Golf With Jay Delsing - - New Year Resolutions

Jay Delsing spent 25 years on the PGA Tour and is a lifetime member of the PGA Tour and PGA of America. Now he provides his unique perspective as a golfer and network broadcaster. It's time to go On The Range with Jay Delsing. On The Range is brought to you by 20 Minutes to Fitness. Good morning, this is Golf with Jay Delsing.

I'm your host Jay. Happy New Year St. Louis Perley. Happy New Year to you and New Year's Resolutions 2020. They're a little scary for golf resolutions. I'm not sure if I've ever even done anything like this before.

I really haven't either. I think it's been really fun to put this show together. Meet Happy New Year to you. Thank you so much for joining us again for another year. We formatted the show just like Around the Golf.

The first segment is called the On The Range segment. Our social media outlets. Twitter is at Jay Delsing. Facebook is Golf with Jay Delsing and Jay Delsing Golf.

LinkedIn is Jay Delsing and Instagram will remain a complete mystery for 2020 just like it was for 2019. Consistency. Consistency. New Year's Resolutions are made and broken more than... So this is our practice, range, New Year's Resolution. Right. I got one.

Let's go. No three putts this year. Love it. I mean folks, if you can sit down and just quickly peruse about the last 10 or 15 games that you had playing golf and you could eliminate your three putts, how much lower would your score be and how much better would your handicap be? Absolutely. And that's something we want to tackle.

That's absolutely key. And to be legit though is let's have three things we're going to resolve to do to give us the best chance not to have three putts. We're not going to not three putts this year. Nobody's going to do that.

Nobody is. So Jay, what are three things that a person can do and commit to all year to help that? Number one, you get to the golf course, you have got to give yourself at least 15 minutes of time on that putting ring with your putter.

Feeling the speed of the greens for that day, it changes every day. Absolutely have to get that putter in your hand and stroke some putts. No doubt about it. Okay. What's next? So number two is we have got to get committed to what you're trying to do with each and every putt. Jon, tell, I mean, I cannot express how important it is to putt to make a putt instead of to not miss. You have to commit on each putt. Putt to make this putt, this very putt.

Quit thinking about, oh, I don't want to not hit it too hard because it might go five feet by. Each and every putt you putt to make, not to not miss. Gigantic difference.

Huge difference. So stay focused on that putt to make each putt. And number three, you got to relax.

You got to be as relaxed with those hands and soft with those hands as you possibly can because it will give you so much more feel. Relaxed over each putt. Okay. So that's our three pieces. So let's have a little reminiscing. Good time of year to do a little reminiscing back in the day, running around the world with you. How did you do on some of these things? I'm trying to remember some stories.

Oh, it just depends on the day. Fifteen minutes. So let's see, what was that one qualifier that we were running to the first TN? It was a US Open qualifier. We didn't have fifteen minutes to putt on that day, did we? No, we didn't.

We ran to the T because we were almost living one of your nightmares. Yeah, that's right. I think I lost a golf bag or something.

Yeah, right. You went in to go do something. Yeah, I was going to the shop to see if they had an extra yardage book or something and they had skipped a tee time and we were suddenly on the tee and I looked over at you. And unfortunately, I was the first up. And so I literally ran from the golf to you.

I could tell by the tone of your voice, there was some panic in there. And I ran to the tee with, what, about ten seconds to spare? Yeah, it was close. It was very close. And then there was some funky downhill iron thing. Yeah, right.

Which we hit driver instead of the iron. It was fine. You know, sometimes I think, too, maybe you overdid it sometimes, too. I think one of the things that's a good advice that you've given on the fifteen minutes, you don't need an hour. You do not need an hour. And if there's other times you want to do some of that, but before you're playing, part of what one of your three tips is, is to get in a routine before you play of this fifteen minutes.

Here's the other thing. Don't go to the golf course without a plan. We're going to talk about this in each one of our New Year's resolutions for the golf. But the plan is fifteen minutes, not thirty, and not two. Go there with a plan because it's just going to relax you. And the fact that you've got a plan, I mean, have you ever gone to the golf course and spent fifteen minutes practicing your putting before you got out there?

No, that's what I was going to ask you. So I go and I'm straight to the driving range, maybe ten, fifteen minutes, and I'm going to go through my driver. I'll start with a couple of irons, go through my driver, but I don't even think about the putting.

It's not even a thought. How do you putt? Actually, I'm okay. Really, depending on the day, sometimes it's the best part of my game.

There's very few lost balls on the putting group. Let's get down to it. Right, right.

It doesn't cost me any money. So that's a big deal, too. You're talking about part of the routine.

So these three things that you've given, fifteen minutes of practice, have the mindset to make it, and really be relaxed over it. Right, so I'm going to tell you this. When I played our best, we had all of these things and we didn't vary off of these things much.

Absolutely not. The whole routine in the mornings was so similar. One of the things that we did, too, on the range, Pearl, that is kind of a footnote to this sort of stuff, is just get loose. You don't have to go to the range looking for a swing.

Just get your muscles loose. Hit some shots. If you hit one kind of funky, so what? You're not looking after results.

That's the wrong place to look after results. And you're not looking to rebuild your swing in five minutes before you go play. It's like you know how to play the game, relax a little bit, and then go play.

So when we talk about getting really committed, really thinking to make each one, I'm trying to remember some of the times out there with you two trying to make it. I remember you going through a tour school, or it may have been nationwide the one year, and you're coming down the stretch and making birdies all over the place. And you got on one par five and you had about an eight-footer. And we read it left edge, you stepped away, you stepped away, and you turned around and he says, I can't make this putt.

I'm not kidding you. I stood up and looked at Janet and you came over and go, because I've got a very kind of quicker routine that I repeat every single time. I just couldn't get it in my mind that I was going to make this putt. But that was great though, to step back, because you had the mindset of make, and you literally couldn't get it into your mind that you could make that putt. And guess what? I made it.

It didn't feel good. Everything was shaking. I'm like, is that ball going in?

I remember we just kind of mentioned, hey, what's the routine here? What are you looking at here? This is left edge.

Get up there, roll that thing towards the left edge, and go from there. Absolutely. You've mentioned a couple times, doing these three different things is going to help with that overall relaxation, overall kind of getting that mindset, overall being in that zone, if you will. I mean, the reason people get into zones is because there's a zone that they've mapped out to get to, and that helps you out an awful lot with it. And John, the plan. A plan.

Something that you can rely on. What are you going to do when you get to the golf course? I know exactly what I'm going to do. The first thing that I do is go to the putting green and spend 15 minutes before I went to the range. And then we go to the range and we did our same thing every day.

There would be some slight variations depending on altitude sometimes. When we'd be in Reno or Denver, it was a little odd. But for the most part, it was kind of like on our watch. We were there, we hit our time, off we went, and it worked. So number three you've got here, relax over each putt. This is a bit of a fine line. I've actually been studying some of this type of stuff relative to how hard do you try. You've got to try a certain amount because you have to stand up and have a putter in your hand. But trying too hard and not trying hard enough is almost just as bad. And I heard somebody, Golf Channel or someplace, the other day talking about this too.

Actually it was Mike Weir talking about on a scale of 1 to 10 how he wanted to be kind of in this 5, 6, 7 range. Don't try too hard, but he couldn't just be all loosey-goosey and that thing waving all over the place. That's not going to work when you're playing the greens you guys did or just for anybody. So finding that relaxed for you. Can you talk about that? Yeah, no.

I mean it has to be and match your personality. There are some guys like John Daly, he's just up there and that putter is waving all over the place. It absolutely is. And he has no sense for where it is other than the feel that he has that day. But then you get to a guy like Mark O'Meara for example.

Mark was very meticulous about what he did every single day. Tiger? Tiger is the same way.

What about Fax though? You and Faxon were good buddies and he's kind of been known as, maybe after Crenshaw, one of the next kind of putting kings. It was an awful lot of feel and it was an awful lot of seeing the ball go in the hole. It was very loose. He was very movey.

He had a lot of movement going on in there. But Fax is an athlete and he's trying to shoot that ball in the hole with his putter and I think it shows. Again, we've got to match up to your personality. But if you have one of those personalities that wants to control everything, we've got to get you to not squeeze that putter too tight.

And we've really got you to loosen those muscles up to give you a sense of feel. One putter's coming back on me. It was the first hole you played at... Oh damn, I was hoping it was the putter you hit, not me. In Milwaukee.

The GMO. In Milwaukee. You got up the first hole and you hit it right down the middle, hit this pretty second shot, a little bit short, you know, a pin about 25 feet. You got up there and hit that first putt. You were so pumped up to play. Hit that first putt about 12, 14 feet past the hole. I don't remember that. I wonder why I don't remember that. And I think you made the one coming back.

Oh good. How do you plug in to those different pieces? Okay, so this is a perfect time to give you guys some drills on helping you not three putt. And of all the components in this segment, the putting can help lower your score the most. Okay, so let's break it down into short putts and the long putts. Alright, so here's a drill that I worked on all the time when I played on tour and I still work on it today for my long putts. I'll get somewhere between, oh, 20, 30, 40 feet from the hole. The putts don't have to be straight. They can be breaking.

They can be uphill and downhill. In fact, choose a variety of putts, left to right breaking putts, right to left breaking putts, uphill and downhill. Go through your pre-shot routine and right before you're going to hit this putt, close your eyes. Okay, now this is going to completely freak you out. It's going to blow your mind.

You're going to go, what? But here's what this does and why it's so effective. Because all you have left is the feel of that putter hitting the ball. And you want that to reflect back to your senses and you can keep your eyes closed, hit this putt, and then give it about 15 or 20 seconds and then judge what happened by the feel that you got back. Oh, I pulled that putt and I hit it a little too hard. Or it's a little short and it's a little right.

And then open your eyes and go, oh man, that didn't match up at all. You want to do this. What it does is it takes away all of your conscious thoughts about what you're trying to do. This just lets you plug into feel and putting is the feel in putting is the most important part of this thing. There's so many ways to make putts. You have to pick out a line and match that up with the feel to match that line to get that ball in the hole. Okay, second of all, and this is really important, is short putting. And I'm talking about four feet on end.

If your handicap is below a ten, I'll go ahead and say five feet on end. But you want to get four balls and put them in various spots around the hole. So that you have, let's say, it's a flat area on the green and you're going to have your balls around this hole. So I want you to go through your routine with each one of these putts and start at three feet.

Actually, let's do this for your confidence. Let's start at two feet and knock those four putts in. And once you make the four putts in a row, then back them out to three feet and make all four of those putts from three feet in a row. And then once you back, once you make those three footers in a row, then you go and get that, go to the four footer.

And here's what's great about this, folks. First of all, these are putts that you can handle and that you're going to expect to make. Second of all, you will find there's pressure added here because after you make those two footers and then you make the three footers, when you get to the four footers, if you knock the first three in, that last four footer means I've got to knock this in or else I've got to start all the way over.

That's the component I forgot to mention, Meat. If you miss, you've got to start all the way over. So you make the first round of two footers, you go to the three footers, you make all those three footers, you go to the four footers. At any point in time you miss, you've got to start over. And this sounds really, really easy until you miss a couple times.

And then you start getting a little frustrated and you start feeling a little more anxious or a little pressure. That's why this drill is spectacular. The other thing that I'll tell you, almost every single guy on the PGA Tour works on this drill. And one of the things that PGA Tour players practice is putting themselves in situations where there's stress. And no, this isn't the stress of knocking in a putt to win a tournament, but it is still stress.

Once you finish and knock those four footers in, then you get to go move on to the next part of practice and the next part of your game. The other thing why this works out so well is just put this in and make a plan for when you get to the golf course. You're going to rely on it, you won't believe how much better your short putting is. And here's the last tip on these short putts. Line the seal, whether you use a Titleist or a TaylorMade, whatever ball you use, there will be a straight line print on the side of your ball.

Line that up. Like we said with these putts, these are going to be straight putts. Take that seal of that ball and line it to the middle of the hole. And then when you stand over your putter, I'd say 98% of all putters made either have a line or a dot or something for you to use to help you figure out where you're aiming.

You aim that line on your putter and match it up with the seal on where you have that ball lined up and roll that thing in the hole. Those tips will help you not three putt in 2020. So that's that new year's resolution for the practice range is no more three putting.

And we've got those three ideas for you to take there. Fifteen minutes of practice, putt to make it, and relax over that darn putt. And here's the thing that's so challenging. You're going to stand up there and try and crash a drive 350 yards like we were trying to do. And you're going to hit an iron shot with some touch and some shape to it. And then you're going to try to finish this thing off with a super touch related motion by putting the ball into a four plus inch hole. That's where we need a plan.

That's right. You need a plan. You need to be soft.

You need to be simple. Pearly, that was great. Thanks so much.

That's going to do it for the on the range segment. Come on back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. We're headed to the front nine. Quick note. We just got a call from our friend Joe Siesler at USA Mortgage.

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Welcome back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. I'm your host, Jay. I've got Perley May here with me and we're headed to the front line. Perley, we've got to give a little bump to Whitmore Country Club for sponsoring the show again.

They were fantastic in our first year and they're back again. There's 90 holes of golf at Whitmore. You get access to Golf Club of Wentzville, Links of Dardeen, Missouri Bluffs, as well as 36 holes out at the Whitmore complex.

When Bummer and I did our exhibition last year, we had probably 200 people following us around. The golf course was in great shape. This is a club that gets used. The members really enjoy it.

Had a great holiday season there this past year. There's a 24-hour fitness club in the summertime. The pool complex is huge. There's the kids club and in the nicer weather months, they've got junior golf, junior tennis, swim teams. And then there's Bummer and the staff in the golf shop.

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So go to whitmoregolf.com, ask for our buddy Bummer in the golf shop, and they'll help you with anything you need. Pearl, we're working on a resolution show here for 2020. Can you believe it's 2020, Pearl? I hardly cannot believe it, but it's right on top of us and we need to be ready for the year. So what are we doing? We had three prepared, not three putt in 2020. That was our first segment. So this segment, what are we looking for resolution? Actually, meat kind of inspired us to get one going here.

No, I love it. And we appreciate that. This is about relaxing. How can we get in that state of mind that's going to let us play our best golf?

How do we do that? So the number one thing... Where's the heck I knew? That's always been a tough one for me. I know. The first thing is going to be stay in the present moment, meaning I'm not worried about hole number 12 that I can't stand because I always seem to double bogey that hole or it's got a lake on it and I hit my ball in the lake on that par three, whatever.

Or how other people in my group are hitting their shots. Right. This is one shot at a time in this present moment. And when you're in the present moment, it's not about what happened last time. That's in the past. It's not about how I might screw up number 18.

That's in the future. It's right here, right now. I'm outside. I'm getting ready to play golf. And how am I going to play my best golf? And that's what we're doing this for. So when you're going to be present, I'm sure you're going to talk about pre-shot routine and just get into that. The rest of the world really doesn't matter.

What's the lie of the ball? What's the situation? What am I trying to accomplish here, right? Absolutely. And you've got to make your commitments. We talked about that a little bit earlier. You've got to stay with your commitments.

You've got to stay focused on what you're doing. We're going to tie all that in here. But the biggest thing is wherever, it sounds like a caddy shack, wherever you are, there you are. I'm putting right now. I got to the golf course and plenty of time to warm up a little bit. I'm going to spend my 15 minutes on the range. Enjoy it. This is a great club somewhere, wherever you are. And you're out, you're not in the office.

Maybe you're entertaining some business customers and this is going to help your business. Let's just relax and enjoy what we're doing. So be present, one shot at a time. Jay, talk about your pre-shot routine. When you play now, is it the same as when you played on tour?

Did it evolve through the years? And if you don't mind, start out with what is your pre-shot routine? I absolutely will. I love it. I worked on my pre-shot routine with Bob Rotella. It took us all of about three minutes.

It was just something that made a lot of sense to me. I take my practice swings and everything away from the ball. I don't do a whole lot of that when I get into the ball. When I stand in that ball inside that kind of magical three-foot circle around the ball, I've got my shot already committed to.

I know where I want to start it. I know what my target is. And folks, sometimes my target isn't the flag stick. A lot of times on tour it's not the flag stick.

Because they just make the whole location ridiculous and they're so penal. So there might be a little right or a little left. And I commit to everything that I'm doing. And then when it's time to swing, I'm working on my field. So I'm going to get myself set. I'm going to take a look up at my target. A little shuffling with my feet. Re-adjust my club behind the ball. One more look up and I'm swinging. So two peaks in the goal. And it takes, how long would you say my pre-shot routine takes?

You've seen it more than anybody. I never timed it, but not very long. Way less than 20 seconds.

Yeah, not very long. And I've done this with some of the students I've worked with and timed these things. But the timing, I'm glad you brought that up. Timing of it. I worked with you and watched you when you were working with some of your students. You know, if it's a look at your lie, look at the shape, look at what you're trying to accomplish and you've got five or six things you're trying to plug in. We want all this to happen in the same time frame.

We don't want it sometimes to take 15 seconds and other times to take 30 seconds and other times to take 25 seconds, right? Just the rhythm of that routine, literally we would talk about all the time, is a big piece of this. Bro, you and I both played basketball. Not at our level, we played high school basketball.

We both loved it, very competitive guys. Oh, the B-League at UCLA too, intramurals. Oh yeah, yeah. That could be a whole other show. There may have been higher than a lot of high school basketball. I think so. We could tell some fun stories about that, but it's not a golf-related thing. But we could do it anyway. The golf team was playing.

Who cares? That's right. You remember when you'd have one guy shagging a basketball for you and you'd be out shooting and we called it around the world, you could do whatever it is. We didn't have a three-point line when we played, but you could do that. And you remember when you got comfortable in that routine? In the rhythm, maybe.

The guy would rebound the ball and one bounce it to you, you'd step into that shot and the ball would be off. And there's a rhythm to that. And to me, when I'm putting well, it feels like that.

When I'm hitting the ball well, it feels similar to that. But there's a general rhythm to this whole thing and that's really important. I love what you said a couple minutes ago about you kind of have two peaks and go in your swing. But I can remember, too, out there, when it's two peaks and kind of a rhythm type of thing, how you addressed it, you got your feet in there. And when there was rhythm throughout that, otherwise, more than once, I would kind of call you off going like, okay, there's a second half of a peak in there. There's an extra waggle in there. There's an extra waggle in there. That's not okay.

When I got really good at that, that felt like a massive issue for me, where I was like, I can't do that. Holy cow, what did I do wrong? And you're like, you looked up when I was first developing it.

I'd vary it a little bit and that was completely wrong. You're done. You're done at that point. And you can see the guys on the tour, the ladies on the tour. Most of them do an excellent, excellent job at this because, guys, this is something we have control over. In essence. We can't always control whether it goes the right height, the right distance, the right amount of curve, but we need to control what we can control. And this pre-shot routine and the rhythm of the pre-shot routine is absolutely a huge deal.

And when I'm watching on TV, I'll sit there and be yelling at the TV, when I watch somebody stand over it, which I know is one or two seconds longer than they normally do, and I'm like, done. Something else is going on here. They're going to grip it a little tighter.

Their putter head's not going to swing the same. Well, it's indecision. What you're seeing there is indecision if they're varying it. And let's go to the second part, the second component. Notice your setting, folks. If you want to relax, notice how beautiful the golf course is.

Wait a minute. You're out of the office. Chances are it's sunny and warm. You're out playing golf. Or at least it's, you know, better than being.

It feels like it because you're not in the office. Yeah, that's right. I mean. And we're lucky. We are lucky to get to play this game and be out there with friends or just by ourself, you know, nature, the whole thing. Whatever it is, John, I felt like when I, this is going to sound so stupid, but I felt like when I could hear the birds chirping, I was there.

Yeah, that's awesome. There were other times where I'm like, what bird? What happened? You're like, they just blew that house up right behind you.

I'm like, I didn't hear anything. Plus, you were in the arena. You were in your element at that point. That's where you kind of wanted to be and wanted to go. We had a buddy from college I talked to not too long ago. He was kind of struggling with some things. And a question I asked him is, when's the last time you even played golf?

And he said, you know, it's been a year or two ago. I said, get out there today and go to a golf course. If nothing else, just have lunch.

Go walk across the practice putting green and go have a sandwich or something. And smell what it smells like to be out there. The atmosphere, the relaxed nature of kind of everybody more or less that's out there. It's kind of a sanctuary in essence. And it's a place that I think you want to plug into as much as you can out there.

Because if you're not plugged in all that, you're missing something. No doubt. No doubt.

And I missed it a thousand times. The pro cutting the grass, the grass being cut, smells a certain way, the dew in the morning, all that stuff. Absolutely. Absolutely plug into nature. That's number two.

Number three, what do you got? You got to work on your focus. And guys, you're playing golf and let's say it's kind of a slow day. It's going to take you five hours to play.

You don't have to focus for five hours. You've got to figure out how to get in and get out. Get in and get out. Okay, it's my turn to play. I'm ready to play. I've made my commitments. I've made my practice swings.

Get in there. After you've hit it, let it go. And do your thing. Not worry about what other people.

You always want to get away from results. But not worry about what other people are thinking. Other people are doing that type of thing.

They got their own world that they need to work on. You know, part of this is the whole kind of ego thing relative to that. Is not be worried about that and be plugged into being present and being pumped up that you're just out there to begin with. Yeah, so our three. We're going to recap our three. Stay in the present moment, one shot at a time.

We heard that time and time again. We're at UCLA. The second is notice your surroundings. Appreciate the golf course, the beauty. There's gorgeous flowers around there. You know, you might have a cocktail in your hand. It's just fantastic.

And part three of that is focus. Drop the ego. You're out there to have fun. Enjoy the whole environment. Enjoy the fact you're fortunate enough to be playing golf today. So that's a resolution to relax for 2020.

Absolutely. That's going to wrap up the front nine. This is Golf with Jay Delsing.

Come on back. Perle and I are going to hook you up on the back nine. One hundred thousand watt blowtorch for St. Louis sports driven by auto centers Nissan home of a 30 day return.

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Welcome back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. I'm your host, Jay. I got my buddy, John Perlis, with me. And, Perli, we are going to the Back Nine. And we're on our New Year's resolution for 2020 for our golf game. And component number three here is shaving strokes, our saving strokes. So we had three putts to prepare to stay away from three putts. The front nine was relaxed and now we're on shaving strokes. So where do we start, Jay?

Where do we start with shaving strokes? So the biggest thing is not assessing and not judging where you are. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm three over par.

I only have four holes left in everybody. To the person seems to have their game just crumble at that point. Absolutely.

Absolutely. So what's some ways to stay out of that? How do we get away from adding that up?

I can remember playing in pro amps. Oh my gosh. How many under are we? And I would say to them, it's not relevant. We are in this thing, and especially those scrambles, best ball, whatever the case is, we just got to go as low as we can go. Get away from what your number is.

It truly isn't relevant. All we're trying to do is get that thing in the hole as fast as we can. Well, Perl, it's hard to answer that question without reverting back to Parts A and Part B here, where it's stay in the moment and also stay relaxed. All of those thoughts, you guys, take away from relaxation. They take away from being in the moment. All of those thoughts only make it harder to do what you want and get what you want. And you've got to stay away from the judging. There's so many examples of adding up the score, judging what's going on.

First of all, it's probably going to keep you in the doldrums. But there's other times, and I've watched you do this, you don't start out real well. A couple of the best rounds I've ever had in my life, I made bogey on the first hole. So you're thinking, oh, how am I going to do this? And all of a sudden, you go from there.

So you want to stay away from that judging and get back into the game plan and, as you just said, the things we talked about the first three sections. Okay, so I've got to ask you, let's just make an example of the two best players on the PGA Tour for the last 20 years. 25 years have been Tiger and Phil, correct?

Mm-hmm. Right. Do you think they're assessing and judging where they are with their driver off the tee? Because not only are Phil wouldn't have been pulling his out of the bag for the last five or ten years. No, Tiger's the same way, right? I mean, we are talking about two of the longer hitters in the last 25 years and two of the more crooked drivers of the ball. Do you think that Phil's getting up there and, as he likes to say now, hitting bombs, even though they're in the left rough and the right rough, and he's caring about his swing? Well, plus he didn't think about the previous one, where, again, he wouldn't have that club in his hand. You know, they always talk about that football season, talk about that with the defensive backs.

If they're going to remember all those crazy things and the crazy calls and how tough all that is, you want a short-term memory, get into your routine, do your thing, no judging, and quit adding it up. There's plenty of time in the 19th hole to add it up. No, that's exactly right, and we're going to get to that. Our fourth segment is going to be how to properly evaluate what you're doing, but we're not there yet. Okay.

All right, so Pearl, number two is how do we avoid big numbers? This so hits home with me. It's another piece of business. It's a piece of kind of living life. How do you stay away from the nightmare scenarios, and how do you look at that? I think a little bit about it is understanding your game, playing to your strengths to the best of your ability.

Yeah, your buddy may have just hit it over the creek or around the corner or over the trees or something like that. If that's in your game and that's part of it and you're feeling it, do it. But otherwise, stay away from those big numbers. It's really tough to recover from triple and quadruple bogeys. You can recover from a bogey here and there and get into the rhythm of a round, I think is the way to avoid the big numbers, and playing within yourself. Well, I will tell you this too, John. What I see is guys get to a par four or a par five, and gals too. I don't mean that in gender.

It's not specific. And they automatically go pull out their driver. And you go, well, wait a second. This hole's 300 yards long, and it's tighter than. It looks like a bowling alley down there, and you're going to hit driver because it's just a club you hit off the tee. I remember you telling stories about how much you played on tour, and I can tell you for some, when you didn't hardly hit any drivers. You had some three wood going. That's back in the day of one iron when people actually hit one iron.

I went through tour school at PGA West and La Quinta Dunes or Mountain, whatever the other one was. I was not a long hitter, and I hit three wood the whole time. Actually, I hit three wood for 14 holes through that tour school because, again, I wanted to avoid the big number. I wanted to be in the fairway, and I just said to myself, if I'm in the fairway most of the time, which I could do with the three wood, how high am I going to shoot? I'm not going to shoot myself out of it. If I'm putting a little bit and get the irons going a little bit, I'm in the game.

I think that's a huge, huge piece of it. Well, that's also about some golf awareness too, John, right? Because you're standing there, and you know the golf course is tough.

You know the conditions being the qualifying school is difficult. There's a ton of pressure, and you want to stay in this thing. So, you're going to keep the ball in play, and you're going to give yourself lots of opportunities. Hell, if the putter gets hot like it did, you nearly got your card. Do you point back to Ego from the other section? It's hard to stand up there and not hit that driver, especially now, day and age, in the mentality.

But I'll tell you what, if you want to avoid the big number, Jay, what are most of the big numbers made? First shot, second shot, or on the putting green? Oh my gosh, I'm going to say first shot.

Yeah, I don't know the statistics, but I would say absolutely. So, keep it in play off the tee. One of the things we want to talk about too, and we've got a guest on next week. Hank Haney's going to be our guest, and he talks about eliminating the big miss. And one of his parts of that program are don't make one swing count for more than one stroke. Which means, you hit a ball in the water, you hit a ball out of bounds, that one swing is going to need two more strokes. And there's so many times, you and I would talk about it when we go look at the golf course before the round.

Yeah, you can sneak a driver between these bunkers out there at 310, or it's four times that wide. Let's hit a cut three wood or a five wood and get it in the fairway. And say to ourselves, if we're in the fairway four days in a row from 175, versus in the bunker twice, the rough once maybe, sorry.

Yeah, you need my game well. But if we're in the fairway all the time, what are you going to shoot here? And you know, we'd have that conversation, you're like, gosh dang it, if I'm in the fairway four days in a row, on this fairly difficult par four, I don't really have a sense how I'm going to shoot over par.

So I'm like, well why don't we play from there then? Yeah, no doubt. No doubt about it. And the third component is stick with your plan, not your buddy's plan who's just made three birdies and he's feeling it and he's hitting driver on this hole because he's feeling it and you're kind of still, you know, looking for the rhythm of the round and looking for your touch and feel and just because he's hitting a five iron on this par three, but you're thinking you need to hit some sort of fairway wood, you go to the five iron and dump it.

I see that all the time. Absolutely. Stick with your plan, stick with what your strengths are. Again, another football analogy, you hear them talking all the time. They went out there, they wanted to run the ball a certain number of times and pass it a certain number of times. And invariably when the teams can stick with what their plan is, they've got a much better chance at having the patience to do that versus, boy, we're down a little bit, start throwing it, then they throw another interception, that type of thing. So yeah, absolutely stick with the plan. And really much of what we're talking about through all these different pieces here is developing that plan for yourself, keeping that plan simple.

Right, right. What we are trying to do here, John, is uncomplicate this whole thing, right? And have a plan for your game. So come to the golf course in number one and spend 15 minutes on the putting green.

I mean, that's not 30 minutes and that's 6, 15. And then how do we get to relax? How do we stay in the present moment? How do I get to enjoy my golf game more?

These are all the components that are going to help you do that. Yeah, and sticking with the plan is absolutely going to help do that. I'm just trying to remember some times when we were out there. One of the plans we had all the time was if I could possibly help you take that extra club, especially early in the round. One of the overall rhythm of the rounds, feel the round, plan for you.

I remember Tucson, especially in some of the earlier morning, you know, where it was going to be warm in the day, but it wasn't quite warm and taking that extra club was so beneficial. Well, and I knew too, and obviously you agreed, if you're swinging full out at a nine iron by the second or third hole, we could be in trouble. You're kind of getting that feel for it all day long and not... And again, you see the guys, because the way TV puts it together, yeah, sometimes you're really swinging away, but for the most part, these guys aren't hitting as far as they can hit it every single time. No, especially with their irons.

This rhythm in the round, play within yourself, play to your game plan. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're really trying to simplify this sort of thing and make it become almost second nature. And if you start, folks, if you start focusing on the stuff that we are talking about, what you're going to notice is you're going to stop focusing on all of this crazy. How many sweet thoughts have we given folks so far? All of zero. And I'm pretty sure the last segment is not going to have any either. It is not going to have any either. So it's really not about that. It's just not about that. I don't know, when you work with Bob Rotella...

So Doc would say you could have one swing thought. But he would never give you one. No.

He would never give you one. Nope. There's no way. Yep. It feels like a security blanket, but it really isn't. No, it's a distraction. Yep.

It's more of a distraction. So go out and hit that ball around and think of yourself as a... What the hell? You're playing a sport. So back nine, shaving strokes. Don't add your score up too soon.

No judging. Absolutely number two, avoid that big number. Have a good game plan in there on how to accomplish that.

We are very much in agreement that really a big number often comes from off the tee. And number three, stick with your plan, which happens to have something to do with number two. And number one in the two previous sections that we talked about is absolutely have a plan and stick with that plan. And from round to round, day to day, you can refine that plan a little bit.

You're not living with the one plan for the rest of your life. The golf courses are going to dictate to you that certain holes are going to be a little different. But this is pretty general that's going to apply to all of your golf. Pearl, that's going to wrap up the back nine.

Don't go anywhere. We're going to tell you how, in our New Year's resolution show, how to evaluate correctly. This is Golf with Jay Delsing.

Pearlie and I are coming right back. Doster, Olam & Boyle LLC are a proud sponsor of Golf with Jay Delsing here on 101 ESPN. The firm was started in January 2015 by Mike Doster, Jess Olam and John Boyle, three veterans of the St. Louis real estate, banking, commercial and corporate legal landscape. The firm was founded on the shared view that success should be measured by client and community satisfaction, not profits for partner. The firm's focus is on business, real estate, corporate finance and restructuring and succession planning. Since its founding in 2015, Doster, Olam and Boyle have been involved in real estate, business and corporate transactions with a combined value in excess of over $1 billion. For decades, Doster, Olam and Boyle lawyers have been recognized as leaders in their practice areas by their peers.

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Grab your friends, a cold one, and pull up a chair. We're on to the 19th hole on golf with Jay Delsing. Welcome back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. I've got Pearly with me.

I'm your host, Jay, and we are headed to the 19th hole. Pearly, we've got to talk about a fine drive with Jay. The Dean Team partnership has been great. The Dean Team Automotive Group. The Dean Team is, first of all, a great family.

I bought a car from Joe there last year. It's just been terrific. They couldn't have done any better.

Brett and Colin were just personable. They did everything right. A lot of dealerships, Pearl will tell you that they've got every sort of car you want these guys do. They've got over 1,000 used vehicles. They've got Hyundais and Volkswagens. They've got Volvos.

Their Autosport thing, which we'll talk about in just a little bit. Their dealership is fantastic. They also have a customized golf division, golf cart division, where they can go and make these golf carts for you. So you've got to check out, for all of your automotive buying needs, you've got to check out the Dean Team Automotive Group. There are all of their dealerships from Manchester Road. The new Volvo store is open in Kirkwood.

It's really cool. But the Autosports is spectacular. About $10 million worth of cars there. And it's, well, you and I are not the most savvy car guys, but man alive, they've got every single car you could ever imagine between Rolls Royces and Porsches and Bugattis and Maseratis and Ferraris. They've got them all. They've got a Porsche 918 Spyder for 1.5 million bucks. Anything you want, any car you could possibly think of, the Dean Team will.

If they don't have it, which they probably do, they'll go get it. So visit them at deanteamautomotive.com and tell them you heard it from Golf with Jay Delsing. All right, Pearl, we are on how to evaluate properly our fourth segment in our 2020 Golf Resolution Show. So properly evaluating your round.

Yes. This is a big deal. This is a big deal because... Oh, I can also say that I was so bad at this when I... Yeah, who wants to acknowledge it? Who wants to really have the awareness of what the problem is because then we're going to have to go work on it? I'd come off the golf course thinking that I needed a new driver, I needed a new set of irons, and all I really needed to do is figure out how to... Well, I thought of a new caddy often.

It's like, hey, me, can you come over and stand in for my caddy? But what I did, what I really needed to do was work on my short game. It really was. That's what it was for me.

No question. It was 100 yards on end. Well, short game, yeah, including putting. There was a couple of key aspects that we did learn late, but the old better late than never, because it did help you an awful lot to the end of your career and even for now, just being able to enjoy the game more. Day in, day out, you've got a phenomenal idea and plan on your putting.

Day in, day out, on your chipping and pitching. That doesn't mean they're good every day, but you know where to go and you know it's not far behind when it's going to start getting good to excellent. Okay, so one of the things, so we're going to help you figure out what's important. Okay, so that's a side note. The other thing that we didn't talk about that I need to talk about is figuring out your tendencies.

Gigantic. What do you tend to do? And later in the round, you kind of get tired. You tend to overswing. So we've got to keep that in mind, all right, because that's a big thing. That's a show. It is.

That's an entire show. Number one in our little, of our subset here, is how many shots did I hit from 100 yards on in? People will be blown away with that. You will be shocked.

Yep. You will be shocked. It's going to be, if you shoot 100, you're going to probably hit 70.

And why do we want to know that? Because where we hit the majority of the shots is where we can try to figure out how to save some of these shots and lower our scores and improve our handicap. Best players in the world are the best players from 100 yards and in. No question. Period. End of story. End of story.

All the time. Move on. No exceptions. Next. No doubt. So that applies to us as well, for sure. So you want to sit down at the 19th hole and have a cocktail, have a beer, grab a sandwich, whatever that is.

How many shots did you hit from 100 yards on in? Hey, and this evaluation takes a little bit of time. And you can make fun of this whole process.

Do it with your buddies when you're in there having a beer or a sandwich or whatever your flavor is. But spend some time on this. It's so easy to save it on your phone now.

Yep. Put some little spreadsheet together. Just keep it in some notes from round to round so you can kind of get a sense. Because at the end of the day, that's how you're going to learn throughout the year whether or not you're getting better and whether or not your plan, your program is working, or you should tweak it and go to something a little bit differently.

Yeah, there's no question about that. Number two in this is going to be, what was the cause of my big number today? So how are people even going to do that objectively and not say, oh, it was this?

This might be one to ask your buddies, too. Why do you think I made that eight on that hole? Right. Well, first of all- Today was more than one bad shot. Exactly. A lot of bad decisions in there. Yep. Right? Okay. So that might be it. The other thing is take a look. Well, undoubtedly some of our folks are single digit handicaps.

And what is going to be, where is that tendency? Where did I make that double bogey? Why did I make that double bogey? Some days it's going to be really obvious. Oh, I hit a bad drive and went out of bounds.

Well, there's my big number. I made that swing. Was it a bad swing?

Was it a lack of commitment? Did I know it was going out of bounds before I swung at it? Should I have hit a different club?

That's why we're saying take a little bit of time and really know the cause. Not that first level of cause, oh, because I hit it out of bounds. Why did you hit it out of bounds? What was the shot you were trying to play? As Jay just said, were you committed?

Did you have the shape in mind? Pearl, for me, when I played, if I did not have my mental commitment, we never, ever, ever judged my swing. That's a great point. We tossed it right in the trash can because it went in that category. Folks, put this in your briefcase under mental airs. I was indecisive. I was uncommitted. I didn't know what the hell I was trying to do. You and I talk about this all the time. Did you miss it before you swung? Exactly.

So if you came out of your routine, if you came out of the rhythm of your routine, if you weren't committed, if you weren't properly relaxed, I just love what you said, Jay. Don't go there. You've already missed it. Right.

John, that is so crucially important. We cannot judge your golf swing. If you're standing up on that tee and all you're thinking about is the ball going out of bounds and you hit it out of bounds, it's not your swing's fault. Or if you don't hit it out of bounds. And you hit it some more farther.

Yeah, right. It's not your swing's fault. That whole piece of, I can remember, one of our goals was how many times are we going to hit a shot during the day without being completely committed within the routine, et cetera. How many shots did we miss before we swung? If you could, the days you got that right, we knew we were going to be good to excellent days. Oh, bro. I got so good at that towards the latter part of my career where I just felt like I made so few mental mistakes.

Early in my career? Oh, I wasn't even on the radar. Right, exactly. Okay, and our last number three pro in this fourth section on how to evaluate property is? Two takeaways. What did you learn from evaluating that round that you want to take away and work on? And again, you can tell we're not talking about any technique, any form, any swing mechanics.

What are a couple things that you take away? Maybe you spend a little bit more time, not before the round per your program, but on a different day when you can just go practice from that 100 yards and in, something off the tee to get a shape that you can trust. Hey, bro, how about if you're going to a golf course that has an entirely different saying than the course you're used to playing?

And you might go from a light, fluffy sort of sand to a heavy kind of almost like that river sand that we have so much around St. Louis. That's a gigantic difference. And if you don't get to spend any time practicing that before you come out and play that golf course again, that's a problem. Yeah, it's a problem. So work on those. Know what those takeaways, not five of them, not ten takeaways.

Don't beat yourself up. It's a couple of things you can do to tweak your game plan, to work on your routine. You know, the beautiful part about working on your routine is you don't have to be at a golf course to really work on your routine either. You can do it at the office.

You can do it at home. Right. So let's wrap this show and our four segments up and put a nice little 2020 bow on this thing.

You got it, baby. OK. So our first was putting and how to avoid three putting.

All right. Our second was how to relax and get you to enjoy the fact that you're out playing golf and to enjoy your game a little more. The third was shaving strokes off of your game and trying to avoid your big numbers, et cetera, sticking to your plan.

And the fourth was how to evaluate properly. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

People do this all year. Keep refining it. It'll get easier as you go. At first, it's going to seem like a lot, even though we've only kept it.

Well, we're trying to keep simple. It's going to really flow and come mid-season. You're going to really start seeing the results. Hey, if you want to reach out to us.

Jay at jaydelsongolf.com. Send us a question. Send us any sort of comment or something that you have on this. Pearly, thank you for being with us. With me, thanks for trying to corral.

It's kind of like putting one more frog in a wheelbarrow with Pearly and I over here. We just keep on going, but thank you for doing that. And we're looking forward to being with you this year, St. Louis.

Hit them straight. That was golf with Jay Delson, brought to you by Whitmore Country Club. Tune in next Sunday for more from Jay, John, and the other pros and experts from the golf world.

In the meantime, you can find all of Jay's shows at 101espn.com, as well as at jaydelsongolf.com. Hi, this is Chris Howard, host of Plugged In with Chris Howard. It's crazy to think that a few weeks ago we were talking about whether or not to Attack on Aloha should consider retiring after two concussions and worldwide debates on player safety and NFL culpability. Tua has done nothing but go back to work and currently has the Dolphins writing a three-game win streak and one loss behind the division favorite Buffalo Bills. While everyone was yapping about the end of his career, Tua Tagovailois said he'll decide when it's time.

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