance of getting fitted for a put...

767: YouTube sensation Danny Maude returns to share his thoughts on The Masters being played in November and commentary on the PGA Tour players who shined and struggled. We also discuss what is a "shank" and why it happens, and Danny’s ability to translate complicated swing mechanics that are overloading our thoughts into terribly simple and sensible instructions. Congratulations to Steve D of Cin...

766: Noah Pilipski is at peace with golf because he is a Peaceful Golfer. If you’re chasing mechanics and fretting over ball flight and distance, then let Peaceful Golf allow you to PLAY golf (remember that it's a game!) and stop thinking about golf shots. One day he questioned what would happen if he swung the club with no swing thoughts or any thoughts at all? The results were shocking, even for...

765: We live in unprecedented times that demand seeing the world in different ways. This week we speak to Eric Sedransk, a golfer, tech entrepreneur, and serial volunteer who came up with a unique idea to raise money in NYC to feed front line workers and first responders during the first wave of the pandemic. It worked so well that he created a golf fundraising platform for nonprofits called Membe...

764: Bill Presse is the inventor of the Lie Angle Balanced putters that are now part of the LABgolf company. In this episode he discusses why putter torque is such an overlooked aspect to putting and how it works against you. That’s why LABgolf CEO and guest of episode 761 say that you’re a better putter than you think! This is not another overview, this is a deep dive into the technical aspects a...

763: GPS has become a critical tool in our golf bag. Never again do we have to guess the distance to the flag. Now let's take it a step further and track each club’s performance…and make it a wearable!! That’s what you get with V3, the latest from ShotScope. Our guest is a former Tour golfer, now spokesperson for ShotScope, Gavin Dear, going in depth on the value, specs, and features of this aweso...

762: Thanks to a great suggestion, this week’s guest is Jayne Storey, author of “Breathe Golf: The Missing Link to a Winning Performance” In addition to writing, Jayne is also a coach and speaker helping golfers for more than three decades overcome performance anxiety and mental interference in high-pressure situations. Her approach is based on both Tai Chi, “stillness is the master of motion”, an...

761: One thing that contributes to a lousy day on the golf course is missing short putts, or multiple 3 putts. But your confidence in lining up your putt, your ability to read the greens, even your skill at lag putting is good, so what’s the problem? It’s your putter!! Our guest is CEO of LAB Golf, Sam Hahn, who explains that their Lie Angle Balanced putters designed by Bill Presse will completely...