Transcripts - Episode 13: Making the Most of Winter Golf Practice (with Jeff Jones, PGA)

Announcer: The Birdie Board podcast is brought to you by the Birdie Board app, the easiest way to track matches, scores, and handicaps with friends. Now, here's your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Corey: Welcome back to the Birdie Board podcast. Back on the show is Jeff. Very excited to have him back here.

One of my favorite things the first time he was here is just how much I learned in our conversation. I still remember the story you said about the basement mattress with the practicing. I do not know why, but that really stood out to me when you did that, because I just picture myself doing something like that, and I am sure a lot of other people do as well.

Last time I actually introduced you to the podcast. I am sure some people are going to remember that, but I thought this time, why do not you introduce yourself so we can hear who you are from your own words?

Jeff: Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me. Yeah, my name is Jeff Jones. I picked up a golf club when I was 13 years old. That was 52 years ago. Instantly fell in love with it. Started playing in high school, played in college, thought I was always going to get good, make the tour, realized in college that while I was a skilled player, there were much more skilled players.

After that, I turned pro, started getting the apprentice program to the PGA. I realized I did not want to sell shirts. I did not want to make tee times. I said, I do not want to do that thing. The only thing I really liked doing was teaching. So for the last 40 years, that is all I have been doing, just out teaching.

So I love my journey to learning the sport. We oftentimes say people are self taught. Well, everybody is self taught. I did it without guidance. So I like to provide guidance to people because I am sure I can help them shortcut the learning curve.

That is where I get the enjoyment from teaching, watching other people have smiles on their face because their balls go further and straighter, or they shoot lower scores.

Corey: So when you got to college, what was the defining moment that made you think, like, oh, PGA is probably not quite for me? Or was it just after playing with the guys you were playing with?

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, the defining moment, you know, I played with our number one player. Great guy. Three consecutive days, he shot 64, 66, 65. He just did not look like he was blinking. And I thought to myself, wow, I am struggling to shoot 74. I am 10 down to this guy. Like, maybe a real job would be the tip.

Corey: Yeah. I guess that is the one way you can kind of stay in golf. Do you remember what you thought the biggest difference was between you and him at the time?

Jeff: Oh, 100% one was speed.

Corey: Really?

Jeff: I grew up in Western Colorado, short golf courses at altitude. You can hide with the lack of speed. I had a decent little short game. I could get up and down a lot.

Then I played junior college golf in Arizona. The course is really long. I did not have altitude. A lot more bunkering out front. And all of a sudden I was like, in my mind going, oh wow, this is a lot more difficult.

And you know, nowadays, we taught accuracy back in the day until this kid came, you know, facing the planet called Tiger Woods. And all of a sudden people were like, oh wow, look, this is what we do.

And so now, if you are teaching and you are not teaching speed, you are killing people because, you know, if you want to make par, that is a win, right? A birdie is a big win. A bogey is a loss. A double bogey is a huge loss. You have to have speed.

If you have ball speed, you are armed in danger to beat the hole. Without ball speed, you are going to get whacked around.

Corey: Yeah. So probably a good transition then, because as you know, one of the things I am focusing on for this podcast is just what can we do during the winter.

So it is one of the reasons why I wanted you to come back on the show, because what better advice than from a PGA professional than we can get.

So I wanted to start off this podcast by talking about why winter practice really works. Outside of just the obvious weather difference for most of the country, what makes winter practice different than in season practice?

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, look, golfers, we are in love with the ball. Of course, we want to just go interact with the ball. You get off work, you want to go hit it, and then you are frustrated, right?

And then what happens when you start interacting with the ball is you become reactionary. If you see something you like, you think, oh, it is all good, and then once you hit it bad...

So I think when you go to the winter, you can really slow down and you do not have to react to the ball flight, because you are not going to have the ball flight.

If you have an indoor net or you rig something up and hit it to a mattress like I did, you have ball contact, you feel ball contact, but you cannot see ball flight.

Corey: You see, that is a good thing for golfers.

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, you need it. You need a blend of both. You need the feedback off the flight ultimately to make adjustments. But the problem is, if you do not establish the core movement fundamentals, right, that is really the rub of golf.

What is the great thing about golf? You can enjoy it at any level. Okay. I do not think that some people shooting one tens are having that much fun, but God bless you if you are.

So if you take winter and you just slow it down and you maybe take like a 30/70 approach, spend 30% of your time studying, not scroll tipping on Instagram, but actually find an instructor you trust, somebody who can dive in deep with you.

Start learning your swing mechanics. Start using video, recording yourself, and then get a deeper understanding.

I always went for this thing of UFO. It is a simple acronym for understanding. Do you understand the mechanics of the swing, how to generate speed, how to control the club face?

And then do you understand your faults, your tendencies? Even if we go, oh, I do not want it over there, but it tends to go over there, right?

And then F is feeling. What is feeling? It is this kinesthetic awareness. You cannot feel the wind, but you know it is out there. You cannot put your hand on it and grab it, right?

And then O is overlearn. Overlearn to the point where you are repetitive enough in your motion.

You look at driving 30 minutes after work to the course and taking two and a half hours to play nine holes and driving back. It is three hours. Think about the amount of reps in the winter you could make at your house.

So I think it is a good time to slow down, gain some understanding of your swing, gain a feel for what you are trying to do, and get some confidence and trust in what you are doing. So when the snow comes off, then you are ready to rock.

Corey: So I think about an at home setup, similar to what you did in the basement, just mattress against the wall. It is pretty easy nowadays to get a golf net for a hundred bucks and hit into it, whether you can do it in your basement or garage, or outside on a hopefully non snowy day.

What would someone be looking for? Because so many people are trained to look at the ball flight to determine whether or not they had a good swing. So if you are not looking at ball flight, what are some things you can pick up on for feedback?

Jeff: Yeah. Launch monitor. When TrackMan and FlightScope first came out, the big units were $24,000. You can get a FlightScope Mevo, or a Foresight, you can find one for 180, 190 dollars. So it is not a massive investment.

And you really want the four main metrics. One, it is going to track clubhead speed. It is going to say how efficient is your body bringing the club in. Number two, it is going to track ball speed.

And then we look at smash factor, which is just ball speed divided by clubhead speed. If you come in at 100 and the ball leaves at 140, the difference is 1.4, that is the smash factor.

We know 1.5 is considered the holy grail, perfectly hit. So anytime you can stay over 1.4 is good.

So you got clubhead speed, you got ball speed, how efficiently did you transfer, smash factor.

And then look at your spin rates, because your spin rates are going to tell you, was the ball over spun or under spun.

Distance comes on an X/Y axis between speed on one side and spin on the other side. Too much spin, think baseball, too much bend is a pop fly. Not enough spin is a ground ball. And that perfect launch gets in the left field or right field bleachers.

Corey: So it sounds like you do not necessarily need a monitor that can be high end like TrackMan, just enough to give you some of those basic statistics to get you practicing through the winter.

Jeff: Yeah. That is a great investment. We are getting close to Christmas.

Corey: Exactly. That is your wife, your girlfriend, just say you deserve this.

Jeff: I want one myself. Because then when you take it to the golf course, it can translate. If it is easy to look up and you go, okay, what are ideal spin numbers for my driver?

Then you start going to the course and you are hitting with it, you are checking out the feedback, and you go, okay, I can see what that visually looks like to me.

Back in my day without those, I was always like a height guy. If my driver is going towards the eighth floor of the hotel, that is good. If it is down at the fourth, it is too low. If it is up at the 12th floor, it is too high.

So yeah, I would definitely get one of those. It is great if you get the whole setup where you can travel and see, play a course doing it, but you do not need to. You can hit it in the net and get the feedback on that.

Corey: Yeah, definitely.

So imagine they at least have some sort of feedback they can get from a net or from a simulator or even just some basic numbers, whatever works in their budget.

I know when you and I first talked about an outline, we talked about some of the things you could do even before you start hitting the ball, and one of those is the setup and starting position. You mentioned this is one of the easier ways to improve your consistency. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Jeff: Yeah, sure. Grip, stance, posture, ball position, alignment. That is the five tools.

I will quote Jack Nicklaus, because he is more credible than me. Jack said in one of his books, "I have played with amateurs around the world for 40 plus years, and I can tell you that 75 to 80% of every bad golf swing I saw an amateur make was directly related to a poor starting position."

Now he has got four decades of watching people play, and you can pick it out. Rarely do you see somebody where you walk up on them and you go, okay, the grip is good, the posture is good, the setup is good, the alignment is good, how they came into the ball, the whole mojo of getting set.

When you see that good, you are expecting a nice swing. And when you look over and the grip is out of position, the posture of the arms is wrong, something is in there, you are already down. You only got a quarter left of your dollar.

Corey: Yeah, exactly. And that starts leading to a poor takeaway and a poor position at the top.

Being a self guided learner, the one thing I focus on is I always ask myself, okay, if I can start perfect and get to the top perfect, how much can I screw up in point three seconds? Because the whole downswing is point three seconds.

Jeff: That is a great point.

Corey: It is so true. If you are not in a good position, how much can you fix in point three seconds? Not much.

Jeff: Exactly. We love to apply speed. We love to see the ball fly. But talk about a perfect thing for the winter, work on your setup. Grip, stance, posture, alignment, ball position.

Learn how to get that perfect, and learn how to take and get the club loaded up into the right position. Get your body position, get your arms in position, get the club face position. Then you got point three seconds. When you step on the gas, something good is going to happen.

Corey: What are some of the most common problems you see with people and their setup?

Jeff: Without a grip, you have no chance. The grip goes to wrist function.

The wrist is a beautiful tool because it goes four ways. Flexion, extension, radial and ulnar deviation, up, down, in and out.

The human body does not have any other joint that does that. If you rotate, you are either rotating in or out. That is your choice.

You set the wrist control and the hand control. And I think this is why you see people on TV and you go, well, they do not look the same, but they are generating high ball speeds. Obviously they are great players. There is none of them who have poor wrists.

You just simply cannot.

HackMotion is one. It has wrist sensors. It gets confusing looking at graphs, but I am just saying, if you get that club in your hand every day and you start to understand where you want the club in certain positions in your swing and start to get your wrist control, that is huge.

The wrist control is where you get speed, but it is also the most vulnerable. Your strength is going to be more on the inside, and you work to the outside of your body. The weakest segment is going to be the fastest segment, which is your wrist control.

So if you are bad in the wrists, it means your grip does not work. Work on the grip. Work on your posture.

Corey: We have talked about grip and stance, but I know personally, whenever I start focusing on grip and wrists and getting things in the right position, I tend to forget about my body and it ends up being a whole arm swing rather than a nice sequence with my body.

How can a golfer avoid getting so focused on one part of their swing and forgetting it still is a full swing?

Jeff: Yeah, that is a good question. You have an inside section of your swing, which is your framework: your rib cage, your hips, your pelvis, your legs, your feet.

And you have an outside section, which is your arms, your elbows, your wrists, the shaft, the club.

So it is really like coordinating, like I always tell people, can you rub your stomach and pat your head? Can you do two different things at the same time independently?

Arms have speed. The bad thing about them is they want to be in the driver’s seat. They need to stay in position and work with your rotation.

So this is another beautiful thing to do in the off season, learn how to get your body and your arms to sync up.

Corey: Do you have any tips for that, especially with off season training?

Jeff: Yeah. I am one of these weird people. Your body has a front side and a back side. The spine is in the center. You have an independent left and an independent right.

So you put them on the club and now the front and the back are married. So when I do drills, most of the drills I post, they are either front side only drills or back side only drills. And then we marry the two together.

Some people respond better to front side rotation drills. Other people respond better to trail side drills.

So I like to drill the front, drill the back independently. I like to drill the inside. I like to drill the outside and try to marry them together. I guess that probably means I just defined myself as slightly ADHD.

Corey: Yeah, just jumping all around, exactly. But it does not sound like it would be too hard to go through sequenced drills in the winter.

Jeff: 100%. Because anytime you practice or touch the club, what are you ultimately looking for? To learn something. If you do not go there and learn something about you, then you are not getting what you need.

You can read stuff, you can watch stuff, but then you have to take that information and learn something about you. Because when you can assimilate the information and you can trust it, then you are going to play better.

So the winter time is a great place to get a better set of knowledge and gain more trust in what you are doing.

Corey: During winter practice, sometimes people, me included, it is cold outside, their headspace is not really in golf anymore.

But I know just from being an athlete and talking to you, consistency every single day is what is going to lead you to be a better golfer next spring.

Do you have any advice for people trying to stay in rhythm throughout the winter, especially in the dark days of the Northeast?

Jeff: Touch the club five to six days a week. Get a little cheap mat, something where you can make contact with the ground and work on that.

The ground, what a great way to develop confidence. You take five minutes a day for six days. In that five minutes you can make 40 swings.

How does the club interact with the ground? How does it come to the ground? Chunky, thin, those do not say anything other than, oh, I am coming to the ground too hard, or I am not getting to the ground.

When every time you rotate, you can rotate the sole of the club and get it down to the ground and you can start to say, oh wow, I am having a great interaction.

Then take a piece of chalk and put a little line on your mat and say, okay, that is where I am touching the ground. I am going to touch the ground more specifically right there.

Corey: I love that. That is something really practical that you can do too.

Jeff: It is a pattern, and it is a weird pattern. Not only is it a difficult pattern with a lot of moving parts, it is a weird pattern that your brain has to learn.

How many times will I go, wow, that person is just natural. Some people learn it quicker than others.

For me, I did a lot of club throwing and a lot of un-colorful language coming out while I was learning. I do not think it is natural.

So the winter time, just get some movement. Go to your happy space down in the basement or the garage, turn the heater on, and make five to 10 minutes of reps.

And obviously you can go to the gym and work on rotational stuff, increase your strength, flexibility, all of those things.

If you really are a hardcore golfer, make sure part of your workout is rotational based, because that will translate over when March or April hits.

Corey: That is awesome. I love that. I just moved into a new house, so I have a spot in my basement I have been eyeing for some golf practice.

I have been thinking about your advice ever since our last podcast, getting the club in your hand for five, 10 minutes every day. So that is going to be my Christmas break project, clean up that basement so I can start doing that.

Jeff: Nice. Yeah. Do not tell your wife anything. Just do it.

Corey: Yeah, exactly. Just show up down there with the club.

Jeff: I cannot say enough about touching the club every day. I have three boys. My oldest son was a baseball player. After high school he said, I am going to learn how to play golf. He said, how should I do it?

And I said, okay, I am going to give you a quick brief one minute lesson. Practice that for 30, 40 minutes, seven straight days a week, and do that over the whole summer.

He had 90 days straight. One minute lesson, practice at least 30 minutes a day. At the end of the summer, he was breaking 80.

Corey: Wow.

Now he is an athletic kid, but still, I think the key is you are not doing information overload.

I think people get lessons and they sometimes sit there for 30 or 45 minutes with the instructor telling them every single mechanic of a golf swing, and then you do not see them for a week. Then you are expected to practice all of it. Of course you are not going to retain it.

Or maybe you do not get lessons and you are just going to YouTube watching 20 or 30 minutes of instruction, and they mention motions that cannot be practiced that simply.

It makes sense that it was more effective with a shorter burst, but more frequent.

Jeff: Oh, 100%. You just gave me a great next podcast idea, if you will have me back on.

Why does the one hour lesson model fail 99% of the people? I have been getting paid for doing this my whole life.

But in an actual one hour lesson, there is probably five minutes of instruction, if you are a good instructor. If you are not a good instructor, you babble.

Short pieces of information are good, but it has to come with a plan.

That is the problem with YouTube and Instagram. It is short bursts of information, but chapter one has to go to chapter two to three to four to five.

When I was teaching my son, I had a definite plan. Golf should be built in a specific order.

I build the inside and the outside. I alternate my short tips. Work something on the inside, work something on the outside. Work something on the front, work something on the back. And you just keep rotating. Then the player can assimilate those together.

Corey: Yeah. Well, I think this makes sense too because I originally found you on YouTube and I know you have good content and a lot of good drills on there.

Can you tell everyone what your YouTube channel is and if there is anywhere else they can find you?

Jeff: Yeah, you can find me. Most of the stuff I post is under rightstartgolf.com.

I started off, and I have a huge junior golf background. I run one of the largest after school golf programs in the U.S. I started 30 years ago.

And I have a passion for junior golf development. One, they are not in a hurry. They do not have jobs, wives, mortgages. And they have a lot of time.

So when I started posting stuff online, I was posting stuff that I teach. But then I realized there are 1,600,000 people posting stuff trying to sell stuff.

So if you look at my stuff, RightStartGolf, you will see a lot of a junior golf slant to it.

Do I teach adults? I do teach adults. And most of the stuff I do online is I take the lesson model and I fraction it. I fraction it into two video analyses per month, and then the other two off weeks are specific drills and drill evaluations.

So it comes back to what we talked about before. The more you interact with your instructor, no matter who you use, the better you will be.

The problem is if they are charging 100, 125, 150 an hour, and you start going, well, twice a month is a lot of money. And I understand that.

So I think online it is easier to fraction down time. It is a better working model.

I think a lot of learning things are worse online versus in person, but I am changing my tune with golf.

I have had a lot more success with people doing more frequent contact with them online because you can never run a business where you go, okay, I am just going to book people for 15 minute lessons.

Corey: Yeah, exactly. And you have opened in my own mind the importance of frequency. I think that is true in a lot of areas of life.

I used to be really into working out, and I knew I would get better results if I did 30 minutes every day rather than two hours every couple of days. It is the consistency.

Even with golf in the winter, it is probably the best thing we can do leading up to spring, trying to do a little something every day.

Jeff: Yeah. And make sure you do not forget your putter. Do not forget, you know, we have not talked about your putter.

You can set down a couple of alignment sticks and work on your path and your face angle.

Same thing with shorter stuff, chipping and pitching. You learn how to do all that.

Corey: That is a really good point. It is easy for golfers to forget putting, even though it makes up like half of our score.

Jeff: I know. Three clubs make up 82%: your driver, your wedge, and your putter.

Putting is 42%. Wedges are like 27, 28.

You have never had a bad round where you go, wow, I drove it great, all my wedges were on point, I hit the green from 80 yards in every time, I got up and down, I putted well. You are not getting in your car and going, wow, that score stunk. It will not happen.

Corey: Yeah, definitely.

So we are getting near the end of the podcast. Based off what we talked about today, is there anything you want to leave the listeners with for how they could practice this winter?

Jeff: Hey, you are figuring out me. I am a rep guy. So get into reps, have fun, and learn something about you.

Put a mirror, go to Walmart, get a cheap mirror, get a cheap mat. Learn to make some reps and make the swing. Build confidence, build trust, and build vision.

I missed a great opportunity. This is how stupid I am. I was invited to play in a fundraiser last Saturday and I do not play much golf.

As soon as we got out there, I realized this guy had a sponsor of three teams. I do not know anybody, but I am in the midst of all these people talking, joking back and forth.

I was thinking, oh man, if I would have just known, you guys need the Birdie Board here. There was so much crap talking going on between these teams.

And then they would drive from two holes over and come over and they would go, how are you guys playing it?

I would have to whack the guy I was with because he says, I go, do not say a word. Well, there are many under.

This would have been the perfect opportunity. If everybody had this, there would not have been any, hey, you could just check your app and go.

Corey: Exactly. That is what Birdie Board is there for, tournaments and fun matches like that. And it has all those fun stats that tell you who had the best hole and who had the worst hole throughout the round.

Plus you can hold them accountable.

Jeff: Exactly. Plus I could follow up behind them and make sure they were not pencil whipping me either.

Corey: Exactly. You can hold them accountable.

Awesome. I appreciate your time. I love talking golf. I love your passion for golf.

And that is one of my favorite things about golf. It is cross generational. There was a time in my life where I was playing golf with my dad, my uncle and my grandfather, and I was like, what other sport in the world can three different generations come and just do a sport together. That was always so special to me.

Jeff: Yeah, no doubt. But we just had our first grandbaby. So now I already told my son, hey, your daughter is playing golf.

Corey: I was going to say, it is not going to be long. She will end up being better than all of us.

Jeff: She will have a good start. As soon as she can get her legs under her, start walking, we will start swinging.

Corey: Exactly, exactly. Well, thanks again, Jeff, for joining, and that is this episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Jeff: That is awesome. Thank you for having me. Have a great Christmas.

Corey: Thanks for tuning into the Birdie Board podcast. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and share it with a friend who loves golf as much as you do.

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