On the podcast, this past week, we had on Clay Ballard with top
speed golf. We had a great conversation on
what it takes or what are some Concepts that you can experiment
with and explore to potentially, hit the ball farther.
It was a great chat, hope you enjoyed that.
And then after we had that conversation, we went through a
round of quick questions with Clay so you could get to know
him a little bit better. What's your favorite piece of
gear? Could be anything that you've
gotten lately. That you really like, I'm big on
so Snell, golf balls. I don't know if you've tried
those, it's not really gear but they make basically Dean snail,
the guy that invented the Pro V1 and and made a lot of the
TaylorMade golf balls. He's basically making a tour
caliber golf ball and they're about 32 bucks a dozen or
something like that. So I've been using those and
playing around for a while but man, it's I probably liked it
better than I used to. The projects.
I like it better in a probe edx and it's a little cheaper, so
it's pretty cool. Pretty cool, golf ball.
Nice. Nice.
Favorite Club in your golf bag. I've always loved it in the
driver and there's something about it and it far and I've
always been a pretty good driver of the golf ball.
So I use a use a ping I15 driver.
The things like I don't know how many years old like eight years
old. I've tried out all the new stuff
and one and two and three all that all the different drivers
and I hit this one way better than any of the new stuff so
that's probably not very good for selling drivers but that's
that's that. It's working for me.
There you go. What kind of like, what's the
shaft, or what's the specs of that club?
That's so magical. Yeah, I think that's it is that
you just get a feel for it and it just works really good.
So I get good launch and spin rates and all that kind of
stuff. And I feel like I can just, you
know, try to swing as hard as I can, and I know it's going to
stay in the Fairway. So it's a, it's an active core
is the name of its UST Mamiya shaft.
It's a 69 G, extra stiff tipped about an inch or so.
So, This works out. Good for my swing, I guess.
I agree. They still have finding a driver
combo there. You can swing as hard as you
want. I've just recently found that
and there's something about that that really helps.
You just like man I can just take a look at this thing and I
feel pretty good about it. Yeah talk about a good feeling,
you know because you get a driver sometimes and I just
don't fit you for whatever reason.
I bought five hundred dollar drivers, trying to replace this
thing, and I'm on about my third one, because just remember the
face cracks over two years, just replaced it with Huh.
They used one off eBay. I think this one cost me 80
bucks. The last one.
There you go. That everybody hang on to your
eyes 15s and then sell them back to clay at a another trash.
That's here. That's right.
Him up on Twitter. Hey, I've got another one for
you. Favorite Golf Course or golf
trip. Anything stand out to you.
The favorite Golf Course of all time is in is in Alberta Canada.
I don't know the city name but it's a it's called Silver Tip.
This place is crazy. I went there when I was about 10
or 11 years old, 12 years old. Something like that when I when
I first started playing golf on a family vacation and it's like
it's nuts. If you Google it, it's right in
the Middle East big mountains, it's crazy.
It's the best course of our played by far.
I will check that one out. Who's been a big influence on
your golf career as a teacher, as a golfer who do you look to
as your influences? I think a lot of it is just
growing up like in the right time at the right place.
So we always had a really good golf team and high school and
the head pro. His son It was announced the
home town. I grew up in Bobby, Baldwin
still at Winchester Country Club in Winchester Kentucky.
And so, that was really good because John Baldwin his son and
his older son, Robbie Baldwin. We all three played a lot
growing up and then we had a group of like, 20, guys, on our
golf team when we were in high school and he didn't let you the
coach West Martin, would let you join the team even when you're
in like eighth grade. So it took it real serious and
there's always tons of guys to play with.
This is really cool to be able to go Like a good group of
people to play with. So that's just kind of kind of
dumb luck just fallen into that, I guess.
And then lightly, I know you've done some stuff with uh, Sasha
Mackenzie but I think he's really helped my my teaching
here a lot learning. A lot of the science of forces
and motion, they're going in the club and stuff like that, him
and Phil Cheatham have a great training that I highly recommend
for anybody. And I think that's been really
eye-opening for me. A lot of cool stuff in there.
That's very counterintuitive, not not things that you would
would. Think should be happening and
how that affects the golf club and specifically the gulf face.
You know, if you want to, you want to be consistent, you got
to do a few things like shallow the club shaft in the early
transition really make that a lot easier.
So that's, that's some good stuff in there.
What worries you the most about the golfers that you helped by
the golfers that you see in the industry, I think that's been
the most time, like, is the most aggravating part is not
necessarily having the right information to say to someone
but saying, in a way to where it's Help them and be the
easiest to implement in their game.
So I try to put together a lot of programs and spend a lot of
time. Not only just throwing together
information, but going through and trying out multiple drills,
you know, which ones are going to be the most effective for
somebody to try and see results right away.
And sometimes that takes a lot of time to put together a
program doing that because you may have to try out 10 or 15 or
20 different ways of saying something to figure out the best
way to get it to click for somebody.
But you know that's that's also the fun part 2.
It's kind of a little bit like a puzzle trying to figure it out
if it was easy. He probably be boring.
Hey I mean you're prolific at putting out great content over
the past year. What do you think has made the
biggest difference in your ability to get results for four
players just testing? Not used to never.
I think when I started teaching, you know, you just have these
ideas and think all this is a great idea.
Like I got this Theory, right? And then you go out and you
start doing it and it's very easy and I see a lot of coaches
do this and drives me nuts. Is, they'll just have a theory.
We'll go out and start teaching it and if it's not working for
somebody then they just say, oh well he don't you just hasn't
gotten it yet or we'll just keep doing this and a lot of times
I'll see players which I think is very frustrating for the
player. The work on something.
For three, four, five, six months and not be getting the
results that they want to get, but they just keep grinding away
at it. And I just, I just don't believe
in that anymore. Like just test it, if it works
and you should be getting positive results.
If it doesn't work, then just quit doing it and find something
else. It's better, you know, Life's
too short to spend years working.
On some theory that may or may not be true, you know, and then
you have some tack, what's your most used Tech in your testing
and you're trying to figure stuff out.
What do you use the most? I use Radars all the time.
So I got a GC quad is the latest radar.
I got and I got an older flight scope next to Ali.
That's a good radar. When you pick those up for
relatively. Well it's are all expensive but
relatively affordable. If you get a used one of those
now and that makes teaching so easy.
Just because you talk about an idea and then you say, okay,
here's here's how this should change your impact.
Let's see your speed go up two or three miles an hour.
You make a swing and either it's going up or it's not going up.
Probably the one that's the best for the consumer.
I don't do you mostly coaches or players on the podcast.
You think we're mostly golfers now.
We're about probably 60/40 70/30 here.
Yeah. So swing caddy makes the SC 200
which is a little portable radar, which shows your swing
speed and some different data on there and those are really good.
Those are probably about I think they're about 300 bucks.
I like to use those a lot. We use those in our distance
clinics, you know, every person will have one while there while
they go into the clinic and then just a little really easy to
use. Indoor product is the one that
we talked about is the swing speed radar.
It's about 100, 120 bucks, or something like that.
I think the cool thing about that is you can practice your
distance, practice, making swings and get immediate
feedback without even being outside of the course.
So, if you want to, you know, you get home from work, you got
five minutes. You want to make 1015 swings,
throw that thing down, make some swings and get get immediate
feedback. So you If what you're working on
is right or wrong at least in regards to swing speed.
Yeah. Yeah.
Any books not necessarily golf-related but books that
you've read lately, that you feel like that have helped you.
Oh yeah, you have read a ton. I really like to I'm a big
audible or a yeah, yeah, audible.com the website.
I probably read a listen to how I don't read very much anymore
but I'll listen to probably 40 or 50 different books a year.
But Peak by K. Anders Ericsson is like awesome
for coaching. If you're into coaching and
learning Fast. And you want to learn ways to
really improve your ability to pick up a new Motion, in your
golf swing or whatever. Then he's got a lot of good info
in there, so it's a peak, like, the peak of a mountain PA K.
And it's by K, Anders Ericsson who's a big-time researcher and
in just a lot of basically ways to learn faster kind of came up
these famous a little bit for a bit misunderstood but the
10,000-hour rule from what was the book, Malcolm Gladwell book.
Outliers outliers. Yeah, yeah, so he's the guy that
kind of came up with that 10,000 hour rule, it's not really.
The way that Malcolm Gladwell talked about is a little bit
different. It's not actually 10,000, it can
be variable and I'm actually going to talk a little bit today
in this podcast about one of the things that he goes over in
there, which I think is really good.
Love it. That's one of my favorite books.
I think it's just well, written. Easy to understand.
Yeah, not super difficult to read and some great, the great
research that it's trying to explain.
So yeah, I highly recommend that one as well.
I would say it will end with this one, so you could write
something on every golfers, golf glove.
So, every time they look down before they hit a shot, they saw
phrase or something that you wanted to impress on them.
What would you put there? Oh, that's a tough one.
Yeah, he's a little different for everybody if we're sticking
with the topic we're going over today which is distance is just,
you know go ahead and rip it don't.
Don't hold back and you try to guide it.
Everybody wants to slow down and kind of steer the ball in the
Fairway and what ends up happening is you swing slower.
You should it shorter and then you still don't really hit any
straighter. So it's always better to be
confident. Go ahead and make a good swing
at it and let the results come out as they come out rather than
trying to steer to go at it.